“Stories, Jai, will always float around”, he said, draining down a bite of his cheese sandwich with a sip of coffee. “But, really, what do you think would set yours apart?”
Jai lifted his mug of beer and paused midway-to-mouth, obviously grappling with the question hurled at him. This wasn’t a direction he had invested much thought in. That having been said, it wasn’t as if he was oblivious to the answer; just that, probably, he had never tried to articulate what his greatest asset as a writer was. Like most in his trade he preferred the more mystical, if slightly intangible expression- ‘signature’.
Unfortunately, uncomfortable as it was, it was evident that Prakash’s question wasn’t rhetorical. His restless and expectant tapping of his coffee mug with the spoon made that implicitly clear. With a slight shake of the head, he took a rather large draught of beer.
“Would you laugh terribly if I said - well – my sincerity?” he answered a touch sheepishly.
Prakash didn’t laugh; he proceeded to stir his coffee with a thoughtful gaze directed at Jai which made him feel awkward enough to gulp down another mouthful of beer just to buy himself a few seconds of shelter from the attention his answer was bound to stoke. When he rested the mug, there was still a suspicious silence at the table.
And then, inevitably, Sunny chipped in with his unique brand of laughter. It had been an oddly somber and impassioned conversation at the bar table tonight and one that had had him both bewildered and bored at once. Cigarette after cigarette had been stubbed out and, yet, this subject of discussion, frustratingly unintelligible and drab to him, had stubbornly persisted.
Jai rolled his eyes in annoyance; he had expected as much from Sunny. Sunny, he believed, had the singular gift of trivializing worthwhile conversations with his curiously affected and above-the-fray laughter.
“See, Prakash, that’s when it becomes difficult for me,” he continued, trying to ignore Sunny. “If sincerity isn’t enough then, as a writer, what else do I have to offer?”
“Struggling writer,” Sunny corrected with a smirk as he lit another cigarette.
Prakash lifted a crumb sticking to his chin with his forefinger and swiped it off with a swift lick.
“Look,” he said, gesturing sandwich-in-hand, “I’m not a writer. But I do read a good deal. And I can tell you, as someone who might someday soon pay good money to buy something you’ve written, that sincerity counts for nothing.Zilch.Nada. I’d rather the author was charming and insincere than sincere and tedious. Hang on- isn’t there a bit of Wilde in there somewhere?”
“Quite possibly,” Jai replied flatly.
“Wilde, indeed,” Prakash chuckled and tucked into another sizeable chunk of sandwich. “But really, Jai,” he continued, “do it your own way if it works for you.” Jai exhaled in perturbation. He shuffled his feet beneath the table and tugged at his hair.
“But it’s not working for me, you see!” he said, with a tinge of desperation in his voice.
“What makes you think it’s not?” said Prakash.
“Oh come on, Prakash bhai!” Sunny exclaimed, throwing his hands up in disbelief that Prakash should fuel this morose discussion further. Usually when Jai sunk into one of these moods after a couple of drinks, Prakash would play the jovial elder brother and laugh off his whining.
“If I can’t interest my wife of 7 months in my stories about relationships what chance do I have out there?” he said.
“Good point,” Sunny quipped. He sniggered and started fiddling around with his cell phone.
“Come on now, you don’t really mean that. What makes you think that Ruchi isn’t interested in your stories?” said Prakash, leaning back into his chair with his hand gently stroking his bulging belly.
Sunny sat up straight and quickly exhaled a cloud of smoke.
“See, this is more like it,” Sunny said, flinging his cell phone on the table in a spurt of new-found enthusiasm. “This, finally, is a conversation worthy of a bar table. Gentlemen, I propose to you- why can’t Jai’s wife stand his stories?”
Jai shot him a cold glance. There was another uncomfortably pregnant silence at the table. And since Prakash had started tapping his coffee mug with his spoon, Jai had no alternative but to raise his beer mug once again for a prolonged draught.
“Well, it’s nothing she has told me to be honest,” Jai resumed, “but there’s a distinct - how do I put it – distance, aloofness maybe, that I sense in her mannerisms during my narrations. For instance, texting on her mobile, while I read out a particularly intimate bit about the bloke gently lifting a strand of velvety hair sprawled across the girl’s face so as to unveil her sublime features and plant a kiss on the moist lips of said girl, is hardly an appropriate response I should think.”
Prakash let out a mild, empathetic chuckle which triggered tremors in his fleshy, round face. “But, perhaps, you are overreacting,” he said. “It is unfair for art to unconditionally demand an audience, you know.”
“Well maybe not quite so unfair if the audience in question happens to be the art’s inspiration in the first place,” he laughed mirthlessly.
“All I’m saying, Jai, is that we all lived cluttered lives these days don’t we? Maybe, we have to make allowances for the fact that at any given point in time, people have a lot going through their minds. And maybe, just maybe, the artist must be ready to combat other distractions for a share of human attention instead of -well, you know- is that a Heineken you have there? I think I’ll indulge today.”
Smiling smugly, he called out to Pooja, the waitress, and added, “So, oddly enough, you will still have to fight for her attention-even after marriage, that is.”
“Pooja, I’ll have a pint of the Heineken, please. No wait, make that two- I think Sunny could do with a drink too. Right,Sunny?” He stopped shuffling the mobile phone around in his hand and looked up briefly at Prakash.
“Why not, I suppose,” he said and proceeded to take a deep drag from his cigarette.
Pooja smiled and tucked a hanging strand of her dark hair behind her ears.
“Really, Prakash? You’re drinking tonight, is it? Planning to get drunk, are we?”
“Well, what if I am, young lady? You still don’t get to take me back to your place tonight, I’m afraid. The honorable drinker leaves with who he came with.”
“In that case, I must say I’m devastated,” she said, putting on a playfully wistful expression.
“Oh and one more thing- a refill for Jai here would be fabulous.”
“Wow! A fourth? ”
Prakash leaned forward suddenly, planted his hefty elbows on the table and smiled suggestively at his friends.
“I have a feeling we’re about to swim in unforeseen directions tonight. Wouldn’t want the river to run dry now, would we?” he said, deliberately adding a smattering of mischief to his voice.
Pooja was visibly hooked. With an excited gleam her eyes and a lop sided grin she said, “ I’m going to go now to get the drinks but, Prakash, I need you to give me the low down on whatever it is that’s going on with you guys. You will, wont you? God, I have a boring life.”
With a zen-like all-knowing smile firmly in place, he said, “Let the river take its course, pretty one. I shall see you on the other side.”
“It’s a date then. You keep that tummy in, Prakash,” she said.
“For you, honey, always,” came the reply.
She ran her fingers through her dark hair and gracefully spun around, all in one elegant move, and then glided across the bar to fetch the drinks.
Jai watched on in disbelief and admiration as Pooja left. He couldn’t fathom how Prakash, with his 100 kg frame, pot belly, and thick, rotund face could manage to weave a web of intrigue around a pretty girl with the mere suggestion of a story that he obviously didn’t have, while he struggled to narrate his genuine and heartfelt stories to his own wife, the love of his life, without eliciting a few stifled yawns.
Perhaps, Oscar Wilde knew what he was talking about after all, he thought as he dropped his head and stared at his reflection on the glass table.
“I may have a theory,” Jai said, suddenly looking up.
Slapping his left palm on his forehead, Sunny let out an impatient sigh and made a considerable show of glancing at his watch for the time.
“Stay put, Sunny,” said Prakash with surprising sternness, “you’re not going anywhere till you finish your drink.”
“All right, Prakash bhai, I’m right here. Relax.” said a slightly taken aback Sunny. There was a brief pause while Pooja returned with the drinks. She beamed radiantly at Prakash as she turned to leave.
“It’s my face, isn’t it?” Jai almost spat out.
“What?” cried Prakash, more than a trifle bemused.
“It might well be,” Sunny muttered, latching onto the opportunity that had presented itself.
“Look maybe the problem is not so much my stories but the fact that it is me who is narrating them,” he continued. “Ruchi looks at me and she sees a bespectacled young man, rather lean, with a boyish face, no hint of a beard, average height and a feeble, thin voice. Of course, she doesn’t expect anything mature or passionate to ever come out of me; of course, my stories hold no credence to her. Isn’t it? Surely, if she were to read my work without knowing that it was my creation, she would appreciate it? Yes, I’m certain that’s it. The words I write belong to me but they deserve to be voiced and heralded by another. Prakash, I believe that my words might just be too beautiful for me. Am I right?”.
Jai thumped the beer mug down onto the table with the triumph of one who had finally diagnosed his malaise.
“Am I right?” he repeated.
“I don’t know but you’re definitely drunk,” said Sunny, calmly lighting another cigarette.
In a sudden bout of irritation, Jai stomped his feet on the ground which such ferocity that it attracted the attention of a couple of the surrounding tables. Luckily, the bar was starting to empty out by now and not much of a scene was created.
With his eyes seething with anger, he said, “Sunny, I’m not playing anymore. I’m really, really not. Please leave if you feel like.”
“You’re drunk,” Sunny repeated, without looking at him.
“Go to hell,” hissed Jai.
Prakash leaned forward and lodged a bulky arm around Sunny’s shoulders to preempt, with assertiveness, any move on his part to leave.
“On the contrary, Sunny, do stick around a little while longer. I’ll give you a ride home. In fact, your presence will prove to be instrumental to proceedings.”
Sunny shrugged nonchalantly. “Prakash bhai, whatever it is that you’re driving at, I’ll be grateful if you could make it quick and painless so that we can all call it a day,” he said, in a voice which attempted to convey tiredness and indifference at once.
“That,” said Prakash, “depends entirely on you.”
Sunny laughed in derision. “It couldn’t possibly! Nothing which concerns the literary habits of Jai could possibly depend on me; nothing this evening has depended on me and I’m certain none of your so called proceedings will.”
Prakash patted him on the back with a series of fearful thumps, leaned back into his chair, crossed his legs and then rubbed his palms with palpable excitement. He paused for a few moments to let things simmer down a bit. Sunny tapped out some ash from his cigarette, all the while staring into empty space. Thick swirls of smoke hung heavy over the table. The bar was nearly empty now.
“Sunny, you were right though,” Prakash resumed.
“About what?” said Sunny
“Yeah, what could he possibly be right about, Prakash,” said Jai, putting on the most convincing sarcastic tone he could muster after having downed almost four pints of the Heineken.
Prakash smiled, almost paternally, at his two warring friends. “You were right when you said that we needed to discuss why Jai’s wife can’t -seemingly- stand his stories.”
Jai closed his eyes momentarily and shook his head in obvious exasperation. “Here we go again!” he blurted out in despair. Although he wouldn’t admit it, he began to realize that he was a touch drunk. Bleary-eyed, he started to massage the side of his head with his fingertips.
“Jai, I need you to listen to me closely,” Prakash said in a forceful voice which instantly commanded attention, “unless you want to go back to the drudgery that is your desk job.”
Jai emptied his mug with one final swig, inhaled sharply and adjusted his spectacles by pushing them firmly up his nose.
“All right, let me hear it,” he said.
“Your passion though well-meaning is, ultimately, irrelevant to most. Worse, it may even be plain boring. You write of love and relationships and yet, ironically, you write in a way which to me seems generally selfish. There’s so much of ‘you’ in your story that it leaves absolutely no room for anybody else. It’s suffocating really; almost as if you’re thrusting your sensibilities down your reader’s throat.”
“Well, of course, there’s a lot of me in my stories. That’s why they’re ‘my’ stories, aren’t they? It’s my bloody perspective of things!” he replied, clearly annoyed and baffled in equal measure by Prakash’s line of thought. It was as if his very identity as a writer was being questioned and he felt a surge of aggression swell up within him. Or, perhaps, it was the liquor.
“Ah, perspective!” said Prakash, triumphantly slapping his thigh with his right hand. “Now, we’re getting somewhere. Every damn story doing the rounds is the perspective of some author or the other. What sets you apart? I’m sorry if I’m demolishing your world-view here but, give or take, love is the same for everybody. Yes, it’s true. Consider this- the velvety dark hair sprawled across the sublime features conveys eroticism in every perspective; the kissing of the moist lips conveys passion in every perspective; unrequited love conveys heartache. Does that seem familiar? Like one of your stories isn’t it?”
“That’s called romanticism, Prakash!”
“Just because it’s a love story doesn’t mean it has to be romantic,” was the retort.
“What is that even supposed to mean?” said Jai, feeling the throbbing in his temple with a fist.
“Tell me, Jai,” he said, purposefully drawing his chair closer to the edge of the table with a soft grunt, “do your stories ever consider that maybe the bedroom window was left open?”
Prakash paused for an answer and began to roll up the right sleeve of his shirt. Seeing a perplexed Jai, with his lips slightly apart as if he had meant to say something but had later decided to await further clarity, he smiled almost contentedly and began to undo his left sleeve button.
“What if – and ponder over this contingency – the recklessly aroused lovers, in their eagerness to gratify each other physically, inadvertently left the bedroom window open?” he said, eventually.
“What if they did? So?”
“So,” said Prakash, injecting a carefully calculated pause, “Rahul has a field day, doesn’t he?”
“Who the devil is Rahul?” Jai cried out, the influence of beer strong enough to turn puzzlement into mild annoyance.
“Rahul,” he replied, “is the adolescent boy-servant serving the Kapoors who live in an apartment on the 8th floor of the adjacent building. And while he stands watching at the window with one hand inside his pants and a dusting rag in the other, little does he realize that he is doing much more than giving into the carnal machinations of puberty – he is irrevocably changing the lives of the Kapoors.”
“And how is that?” asked Sunny, reluctantly giving into a sudden wave of curiosity.
“You see, Nikita Kapoor, the lady of the house and Rahul’s employer is a devoted and doting wife to her husband, Rajiv, who, incidentally is fond of food in general and, has a particular liking for carrots.”
“Carrots?” Sunny repeated, stubbing off his cigarette. He reached out for the cigarette box and fished out the final stick.
“Yes, carrots. So Rajiv insisted on having carrots included in some manner or the other in each day’s culinary preparations and…..”
“And Nikita obliged,” completed Sunny.
“That is correct. As I said, she was devoted. And doting. And rather pretty, actually.
In her defence, however, she didn’t know what the Ancient Greeks knew.”
He waited for the obvious question. Since it didn’t come immediately, he proceeded to calmly roll up his left sleeve this time.
Jai sighed. “And what, pray, did the Ancient Greeks know, Prakash?” he asked finally.
“They knew that the carrot is, if consumed regularly, a potent aphrodisiac. And so it transpired, that over a prolonged period of time, the entire family, boy-servant included, was fed on a healthy diet of carrots. As you would expect, this heightened the pressures of puberty in the young lad, eventually pushing him over the brink into a swirl of helpless voyeurism.”
“This is the most absurdly moronic concoction I’ve ever heard,” declared Jai, curling his lips in disgust that the pristine little bubble of love created by him was being desecrated with such gay abandon.
“Never mind him, Prakash bhai, do carry on,” said Sunny, who was quite taken by Prakash’s rendition of Jai’s story. Also, it had the added advantage of being able to irk Jai.
“Carry on all you want, but this just vindicates my position,” said Jai. “Not only is insincere story-telling morally questionable, it also makes a writer vulnerable to gaping technical holes. I mean, it is plainly obvious that your version is intended for the sole purpose of titillation – what relevance, for instance, does Nikita’s being pretty have to the goings-on? You just threw it in there for the dogs to salivate, didn’t you?” He shot across an accusing glance at Sunny.
“Well consider me titillated; more anyways than by the mush about velvety hair and moist lips. Call me depraved, but I can relate to this,” Sunny said with a smirk.
He was beginning to quite enjoy this.
“Well, Jai, consummation for one might be titillation for another- that is the crux of what plagues your work, but more on that later. Yes,Nikita was pretty. And that’s important because her teenage daughter, Sonia, inherited her appealing features and blossomed into a rather voluptuous young girl.”
“Ooh, describe her, describe her!” said Sunny. He took a sip of his beer and wiped the trickle from the corner of mouth with the back of his hand.
“Relax, Sunny, she has a boyfriend. She’s very much committed.”
“I couldn’t care less,” he replied. “Get on with the description!”
Prakash smiled. “I know you couldn’t care less, Sunny. I know.”
He scanned the bar quickly. It was virtually empty now.Pooja was pacing about cleaning the counter and preparing to wrap up for the day, her hair bouncing rhythmically about her waist as she moved. She caught Prakash observing her and waved out to him.Prakash smiled back. Then turning back to his friends he said,
“Well, you could say that she, too, had that dark, velvety hair.” He burst out into a volley of laughter, accompanied by Sunny. Jai found himself not appreciating the joke as much. His mug of beer had run dry so he removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes with his palms till the laughter had subsided.
“As for the rest of her,” Prakash continued, “consider Pooja to be a fair approximation.”
“Works for me,” said Sunny, eyeing her tie her hair into a bun.
“Well, unfortunately – and I want you to listen up here, Jai, because this, conceivably, is how your love story ends – driven by increasing dosages of gentle lifting of velvety hair and kissing of moist lips administered from across the bedroom window in the adjacent building, the boy’s voyeuristic excesses devolve gradually into a full blown, violent mania. So one day, he enters Sonia’s bedroom to dust the furniture, finds her sleeping with ‘ her hair sprawled across her sublime features’, tries to gently brush aside her hair from her face, meets with a frightened resistance from the girl and – well , to skip the gory details – brutally terminates her .”
Prakash held his pose after having delivered what he felt was the knock-out punch and awaited some sort of a reaction. After a protracted silence, during which both Jai and Sunny glanced at Pooja, imagined the worst, cringed involuntarily and then looked away, Jai spoke.
“That’s just distasteful. And frivolous,” he said, curtly.
“I agree. And it’s also not romantic, is it?” said Prakash.
“No, not particularly,” said Sunny.
“What I’m trying to get at, Jai, is that there are frames of references other than your own that you need to look into. Your stories of relationships are glorified clichés. I know this might hurt but try and take this in the right spirit. Oh wait, you already did. It’s called Heineken,” he said, and erupted into hearty laughter.
“That actually makes good sense. Well, I felt entertained, at any rate,” said Sunny. Realizing that he had forgotten to light his cigarette all this while, he reached out for the match box on the table.
“Oh, shut up, will you? What do you know?” remarked Jai with scorn. To be talked down to, in matters of intellect, by Sunny was something he would not abide.
“All right, all right,” said Prakash, raising a hand to diffuse another imminent flare up between the two. “Indulge me a little longer and I’ll provide you two with another example.”
“I think you’ve made your point, Prakash,” said Jai. He had had enough by now. Prakash smiled back at him. “No I’m afraid I haven’t. I really, really haven’t.”
“Listen now to the tale of Jai Mehta, writer, concerned about wife, Ruchi’s, dearth of enthusiasm for stories lovingly crafted by him; decides to pop over to the local bar and meet up with his two friends, presents them with his predicament; by and large they commiserate with him and bear him out patiently- of course, they throw in the odd inappropriate joke; he feeds on their patience and empathy and embarks on a vicious cycle of whining, drinking, self deprecating and self-deluding. If, however, by some quirk of fate he were to disappear from the bar table and yet listen in to his two friends, an entirely new ‘perspective’ might reveal itself to him. And this, Sunny, is where you come in. Now, we will ignore Jai’s presence completely for the remainder of this dialogue.Alright?”
Prakash turned to face Sunny.
“You know, Sunny, I think I might have a fair idea why Ruchi doesn’t think much of Jai’s stories,” he said, with a slight wink encouraging Sunny to play along.
“So do I. I just don’t think he’s good enough,” said Sunny, trying his hardest to keep a straight face.
“No, I don’t think that’s quite it. By his own admission, he considers his physical appearance a hindrance to his literary prospects, right? And also, by his own admission, his narrations don’t arouse much interest in her – to the extent that she can be found texting on her mobile simultaneously. Now if you were an attractive and smart woman like Ruchi,why would you stick around with a husband you didn’t find physically or intellectually appealing. Tell me, Sunny!”
A cold silence clattered at the table. Sunny instinctively shot a gingerly glance across at Jai, who had by then clenched the edge of the table with both his hands.
“Listen guys…,” Jai began, deciding that things had gone too far and ugly.
But his voice of protest was strangled dismissively by Prakash.
“Come on now, we’re just having a bit of fun. Nothing wrong in a bit of fun, is there Sunny?” he said with a loaded smile.
Sunny reached out for his cigarette box which he knew was empty. His fingers conducted the obligatory search inside the box, but in inevitable vain.
“No there isn’t,” he replied slowly as though he was reciting the letters in an optical test. “But I think it’s time we made a move. It’s too darn late for all this.”
“And the text messaging, Sunny? Doesn’t that strike you as a bit fishy? Who do you think she might be messaging?” said Prakash, completely disregarding Sunny’s reservations.
Jai could feel his grip of the edge of the table tighten. His smooth, clean shaven jaw line was now distorted by convulsions of anger.
“Tell me, Sunny, who could she be messaging?” he said, exhorting him to participate further.
Prakash looked straight into Sunny’s eyes with his lips set tightly together.
“Well if you’re not going to indulge me, I’m afraid I’m going to have to do all the theorizing myself,” he continued.
From the corner of his eyes, Sunny could see that Jai was just about ready to explode.Prakash began tapping his coffee mug with his spoon, slowly at first and then rapidly escalating into a crescendo. He looked beseechingly at Prakash but he just smiled back coolly. His feet felt stiff but he managed to shuffle them with some effort.
“I think she has a lover outside marriage”, said Sunny quickly, like he was ripping off a bandage.
Jai rose violently from his chair causing it to teeter on its legs for few brief moments before, finally, toppling over with a thud. The empty bottles and mugs on the table shook.
There was a long pause.
“I need to take a leak,” said Jai, as soon as he could say anything, and staggered off in the general direction of the wash room.
“You knew all along didn’t you,” said Sunny quietly without looking at Prakash, as soon as Jai was out of earshot. “It was just the onetime Prakash bhai,I swear. You can’t tell him. You just can’t. But why do all this Prakash bhai ? Was this the point of this entire evening? You led us here on purpose, didn’t you? All those stories? Just so that you could enjoy this moment?”
Prakash rose and brushed of morsels of his sandwich from his shirt. He smiled victoriously down at Sunny.
“Relax, Sunny. None of this is my business. And there was no point to any of the stories-mine or Jai’s. The joy of a story lies in its telling, doesn’t it? Remember to tip Pooja generously for an extremely enjoyable evening,” Prakash said, and shuffled out of the bar and into the streets.
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