There’s a
waiter at Kerala Hotel, tallish, fair, thick of moustache, forever not so much
rubbing as lovingly caressing his considerable belly.
Greets me
with the broadest smile of acknowledgement, even if he’s in the middle of
taking an order, almost as though he’s been expecting me.
Slows down
ever so slightly on his way to place his order, rolls off the day’s specials,
rounds them off with a “what will it be today?”, and he’s off.
Comes
tearing back from the kitchen holding up four, sometimes five, fingers in the
air- one for each day since my last visit. “Decided?” Almost a challenge.
I ask him
what’s good. He chooses from a variety of digressions. “You smell like a bar!”
“Should’ve seen the group of girls here for lunch!”
I say I’ll
have dosa with prawn curry, or parotta and beef roast. “Good choice,”
he says, “why do we make anything else?” Ambles away, hurt.
Mid-meal, he
wants me to know there’s someone traveling to Kerala the next day. Do I need to
send anything home?
There’s another
gentleman making his way here from Kerala if I’d like anything sent this side?
Pickle? Chips? One can never have too many chips.
He goes to
great lengths to establish these friendly mules as men of great character, as
though I might be in the business of gold or spices.
And if the
Samaritan happens to be a woman: “do I need say anything else?” This is said
with a pointed shrug of the shoulders; checkmate.
I brought
this up one day –the hushed tones and the declarations of faith- and he told
me, “you shouldn’t just let anybody into your home”.
I tell him
today I’m having trouble finding a flatmate. “A Malayalee would be best,” he
says, almost to himself, “I know just the guy.”
He affects
one last roguish grin at a young woman sat across the room –“Used to be a nun.
Now training to be a nurse.”- and turns to me.
“I’ll let
you know about the boy,” he says, and hands me the bill, “you’re on Whatsapp?”
Sandra Bullock has confirmed she will not appear in Speed 3.
It was probably my fault. In a moment of weakness, brought on by a severely late night that I could have avoided and sheer physical inability to face the day before the sun had started its mournful descend down the clock, I found myself boarding a KSRTC Super Fast Passenger bus from Trivandrum to Cochin last Saturday. A journey I usually make in under five hours from behind the air-conditioned comfort of my steering wheel. I can do this, I told myself, I can middle class it one weekend.
My suspicion that the bus service was named by a clinically optimistic mid-level bureaucrat on a sleepy Friday afternoon many sleepy afternoons ago was confirmed almost as soon as we left the suburbs and hit the highway. "Why won't a Super Fast overtake autorickshaws?" inquired fellow-passengers, "I could have paid 50 bucks less and taken the Fast Passenger instead!" Aah the joys, and fleeting entitlement, we derive from public sector nomenclature.
I was still mulling over excuses to give my Mom on showing up a couple of days late for her sixtieth birthday when we stopped at the Kayamkulam bus station: a fifteen minute snack break, announced the conductor cheerfully. Desperate for a cigarette and having heard horror stories about how strictly the anti-smoking laws are enforced in Kerala, I made my way to the washroom while mapping out a Bourne-style mental lay of the land- here a cop, there a "No Smoking" sign, etc.
The washroom was a study in the famed Mallu eye for a quick buck. Under the cover of a desk that men in urgent need of bladder relief threw mandatory 1-rupee coins on before making their hasty way to the urinal, was a thriving cigarette business! See, the cops needed their nictonie fix too. So rather than let the law be flouted across the bus stand, they had quietly convened all lawlessness to a corner, where men could urinate and suck on phallus-shaped cancer sticks without detracting from the status quo. How empowering, how communal, to bum a light off a policeman to spark up a cigarette in a No-Smoking zone!
But if the washroom already evokes images of an Oscar Wilde-designed utopia, let's bear in mind that every revolution has a Dick That Takes It Too Far. So there I was, my body as far as possible from the urinal to avoid splashage, encouraging the little man to do maximum damage in lieu of the many hours of travel ahead, when I sensed this presence, this intrusion into the most private of men's worlds- the space between urinal walls.
I looked up, and sure enough, there's this middle-aged guy at the adjacent stall, his dhoti hitched up around his waist and neither hand on deck, peeking. I stood rooted to the spot in fear and embarrassment, unable to take my eyes off his face, as he continued to stare right at my cock and appeared to be shaking himself clean a little too vehemently.
It's my fault.
These shorts are a little too tight.
I am showing a little more leg than what may be considered savory.
Fuck this, I'm the Victim here!
"Seen enough?" I asked, in a voice calculated to imply manly, gym shower-indifference and the casual nature of having one's privates ogled at. That's when the Middle-Aged Masturbator looked up, calmly lifted a hand from underneath his dhoti, and proceeded to gently box my ear. "What'd you say?" he asked.
He hadn't even considered punching me, the patronly pervert, he thought it fitting to punish my bringing down the fourth wall with a clip of my ear!
Now say what you will of the Straight Man and his propensity to attribute all kinds of terror to the Unknown, but it arises out of a Fear that is both recurring and real: that of Another Man's Penis. It's a nightmare that twitches threateningly in the back of our minds, one that snakes its way without invitation into a multitude of our orifices from nostril to asshole on any given day of the week. Not that I didn't think I could take him in an altercation, but somehow the nature of his perversion filled me with images of him using his Penis as a weapon. I looked around the otherwise-empty washroom and decided I may very well end up in a Borat-style battle of the brosephs if I were to pick a fight. So I lowered my gaze, furious at myself for having backed down, zipped myself up as quickly as I could while the Middle-Aged Masturbator continued to have his merry way with my johnson in his mind.
I did manage a parting blow though, even if it was in flight. Business unsatisfactorily concluded (on my end, at any rate), I stepped back and kicked the guy right in the middle of his back. I didn't stay to bask in the glory of my legwork though few sounds have pleased my ear more than the sickening splash of all the collected urine in his pot as he helplessly lowered his hand in it to brace himself. Outside, I decided I could risk missing my bus to catch a glimpse of my tormentor's walk of shame. And if any political party promises to arm women (and... ahem.. boyishly good-looking men) using public transport in India with switchblades and guns, they have my vote.
Icy Highs's Video Recco: The Smoking Area clip from the always brilliant The IT Crowd
The Mothership, hardcore Mallu that she is, has a tendency to assume the worst about North Indians- or as we call them in private, 'Hindi people'. Her definition of 'Hindi people' is a wide, sweeping, arc that covers just about every inch of the country north of Bangalore. Naturally, she wasn't thrilled when I moved to Bombay last year. Till recently though, I was under the impression that I had finally converted the Mothership, that I could take comfort in knowing that I'd transformed one bigoted soul forever.
Not having spent much time in the North myself, I was thrilled when I got the opportunity to spend a few days in Delhi last month to promote my novel. To nobody's surprise, those 'few days' in the capital have somehow stretched into a couple of weeks now, partly because I was down with some stomach trouble, and mostly because it meant I 'd have that much longer before getting back to the daily grind. The Mothership- bless her- fired off two warning texts to my phone before finally calling.
"Tharun," she says, "what do they want?"
"Who, Ma?" I ask, because it's 7 in the morning and I've just returned to the friend's home I'm crashing at from a party with seven hungover strangers.
"The Hindi People," she says, "what will it take to get you out of there?"
"What?" I try to clear my head, "Mom, I just got held up with book stuff here. I'll head back soon."
"Son," she whispers, "I don't know who they are or what they want, but you tell them your Ma's got skills, you hear? You tell them if they don't let you go, your Mommy will look for them, that I will find them, and I will kill them. You hear?"
I consider letting my Mother think I've been kidnapped by Hindi People for just a little longer; it'd be easier than telling her I've been putting off getting back to real life because breakups are hard and I'm in possession of half a brick of primo hashish that needs smoking before I can board a flight without fear of getting an anal probe.
"Ma," I say, "I'm not being kept here against my will. My stomach's all screwed. I think I've got Delhi Belly."
"That's good," she says, "speak only in code. "Delhi Belly"! Ha, I bet they're going crazy trying to figure that out!"
"No Ma, 'Delhi Belly' is a real thing," I say, "It's a stomach infection you get from drinking Delhi water or something."
"Good. Now keep using code, but what can you tell me about your location? I'm sure they blindfolded you, but did you happen to hear a train or a plane in the background?"
"The entire city is connected by train, Ma," I say, "and besides, I've not been kidnapped! I can't believe you've never heard of Delhi Belly. Google it. Aamir Khan even made a movie about it. You know it must be contemporary and traumatic and capable of reducing housewives across India to tears if Aamir Khan makes a movie about it."
The Mothership falls silent. Aamir Khan is one of the few Bollywood actors to hold his own in our household, partly because he made a couple of decent movies ten years ago and mainly because, as my mother put it, "I think his people have suffered enough, don't you?" She knows I wouldn't use the Khan's name in vain.
"So you're actually staying longer in Delhi off your own free will?" she asks.
"Bye, Ma," I say, "I love you."
Now as any man will tell you, you can't really look people in the eye after they've just heard you tell your mother you love her. So I put down the phone, make a face, and plant my gaze on a speck on the wall that's a good foot above the tallest person in the little group assembled around me. Though we've boarded up the windows, we can hear the day breaking outside, an angry milkman here, a furious automobile honk there. We haven't slept a wink all night but we've been in Delhi long enough to know we can't afford to waste daylight.
"Right, people," I say, "you know the drill. We're all hungry and this is part of the cultural experience, so no whining. And pick up anything you see that can be concealed in your clothes and can be used as a weapon."
There is a collective nod, and no audible Oedipus jokes. Deciding it's still early, I collect just the assault rifles from the corner and pass them around.
"Ok on the count of three," I say, "ladies, grab your pepper spray and tasers, and other assorted anti-rape devices. Guys, you've got your guns; lock and load. Let's go get some breakfast."
Countless years ago, on a fairly mundane but ominous-in-retrospect Thursday evening on the eve of my seventh birthday, my father had The Conversation that all Mallu Dads must at some point, usually on the eve of their son’s seventh birthday, have with their male progeny. “Son,” he told me, “I know you have friends from all over the country in your school, and they’re all lovely children. But… you’re different. You’re notbad-different, just… Special.” The Mothership’s meticulously indexed library of family photographs (Ref: Aug-Oct, 1991;, pre-measles, post C- in Fingerpainting) will show I arched my eyebrows like the best in the business, suitably impressed by the enormity of the occasion. “Son,” my Dad continued, looking away from the thunder and lightning and the late Monsoons that dutifully lashed against our living room window, “you’re a middle-class Mallu man.”
He told me how, as a Mallu man, I was blessed with superior qualities other races just weren’t privy to, how life had been handed to me on a silver banana leaf by virtue of my lineage alone. I would have to deal with the good looks, the charm, the terrible terrible popularity with the ladies, he said. I’d also have to put my superior Mallu brains to good use, he said. I would grow up to become a computer engineer in the Silicon Valley, he said, or a dentist in some posh English county like all the nieghbours’ kids. “It’s part of our culture,” he explained. Some of those predictions were proven wrong over time. Some, like “not too long before you start sporting a thick moustache like mine!”, over a little less time. But I’ll always remember what he told me while tucking me into bed that night: “There’s always a choice, son. You can either spend your life under-achieving to compensate for your natural awesomeness, or you can light up the world with it. Just don’t, ever, be Evil.”
Nearly twenty two years later, staring right through the eyes and into the soul of a little Pahadi man in the foothills of the Himalayas, those words came back to haunt me. Girlfriend and I had come across the native while struggling up the deathtrap that is the trek from Barsheni, a tiny little town in Himachal Pradesh, to Kalga which would be our basecamp for our trek to Kheer Ganga. We were tired, we were starving, and we were cold. We had been walking almost twenty minutes in the wintry chill of June. It was either him or us. To his credit, the native showed no signs of fear, the little tyke. I told Girlfriend, gently: “darling, we have no choice. It’s the human thing to do. You’re struggling, too.” “I wouldn’t be if you’d just carry your own damn suitcase,” she muttered, “who brings a suitcase to a trek, Boyfriend, who?” The poor thing was losing it. I had called dibs on being Navigator days ago.
But even as she borrowed desperately from the last of her moral reserves, even as she stumbled over the last few centimeters she would spend as a righteous woman, I knew: the madness had to end. The natural order would prevail. But we weren’t like that, Girlfriend and I. Girlfriend had read Roots six times, and retweeted Toni Morrison Quotes religiously. I had only watched Django Unchained a few days ago. Far be it from either one of us to take advantage of a historically and economically disadvantaged community for personal gain.
I looked up one more time through my polarized Ray Bans at our destination- Kheer Ganga, home to the holy. This mission was the culmination of the work of a lifetime, and it would involve collateral. We would have to make a judgment call, and we would have to live with it the rest of our lives. It was Time. We’d have to middle-class it, or run the risk of never making the climb. “Native,” I said purposefully, as I looked him in the eye, “five hundred bucks to carry our stuff all the way up and lead the way. An extra hundred if you don’t crumple my casual-yet-elegant cardigan. We cool?”
