Carte Blanche

It was his first time at her place. She shared an apartment with another girl, who ignored him completely by staying busy on a phone in the other room. The elevator was jammed. They had to walk up five floors to find out that she did not have the keys to the apartment. He walked down to the Concierge to get the spare and up again and by the time he did, the door was opened, the elevator had started working again and out emerged from it the room mate.

She did not bother to introduce him to her and the girl seemed to be stuck to the phone anyway to take offense. She disappeared into her room, whispering strained threats into her phone, leaving the rest of the apartment to the two of them.

It was small and like most girls apartment’s messy. At least like the apartments of the ones who seem to be inclined to have him over. That was a thought. That was one of the key jokes to the understanding of how the gods who controlled his life functioned. He looked around for a place to sit, found a rug on the floor and tried to read a newspaper. The newspaper distracted him easily with photographs in exaggerated newsprint colors of Kim, Mellie, Ray and many more starlets. It spoke of them as if they were famous. He felt old and left out for he did not seem to know of any. He could only stare at their full bodies and tanned skin and feel terrible about himself. He also managed to feel guilty that he was indulging in such lechery in a girl’s apartment. He kept the paper back on the floor, feigning disinterest, although there was no one around to notice it. She was in her room, locked in, ‘washing up’.

She came out, in a loose shirt and jeans, smelling of watermelons, with a warm smile.

Would you like some tea, she asked him.

Yes please, he said.

What kind?

Would you have green tea?

I do. I love Green Tea.

He smiled back at her thankfully and asked her if he could use the washroom.

You can use mine, she told him, if you promise not to notice how filthy my room is.

Her room was clean and tidy, with some clothes strewn around on the bed. It was dark though and did not seem to get too much sunlight. He wasn’t sure if he was being watched through the crack in the door and went straight into the washroom. The mirror shelf was crammed with small bottles of hair moisturizing cream from some hotel. He was surprised to notice, that there wasn’t much else in the lotions and creams range, something he would have expected in any woman’s washroom. Just the basic shampoo bottle, soap, toothbrush, cream…he realized he was spying around needlessly and exited as soon as his business was done.

She had the tea ready. There were two cups on the table, each carrying the Manchester United Logo. She was sipping on hers with great contentment. He took his. She had added sugar to his green tea. Should he tell her that he liked green tea without sugar? Should he politely sip and finish it off, gulp down the sickly sweet green fluid smelling of lemon and honey? Should he wait for her to ask him whether he liked it and tell her of his preference? That seemed the right thing to do.

She never asked though and started talking to him about her work. She worked as tech-support in a technology firm. Two sentences down, he was lost in a stream of jargon. Her work seemed very complicated. Even the way they worked was quite a maze for him as words like groups and teams and protocols and work meets filled the space.

So what do you think I should do, she asked him.

That confused him. He hadn’t paid too much attention. She looked tired and she hadn’t narrated the story to him with great enthusiasm. So he took the risk

You need a break.

That seemed to please her immensely.

I would like to go to South Africa, in May. They have beautiful cities there and mountains and such a vibrant night life.

They do?

Yes. They have fabulous night clubs and strip clubs in some city.

Strip Clubs?

Yes. They have some super hot men and women there and there are people from every where. It’s a crazy scene there.

There was something strange about this conversation. She smiled with almost open innocence and genuine enthusiasm as she elaborated on her image of a crowded strip bar in South Africa . It wasn’t very pornographic-the imagery- but it sounded strange to hear a woman he had know for all of twenty days spout sentences that contained references to items of male and female underwear and occasionally, the anatomy.

What should he do now? Should he interrupt this steady flow? She was now detailing the dance moves of a lap dancer and the experience of a male friend in London . Her fingers twirled on the table and head swung slightly in ways as she tried illustrating them. This was a funny story, he presumed, because she laughed every time she mentioned the guy whose lap was being danced upon in the recounted scene. Maybe he was her ex-boyfriend?

He closed her out and inspected the drop of green tea in the bottom of the mug. He tried memorizing the color of the table top and the rug beneath his feet. He wondered if his watch was running fifteen minutes faster, again. Her laughter snapped him back.

You are blushing, she peeled laughter.

He wanted to refuse. He liked the way she laughed and hence smiled.

So when do you go to the strip bars of Cape Town ?

Soon, she said and then looked extremely sad.

I have no money to go there, she said. I never save much and it’s all gone now. I am broke.

Do you really want to go there?

I sometimes wish I can just go there and never come back

What would you do there?

She looked startled by his stupidity, Become a lap dancer of course! Duh!

He hated that word. He hated the sound of it and the way girls four years younger than him used it. It was an alienating sound reeking of youthful arrogance, beauty, modernity, technology; everything that had passed him by without waiting to take him on board.

So how much would it cost you to get there?

I don’t know. May be around an eighty thousand…would you lend me some? Twenty thousand? I am sorry for asking you so shamelessly. I will repay you in a month’s time.

What had he got himself into? What would this favor earn him? Love? Could he afford so much? Even if he could, would she actually return it? Or would it just be forgotten with her disappearance? How much was she worth? The risk of money not coming back but the bonus of earning some love, adding a point to his starved life… at the cost of a dent he could afford to paint over?

I don’t know I will have to check, he said. I would love to help of course…You will come back though some time right? Ha ha!

That laughter was faked, badly. It sounded dry like a throat clearing cough.

She smiled warmly though. Her lips stretched across her face like a pretty version of the Cheshire Cat.

I understand. It’s so nice of you to even consider it. You hardly know me right?

That’s nothing. Do write to me when you get to Cape Town . It would be quite cool to receive e-mails from a lap dancer, I think

She laughed.

I will send you postcards, too.

Even better!

He returned home soon. He never really bothered to go out of his way to meet her afterwards. He received a mail from her once and she forwarded messages wishing happy festivals for a while.

He never found out if she ever went to South Africa . He had missed his chance in life to receive a post card from a lap dancer.

Natural Mystic

In thrilling sounds of incandescent wisdom she is stalking this night.
She is eager to feed and nurture, Mother Nature.
Take little nurslings to her breast and feed them ink.
She will pat on their back till little burps fill her splendidly curved ears.
She is gracious, good and she annoys me so much.
Go away Mother Nature!
Evil woman!
Discard. Ignore and plot and accidentally spoil plans with news of death.
Do what you do best.
Foolish woman, full of precious grace and much streamlined beauty.
Swim away like a hooting whale.
Breeze away like summer evenings.
Ride clouds to the moon and settle in broom dust.
Leave me alone.
Take your mother instincts and smother a pillow.
Wave away your splendid black hair at some other man, you sorceress.
Feast on electric beams and choke.
Sleep talk. Play. Do anything you please.
Just promise me your love.

Reasons for Insomnia

Listen.

Can you hear them sing?

Take out the dragon wax and purple clips.

They are spinning weaving mysterious fabrics inside the dark theater of my mind.

They tap. They dance. They drum on glass windows

Like the shadow of a wicked thick head crow. It’s the middle of the night.

They slip in through the cracks between the carpets and floors and doors.

Like morning newspapers and hotel bills.

Only they are louder and braver

And not always so much fun

Or too much of nothing.

They are ghosts hooting and woohing

Flapping white clothes in candle lights.

They demand to be petted and patted

And rubbed against like a magician’s lamp.

Turn off all noises and wake up.

WAKE UP!

Hear those feet running stomping crazily drunkenly shouting my name

Banging the wrong doors while I lay shivering pretending stillness and sleep.

I am listening and waiting hopelessly for them to pass me by.

Peer into their eyes gleaming yellow

Like feverish moonlight through the cracks in my mind.

Oh please get up and let them loose.

 Let loose those stories within my head.

Flower Story

"Why don't you tell me your story?" she asked. "You write so well, am sure. Even your e-mails reek of poetry and incomprehensible words."
"Is that an insult?" I asked.
She laughed. "I mean well. You do write well. So why don't you read me a story?"
"Well, am not sure if you would like any of them..."
"You think I won't understand them?"
I knew there was a trap being set and I had to avoid it in three seconds.
"They are very ordinary stories...too much nonsense."
"Ok..." she drawled. She looked at my notebook and pointed at a page. "Read me this one"
"Oh! That's not really a story. It happened to one of my friends and I wrote it for him"
"Wow! Now you have friends who supply you with stories also. Are you writing one about me now?"
Trap number two?  I laughed lamely. "Ok here goes the story of Ranga and his Pushpa." I said clearing my voice.
"A Madrasi in love with a Punju chick, is it?"
"Well...yeah kind of. There are chicks from other parts of the country as well, in it."
"Nice!" she said approvingly. "Start."

"It all started some twenty five years back, when Ranga was in his seventh standard at the Sivamani and Sons Matriculation Higher Secondary School, a horrible school that was tucked away in an unfashionable corner of T Nagar, Madras."
"I have been there!"
"Where? Sivamani and Sons? That's my school you know."
"No. T Nagar. That's where that Nalli saree shop is no?"
"Yeah."
"Go ahead with the story, please."
" His classroom overlooked a tiny apartment and lovely little Pushpa who had bunked class and gone home during the lunch break, waved at him from her balcony. There she was in a florid pink shirt that beamed up her smile across the few hundred meters that separated his classroom window from her sun kissed balcony. The gentle sunshine bathed her luxuriously. Her black hair caught the breeze and she shook it around a bit to bring it under control. She was eating something from a plastic cup with a steel spoon. He imagined it to be a soft white Marwari sweet, which you take in small bites so that it can last forever. He was terribly fascinated by Pushpa- fair skinned, flirtatious, Hindi speaking, precociously well formed, bubble gum chewing girl of his dreams who could entertain him better than any Roja or Kushbu in his late night departures from reality. Soon life would imitate bad art and his chemistry teacher would stand beside him and stare out of the window, provoking much laughter from all around including from across the balcony, and whack him with a heavy notebook. And that is how Ranga fell in love with a name."
"Haha! Kushbu! You South Indian men all like these big women no?"
"Well, not all of us. You are not big and I like you well enough." I realized that she might take this meager attempt at flirtation really badly, only after I heard the words escaping my mouth.
"Thank God I am not like them. I hope I never am like that."
"Fair enough." I smiled as sweetly as I could, begging the forgiveness of Nagma, Roja, Jyotika and all their ilk for that treachery.

"Ok so...Seven years later he met a Priya, reading a book next to him on a train from Bangalore. Bespectacled in an irresistibly sexy way, she turned the pages of the Agatha Christie very fast. Ranga knew little of Agatha Christie. He knew somewhere in the pages of those books, there lurked a Hercule Poirot -a French detective with a strange mustache. He asked if she like Poirot. Priya seemed extremely pleased by that question. So delighted was she that she closed the book in one quick smooth movement and let it thud down between them on the seat. She told him that it was a terrible book and it belonged to her friend. They talked about career choices, movies, AR Rahman, boys and girls they seemed to know in common through complex relationship webs and then she excused herself to go to the toilet. Ranga planned to follow her after a minute and stand by the open compartment door. He would invite her over. Much conversation would resume. Gentle breeze will push hair strands for him to settle against a beautifully formed ear...Ranga opened the book to see what it was about.
"Pushpa Raghuram Book no. 127. 1998" it said on the first page, written a cute cursive hand, in pencil.
His heart sank. Surely it couldn't be the Pushpa who had dropped out of school after tenth standard."

"Ooh! Nice touch! This Madrasi boy has got it for this Pushpa babe uh?"
"Well...see it's not technically the same Pushpa. I thought that would be very cool, you know. Like the name follows him around and all."
"Why?"
"Well...I don't know. It seemed like a good idea. Fate. Irony. That kind of stuff."
She rolled her eyes and smiled. I looked away.
"You don't like it do you?"
"No!" She took five seconds to finish that word. "It's really nice and sweet."
I continued reading it out, encouraged.
"The Pushpa from his school would have struggled to finish a collection of ten nursery rhymes, he knew. Although, he also strongly believed, that someone blessed with the kind of largess that she possessed, need not be burdened with the material pressures of learning anything. He wondered who this Pushpa could be. Would she be a well-read stunner,bespectacled and tall and dark haired and lusty, in ways Priya could only partially be?  Ranga opened the book and breathed in it's perfumes to get closer to her.
"Don't you just love the smell of books?" said the voice that stood behind him. She was back and she beamed at him. She took the book and sniffed at it and beamed again. He smiled lamely and asked her if she wanted to share a cutlet with him at the next station. While plying her with cutlet and tomato ketchup he would ask her about her friend Pushpa."

"So all the women in your stories read books and all, uh?"
"Not all of them. In fact in the end of the story there is a rather illiterate Pushpa."
"But all pseudo-girls your hero likes I can see. I tried reading an Agatha Christie once. Man! It was so boring and obvious. It seems she was a manic depressive that woman. No wonder she kept writing these mystery stories."
"Really? Agatha Christie was a depressive?"
"Yeah. Seems she even faked her disappearance once. Nut case."
"How do you know all this?"
"Well... I read, you know," she smiled. "I don't read all your big French stuff and all, but it's not that I don't read at all!" She looked so beautifully angry that I apologized profusely for offending her in any way possible.
"Arrey...I am just pulling your leg. Haha! Continue with your Ranga and his Punju babes..."

"A week after their journey together, Priya called Ranga and asked him if he wanted to see the new Matrix movie at Satyam cinemas. Ranga asked if she was bringing someone else along, to which she replied with an “of course not” that scared him with its boldness. Self-assurance in women was a frighteningly attractive proposition."

I paused to see if she would object. She was busy texting someone on her i-phone. She looked up and said without a pause "I am listening go on" and tapped something on the screen and put the phone back in her handbag. 

"How old is this story?"

"Not very."

"How? Matrix was released when I was in school. Do you know if Keanu Reeves is still acting?"

"He should be. So...He bought her a tub of cheese popcorn and while she crunched and chewed busily, he guided the conversation towards the Poirot mystery with great dexterity. They talked about Keanu Reeves..."

"He was so cute."

"... Al Pacino, Godfather, gangsters, Sherlock Holmes, mystery novels..."

"See...pseudo!"

"... and finally, when Ranga realized that the width of his knowledge was stretched beyond limits, he asked her if she still had the Agatha Christie she was reading at the train.

She had given it back to Pushpa just the other day. May be she can get it for him the next time they met. He was distracted briefly from his pursuit of Pushpa by this promise of a next time, through the remaining length of the film.

At their next meeting at a café at Nungambakam, she passed on the book to him. They talked of her school days, her friends, the girls who bullied her and her life at college. She confessed her huge crush on Tom Cruise, at which he felt a gush of jealousy. She told him about her love for Kamal Hassan’s films and how she wished everybody else could make movies as intelligently as that man could. At some point he ceased listening to her and started examining the book in his hands. It was covered with a transparent plastic sheet, the way the British Council Library protected its books. The pages were still crisp white and at page 97 there was a little fold on the top of the page. Maybe Pushpa had never got beyond that page. Did she have to go all the way to her place to pick this up, he asked with cunning gratitude. Oh no, she lived in that area only, she said. All she had to do was stop by on her way here and pick it up for him. She beamed at him, with the pride of having pulled off something for him. He smiled back and smelled the pages of the book. She laughed."

"Nice. Listen, Lalith, I have to go now. I have a meeting with a friend and I will have to get ready."

"Oh! Cool! So I will read this to you when you get back home?"

"I don't know when I will be back. My friend is making all the plans. So I will keep you posted ok?"

"Sure. So do you want me to drop you home?"

"No it's fine my friend will pick me up from the mall. I have to do some shopping also."

"Great. Do you like this story?"

"Of course" She took five full seconds to finish that word, with smiles, rolls of eyes and a pat on the arm. "It's very cute."

We met several weeks later for ice cream at Corner House. She spoke eloquently on the defects of canned peach in her peach-melba and then when I least expected it she asked "So did you finish that story of your Ranga and Pushpa?" with what would be her version of the mischievous smile.

"Oh long time back. It was already finished when I read it to you."

"So what happens to them?"

"Well it goes on for a bit after that."

I wasn't really sure if she would want me to read the rest out to her. It would have been gratifying if she had. My powers as a storyteller would have been sanctioned. But I was sure reading out a story was not the way of getting any where with this woman. A better peach melba might have worked wonders that my story surely never would.

"Does he marry your Pushpa?"

"No. He marries Priya!"

"Why because she is also Iyer?"

"I don't think I thought of that angle in the story. And am not sure if Ranga is Iyer either."

"Your friend is not an Iyer?"

"Which friend?"

"The one who's story you told me this is."

"Oh Baloo! Well, not everything in it happened to him. He is a Bong actually."

"Ha!"

"So do you want to read it out to you now?"

"Hmmm...no just tell me how it ends no."
"Where did we stop?"

"He sees this girl Priya and goes with her to Matrix and she gives him this book from Pushpa..."

"Ah! Cool, here's my notebook and here's the story...Ok...So... Ranga spent several hours in his room planning his search for Pushpa. The book would be the first clue. He took up the bulky telephone directory and looked for Raghuram The names were helpfully sorted by the area they lived in and so there turned out to be just twenty Raghurams in the Nungambakam area. It was 8 30 and might not be too bad a time to call asking for Pushpa. 9 would be dinner time and arise suspicion. So he called seven numbers without success. A deep male voice picked up the eighth one and shouted “Ei Pushpa, call for you only!” before he could finish his question. It was a sweetly childish voice that said hi like it was so pleased with whoever it could be on the other end of the line. His mind froze over. A spider seemed to crawl somewhere deep within his stomach making its way up to his throat. The hand grasping the telephone receiver became wet with sweat, and his tongue dried up. He knew that this was how love felt like. Should he use another voice? What would be the best excuse? He realized he hadn’t planned it out well at all. He apologized hastily and cut the call, while she chirped a delightfully surprised sounding “oh”.

"Are you reading the story fully?"

"Yeah"

"Why don't you just skip here and there. I will give you time till my ice cream ends. And there is so much peach in this thing anyways. Uff! It will take me half an hour to finish this only at this rate."

"Do you want to get another? The DBC is good here."

"Oh God! No! Then I will have to do half an hour worth of cardio tomorrow. As such I hate cardio so much. So go on, now. You have twenty minutes. Tick tock tick tock."

"So he decided to visit her. He would carry the book with him... anyway's he goes rings her bell and runs away without meeting her. He gives the dad or someone the book."

"Hmm..."

"He ran back home and called Priya that evening and told her that he loved her."

"What an asshole!"

"Yeah!"

"Four years and a city or two later, Ranga was in bed with Priya. He woke up to her singing to him. She always chose odd songs to wake him up with- it was King of Pain that day. Normally her songs entwined with his waking-up dreams and everything from rats on slides to courier boys would suddenly lace his last wakening thoughts and confuse him. That day he woke up wondering where the black hole in the sun was. "

"These days I can't listen to anything but music with no words in it. Nice dreamy quite tracks. That's all that I can take. I have been asking my gym guys also to change the shit that they play when I work out."

"He had dreamed of Pushpa. A brown haired, dark witch of unspeakable powers. She could take your heart and turn it into strawberry pudding for her black cat. She fed on sailors tears and the lost negatives of photographs. She screamed his name out from the perilous dark pits of a cave like a Shelob waiting for him, waiting for him. He was so much in love with Pushpa that he would have volunteered to do the heart baking procedure himself, and helpfully stir her pots and lick her fingers.

Soon Ranga found himself incapable of doing much in bed with Priya. She just had to shake her head and he could turn himself on. That was the norm. That night was not normal. A strange sickness would latch on to him and make his mornings uneasy. He would spend half an hour every morning at the toilet, he who until that night would normally be done with those rituals in minutes. He would feel his mind emptying out through his bowels. Priya slowly stopped singing for him, on mornings. The Ranga-Priya household was settling into uneasy silences and prolonged toilet visits. Love was ebbing away."

"There goes the last peach. Finally! I don't like this at all."

"I know, you told me."

"No, not the peach melba. It became ok after the ice cream melted. Your story. It started off so cute and all and now you are making it very depressing. Why? Did all this happen to that Bong boy?"

"No. Well...see, it's got a bit of me in it also."

"You aren't married!"

"Yeah..."

"What! I thought you would write all happy stories and you end up writing something very depressing and complicated."

"I actually thought it's funny- the way he keeps obsessing over some Pushpa when he can actually have so much fun with this Priya."

"Men!"

"Well...it is actually about us men only"

"You guys are all the same. You can't commit. You don't know what you want. I think you guys never grow up."

I pushed the can of empty ice cream around blankly.

"Let's go", she said.

On the five minute drive to her home, she stayed silent for a minute.

"So how does it end?"

"Ranga and Pushpa?"

"So he goes and has an affair with some woman called Pushpa. Priya and he separate and then he goes of on a pilgrimage. There he meets a goat called Pushpa and dedicates his life to nurturing and taking care of the goat and its progeny."

I was quite proud of the way the story ended. I liked the goat.

"Your Beng friend slept around while he was married?" she asked with that smile of mischief that she could do so well.

"No. He tried to but failed."

"What do you mean failed?"

"Well he never got around to doing much."

"Your friends are strange. They are all like you only no. Crazy in the head."

I smiled.

"I will read just the last part for you. I think it ends well."

She looked like I had asked her to tell me what the square root of three thousand five hundred was. Then she smiled and said "Ok" one hand already on the door handle of  my car.

"And so Ranga sat, bald, skinny, alone in a bus stand in the middle of nowhere. Forty five year old  and looking like he was sixty,  he decided to sell all that he owned to whoever would buy it and travel the country alone. He would embrace his religion and sleep in temples and eat free-lunches. He would entertain passing kids with poems and stories. He would never stay in a town for more than three weeks. He would move ever onward, never visiting the same place again. He was now somewhere in Bengal, trying to decipher the language. He dropped a picture postcard addressed to Priya and his son from every big town and sometimes he would write it in the language he had picked up. He was busy looking up the Bengali word for chemistry. The Learn Bengali in Thirty Days was not very helpful. It had options for food, greetings and phrases to say that you were sleepy and wanted to get off at the next stop. It ignored chemistry.

A woman approached him. She was dark, obese and fifty years old. She did not speak politely, although what she wanted was a favor. She was not the type who could tell him what the word for chemistry was, surely. She wanted to know if she could leave her goat with him, while she went to make lunch for her son. He smiled at her gently and nod. She dragged a white, stinking beast with a beard and tied it next to him. It had a bell around its neck that jingled sweetly. She warned him that the thing could eat through the rope easily and the only way to stop it from doing anything was to shout its name very loudly. What would the name be he asked her. Pushpa, she said. She tied it around the pole of the bus stand’s shelter. She opened a pack of Khaini and poured the contents into her mouth. She did not thank him. She said she would take approximately half hour. He told her his bus would take another hour or so to come anyways. She looked at him suspiciously for ten seconds, then made up her mind and walked away.

So he waited for her to disappear around the corner. He approached the goat gingerly. It looked at him with disinterest. He would put his hand out and feel its ears. “Pushpa” he said gently. The goat looked the other way. Ranga bleated discreetly and tried to snuggle against its neck. “Pushpa” he mumbled and started singing a sad song."

"The Bengali word for chemistry is rasayana. Like it is in Hindi only." She said that like she expected me not to know the Hindi word.

"Oh!"

"Anyways. Cute story. Talk to you later. Bye!"

She took three seconds to finish the word and slamming my door shut, walked home.