Cheeniya, Wodehouse and Other Stories

Lovely Lady of my Dreams:

I had to exercise great self-control not to bother you again, though I was fully aware that I express myself best through letters to beautiful women. I need to imagine at least that there is a lovely someone or the other waiting in animated suspense for the arrival of my communications. Of course, experience has proved without fail that even if you exist, you prefer to remain invisible. Somewhat in the spirit of the Dark Lady of Shakespeare's sonnets.Yet, the presence or, even the absence, of this lovely thing brings out the craziest worst in me.

And tell me please, what's the point of creating women if they don't make men go crazy? Find me a man who doesn't enjoy the prospect of a pretty thing giggling at his eccentricities, feigned or genuine.

Lady dear, before I found the courage to write this letter to you, I wrote yet another one in the recent past to two other young ladies. The letter in question was all about a question, relating in turn to a question, about the thoughts a guy called Cheeniya was surreptitiously entertaining in his mind. He was trying to suggest that lovely ladies grow tails instead of trails. I being one of the trail lovers, as opposed to this Cheeniya chap, who's a tail catcher, I saw through him with a speed that would make not only Holmes, but Poirot blush also. I handed him over to the ladies in question, patting myself on the back that justice had at last descended on earth.

And would you believe what the ladies told me? They said that they didn't believe me at all. One of them even suggested that she would much rather accept Cheeniya at face value, thereby ignoring the intensely painstaking detective work I did free of charge. All for her benefit. Well, I'm telling you now the true story. Privately of course. Please, please keep it to yourself. Especially, don't let Cheeniya find out that I found out.

It so happens that Cheeniya is a great fan of P.G. Wodehouse. In fact, he probably knows by heart each and every line that PG ever wrote. Now, Cheeniya was mighty impressed by a book that Wodehouse titled "Pigs Have Wings". It gave him ideas you know. He decided to write a book with a similar title himself. And the title he landed was "Women Have Tails". And that's the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. He's writing this book on women's tails. In fact, he is also considering calling up a bloke called Ganesa (whose address he is holding back from me, somewhat in the manner in which poker addicts hold their cards to their chests) to dictate the book to him in one sitting, the way one of his acquaintances, someone whom he refers to as Vyas (or Gas, I could have heard him wrong you know), compiled a book with a name that sounds alarmingly close to "Maha-Bharta". Could be a Pujnabi food recipe if you ask me, but if so, why all this fuss of calling up a stenographer to write it down? Of course, this V guy could have been quite illiterate, even though a good cook, and, in that case, he would need to dictate his recipes in the interest of posterity. In fact, Cheeniya claimed that V's "bharta" is the ultimate source of every dish that Indians ever prepared.

Ah, women will be women, including you I guess. Why can't they accept me at face value and choose instead this Tailman. "Begone Trailman!" said they. It's Tailman alone that we trust. I shed lonely tears and walked out of the study where I sat as this lady pooh-poohed my thesis around 2 PM in the afternoon. And then I entered my bedroom. I really don't know why I did this, for I hardly ever sleep during the day. Days are meant for dreaming, aren't they? At least, Trailman was sent down to earth by God with strict instruction that he should engage in nothing other than daydreaming. During daytime in particular.

Well, as I said, I walked into the bedroom, having been rejected by the virtual-women in my study. What I discovered in the bedroom were two objects. A real female form peacefully enjoying a siesta and a TV turned on at full volume. I have noticed this somnolent propensity of my better half whenever exposed to TV programmes. She falls asleep as soon as a TV is turned on and prefers this form of a sedative more than any other available in the market. "Why pay the doctor to prescribe you a sleeping pill?" she argues. TV is a proved panacea for all forms of insomnia.

I sat next to where she was sleeping and began daydreaming about such inspiring subjects as slumbering wives, staring all the time at the TV monitor and watching nothing in particular. Till that is, my eyes froze, connecting the TV to the brain, or whatever it is that has found shelter inside my skull ever since I left the secure confines of my mother's womb. I sat up, with more than total attention and asked myself, "Is this what I think I am seeing before me, or is it an illusion?" I don't know the answer till this day, even though I watched through most of the programme.

It looked like a procession on the Howrah Bridge in Kolkata. (I am not entirely sure though if it was indeed Howrah or Hardwar that I was transported to.) Towards the front was a battalion of well-built men, while a bevy of women (equally well-built, I admit from a man's point of view) brought up the rear. And what separated the men from the women was a group of Sadhus. The men were keeping at bay an idle crowd that had gathered and the women were blowing on conch shells with gay abandon. But what I want to bring to your attention has little to do with either the men or the women. It's all about the Sadhus.

They were stark naked, Digambar Jains no doubt. Around 10 or 15 of them. You understand now why the crowd had to be controlled. An average Kolkattan (assuming it was Kolkata where all this was happening) finds it hard to give up free invitations to watch tamashas. So, there they were. Every now and then, the Sadhus stopped. One of them, the Sankaracharya amongst them I assumed, would sit down on the street and perform some rite or the other, while his chelas walked round him in a circle, chanting mantras. So far so good, or bad, depending on the way you want to examine the matter. I mean you may want to choose between the rear and the frontal view. But you can wish for both too. No holds barred, should you feel worried. (This reminds me of a friend in school, who accompanied me to a wedding dinner. When asked if he was a vegetarian or a non-vegetarian, he replied without hesitation, "Both.")

I was watching the goings-on, as I said, with interest, till suddenly, in fact much to my mystification, I noticed that most of the Sadhus were wearing glasses. However illogical I might sound, I found it simply impossible to accept this aberration. I mean, look, if you decided to throw away all your mortal belongings, in particular your clothes, do you have the moral right to retain your glasses?

Think about it this way. We have all been exposed to young people at Pantaloons or wherever trying out a pair of jeans or two and a Tee shirt may be in front of full sized mirrors. But I am not sure that I want to come across a guy at an ophthalmologist's den trying out which frame offers his face the right look, if the rest of him looks all wrong. No, dear. This is simply not done. These chaps can't be allowed to wear a pair of glasses, and nothing but a pair of glasses, to ogle at conch shell blowing women in broad daylight. (Normal people often forget their glasses in the bathroom, but they never emerge from the bath without clothes. The ones I was watching appeared to have been carrying out an exactly opposite exercise. Leave your clothes inside the bathroom without fail, they could be advising, but never your glasses.)

And you know what? Around 50 per cent of the women too had glasses on them, to watch what I don't even wish to guess. And why, I would like to know, would these disciples, irrespective of sex, be allowed to wear things other than glasses, if they were true subscribers to the faith? Unfair, terribly unfair as well as illogical. Besides, the sadhus looked like MCP's if you ask me. Or else, they could have inducted a few sadvis in their midst too. Don't you think so? After all, there is this 30 or whatever per cent reservation bill for women that's up on the anvil now.

(By the way, I tried to raise my wife out of her siesta and encourage her to watch the circus. She looked interested as she searched the screen with great concentration, and then, after assuring herself that all the women were wearing more than glasses, felt immensely relieved and fell asleep immediately. Not before exposing me to an angry glare of course.)

I know, it is already a long letter, but I cannot check the temptation of telling you in this connection about an elephant I saw near Green Park Market in New Delhi There was a great commotion that I noticed and assumed that the arrival of an elephant in a shopping area had attracted attention. Upon making inquiries though, I discovered that the source of the hullabaloo was not the elephant, but what sat on its head. It was, once again a completely undressed man, head tonsured, and wearing a vague look of renunciation on his face. The face looked familiar and then I suddenly realized that it belonged to the man who used to own the largest stationery store in the neighbourhood. He had decided to convert to a yogi and he was doing it all the aplomb at his disposal, minus clothes, in case you have forgotten. People were beating on drums, playing flutes and singing themselves hoarse. Loudspeakers blared Bollywood music and the elephant, swishing its tail (its own tail mind you, whatever Cheeniya might have told you), carried its birthday suit clad burden to a wisdom filled destination.

I was driving my little Maruti 800 and was scared to death. What happens if the elephant ceases to enjoy the Mardi Gras and goes berserk? My Maruti's tin shield would hardly offer me protection. And all because my stationery shop owner got this wild idea of meditating naked on an elephant's head. Come to think of it, he too had glasses on. Costly ones too, the best that Delhi had to offer.

I am a careful driver, but at that juncture, I lost all control over speed. That was truly an occasion when I was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Or, between Scylla and Charybdis, as the Greeks might observe. Driving fast could have killed me I knew. And an elephant, if it chose to use my car top as a chair, would have caused the same quantum of damage. The right response to the situation would have been to join the yogi, the truth about the inconsequence of existence having dawned on me with quiet intensity. But men are stupid. And was I not a man?

I really don't know why I thought that driving at 90 km an hour along Aurobindo Marg through peak hour traffic was safer than waiting to find out if an elephant, carrying a bespectacled man on its head, doggedly performing an Indian version of a male striptease show, might believe that my life was worth living!!

But then, nobody has proved to me so far if I am alive or dead.

Lovelornly yours,

oj

 

@ k2s

Good Friend!

Truth has finally arrived. "Words, words, words," was what Hamlet had said to Polonius when the latter wished to know what the former was reading. I have seen a number of performers deliver these this line. Some make it sound melancholic, some appear to treat it as an expression of total hopelessness. But I once watched a not so well-known performer at New Empire Theatre in Calcutta. The Royal Shakespeare Company was touring India and its Hamlet (a Barry somebody, if memory serves me right), made the line sound comic as well as sarcastic. The comic part was addressed to Polonius needless to say. But the sarcasm addresssed a larger audience, one that thrives on hollow words alone.

People such as I, who fall in love with "words" could kill not only the words, but the readers too. They don't seem to realize that human life is finite and everything that a human being is allowed to do should also be strictly finite.

They need to learn where to stop. Unless they learn this lesson, society inflicts a punishment. It's called indifference. As Cheeniya pointed out to me, without meaning any disrespect to Tolstoy, the world has changed. It's a fast food world. Everyone realizes that fast food is not good for health, but s/he consumes it nonetheless. For you don't know if there will be a tomorrow. Life's speed could land you on the other side of eternity at a moment's notice.

Fast food sets the structure, as Cheeniya wisely observed, and the challenge is to fill up the Macdonald atom with Tolstoy's infinity.

I tested all this out (in my very small way, being deprived of Tolstoy's skills or vision) by putting up three posts in rapid succession. A long one, a middle sized one and small one. As I had expected, the number of fb's I received was inversely proportional to the length I had inflicted on the reader.

So, where does that take me? I think I know the answer. When I am unreasonably thirsty for fb's, I will write "words". When I am less unreasonable, I shall choose "words, words". And when I feel totally rational vis-a-vis fb's, I will come out with "words, words, words".

This, I guess, is the only artefact available to me to bridge the gap between my rational self and and the one that's doggedly irrational. I hope the bridge is able to withstand the weight of its responsibility.

Best wishes.

oj-da

 

@ monifa13

Thanks for your comment good friend. That elephants heads could burn up tender posteriors was a fact I was quite unaware of. I have never mounted an elephant's head. But I should have, just to test the tenderness factor.

Don't worry about unladylike expressions. The problem you were commenting on is far too serious. You don't wait for the right expressions. You simply yell and scream. You did right I think. I too reacted the same way. As I told Natpudan, the things I watched worried me to know end. For a week at least after the event, I was worried that people who wore specs would not be allowed to wear anything else. These days the Parliament is passing Acts after Acts. I thought I hadn't noticed this one.

All the best.

oj-da (ji)