I fell down.

“Hehe… I mean, so bad. How?”

Well, you know about Siddashram?

“Yeah. Isn’t it where people wear white clothes? “

They don’t just wear white clothes, silly. It is a community.All are swamys and swaminis or whatever. They sell their property and live together as a group, working there and all.

“So? “

I went there last week, with Shaila chechi and her husband.

“Really? They let people in? And you fell down there?”

Yes, you can go see all, meet their Gurus, and if you want to, go live with them. Nice people.

“Oh?”

We were just roaming around seeing people and all, you know. Then there was this young Sanyasi ploughing the fields. So Shalia chechi asked him why an able bodied young man like him was working like a water buffalo in there.And that he should be ashamed of himself.

“Oh my God! What happened then?”

That guy is not fit to be a sanyasi. Not at all. And boy, does he run fast!

There was once a girl in my life. A girl I loved, a girl I envied, my best friend in an age when best friends are the world.

She was a beautiful girl. Not pretty; we were not the pretty crowd, we were just the geeky know-it-alls. It was ages ago,in quite another life-time, an age before M&B and Sidney Sheldon, an age before I mourned my lost innocence. In fact, it was not me, it was a silly looking kid with a large head and larger uncombed bob who talked her into starting a Jane Austen club. Yet we didn’t know Juvenilia and Lady Susan existed. We were that young, that sheltered, and that silly. We admired Shakespeare and talked about uncertainty principle. There were dreams; dreams of greatness, ideal world, happiness, friendship, and dreams of romance and love even though we wouldn’t admit it. I envied her heart, and knew greatness would find her.

After years of oblivion, I come across her. She is as bright, as silly, and she smiles the same way. But we are different. I wonder if we were always so different, and in my heart I know we were. She has grown up into a beautiful woman, and I admire her smiling face, her hands holding the vodka. Looking at her, I am thinking of how she would look in my canvas, if I could paint her, before she went away from my life again. I am still her twin, her best friend from a world where everything was beautiful, and she takes me back into her heart. She laughs when she tells me she is the greatest hypocrite she knows.

All I know is that I still envy this woman, this child, and I envy the broken pieces of her heart.

My brother is sitting on the verandah reading newspapers, and he didn’t hear the little boy come in till he was spoken to in Tamil-Malayalam.

“Count this, will you?”

He looked up, or rather down, into a handful of coins, and an eager yet arrogant face of a six year old. The gate was open? How did this little person come into the happy world of wars and politics? (Back then my brother was mortally afraid of any humans less than a meter tall.)

“AMMME…. Some kid here.”

“Where did you get this money from?” My mother asked as she was counting it out for the boy.

“I begged for it.” The boy is proud. He is proud of the money. Proud of the earning.

“Don’t you go to school?”

“My akka goes. Sometimes. Will you give me notes for it?”

“Well, where do you stay? Where are your parents?”

“We stay near the quarry. My amma works there. I beg.”

“She sends you out to beg?”

“My father beats her up.”

There is something about the boy. Something winning. He is painfully beautiful, and young. Not yet ashamed. Not yet broken. And my mother is won over.

“Do you want to stay here?” she nudges him playfully. “We even have a dog you can play with.”

He contemplates. Everything about him is serious. He scratches Tintu’s head. He is measuring up. He stays. He is talking to my mother. Making conversation over biscuits. Fearlessly, spontaneously. What my brother and I cannot do as near-grownups.

“It’s very late. I am going then.” He announces suddenly.

“Not staying then?” My mother is smiling at him. I know she is disappointed at heart, even though she didn’t expect him to stay. She wants her grown-ups back into kids.

“Ngu-huh.” Vulnerable, shy and just a child. At that moment there was nothing serious about him. The child is back. That is how I remember him.

I wish he had stayed.

“You can’t go if I don’t move.” The cow smiled.

Hey, come on. People are honking.

“Too much dust. Tastes weird.” She is licking the bonnet.

It was washed today morning. I am defensive.

“You have plastic mirrors? The ambassador on the right there has steel ones. It was cold.”

Don’t touch it. Go to the car behind. It is better. Honest.

“Want to get rid of me, do you?” She leans her neck over to the windshield facing me.

Hey, I like your eyes. But I will run you over, OK? So move. I hate the honking from behind.

“Hahaha. I am holy. And anyway, your eggshell of a car can’t move me.”

Don’t you dare make fun of my car.

“Oh, no. I rather like it. ” She kissed the windshield with her nose, and winked.

A creepy old man begging at the Marathahalli junction and gesturing obscenities made me think about Ix. And how they are everywhere. Ix was my manager in a previous company for close to two months. He was very helpful. The first day in office, he offered to help me find a house, and when I said I already found one, he offered any and all help in setting up the place. He also asked me if I needed a drop home, but when I said I drive, he was very unhappy that he couldn’t be of any help to me.

Of course Bee and S teased me about the manager’s interest in me. Having been brought up in Kerala, and being the paranoiac me who distrusts every man, I did not give him my phone number once I got it. He was to call S for anything urgent, and he would screen the calls, and give it to me. It helped that S wasn’t the sweetest guy in the world to him. He still managed to send me Happy Diwalis and Happy weekends and all that crap(to S’s phone!), and S told me maybe I am beginning to look like a girl after all, hence the SMSes. I had to pull off the haughty bitch act for him to leave me alone. Except for his not buttoning up his tee shirt in office, things were pretty OK. (Oh yes, this is something I feel strongly about. Why don’t majority of the men understand their convoluted bodies are nauseating? Don’t show off your legs and torso if you are not one of those handsome models in the ads. It is fat in all the wrong places. When it ain’t pretty cover it up.)

In two months he was chucked out of the office. Sexual harassment and all that. It was pretty serious too, he soliciting a woman who was in his team, and slightly touching a lot of others. They let him go without any legal action because they wanted to give him another chance and didn’t want to spoil his life. Spoil his life? I wonder whether he is pulling off the same stunts in another office. If a woman accepts a lift in his car, he thinks she is all ready to sleep with him the moment they reach his house or what? No wonder women don’t trust men in India. Unfortunately (or fortunately,people will say) women are not as paranoid as me. When a colleague asks them if he can drop them somewhere, they say yes, unless they distrust him to begin with. That is wrong ladies. I have had this classmate who couldn’t help touching me if he wanted to ask for anything. I used to trust that group earlier, and now that is gone thanks to that bastard. It is so sad we have to be not trusting.

Well, what I began to write about is sexual harassment. Ix surprised me, because I did not expect it to happen where it did. Not that I wouldn’t write it off in him, but I really did not think he would do something like that in office or to a colleague. Not because I think education induced some culture in him, but because of the repercussions. Multinational companies have clearly stated laws on ethics and harassment, and those with such a work experience would hold back their leering hands at least in fear of the consequences. Or so I thought. But apparently, he thought he could get away with it. (If fact he did.) He must have been a veteran, having pulled it off at the various offices he worked, and was never outed? It took the women in my office at least a couple of weeks to come out with the story. They were scared and embarrassed by turns. Why is it that we feel dirty when someone else does a lewd act? The woman is a victim, but the shame is borne by her. Sexual harassment is not caused by your fault, but because the other person is a moron and a criminal. It is not your fault if someone comments on your body. But when it happens at a place you are in constant contact with the perpetrator, you are sorry for all the times you dint tell him off. Why is it so difficult to differentiate the shame and anger and guilt?

I wish all these men would just die away and leave the world in peace. I hate it that these people are reproducing.

So you are not supposed to love?

‘Oh you should. You should fall in love with your husband once you are married. ‘

Well, what if I fall in love with my husband before he is my husband?

‘That is okay too. I mean, you are going to marry him for sure, then you can fall in love. ‘

What if I do fall in love, and I don’t marry him?

‘Well, then you shouldn’t tell anyone about it you know. If you pretend it didn’t happen, it didn’t happen.’

So you never crush, never flirt or anything?

‘Decent women don’t do that. And they don’t talk about these stuff like you do now.’

You do procreate don’t you? There seems to be a helluva lot of you.

‘Oh my god! chi chi…’

I am waiting at the bus stop and a creepy man stares at me lewdly.

Am aware of his eyes on me, and I feel the shame.The shame of possessing a woman’s body. The shame of being a target to the dirty eyes and dirtier minds because I exist.

And I am scared. I try not to see his stare. There’s a wee chit of a girl next to me. It is a deserted afternoon.

I tremble with shame and anger. I picturise a hundred ways to exterminate all of them. Wistful thoughts of extreme violence. Applied slowly and methodically. But I still fume.

Then I suddenly get it. The laughter was spontaneous, and I am almost ashamed of being so bad.

See, it is not his fault. Afterall, he was born to dogs.

‘What?’

Born to dogs.

‘Say son of a bitch?’

Nah. The mother was a human female.

‘Ewwwwww..’

“I wrote his mother a letter.” I tell Avi.

“What?”

“I even copied some of his lines. But I wrote in Malayalam. I don’t think she can read English.”

“You wrote his mother a love-letter?”

“Yes. I included the bit about flowers and honey and bees in it. You want to read it? Come over on sunday.”

“You are planning to send it? To his mother?”

“Yes. He wouldn’t stop it. And the bastard wouldn’t even sign his name.”

“Why don’t you just tell your father about it?”

“Cause I don’t have the proof. Except his ogling. But you know it’s him!”

“Of course I do. Read the letter for me!”

“I can’t. It’s, well… too literary. Come read it.”

*****

“You can’t send it.”

“How is it?”

“It is perfect. Too freaky. But how old is she? 45?”

“Must be. And I am sending it. The bugger didn’t mind sending me all those nasty letters. He is gonna pay.”

“He should. But maybe this is not the right thing.”

“God, Avi.. From when did you become such a chicken???”

“From when I became an adult? And maybe you should deal with this the grown-up way”

“Ha! I don’t want just to rersolve this, don’t you understand? I want him to be humiliated. I want his mother to feel the shame of reading this .. That’s what women should get for mothering such dogs.I want his fingers and arms and legs and ears and nose cut, okay? I want him to boil inwater and then skinned and then go under a train, okay? So, just go away if you don’t like what I am doing.”

“But why should you send such a letter to his mother?”

“Because.”

“You not going to play Kho-Kho?” Avi asks me on the way to court.

No. Venu sir called us for correcting papers.

“Hmm. I saw you three yetserday in his room.”

We did the juniors’ papers yesterday. Today we are evaluating our answer sheets.

I say proudly.

“It’s his job. Why does he always ask you girls? Didn’t your warden say anything about going to his room?”

Why should she? It’s next to their staff-room. And it’s Venu sir! Aviiii….

“He never asks us boys to correct the papers..”
Coz we girls are the best. You are so jealous of us…

“Don’t go today. Ask him to do it in the study hour in class. Come to the playground.”

He asked us. He’ll be angry.

“You are not going. This is games time. Where’s Tessy and Maya. They are not going either. And even if they do, you are not. Hear me?”

Don’t you tell me what to do.

“Don’t go, kid. Please.”

Avi, I think you are in love with me.

I laugh.

“Phew. I will never love someone not pretty. Let’s have a throwball match between boys and girls.”