T
he surroundings fill him with a great sense of loss. Jak rests his arms on the steel table and watches the boy in front of him. For someone his age, he drinks a lot. He drinks too much, Jak thinks. This boy is all messed up. Heavens, how has he managed to put away so much rum without falling on his face?
In the end Minjikapuram wore Jak out. Like that time before, when he was fifteen. It could give him nothing of what he sought.
Instead, it did exactly what it had once before. It pushed him into doing what inertia or perhaps even apathy might have prevented him from doing.
The silence of Minjikapuram so infuriated him, he decided he must find out what had really happened, one way or the other. It could mean starting afresh from another point but Jak knew all about that as well. When available scientific data offered only inconclusive answers, one looked elsewhere. In the stories of men who had seen it happen, in remembered portents and stipples of hearsay. On the field Jak knew of fishermen reading storm signals though radars maintained a resolute silence, of the spotting of a cyclone from the crest of a wave and the cry of a seagull. So Jak went home and began all over again.
The boy’s hand shakes as he pours rum into a glass and tops it with water from a steel jug. Behind him shadows dance as men come and go. There is no laughter and hardly any conversation in that room lit with a lone naked bulb hanging from the centre of the ceiling.
‘How did you know I would be here?’ the boy asks.
Jak shrugs. ‘I have my ways.’
For a moment you think of the days spent in the college corridors and the canteen, seeking a face from the printout you carried. Faces imprinted in your mind so that you would recognize them anywhere.
They threw strange looks your way. Who was this man who haunted the college campus, searching every face? Then you asked to meet the principal.
‘I can’t allow it. I can’t give you personal information about the students here,’ the man said categorically. ‘Why do you need to know about them anyway?’
Smriti wasn’t a student of this college. The boys were Asha’s friends, she had said. What could you say?
‘They were my daughter’s friends,’ you said.
‘Were?’
‘She is not well,’ you said quietly.
‘If it is a police matter, they will do the questioning. I can’t let you loiter here in the college campus. Please leave…’ He looked at the card you had given him. ‘Professor Krishnamurthy, oh, I see… at the University of Florida.’ A note of respect crept into his voice. Apology even.
As he saw you to the door, he said again, ‘I hope you understand my position. I am helpless. Really!’
Outside and across the road was a petty shop. Cigarettes, soft drinks, biscuits, bananas, magazines, betel leaves, chewing tobacco, everything a college boy might need to alleviate the hours spent cooped within the classroom.
You started a conversation with the man there. He knew one boy, he said. Used to be my regular, he beamed, though I haven’t seen him in a while.
‘Where do you think I can find him?’ you asked.
The man shrugged. ‘I don’t know where he lives.’
You looked away. What were you to do now?
You had thought it would be easier to trace the boys rather than Asha. A girls’ college run by nuns would require many explanations. And you didn’t even know what you were seeking.
‘Come back tomorrow. I will ask some of my regulars and let you know.’
Next day the man said, Shivu, that was the boy’s name, had gone back to Salem. ‘That’s where he is from. He moved to a college there. I think it is called the A.V.M. Chettiar College.’
This time you knew what to do. You wouldn’t waste time inside the college. Instead, you would head for the petty shop outside.
‘You could try the Rose Cottage,’ the man there said. ‘Some of these boys go there, dirty as it is!’
‘Rose Cottage?’ Your heart sank. A whore house?
‘Hawaldar’s place. He doesn’t have a liquor licence but he sells booze in a back room. These college boys go there for a shot… army quota. It’s hard stuff but cheap!’
You waited outside for four days before Shivu walked in. You crossed the road and followed him in. In your haste, you bumped into him.
He turned in surprise at your bulk looming behind him. ‘Who the fuck?’ he snarled.
You murmured, ‘I am Smriti’s father.’
The boy’s eyes were those of a rabbit’s caught in a light. Petrified.
The owner, who is also the bartender, steward and chef, slams a plate of scrambled eggs on their table. Oil glistens on the egg and chopped onion and chillies. ‘The hardboiled eggs are over. So I made you this. Anything else?’ the man asks.
The boy shrugs. Jak looks at the thickset man with his hair razed to a stubble. He has heard the other men call out to him as Hawaldar. An ex-army type or a man posing as an ex-army man. He continues to stand there.
‘What?’ Jak asks.
‘You have to order something. This isn’t a club for you to sit around and chat,’ the man says.
‘Fine. Bring me a vodka tonic,’ Jak says. He doesn’t want a drink. But if he has to, he prefers vodka.
‘I don’t have vodka, gin or all those fancy spirits. Just rum, brandy or whisky. It’s all military quota.’ The man’s abrasiveness rattles Jak.
‘Get me one of each.’
‘Large or small?’
‘Large, and three bottles of soda, and a plate of peanuts. That satisfy you?’
The boy looks up now. ‘I am sorry for this,’ he says quietly.
Jak doesn’t speak. He is furious. Then he asks, ‘Why?’
‘I can see that this is hardly the place you would hang out in. And the rudeness of Hawaldar… oh, for everything.’ The boy’s voice rings with remorse.
Jak puts his hand on the boy’s arm. ‘Should you be here at all? Look at what’s around you!’
Their eyes survey the rundown seediness of the room. The decrepit men with shaking hands and the palpable need to toss a drink down their throats. The silence they fill with alcohol in steel tumblers. The demons that perch on their shoulders and urge with slobbering mouths: one more, one more…
‘This is a place for alcoholics. For men who are far gone. So why are you here?’ Jak’s voice is soft but insistent. ‘What are you running away from?’
The boy’s eyes widen, then he drops his gaze. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Why haven’t you been to see Smriti even once?’ Jak asks.
‘It is difficult for me to come to Bangalore.’
‘That’s not the truth.’
The boy continues to look into his glass. He doesn’t speak. Then he raises the glass to his mouth and drinks deeply.
Jak flinches.
‘I can’t,’ the boy says. ‘I can’t. Do you hear me? I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. That satisfy you?’ The boy’s tone mimics his.
‘No,’ Jak says. ‘I need to know why. You were her friend, weren’t you? You, the other two boys, and Asha.’
The boy’s eyes are quizzical. ‘Asha? Who is Asha?’
Jak looks at his palms, on which the lines whirl in an almost centrifugal pattern.
So Asha is yet another lie in the stream of lies Smriti fed them, Nina and him. Why did she feel the need to create this imaginary girl? Asha, whose mother was a doctor and father an architect. Their dog Snoopy and their lovely old home in Jayanagar, which
Smriti had been to several times. Asha, who topped the class and never missed a step. Was she the girl Smriti ached to be? Or was she the veneer of respectability Smriti sought to hide her recklessness behind?
But why? He wouldn’t have prevented her from going on a trip with the boys anyway. He never laid down the law; never played the heavy father. He never said, no dating, no doing this, no doing that… ‘It’s your life. If you screw it up, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself. I know how it can feel. That restlessness. The need to push the limits. But take it slow.’
He voiced only what Amma had said when for a while he, Kitcha, had run amok.
‘The world is yours to grasp,’ Amma said to him, taking his hand in hers and smoothening his tightly clenched fist. There are many ways of knowing life. All in good time. Why must my Kitcha be in such a hurry?’
Kitcha didn’t want to dwell too long on it. These days he didn’t want his mind to pause at any point. If it did, he knew he would burst into tears. It was better this way. Ever since Appa left, a ball of fury seemed to reside in his chest – his biology teacher called it the thoracic cavity. Home to his anger, it hissed and fumed, burnt and seethed.
It made him aim stones with his catapult at the blackboards in empty classrooms. It had him defile library books and smash windowpanes. There was a strange satisfaction at this wanton destruction. Like there was triumph when he aimed for shins rather than the football. Or, when he bowled to injure rather than contain the batsman’s stroke play. A ball of fury with goblin ears that said playing hooky was what any schoolboy could do, go on, do more.
It made him light a cigarette in the playground. It made him smuggle pornographic magazines into the class. It whispered in his ear, ‘Be a man! Now! Now!’
It emerged as a sulphurous stream from his mouth: profanity made him feel better. The shock and disgust it triggered made him want to laugh. A wild manic paroxysm of laughs. Koodhi. Amma Koodhi. Appa Koodhi. Loose Koodhi. The words danced on his tongue with glee and Kitcha spoke them loudly, clearly, on the playground, in the streets. He soon came to be known as the nasty boy with a gutter mouth.
Inevitably, he was caught. ‘Missing classes to go for a movie is one thing, but your son is a bad influence,’ the principal said. He had found his son smoking and the boy had no qualms about pointing his stubby index finger at Kitcha. ‘He said I should try it. Be a man, Kitcha said.’
‘I am suspending him for a week. This is his last chance. Then it will be dismissal.’ The principal bristled.
Amma said nothing. Kitcha waited. They took the bus home, their shoulders and thighs touching, but Amma wouldn’t speak a word. Kitcha darted glances at her face. Would she be angry or would she weep?
At home, she went into her room to change her clothes. He waited in the hall. The chains creaked as he swung himself, waiting for retribution.
Amma went into the kitchen and brought out a plate of tiffin and a tumbler of coffee for him. As if it was yet another ordinary school day.
Amma watched him eat. She sat by his side, still wrapped in a catacombic silence. What was she thinking? What was she planning?
When he was done, she took the plate and tumbler from his hands. Then she said, ‘I think I know what’s making you do this. What can I say, Kitcha? I am sorry that your father and I did this to you. I am sorry, Kitcha!’
He hadn’t expected this. For Amma to take the blame for his rowdiness. Kitcha cried then. Large wet sobs that tore themselves
from the ball of hate in his thoracic cavity and emerged as gigantic, heaving tears.
They wept together. Then Amma wiped her tears and his. She took his hand in hers and kissed his brow. ‘I know you are not a bad boy. It’s your age, Kitcha. It’s your age. Shall I suggest something? When you get really angry, why don’t you draw something? You hardly touch your paints any more.’
The boy isn’t drinking in such a hurry now. The level in his glass dips slowly. Jak feels the questions tumble in his head but he doesn’t know where to start.
The Hawaldar appears at their elbow. ‘Half an hour. That’s it! I am closing. If you have any last orders…’
Jak shakes his head.
‘I’ve had enough,’ the boy says.
‘Don’t come back tomorrow if you are going to sit around and gossip. I don’t like people staying too long here. Do you hear me?’ Hawaldar puts a piece of paper on the table. ‘Settle up and leave. Quickly!’
‘Can we meet tomorrow?’ Jak asks.
The boy shakes his head. ‘For what?’
‘Just an hour. I won’t bother you after that,’ Jak pleads. ‘But not here. Come to the hotel I am staying at. No one will hurry us there.’
The boy gulps his drink down and Jak counts out the notes.
The boy stands up. He wipes his hands on his jeans. ‘Don’t you want to know my name?’
‘It’s Shivu. I know,’ Jak says.
‘What time tomorrow?’
‘Eleven thirty suit you? The bar opens by then.’
‘Hey, hey,’ the boy protests. ‘I am not a drunk. I don’t know why you said that.’
‘I didn’t mean it that way,’ Jak placates. It’s just that he thinks liquor will loosen Shivu’s tongue.