Payback

(Published in The Punch Magazine)

Pappan gets out of the car and hands the keys to the valet, feeling privileged and satisfied in a way he has never before. For the first time ever, he has driven the Mercedes outside his uniform, as if the car was his own. It felt different to not have Muthalali sitting behind, with his over-powering, imperious aspect breathing down the neck.

Muthalali was a man of abundant abuses.

Pappan deeply resented Muthalali’s arrogant nature and he frequently entertained foolish ideas of bumping him off some way or the other, but he swallowed the recurring rancor thinking of his father who was Muthalali’s original driver for decades before he died, and Muthalali took Pappan in as his driver almost as if it was the only way to be employed, despite his graduation degree. As though Pappan’s family was pledged to Muthalali’s life forever. It wasn’t a thought he particularly relished, but today, he was a man on an important mission assigned by Muthalali. A task that he knew could have unimaginable consequences in their lives.

Pappan walks towards the lobby of the hotel with the confidence of a man who knew why exactly he was born and how to accomplish his goal. He nods at the usher at the door who has no suspicion of him what so ever. Inside, Pappan allows himself for a pat-down, something he isn’t used to, but knowing that big places demanded big practices, he lets himself go through the procedures.

He looks around, unsure of which way to proceed.

‘May I help you, Sir?” A honeyed voice behind queries.

Turning around, he sees a young woman’s face framed in brown curls, flashing a smile that he has seen only in tooth paste advertisements. What strikes him immediately are the pink lipstick and an extraordinary pair of eye-lashes. That a woman so beautiful would address him as ‘Sir’ is inconceivable to him, and in his dazed state, he holds the invitation card out to her. Vivek weds Sandhya.

“This way to the banquet hall, Sir,” she says, showing him the way. He looks down a long, carpeted corridor, and quickly appraises the people around. Their unerring haughtiness grates on his skin and he shudders with disdain.

It is all surreal. This task he is on, this setting, this woman, and this festering nervousness. He feels like a hit man on his first outing of contract killing, teetering between determination and doubt. With sweat threatening to break out from every pore in his body, he walks towards the banquet hall along with a waft of perfumes from people coasting down with him. He detests their affected presence and the feeling of meagerness they inadvertently leave in him as they pass by.

With stealth lining his eyes, he scans the area soaked in miscellaneous varieties of snobbery. He is looking for a girl, who does not know he exists, or the story that has brought him here. He has no reasons to be discreet but still he has to be careful. He is standing near the doorway and surveying the golden banquet hall, which is filled with refined bodies in saris and jackets, and beautiful young women with straight hair who never make facial expressions. But they will, soon. Any moment now.

He pulls out an envelope from his pocket, and walks towards a young woman with a tray of fried snack that had little sticks poked into them.

‘Sir, chicken lollipops?” she asks as he approaches her.

He picks one, surveying her face carefully. And before she moves away, he grabs her hand suddenly and the tray falls to the ground, scattering pieces of fried fowl on the carpet. All attention gather to where he stands, like iron dust to a magnet.

“I am sorry,’ he says, as the look of horror on the woman’s face freezes and she stands heaving. He is grateful to her for not raising an alarm.

“I am sorry, I didn’t mean to. I just wanted you to give this envelope to the bride,” he says in an attempt to calm her and defuse the tension.

“It’s… a gift cheque… from a friend who couldn’t make it to the wedding,” he stammers to the perplexed woman. “I am his driver.”

The woman doesn’t seem convinced, but she takes the envelope warily and turns to go towards the bride, who, unaware of what was happening at the other corner of the hall, stands gushing beside her tall groom, her hennaed hands locked in his.

No one in the hall knows that she is faking her feelings. She is far from being in love with the man she is hitched with. She has nothing new to give this man. Her love, in all its physical and spiritual dimensions, has already been spent for another man who dumped her for his family. But she can pretend love for a lifetime and her husband will not catch a wind. She knows it. But what she does not know is what happened to the other man after they split unceremoniously. Theirs was an unequal love. And such love often remains inconclusive.

In a moment of panic, Pappan turns to flee and vanish before someone gets suspicious, but stops upon remembering Muthalai’s stern words. “Don’t come without getting her.”

Wedding receptions are such tedious occasions, Sandhya thinks fretfully. She can’t wait for the evening to close and for the guests to leave. Not because she has anything to look forward to beyond it, but she is genuinely tired and all she wants is to plonk in the bed and sleep.

But life is on a cusp and the night will not end in a hurry.

Sandhya unlocks her hand with Vivek and moves towards a hostess for a soft drink. Pappan hopes that the woman with the envelope will use this opportunity for his errand, and much to his relief, she does, and Sandhya opens the envelope with a calm befitting a bride.

Laden with anxiety, Pappan scratches the invitation card with his thumb nail and the embossed gilt on ‘Vivek’ begins to wear. Anything could have gone wrong with the plan, actually. The woman whose hand Pappan grabbed could have created a scene and got Pappan caught red-handed, she could have chosen a wrong moment to hand the envelope, and Sandhya could have passed it to someone standing nearby without opening it. It takes nothing for the best laid plans to go awry. But Sandhya opens it as though she is programmed for it, and pulls the note nestling in it.

“Jaan, how can you get married when I am still waiting for you? Mahesh.”

With feet trembling under wobbly knees, Sandhya darts towards the woman who brought the message to her and together they look around as though trying to spot somebody. Her pounding heart threatens to tear her wedding finery and fall out in a lump. From the verge, it calls out a name it has never forgotten. MAHESH. The name could have clambered from the chamber of her heart to her mouth and spilled out any moment. She fights hard to not cry.

There is only a slender line that separates foolishness from naivety. And disaster strikes when that line blurs and sets one up on a path to self-ruin. It often happens unconsciously, the impulse driving the disaster materializing almost instantly. Then, nothing, not even the finest of destinies can stop tragedy from happening.

Sandhya finds Pappan lingering near the door, his uneasy but eager expression betraying his intention to sweep her out of the hall in a flash.

Pappan gears up for the moment. It is a moment that will settle a lot of things in his life too.

‘Where is he?” Sandhya asks, her eyes exploding into countless flickers, each one reflecting an urgent question from her past, present and future.

“Come with me. He is waiting for you.”

“Who are you? And why should I believe what you are saying?”

Pappan opens the invitation cover, pulls a photograph out and flashes it in front of her. A moment from the past says peek-a-boo and quickly returns to its place inside the cover.

“That’s you and him, isn’t it? He gave it to me to show you as evidence. Now come with me. Quietly. Before they notice your absence on the dais.”

Sandhya stands indecisively, unable to determine the veracity of Pappan’s words. Even if it is true, what obligation does she have to return to an old love that she was forced to forget after Mahesh succumbed to his father’s pressures like a spineless nincompoop? Yes, there were the undeniable differences between them. Of caste and class. She was the daughter of a low caste proletariat whose family had come into good money only after the land reforms. And he had aristocracy tagged to his name which couldn’t be rivalled by any newfangled fortune of hers. But didn’t he consider these factors before sending out his first missive of love for her in college? Didn’t he know? Wasn’t he man enough to stand up to his father when he threatened to disown him and leave nothing of his wealth for him in his will? If he chickened out then, why is he back crawling now? Is the man who threatened them with the words ‘I will shoot you both dead’ in front of her himself dead? Is Mahesh now free to take possession of her?

The lure of an old flame is irresistible, with the power to draw blinded night insects towards it and singe it in a seductive instant. It is hard to say if the insect is conscious of its folly and consigns itself to the flame as an act of supreme sacrifice in love or it is too guileless to think.

Then there is the guilt, of course, of having moved on with life when Mahesh was waiting all the while. But life gives a second chance, doesn’t it? To squander it will be foolishness. She will go, regardless of what the rest of the crowd in the hall will think of her. It isn’t their life. After all, they do not face the prospect of sleeping with a man they don’t love. She does. And now she has an opportunity to defy it. Sandhya feels an old pang arise and sting her mascara-fringed eyes.

“Wait somewhere between the entrance and the main gate till I get the car, and make sure no one spots you there. This wedding dress is dangerous,” Pappan hisses angrily, now emboldened by the fact that the plan was working like a charm. He now has a firm control, both over the girl and the situation that was getting incredible with each passing minute.

Reeling under the rush of blood to his head, he goes to fetch the Mercedes that he imagines is his for a day. The Mercedes that changed the fate of his family forever.

He thinks of his father with a dull ache before driving himself to the next task.

Pappan didn’t know Sandhya until Muthalali showed him her picture two days ago and said she was the girl who had ruined his son’s life and snatched him away from them all. And it was payback time for her now. The rest of the story was furnished by his mother, who by now has made it a habit to resign everything to fate.

Including the death of her husband in a tragic car accident involving the Mercedes that Pappan is driving now.

“That girl left for studies abroad after her affair with Mahesh was thwarted. Everything was considered to be settled for the time being. Muthalali, as the whole town knows, had made the son withdraw from it with threat of various kinds. But does love concede defeat so easily? The boy, refusing to forget her, one day jumped from the terrace.” Pappan’s mother narrated the love story dispassionately as if it was a movie.

“And?”

“And what? He didn’t die. He became a vegetable. They moved him from home to the hospital where he lay. Neither dead, nor alive, until one day life left him,” she said with a sigh that she drew from an old memory. And then she added, as if to vent her own undisclosed woe, “Karma. It is the result of Muthalali’s karma. For the things he did to others.”

Pappan knew what she meant by ‘things he did to others’. The whole town knew. And like many truths that a society swallows hastily and pushes into its deep innards to escape scalding its tongue, this one too lay buried amidst deep rumblings. Now and then it belched up, rattling the lungs of those who were affected. Sandhya was only part of the first half of the whole story. The other half included Pappan and his mother.

“Where are you taking me?” Sandhya hollers angrily from behind as he turns the car towards Muthalali’s bungalow. “You were supposed to take me to Mahesh, not to his father’s house.”

For no particular reason, Pappan feels sorry for the girl whose only fault according to him was falling in love with an upper caste boy who had a heartless father. He is tempted to tell her what had happened to Mahesh after she left him. The fact that he lay oblivious to the goods and bads of life, to the fact that the death he had hoped to bring him solace following a heartbreak betrayed him and left him dangling in an unspecified realm of consciousness before it finally took pity on him. And the fact that Muthalali held her responsible for whatever had befallen his only son, and sought to get even with her. He is tempted to save the girl from an impending catastrophe.

But Pappan realizes in a snap that helping her escape will put his own life in jeopardy. Muthalali has no reputation for compassion and can be remarkably ruthless, especially in this instance involving Mahesh and Sandhya. No one knows it better than Pappan and his mother.

“Why are you bringing me here? You were supposed to take me to Mahesh,” Sandhya screams hysterically as Pappan parks the car, opens the door and drags her into the sprawling hall of Muthalali’s bungalow. He wonders if there is anyone other than Muthalali inside: his diminutive wife who shrunk to a shadow with time, or the servants, most of who pledged their loyalty to him more out of fear than good will. The silence and darkness in the adjoining rooms confirms that apart from the man waiting in a plush sofa, watching TV, with none of the villainy that he is fabled to have reflecting on his face, there is not a soul in the house.

“Come, come, my dear girl,” he says with a feigned sense of fondness to Sandhya. He notices the fearful steaks of tears flushing the bridal make up down her cheeks and asks Pappan. “What did you do to her that she is crying? I had asked you to be soft on her. She is, after all, my son’s girl.”

“Did he misbehave with you?” he turns to her and asks, in a voice most mellow. “What did he tell you? That he will take you to Mahesh?”

She nods her head, unable to decipher Muthalali’s demeanour.

“Which is true, of course. I will send you to Mahesh, because you are rightfully his girl. How can I let you be another man’s wife? I made a mistake once. But not again. This time you will unite with him. There is nothing more precious to me than him.”

Pappan feels a chill creep up his feet as Muthalali utters those words with a deliberate stress. He stands tentatively, waiting to be dismissed by Muthalali. Unable to inhale the ominous air that hung heavily in the room, he asks, “Can I leave, Muthalali?”

Muthalali looks briefly contemplative, and nodding his head gently as if conceding to Pappan’s wish reluctantly, says, “Alright, go. I will take her to Mahesh myself. Being his father, it is actually my duty to unite them. You go, you go.”

Pappan doesn’t miss the sinister tone as Muthalali dismisses him with a desultory flick. He heads out of the bungalow, scurrying like a mouse that has just escaped from a cat’s paws, and as soon as he crosses the gates, makes a call to the police station from his mobile phone. The caller ring on the phone is interrupted by the boom of a gunshot not very far behind him. And two more after a few frozen moments. It takes some effort for Pappan to furnish the policeman at the other end of the line with details.

He sprints across the road, hides behind a soda-beedi shop that has long since closed, and waits for the police jeep to wail into Muthalali’s compound. The darkness presses against him and the air is stifling still, but he feels a bizarre sense of relief sweeping over him. The sense of foreboding that held him captive since evening begins to wane, and an unusual calm prevails.

In an aching flashback, he thinks of his father and the last conversation they had the night before he died.

No, not died. Killed.

By Muthalali’s men at his behest. For aiding Mahesh’s affair with Sandhya. For carrying their letters to each other. For ferrying Sandhya from the hostel on the day the couple had planned to elope. For facilitating love.

He remembers his father’s words, dripping with dread. “Muthalali will not spare me for this. If I am killed, take care of your mother.”

A row of rotating strobe lights zips past him and stops in front of Muthalali’s massive teak doors. Police jeeps and ambulances. From a distance, he sees two human bodies being moved into the vehicles.

Two.

It all seems surreal again. These wailing moments. The story that brought him here. And its unexpected denouement.

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A Letter To My Student On The Eve Of His IIT – JEE

(Published on momspresso.com)

My dear child,

I will be spending the whole of today and tomorrow thinking about you.

Primarily praying for you, but beyond that, worrying. My fears are not about whether you will crack the IIT-JEE or not. My deepest concern is about how you will come out of this phase of intense academic trial that has consumed you so fully.I want you come out unscathed and resilient. And more confident than ever before that no matter what the result of this particular exam will be, you will not stop chasing your dream. Ever.

It’s my greatest wish that you clear the exam and come out triumphant, for you have worked very hard for it. Yet, I want you to believe that the possibility of becoming the professional you want to be doesn’t lie in this one exam. It lies in you. And you are a force that will exist even after tomorrow, beyond this test, stretching into the wide universe, open to all possibilities there are to make your dream come true. It is this force that you must trust. A Force otherwise called God.

I want to share a personal experience with you. This painting of a tiger that you see here is among my best works. I am not a trained artist, but I have great love for colours and I have tried my hand at painting now and then. I don’t know why, but when I draw life forms, I go for the eyes first. I always believed that I had to get the eyes proper to get the rest of the portrait right. So it was with this. But trust me, the eyes just didn’t come out the way I had wanted. I tried many times – glazing, erasing and going over it for days together.

Disheartened and unable to move forward, I was on the brink of giving up, abandoning my first ever animal portrait. It was then that the ‘a-ha’ moment struck. I decided to leave the eyes there and look at the other parts of the picture. The painting was a lot more than just the eyes. The bigger picture on the canvas was waiting for me to bring it to life. Thus the work progressed, with the fur and the face, the whiskers and the nose, all falling in the right places.

In the end, when it was the turn of the eyes, I wavered. It was a tall order, one at which I had failed once. Then I looked at the bigger picture again, and in a moment’s spark I exclaimed, ‘Why, I have come this far! Now can’t I do a pair of eyes and complete this painting?” I don’t know how it came about eventually, but today whoever looks at it on my wall avers that the eyes are as real as they can get. A student who had come for my writing workshop even remarked, ‘It seems as if the tiger is staring into my soul.’ I gave him a star for that creative statement and thanked myself for not quitting that day when the eyes got stuck.

The idea, my son, is to look at the bigger picture of your dreams. They are like my tiger painting. I could have given up when the eyes didn’t come out right and said, ‘I can’t. I am not up to it’. But somehow it dawned on me at the opportune moment that the eyes weren’t the only things I should be sweating out. There were other ways to go about it and complete the picture.

So it is with you. The exam you will take tomorrow are the eyes of the tiger. If you get them in the first shot (and I sincerely wish you would), there is nothing better. But if they don’t turn out well for some reason, remember, your aim is to complete the painting. Don’t stop. Don’t crumble if one stroke goes wrong. There is a whole canvas of life waiting to be filled up. Pick up the brush, dip into the pigments and keep painting till your tiger is made. Trust me, the universe will conspire to make things happen for you, sooner or later.

As the old saying goes, ‘act as if everything depended on you. Trust as if everything depended on God.’

Good luck & God bless. May the Force be with you.

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How long will the Lord sleep?

(Published on momspress.com)

The Creator, the One who made all these things come to be with a wave of His hand, once came to survey His earthly reign.

It is not often that He takes such royal tours. He had immense faith in the way things were run in the world by those He had crafted with great diligence. So He left them to their own defenses and intruded less in their affairs.

But for a while now, He has been ill at ease. He has been receiving ominous signs in His sleep. He has been dreaming of mountains spouting red liquids and jolted by jarring notes of human cry. He felt a taste of venom in the ambrosia, heard melancholy in the nightingale’s voice and a hint of untowardness in His heart. Even His omniscience seemed blotted now.

“Something is amiss with the human creatures. They aren’t in peace and seem to be in great difficulty,’ He said to His deputy. ‘I must go physically and know what they are lacking in lately.’

‘My grapevine says it is love, my Lord. Love, it seems, has tarnished.’ The deputy rubbed his ears and said a tad weakly. ‘But how can it be?’ he added. ‘You had intended them to be Your perfect synonyms. Wisdom was supposed to be their hallmark, and love their character. You had made them flawless in spirit and essence. Yet, rumour has it that they are now bereft of both wisdom and love, and are languishing in penury.’

The creator nodded pensively.

‘I must go, live in their midst physically, know what ails their lot and dispense the remedy by hand. The humans and I haven’t met in a long time. That’s causing the disquiet probably. It’s time I gave them an audience.’

So saying, the creator embarked on His journey. The celestial horses shook their mane and neighed, signaling the start of a long, divine ride. They galloped past time and space, and when they reached the fringes of the world, they were ordered to pause, and the Creator took stock of the mortal territories.

In a sweeping glance He caught the picture of life, as bestowed upon the earthly kind. With deepening dismay, he peered through layers and layers of black patina that had settled on the world, like silver wares left unpolished for long. The nights were more sinister than what he had intended, and the days grosser. Beneath them He saw life floundering, weak in its knees and feeble in its spirit. The decay was spreading at an alarming pace. Of all things, the plight of man was the most deplorable.

Spurred and shaken by what He saw, He was convinced it was time for a reappearance. A second coming. He had promised them that He would come and restore order when anarchy sets in, that He would save them when they stood on the verge of doom. He was their Saviour. They were His responsibility.

But then again, how on earth will He appear before them? In what form and by what name?

He could not reveal Himself with halo and wings. Nor with conch, disc and mace as some conceived him. Who would believe it if He said it was Him, REALLY HIM come to save them from ruin? Many mortals had impersonated Him on silver screens and festival grounds. He would be passed off as another grease-painted imposter. He had to masquerade and take aliases, and present Himself in familiar forms, as things they saw every day.

First, He asked a Rose flower. ‘Will you be my disguise? Can I work through you to fix this worldly mess?

‘But You dwell in me already. This fragrance is the essence you have poured into me. Ask the snaking river.’

The river said, ‘Already, Lord. But for You, how would I flow and reach the sea? Ask the bumble bee.’

‘Already. Isn’t this nectar your quintessence?’ the bee buzzed and hovered over the halo in obeisance.

Thus, one after the other, all the sentient and insentient things vowed that they were filled with Him to the brim already. However, no man saw them for what they were. The human beings had other fallacies. Of finding God in other places and not in the familiar things.

‘Already. Already. You are in us already.’ The words rang in the Creator’s ears as He wandered aimlessly in the streets – invisible, watching men and women milling about, catching every twitch in their face, feeling every deep sigh that passed by, wondering how He should manifest so that people would recognize.

It was then that He saw people making a beeline to some designated spots not far from where He stood. From the way they scurried and swarmed the fanciful places, He suspected they were a treasure houses. It was probably there that people found the material things they sought. He had little clue about what they could be seeking. He stopped a few people scampering down, and asked them what it was all about.

‘What are you rushing towards? What is in there? What is this place called?’

But no one heard Him speak, no one felt His hand on their shoulder. How will they? To them, the Creator is intangible. He is out of bounds for immediate mortal experience. They placed Him on pedestals, installed Him in niches and made Him reside in spaces they called by different names.

‘Hey, listen.’ He tried again. But His words fell on deaf ears.

The Creator was puzzled. How would He make Himself heard? How would He tell He was there to help them? Defeated by their indifference and ignorance, He merged with the crowd in an attempt to catch a glimpse of what transpired inside the tall bastions. It certainly looked to be a special place for them.

Inside, He saw chunks of people on a euphoric high and some in calm stupor. Installed at the far end was His earthly embodiment. He looked around and absorbed the commotion with heightening interest. The people who had assembled had a common purpose. Seeing God. Affirming their faith. Seeking boons. Banishing banes.

To them, this was the house of God. It was here that they sought and found Him, and fixed their fickle faith.

The Creator stood amidst the thronging men and women, and watched the script play out. Hordes of men and women were chanting His praise, some swinging in a trance as if they had had a tryst with a wish-granting deity.

As the chants reached a crescendo and the frenzy rose, the Creator called out desperately. ‘Look around. I am here. I am here. Don’t put labels on me. Don’t bind me to a place. Don’t fix me to a seat. Find me in a flower, find me in fire. Find me in all things around here. Don’t place fetters on me. Don’t love me as if I were a possession. I am nobody’s commodity. Love me unconditionally. Liberate me from your restricted creed. Let me be free.’

Alas, the Creator’s wail got drowned in the human hysteria. He stood there, lost like a child at a carnival. Failing to make sense of the goings on, He gathered His divine trail, hastened down the aisle and exited the place they all called God’s sacred abode.

Behind Him, they praised and worshipped Him. They sought favours of numerous kinds. They wept, asking for redemption from their woes.

He heard their voices ringing out in tandem with the sacred bells. ‘Descend from the heavens, Almighty God. Didn’t you to promise to come whenever we have a need? Come, fill our coffers, fulfill our dreams, and erase our pains. Show us you exist.’

Rattled by their limited love and restrained faith, the Creator fled the human precincts.

He bolted past the rose and the river, the bee and the bough, the plateau and the meadow, the pebble and the snow, and all that He had met on His onward journey. They watched His hasty retreat with consternation, and heard the horses’ neighs peter out into the skies. Soon, He was gone. His immutable presence quivered feebly in the fibers of the myriad living and non-living things that had recognized Him. All except man saw Him for what He was.

‘You have returned earlier than you said. Isn’t everything well with the creatures?’ asked the deputy, reading the flustered face of the Creator as He dismounted the chariot. ‘What transpired on earth, Lord? What makes you so distraught?’

The Creator shook His head, wiped his brow and said, ‘I can only say this much of men. They have lost their sight and sense. I was in their midst, yet they didn’t see me. I spoke to them, yet they didn’t hear me. I was present for them to embrace me, but they sought after me as if I was nowhere. They have created my distorted versions that I don’t recognize myself. How do I cure those that don’t see light even in the day? What has caused this blindness, I can’t say. This isn’t what I had conceived them to be. I must mull over it. Their souls must be redeemed. I love them too much to let them be ruined by ignorance. I must find a way to save my offspring.’

Saying this, the Creator descended into a state of deep contemplation that would last millions of years. Beside Him, the deputy stood patiently, waiting with hope for Him to awake from His cosmic sleep and pronounce, ‘LET THERE BE LIGHT, AGAIN.’

How long the wait would be, no one knows yet. Not even the mighty Lord.

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