Last night, driving through the rain-drenched streets of Tokyo, I wondered if this was the beginning of the end. Lives spiralling out of control have a way of creating forewarnings. I am tired and listless. This is the fourth city I have been in five days. Two days ago, I sat in a hotel room in a London suburb and watched traffic on the highway on a foggy and slightly chilly yet-not-summer night, the ame thought had occured to me. It was still daylight at 10 PM.
But it is hot and muggy here and the nights are short.
Tokyo looks brooding and overcast. May be it is reflecting how I feel. I don't feel like writing much these days. Words have deserted me. There are happy days though. Sitting on a bright green meadow and I looked up at a spindley tower on a sunny day earlier this week and had smiled happily. It was chilly but sunny. There were jugglers practicing their craft and students reading under the suns. Why can't I have more days like that?
Rain is following me these days. In every country. Perhaps I am a messenger for climate change, tracking it from country to country.
In a few days, I will be in the US, and rain is forecast there as well.
The Gods must be crying. For me.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Bullets Over Janpath 3
They were in MD1’s home office. His wife, wife 1 as is customary, came out to be introduced and then disappeared into the large colonial era house with sure footedness and from where nothing else was heard henceforth. But through that silent vacuum, plates carrying vegetarian dishes emerged, carried by servants with sizeable moustaches and expressionless faces.
The seriousness of their conversation was justifiably counter-mirrored by a blank and assiduous blue sky that sat uncharacteristically outside up in the ether refusing to budge. Bullet saw the sky reflected on the thick glasses of MD1 and noticed how his lips quivered when he spoke. Every now and then a spray of spittle landed on his cheeks like the backwash of a great spray and Bullet accommodated this too with great cheer.
His proposal was quite simple, split RCC and RTC completely and make them entities that had nothing to do with each other. One will mind its business with tenders and such (and no prize for guessing which) and the other will be happy with maintenance of the roads. There is plenty to go around, he assured. After all, haven’t you heard about the bridge in Unnau that cost the taxpayers many a lakh in maintenance until the minister concerned (and he used the words minister concerned as if it was a proper phrase and not an anomaly of officialese) visited and realized there never was a bridge?
Bullet nodded. He had no heard about this specific bridge. But many such bridges existed throughout the southern block and through the entire Rajdom of Hindustan. One would argue that many an IAS-wedding was paid for by the non-existent bridge of various shape or form that sometimes took the form of an uninvited tender and at other times as a defense purchase.
MD1 let out a silent fart, the sort that lingers pungently like smoke from a paper factory on a humid day spreading malevolence and discontent. Bullet choked in his own tears and gulped down some whiskey. Another glass was quickly emptied. Dal dripped from his hands onto his safari suite and made stain marks in the shape of Orissa.
For all that juicy dal, he promised to be considerate to the wishes of MD1. As he ambled to the car, and rocked in its wavy motion, he slept a baby sleep and dreamt of Shaddo’s pear-shaped breasts. Then in the dark, he cried in his sleep.
MD2 was a little different. He met Bullet in his large office populated with books and a square table. It was an odd shaped room, Bullet noticed without irony, as if it was a large hollowed out geometric block of an isosceles triangle. MD2 sat upright away from his desk under a picture of Mahatma Gandhi and all dead prime ministers and stretched his long legs out as he spoke. He had a casual regal manner. His long hands moved in the air when he made a point as if he was preaching in a church of over attentive laity. Bullet slinked back into the couch as if he was a schoolboy. MD2 was much more senior to him and a retiree of the IAS. His moustache, a mere remnant of a former self (as ascertained from a picture on the wall where MD2’s moustache was presenting a garland to a former prime minister), was white in most part. This stood in stark contrast to his dyed jet black hair with its characteristic plastic sheen that comes from all the overuse of ammonia in the hair product.
The room smelled of a mix of gardenias and cigarettes. Every once in a while, a plump secretary with giant calves waddled in and handed him a file or a piece of paper. MD2 casually glanced at them and set them apart as he continued talking.
He made no demands. He didn’t ask what MD1 had said. He just said if you listen closely you can hear frogs at night even when it does not rain.
Then he chuckled over a cooling cup of tea.
That night Bullet had ejaculatory dreams about Coco. And Shaddo. In his dreams he interchanged the pear-shaped breasts of Shaddo with sizeable mammaries of coco and felt the tenderness of both. He imagined himself to be a schoolboy arrested in the sentimentality of motherly love as he was cuckolded by two pairs of tender breasts.
The next morning he awoke without shame or sentimentality. As he stood there in his undershirt contemplating the serious nature of the arresting beauty and sizeable asses of the poor dispossessed people without shame, he told Parashuram Singh, who stood there watching the master dress, how he was so interested in the tender nature of the local women.
Parashuram Singh sycophantically rolled his head and agreed a half hearted yes, the sort that was personally profitable to him like a salesman telling the customer how something looked so perfect on their pot-bellied porpoise-like torso. He pretended to be surprised that such talk will come from bade sahibs even though he was a master of this parlor game where many a bade sahib has prostrated himself after the sin and quite a favor was extracted for his continued pretence of respect.
The days in the office were humid and pointless. There was a loud ceiling fan that kept him company through the afternoon as all sense deserted him and he saw pictures of tenders and roads jump at him through imaginary convex possibilities of nothingness where none really existed. An imaginary bridge over Unnau stretched to oblivion in the afternoon orgy of sweat and non-comprehensible parade of bad English.
Favor me with a smile, he muttered under his breadth as Shaddo passed him by wafting in a malodorous cloud of domestic chores. She walked past hurriedly giggling under her duppatta. Emboldened, he walked to the open kitchen door and stood there with his arms on the top of the door and stared her intently.
He felt the hair on his forearms standing up. The scandal, he thought.
Shaddo kept on stirring the pot that ddn’t need to be stirred. In more ways than one. Bullet watched this and felt himself springing to life. His earthly need, hithertofore taken care of by the nocturnal self abuse protested. He stood there motionless and watched the pot-stirring princess of poverty. Then he advanced towards her in sure-footedness and grabbed her from behind in a fast sweeping motion, roughly and almost with intent to cause pain. She jumped even though she was expecting this. A spoonful of gravy splashed out from the pot around the kitchen table and a passerby cockroach that was minding his own business was hurt. The universe has a strange way of enforcing order.
There was violence of hunger in their love making. Right there on the uncleaned kitchen floor, smelling of masalas. Unclean and uncivilized, like animals, grunting and moaning, his black skin and gold-framed glasses over her light brown caramel skin body. Together they writhed in hunger and unspent passion of loneliness and winter nights. If it was a movie, there would have been fireworks and anxious mood-building music. But this wasn’t. So they made love to dogs yelping in the evening heat for a background noise.
They were not naked either. They looked obscene in their hitched up and scooted down compromising attire as they consummated and exploded in delight. Even without a convenient condom.
Shaddo, Bullet cried, what of us now?
Don’t worry, she said smiling, I never get pregnant.
He didn’t ask why.
Later in the evening, he joined Parashuram Singh on the veranda drinking cheap Indian-made foreign liquor and sat looking at the moon. Long after Shaddo had cleaned up and left, long after the smell of her cooking had faded from his unwashed chest, long after his desire for Shaddo’s bare bottom was replaced by a mournful pointless depression characteristic of IAS officers put out to pasture with no sights to move up or out of punishment. Like two men, unbound by official titles and convention, they sat silently in the darkness looking at the moon and taking their turns at smoking a cigarette. Parashuram Singh thought of his wife in the village and his children he hadn’t seen in months and thought why didn’t feel the need to see them. Bullet looked at the moon and thought why the sea of tranquility was not looking very tranquil.
- Do you where Washington DC is? He suddenly asked.
- Sahib is in love, Parashuram Singh said matter-of-factly
He wasn’t. Not anymore. Sure he felt those pangs for Coco on nights like these. But those were not from love. Those were from loss. Do you know the difference? Sure, they feel the same sometimes, but on winter nights, one hurts like exposed varicose veins, the other just longs to be stroked.
- Parashuram, let me tell you about Washington DC, he began.
For once Parashuram Singh actually listened. In the darkness he forgot to flash his sycophantic yellow smile and forgot to preach the preach-tried and true.
He sat there and imagined a place like Washington DC. Bhasingdon Deesee. A faraway magical place. Where girls with magical breasts and even more magical pudendas took men home and made love to them until they were lost.
A place like those stories about Krishna. And Mahabharata.
The seriousness of their conversation was justifiably counter-mirrored by a blank and assiduous blue sky that sat uncharacteristically outside up in the ether refusing to budge. Bullet saw the sky reflected on the thick glasses of MD1 and noticed how his lips quivered when he spoke. Every now and then a spray of spittle landed on his cheeks like the backwash of a great spray and Bullet accommodated this too with great cheer.
His proposal was quite simple, split RCC and RTC completely and make them entities that had nothing to do with each other. One will mind its business with tenders and such (and no prize for guessing which) and the other will be happy with maintenance of the roads. There is plenty to go around, he assured. After all, haven’t you heard about the bridge in Unnau that cost the taxpayers many a lakh in maintenance until the minister concerned (and he used the words minister concerned as if it was a proper phrase and not an anomaly of officialese) visited and realized there never was a bridge?
Bullet nodded. He had no heard about this specific bridge. But many such bridges existed throughout the southern block and through the entire Rajdom of Hindustan. One would argue that many an IAS-wedding was paid for by the non-existent bridge of various shape or form that sometimes took the form of an uninvited tender and at other times as a defense purchase.
MD1 let out a silent fart, the sort that lingers pungently like smoke from a paper factory on a humid day spreading malevolence and discontent. Bullet choked in his own tears and gulped down some whiskey. Another glass was quickly emptied. Dal dripped from his hands onto his safari suite and made stain marks in the shape of Orissa.
For all that juicy dal, he promised to be considerate to the wishes of MD1. As he ambled to the car, and rocked in its wavy motion, he slept a baby sleep and dreamt of Shaddo’s pear-shaped breasts. Then in the dark, he cried in his sleep.
MD2 was a little different. He met Bullet in his large office populated with books and a square table. It was an odd shaped room, Bullet noticed without irony, as if it was a large hollowed out geometric block of an isosceles triangle. MD2 sat upright away from his desk under a picture of Mahatma Gandhi and all dead prime ministers and stretched his long legs out as he spoke. He had a casual regal manner. His long hands moved in the air when he made a point as if he was preaching in a church of over attentive laity. Bullet slinked back into the couch as if he was a schoolboy. MD2 was much more senior to him and a retiree of the IAS. His moustache, a mere remnant of a former self (as ascertained from a picture on the wall where MD2’s moustache was presenting a garland to a former prime minister), was white in most part. This stood in stark contrast to his dyed jet black hair with its characteristic plastic sheen that comes from all the overuse of ammonia in the hair product.
The room smelled of a mix of gardenias and cigarettes. Every once in a while, a plump secretary with giant calves waddled in and handed him a file or a piece of paper. MD2 casually glanced at them and set them apart as he continued talking.
He made no demands. He didn’t ask what MD1 had said. He just said if you listen closely you can hear frogs at night even when it does not rain.
Then he chuckled over a cooling cup of tea.
That night Bullet had ejaculatory dreams about Coco. And Shaddo. In his dreams he interchanged the pear-shaped breasts of Shaddo with sizeable mammaries of coco and felt the tenderness of both. He imagined himself to be a schoolboy arrested in the sentimentality of motherly love as he was cuckolded by two pairs of tender breasts.
The next morning he awoke without shame or sentimentality. As he stood there in his undershirt contemplating the serious nature of the arresting beauty and sizeable asses of the poor dispossessed people without shame, he told Parashuram Singh, who stood there watching the master dress, how he was so interested in the tender nature of the local women.
Parashuram Singh sycophantically rolled his head and agreed a half hearted yes, the sort that was personally profitable to him like a salesman telling the customer how something looked so perfect on their pot-bellied porpoise-like torso. He pretended to be surprised that such talk will come from bade sahibs even though he was a master of this parlor game where many a bade sahib has prostrated himself after the sin and quite a favor was extracted for his continued pretence of respect.
The days in the office were humid and pointless. There was a loud ceiling fan that kept him company through the afternoon as all sense deserted him and he saw pictures of tenders and roads jump at him through imaginary convex possibilities of nothingness where none really existed. An imaginary bridge over Unnau stretched to oblivion in the afternoon orgy of sweat and non-comprehensible parade of bad English.
Favor me with a smile, he muttered under his breadth as Shaddo passed him by wafting in a malodorous cloud of domestic chores. She walked past hurriedly giggling under her duppatta. Emboldened, he walked to the open kitchen door and stood there with his arms on the top of the door and stared her intently.
He felt the hair on his forearms standing up. The scandal, he thought.
Shaddo kept on stirring the pot that ddn’t need to be stirred. In more ways than one. Bullet watched this and felt himself springing to life. His earthly need, hithertofore taken care of by the nocturnal self abuse protested. He stood there motionless and watched the pot-stirring princess of poverty. Then he advanced towards her in sure-footedness and grabbed her from behind in a fast sweeping motion, roughly and almost with intent to cause pain. She jumped even though she was expecting this. A spoonful of gravy splashed out from the pot around the kitchen table and a passerby cockroach that was minding his own business was hurt. The universe has a strange way of enforcing order.
There was violence of hunger in their love making. Right there on the uncleaned kitchen floor, smelling of masalas. Unclean and uncivilized, like animals, grunting and moaning, his black skin and gold-framed glasses over her light brown caramel skin body. Together they writhed in hunger and unspent passion of loneliness and winter nights. If it was a movie, there would have been fireworks and anxious mood-building music. But this wasn’t. So they made love to dogs yelping in the evening heat for a background noise.
They were not naked either. They looked obscene in their hitched up and scooted down compromising attire as they consummated and exploded in delight. Even without a convenient condom.
Shaddo, Bullet cried, what of us now?
Don’t worry, she said smiling, I never get pregnant.
He didn’t ask why.
Later in the evening, he joined Parashuram Singh on the veranda drinking cheap Indian-made foreign liquor and sat looking at the moon. Long after Shaddo had cleaned up and left, long after the smell of her cooking had faded from his unwashed chest, long after his desire for Shaddo’s bare bottom was replaced by a mournful pointless depression characteristic of IAS officers put out to pasture with no sights to move up or out of punishment. Like two men, unbound by official titles and convention, they sat silently in the darkness looking at the moon and taking their turns at smoking a cigarette. Parashuram Singh thought of his wife in the village and his children he hadn’t seen in months and thought why didn’t feel the need to see them. Bullet looked at the moon and thought why the sea of tranquility was not looking very tranquil.
- Do you where Washington DC is? He suddenly asked.
- Sahib is in love, Parashuram Singh said matter-of-factly
He wasn’t. Not anymore. Sure he felt those pangs for Coco on nights like these. But those were not from love. Those were from loss. Do you know the difference? Sure, they feel the same sometimes, but on winter nights, one hurts like exposed varicose veins, the other just longs to be stroked.
- Parashuram, let me tell you about Washington DC, he began.
For once Parashuram Singh actually listened. In the darkness he forgot to flash his sycophantic yellow smile and forgot to preach the preach-tried and true.
He sat there and imagined a place like Washington DC. Bhasingdon Deesee. A faraway magical place. Where girls with magical breasts and even more magical pudendas took men home and made love to them until they were lost.
A place like those stories about Krishna. And Mahabharata.
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