But nobody had the time to think about that, and Raman Malhotra knew. Toss a smile and they violently stared, or incredulously glared, with their eyebrows raised: ‘Who the fuck are you?’ Move a few bogies up to the alleged cleanliness of the First, and their eyebrows seemed to say, ‘Who the fuck are you to smile at me?’
Raman scratched his outer thigh. It was the state of the city; it was what it demanded. Lock your doors and sleep light. And if you get a spare moment—pray. Pray that someone loves you. Your servants love you. Your watchman. The early morning unrecognisable newspaper boy. This was important. It could be life-enhancing. As for money—oh yes, money—there was plenty of that. It was half-regarded. Not reason enough.
Your life is just another commodity in abundant supply.
Ask anyone who lives in a city.
**************
Raman wiped his oily fingers on the outer wrapper of Lay’s Magic Masala and threw it away. Why couldn’t they make wrappers more absorbent, more tissue-like, so you didn’t have to spot the sides of your pants instead? As always, he felt that pull. That urgent knocking in the bottom of his bountiful bones. Advertising or marketing or some such wasteland of commercial creativity—that’s where he was meant to be. Group head. Marketing president. Creative director. He could see the toshed gold emblazoned name plate already. Soon. Very soon. But they’d have to pursue him. The truly talented never chased.
The platform was slushy with the polished slipperiness of fish basket sweat, that dirty bilious water that leaked from the edges. Raman squeaked as he entered the compartment—or rather, his shoes did as they heaved forward onto the high-stepper. Expensive sneakers came with an attitude: they sniggered at bad treatment. They too demanded equal rights like their leather contemporaries and aspired to walk on lush carpeted floors. And then it hit him full in the face. Raman raised his arms to shield himself, as if cowering from attack, but it was too late. He felt the full force of it, the intense vindication, the boisterous tang of heated armpits. His nostrils flared; he coughed, wheezed, as he tried to find a place under the fan. His eyes began watering, mist-filled, as the blades above him droned on. The air was too thick, too potent even for electricity. Raman moved to the door. It wasn’t much better. It seemed to be what everyone else had done.
‘What do you do?’
Raman looked up to see who was talking to him. He turned around. Still coughing, he looked down to be faced with a bobbing head.
‘What?’ asked Raman with a hint of alarm.
‘I mean, what do you do professionally?’
‘Why?’ Raman stared hard at the man. He remembered something, uncreased his brow and smiled gently. ‘Why?’ he asked pleasantly.
‘I’ve seen you somewhere,’ said the man plainly.
Raman had a theory: if you smiled, people were more inclined to be nice to you. Even if you had robbed, maimed, killed, or were about to. Smiling and lying went hand in hand. Scams, bust-ups, indiscretions, financial takeovers, political warfares, marriages had all succumbed to it. Well, as long as you didn’t grin shiftily, attracting suspicion. Lying was an art, really.
‘…Where?’ Raman stopped smiling. The man was still grinning gormlessly. ‘Where have you seen me?’
‘Aren’t you from TV?’
Raman’s eyes darted over the bristles of the little man’s moustache: unevenly patchy, hastily snipped, with bits of orange on one end. TV. Yes! He’d been on it. But how the hell did this twit remember? Five months on a game show. Prime time. 9 pm. In the audience. Well…what’d you know!
He used his best camera angle and pursed his lips. ‘Yes,’ said Raman, matter-of-factly. Life was suddenly everything he wanted it to be. He could bottle this moment and make it last forever. ‘And you?’ he asked.
‘Rahul Bhangari. BCom, CA, having business of hardware.’ The pudgy hand was outstretched. ‘Mobile, com-poo-ter, diary—electronic, latest models, CP209 mobile. With conference facility and micro-small earplug, water resistant, wireless. What you use?’
Marketing is a hard job in the world outside of trains. Working the phone, secretarial suck-ups, perspirational delays—almost as tough as dating. But here, if luck struck out, you just moved on to the next guy: on the right, left, back, or front, in the passageway. It was a breeze. Forget about call centers and rigging up your bio: No prior experience was required. Success rates were high. The lines used were the same, naturally. Everyone wanted to be from TV. No one ever was. But in a roomful of strangers, would you admit it? Other conversation hookers were Page 3, fashion shows, and nightclubs—altars of mass worship for everyone.
Raman gave an incomprehensible look. Far too many CPUs, OEMs, RAMs, hard and soft drives to take in at one time. He was confounded. It was all too overwhelming: the disabling motion of the train, the dancing pamphlets, and his controlled urge to fart. His eyes welled up.
‘Thanks,’ Raman murmured.
‘What com-poo-ter you use at home? The 568E Konkita with parallel folding speakers?’ The thick stubby fingers brushed open an extensive white folder.
There was only one other way to tackle this.
‘…Listen.’ Raman drew a deep breath and looked back to address the man. His body twitched. He peered at the man more closely.
‘You have place, my friend? Somewhere I can show you demonstration?’ The man’s thick upper lip was twitching, the nubby thumb subtly rubbing the outer flap of his crotch.
Oh, that’s another thing about the city. Everyone has a second job on the side. Everyone. But we’ll get to that later.
——
‘If I didn’t know you so well.’ You obviously couldn’t, or shouldn’t, or needn’t, Raman felt like barking back into the phone. It was one of those that came from the family of ‘I love you but…’ Yeah. Trust words to dampen things, to abuse your dependence on them. Just when you needed not to hear, they always came through. They softened as you got hard. Words ought to be banned.
There was a pause on the other end. Lola breathed in hard. Her concern was audible. She said, ‘You really need to think about this shopping trip because the more you don’t…’ It sounded as if she were biting the phone. Digging her front teeth in for an absolving answer.
‘Sure,’ said Raman. ‘I’ll think about it. Seriously.’
Another pause. Another asthmatic gulp of breath.
‘Yup. Okay,’ said Lola, hanging up.
And that was it. For today. But there’d be another later, Raman knew. Everyday conversations. That’s what they really were. Nobody should waste time trying to figure them out, solving their apparent ineptitude. There would always be another one to follow soon. And another. Every single day of your life. Things never looked up in this department.
Raman sighed. He hated his life. His miserable, inconsequential existence. It loomed before him and he knew someday, at the end of it all, there would be nothing to write about. At 35, his life had come to a standstill. A full stop. But something inside kept banging on, raging on, trying hard to get out. He would keep letting loose occasionally.
A thought flashed.
He pulled out his pad. Grabbed his pen. And sat, pen poised in mid-air as he conjured up an inspiration. What was that again? He tried delaying the thought abortion. ‘After a point you stop fighting life—and accept what it gives you. But where do you go from there?’ Deep hmm, he thought, penning it down and then putting down the pen in satisfaction. For several more minutes he lovingly stared at the pad hoping to add any discarded remnants. And then looked at that other magical source of inspiration—at that very moment in time before his eyes there appeared two sad, middle-aged women in pantyhose and black eye-masks with red stilettos. One longingly sucking a lolly, another brushing back her hair with a knife. A rubber dog, a bowl of fish, and a naked man in a tub. Yes, MTV made reality look preposterously dull.
Oh hell, it was Sunday. Lazily, Raman slouched into the curve of the sofa. When in doubt: scout. He bummed the remote hard for another music channel. Munni badnaam hui, darrlling… The song screeched. It drew out. It seemed to be coming out loud, from somewhere down below. Somewhere between the crack of his ass. Damn! The cell phone.
‘Hello?’ said Raman.
‘Darling, where are you?’ a sharp tone boomed back.
Shit! What interview had he missed? His boss never just called. On a Sunday. ‘On the couch. At home,’ Raman said, panic creeping into his voice.
‘No darling!’ The words buzzed among strange zing-like sounds. Raman pressed the receiver hard to his ear to check if she’d hung up. ‘Where are you!’
His mind whirred for an answer. It was a game show moment. His time was running out.
‘Have you seen today’s issue of India NOW!? So tacky!’ said Shaailaa.
‘Oh, of course,’ said Raman, with the delayed acknowledgement of a half nod. ‘I read their lead on that Sonali from Vijayawada. She’s becoming really hot in modelling. Shaailaa, we should do a piece with her on ‘What Makes Sonali So Hot’ before India NOW! even think about roping in her twin Monali and doing something like a ‘Haute Sisters’ piece where they both…’ Raman stopped to envision the contents of his scoop only to see the shiny black of his screen staring back at him. He was talking to himself. Shaailaa had hung up after making her literary statement. She rarely cared for addendums.
Moments of nothingness, hours spent daydreaming of who’s popular. The life of a journo was tough. He hated the word: Journo. What the hell? He wasn’t a hack claiming to be a reporter who did celebrity interviews, but pretended to be a writer waiting to be a novelist. He was a dignified wordsmith. His terms, his words. No puff pieces, no ego massages. On occasion, Raman needed this self-justification like an internal mantra that he kept repeating to himself for sanity. Or else crashing to earth from fourteen floors above was his destiny.
He had flirted with suicide once. With a bottle of Benadryl. He slept leisurely and woke up 18 hours later. It was another day, just like any other. Nobody noticed. No one ever asks ‘How’re you doing?’ and really expects an answer. A nod or a groan was indication enough. You were still breathing. No one had time for anything more.
As if imitating a scene in his head, Raman suddenly rammed his crotch into the cushion. First slowly, then forcefully. When he was alone, aggression descended. He loved the grazing playfulness of it, the plump softness massaging the protruding hardness, the edges of the mirror work inlay that felt like teeth. He used the tassels to gently massage his balls. He felt the tingle, that vibrating sting that readies you up. But something was missing; something was not quite still there. The ambience—it had to be as per the latest clip going on in his head: Raw Military Action II. With his raging hard-on in hand, Raman got up and flung open the bedroom windows. The outside greyness loomed dramatically. The dark clouds dominated. It was time. He pitched back on bended knees, and sprayed into the air with violence as a few pigeons fluttered past.
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