Pangs of Guilt

8:00 AM

Four Wheels:

Arun woke up to a well-constructed symphony of cutlery noises that made Megadeth sound like an S.A. Rajkumar refrain. He glanced at the clock and let loose an expletive. He quickly got ready, with one eye on the calendar, randomly hoping it would turn out to be a Sunday. The calendar remained unmoved and he came to a brilliant conclusion – hope is not random. Which is random, anyway.

He made a ceremonious entry into his wife’s kingdom where she was sweating it out at the sink. To her, he might have as well been Torres scoring a goal; she did not acknowledge his presence. He looked around and gave a despairing look at his plump son who was hurriedly wolfing down a sandwich, lest it evaporated.

“Parvati, I will eat at the canteen. Where is my lunch?”

“It’s on the table. I have made your favorite brinjal fry. Try to come early; we have to go pick up my parents from the airport”.

Arun picked up one of the two yellow lunch boxes from the table and thought for a second.

“I will be late today; you better call them a cab”, he rudely spat and rushed to the car. His wife walked out of the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel.

Six Wheels:

Hari unfolded the morning newspaper as he drank his coffee. The sun rose with a marked disrespect for the moon, even if it was only temporary. Accident, rape, IPL - the more journalists bored into a news-piece, the more boring it became. He folded it back and scratched his stubble, trying his level best to ruminate deeply. He went about four feet, before he gave up and ambled away to get ready for office, after giving a cursory glance at his wife who was sweeping the front yard.

As he knotted his tie, for the 365^th time, he wondered what mortal sin he had committed in his previous life. Did he run away with a Raaja’s daughter? No, not Bhavatharani. Did he shoot an arrow into a sage’s rear while the sage was meditating on the economic affairs of Greece? Everything had gone downhill since his parents pointedly rejected the love of his life, called him a nincompoop among other derogatory animal names and got him married to this simpleton. She was lifeless and for some reason, too shy for comfort. His love had a rebellious spirit that sent a stallion riding up his spine. His wife on the other hand, was a female Manmohan Singh at best and probably sent only a drunk mosquito up his spine.

He packed up the steel tiffin box and marched out of the house. From the periphery of his eye, he saw his wife motion to say something, but stopped herself. He disregarded her and walked towards the bus stop, trying to cross the four feet mark.

Two wheels:

Venkat stood in his lungi, as he recounted office gossip to the maami, who stayed opposite his house. She quadrupled up as his Landlord, Clothesline Advisor, Neighbor Relationship Consultant and High Court judge of Domestic Affairs in general. He had fallen back on two rent payments and was sweet-talking his way to buy some more time. As he kept bowling short balls, both of them heard a wail inside. Quickly delivering a premeditated wide, he made a strong but gentle promise to pay the rent next week and retired into the house for the next two months. Take a cue, Sachin.

As he got ready for office, he nudged his wife awake. She had been up all night, watching the baby. He had a strong feeling the baby possessed alien genes, most probably inherited from his mother-in-law. His wife got up, rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and walked straight to the cradle.

Gathering up the Tupperware box on the table, he strolled to his bike and started it. He heard his wife say something about vegetables, but he drowned it in the revving sound and sped away.

I was sweating rivulets of sweat, as I ordered a hot tea. The heat was unbearable and the tea-shop owner gave me a look that made me feel I would fit better in a retarded ward. I picked up the tea and sauntered to the shade of a nearby tree. I sipped. Bliss reigned supreme.

Having skipped breakfast, Arun was famished. His eyes meandered around and spotting an empty seat, made way to a table at the corner. So did two other people in the cafeteria. All of them converged on the table and looked at each other with nervous glances not different from three men, who had just winked at the same girl and were too ashamed to admit it. They sat down with sheepish smiles and opened their boxes. They swore in unison. There was beans fry in each one of them. Arun knew it was his mistake, but he blamed it on Parvati. Hari slapped his forehead in disgust. Venkat quietly fumed. They dumped their lunches in the dustbin and went to order at the counter. None of them liked beans.

A crow flew down to the dustbin and started pecking at the beans.

8:30 PM

Arun was driving when he called his wife and told her, "Dress up. We are leaving for the airport as soon I reach home. We will eat out today…. Yeah… Work got over, early… No, I don’t have rabies or fever… Ok... Love you". As she replaced the phone in its cradle, Parvati smiled.

Hari stepped off the bus and started walking back to his house. He spied a jasmine seller and bought a foot of sweet-smelling jasmine flowers. It was the one thing, he knew, his wife liked. He smiled.

Venkat hauled up the groceries and strung them on either side of the bike. He was tired, weary lines creasing his forehead. He just needed to hug his wife and son. He looked forward, earnestly.

Having had its fill, the crow took off. Mid-air, realization dawned that it probably should not have eaten so much without Dr. Batra's pills. It flew around in torpor, with Chennai's sun beating down. After almost 4.32 hours it landed on a branch, cursing. It was time to let go. And let go, it did.

It so happened, I was standing under that selfsame tree, when I heard a plop in my tea and something floated to the top of my tea.

Fire in the Hole!

I was shaking and moving it with an Anushka (Sharma or Shetty, dont remember), when somebody who was the President of the International Imbecile and Moron Association (IIMA) flung a newspaper wrapped around a shoe. At my head. A head that was throbbing from an over-hung headache and supported a pair of bleary, fermentation-ridden eyes.

I woke up. It was ghastly.

Ghastly is the mildest description available. Imagine a troll standing in front of you wearing knickers/shorts and a vest with a grimace painted across his face, like he just swallowed a piece of bubblegum that turned out to be bittergourd pickle.Yeah, that. Add a couple of props, like a tennis racquet and a pair of shoes. And an unwashed shirt.

Flinging my veil of stupor, I sat up and rubbed my eyes. My roommate was still standing there, brandishing his racquet. I said the only four letters I could manage.

"Dude".

He opened his vocal chords and proceeded to rape my ears, brain and a passing dove in that order.

"THE MAID DID NOT COME TODAY TOO! WHAT DOES SHE THINK OF HERSELF! IT IS YOUR MIS..."

I went to my happy place and waited until the storm passed. It was not quite long before I knew what he wanted me to say.

"You want me to fire the maid."

"Yes"

I gulped a glass of imaginary horlicks and stood up, arming myself with a pair of argumentative bazookas,

"Where is she? I will fire her this minute."

Now this followed a period of silence during which the raped dove, yelled a few choice words in dove language and Guru Ramdev executed a perfect headstand to a standing ovation. Gas bellowed from my roommates ears and I stood nonplussed.

"I JUST TOLD YOU SHE DID NOT COME TODAY!"

"Oh."

Sheepish. Dumb. I snuggled back under the covers, murmuring 'Mmmms' and 'Okokokokok' etc.

The next day, she came. I opened the door and she went about her work as lacklustre as possible. In fact, she was content restricting herself to the kitchen. I blew my 300 hair-filled top. I called her and told her,

"We are extremely displeased with your work. Stop coming from tomorrow. Here is your pay. Please don't ask why."

"Why? What did I do now", she wailed. It is like women never listen to what I say. After 3 breakups and 2 false pretences, I still have not learnt anything that has impressed me enough to modify my modicum of speech. The Vesuvius inside me erupted with a small bang.

"You are supposed to wash dishes! But the algae on the dishes have been reproducing like rabbits. You are supposed to clean all the rooms! You run a random sequence of which rooms and clean, and then forget to clean them as well. You are supposed to wash clothes clean! Not dislodge the buttons and buckles off in the process, helping my teammates watch me saunter in Jockey jatti all day long! In essential, you are completely deplorable and are as much use as a wedding ring to a drowning woman!"

I took a deep breath after this rant. She too took a deep breath and I reflexed into a pink-belt-patented-chop-left-break-right stance. But she said,

"Ok."

I went Wow. Thats it? I was expecting something along the lines of hell's fury multiplied by 6.023 times. My stance melted into something else that resembled a mangled mongoose. My roommates went gawking at me. I milked the adulation, fluidly moved out of my stance upsetting a bean bag in the process and stepped into my room, locking the door behind me. It was exhilarating and my adrenalin went a-pumping.

And then I remembered.

The person outside was the cook and not the maid.

Permutation and Commutation

The macabre consequences of not meeting a man standing with two tickets to a movie titled Piranha 3D is somewhere along the lines of spilling hot coffee down your trousers. I can think of even worse scenarios that may involve a can of beer, an opener and an umbrella, but let us for decent purposes, keep the content "U" rated.

It was a lovely twilight evening that found me waiting on OMR as a dark shape loomed in the distance on an otherwise empty road. As I continued squinting into the headlights of an oncoming lorry, a share auto whizzed to a stop in front of me. The bearded driver looked like he had been driving all the way from Tunisia and implored me with huge Puss-In-Boots eyes that bore the remains of a TASMAC-orgy aftermath. I felt sorry and jumped into the cess-pot. Small mistake; medium error; big consequences.

Your ability to commute in a share auto full of women of all ages is a feat that deserves an aluminum Olympic Medal at the least. Months of my bike refusing to exit the confines of an inefficient service centre had led me to analyze and effectively come up with an awesome strategy on how to travel in a share auto.

There are three geo-spatial locations within an auto, where you can sit and enjoy the scenery of other people's body parts while inhaling the fresh smell of a day's labor in the Chennai sun (Chennai's software companies' air -freshener, if your lady luck sleeps with you).

Position 1:

I call this the Titanic position. Before lewd inferences be made, I call it so simply because it is reserved for the women and children of the soil. Literally. They come armed with sickles, handbags, rakes, compacts and other items of physical torture. And they get preference over any male occupant. Sexist, I say.

Position 2:

This is the Marie Biscuit Position. Allow me to force you to participate in this experiment. You get into the auto and sit in this position for more than three minutes. Once done, get out and find a vehicle that has a good rear view mirror. And then, you are requested to kindly inspect your rear. It will, 7.89 times out of 9.81, resemble a biscuit. Flat and awful to taste. Warning: Never mix the hot coffee experiment with this one. 

Position 3:
The Tarzan position. You have a swinging view of the driver's vista which is pretty much like watching National Geographic from a RC helicopter. Except of course, if there is a hot female sitting behind you; in which case you tend to bend and flex your invisible muscles by straining against the usually, frail skeleton of the auto.

Which is where I found myself straining away to kingdom come, en route to Satyam one fine evening. The night was young and I could see with my peripheral vision that the young female behind me was taking more than just a peripheral interest as she sniffed loudly and disgustingly into a tissue. Encouraged, I strained even more at the already shredded tarpaulin that hung at the side of the auto and tore it. Suddenly, Vayu found the time and date, auspicious to take a leak. He promptly did.

Within seconds I was drenched to the bone. Fate had copulated me once more as the tarpaulin barely managed to keep a thimble of the rain away. My shirt exposed my misshapen torso and the image of a wrestler that I had so painstakingly built crumbled all around me like a masala papad in coke. In the words of the pointy-face - Ricky Ponting, "It was utter humiliation".

There is more. Right when my stop came, the rain stopped. I got off, walked to the middle of the road and yelled a few choice words to the heavens. The auto-driver empathized and came to stand next to me. He yelled a few more, better-formed choice words. At the end of the duet tirade, I understood and paid him the fare.

After a rather uneventful bus ride later with the only memorable event being me sitting and irrigating the bus, I found myself at the footsteps of the theater. My friend could not control his glee which made me sulk for some time. The moron that he was, he bought me a hot cup of coffee to cool me off, which I promptly and accidentally threw down his trousers. It was hilarious.

Two hours of visual torture later, we came out with our brains eaten alive by a director who had nothing to reveal than most actresses in the movie.

The next day I went to office in the selfsame auto; sniffing with a cold. I did not meet that girl until yesterday. She was still sniffing and was married.

A Moo(t) Point

TWO LEGGED VIEW

A great man once spoke, "The toughest thing to do every morning is getting up". Trust me, after having taken the wrong side in an argument that threatened to diss the libido of many a man the previous night, it really is. And on an unrelated note, there was one consensus that Namitha is no competition to Ajith Kumar when it comes to waistlines. Ah, that was real funny.

I woke up groggily and my vision was instantly impaired with a hairy thigh that lay across my torso. Disgusted, I pinched it. It slowly moved away as the owner turned swearing silently in his sleep. I intuitively knew I was late. I quickly got ready for office and waved goodbye to seven gentlemen who were busy in dreamland wooing the Tamilian Circes. Weirdly, one of them was still arguing about Nietzsche with great passion to nobody in particular.The situation was tempting and I yielded.

I stole my friend's only bike keys with the dexterity of an MRTS bus making a three-point turn. Dirty deed done, I scrambled downstairs to the bike and stood next to it, befuddled. At this juncture it is extremely important to note that my grandfather always used to tell me I never knew my own strength. I still did not. I wasted a couple of more minutes on ruminating that and absentmindedly straddled the pulsar. I did the easiest thing first - inserted the key. Once done, I huffed/puffed and whaled the bike off its stand, easing it right into the foliage next to the gate. After fighting off a dozen bees and an enraged mummy Cuckoo, I emerged none the wiser. This time flinging a prayer to Newton, I adjudicated maneuvering over balancing. I finally exited backwards out of the house onto the road. As I slid down the slope feeling like a bit like Felipe Massa driving a tractor, I felt a small bump.

The bump in itself was minor, the reason was not. As I turned to check, all my gallantry scooted. The huge creature stared at me like I had just jumped out of the Voyager in a golden bikini.

It was a cow - a massive specimen at that. She slowly ambled up with reddened eyes and mouth slurping nauseatingly. I screamed, weirdly in Spanish, "El Mojito al cabana intermilano, cow!" and tried to take to my heels and found my progress hindered by a Bajaj Pulsar between my legs. I started to wheel it away. I might as well have been pushing a bulldozer with a Singapore Shoppe hairpin. It moved inches, the cow moving metres.

I yelled for help and awoke the whole neighborhood including the landlord and his daughter/yet-to-be-my-wife. Help did not come, but panic did. I seemed to be missing something big as I threatened by brain with a nervous machete. Finally, the grey cells hit a home run. Mentally thanking the kinky engineers at Bajaj, I button-started the bike. The bike roared to life with the sound of the Tungabhadra dam developing a leak and figuratively threw me off my seat. I opened the throttle and escaped the area in a blur of smoke that could have easily and permanently blotted many a fair skin.

On the upside, it was exhilarating to know what a bullfighter feels like. Quote cow-fighter unquote. I congratulated thine-self and dreamed of the landlord's daughter shooing cows all over Mount Road on a pulsar.

FOUR LEGGED VIEW

A great bovine once spoke, "The toughest thing to do every morning is eating". Trust me, after having been adopted into a motley herd of a couple of malnourished goats, three bitching hens and two bulls it always is. Add to that a master who likes his drink hotter than his wife; life is not all just a river of milk - there is occasional dung thrown in for good measure. After a rather hectic morning of my drunken master milking me dry, I was famished. My not-so-better halves were better off dozing and I had to make good time quickly. I gave my master plan the green signal.

The genesis of The Plan is a great story. You could write an epic on it. But since, in all probability you are dull-headed if you are reading this, you wont. Following that rather brilliant logic, I will just highlight the well, highlights. A passing fly had mentioned on the fly, the presence of new juicy grass blades in the vicinity. After swatting the fly dead with my tail, I started thinking and came up with The Plan. The plan was complex, tough and required all my female cunning to pull off. That would be the genesis. The Exodus and Job come after it.

After following the directions that the fly had so bravely given in its dying moments, I came across an alley lined with derelict houses. I could smell the shrubbery. I kept walking, trying to convert the fire in my belly to hope. I walked and walked and walked and with every step, the gnawing thought that the fly might have consummated me, hypertrophied. After an hour of pursuit I gave up and flopped in front of a gate.

My pondering on the philosophical thoughts of Martin Udder was rudely interrupted by a sharp pain in my tail. As I stood up to unleash my wrath on whoever the jackass was, I saw a clump of the lovely grass stuck to the jackass' machine. There was a human sitting on it, who looked like he was shitting bricks. My eyes went green and I stumbled forward thanking Nandi for the fly's honesty. The human panicked and suddenly disappeared in a puff of smoke. I swore and turned to the now ajar gate. My eyes fell on the foliage.

It was a feast I tell you. I congratulated thine-self and dreamed of Amsterdam with their wonderful grass.

Oh, it is a moo(t) point there.

Talking in Her Shoes

I scampered into the auto behind my friend, both of us covered in foul-smelling sweat like Sunanda Pushkar's stake. The auto sped away from Bandra station after it played a brief round of energetic Kho-Kho with a rabid policeman and away we were to do some shopping.

My friend (lets call him Mr. India for namesake) was on a mission. The mission was as lame as can be; actually not so much since it involved buying slippers for his fiancee.

I had, perchance, seem to have boasted of my ample shopping expertise with various women in and around my childhood neighbourhood. Mr. India usually hardly pays attention to my tattles and is more involved with the mosquito that has gone up his nose, the blue sky and other matters of cardinal significance. But as luck would have it, this fact fell on his ears, traveled up the cochineal fluid and built a 10-story apartment in his brain. What did not get any portion of the dukedom was the fact that by expertise, I meant standing around, drinking diluted Fanta and eyeballing other females purchasing sarees, slippers, handbags, jewelery and miscellaneous foibles.

Mr. India was in full gear for the mission. He had the exact pencil outline of his fiancee's foot, the sizes according to American, Rhodesian, Swedish and English conversion tables, an extra bulge to his rear suggesting a stuffed wallet and implicit confidence in me. He had a glint of will in his eyes akin to the egregious Mel Gibson beating the crap out of a dozen tribal species. And vice-versa.

Or not.

Mr India had no outline, no size, no money and there were butterflies happily laying eggs in his stomach lining. I was supposed to be his saviour. I felt overrated for the first time in my life. The auto flung its occupants out on Linking Road, Bandra. The road was strewed with shops that sold all sorts of female paraphernalia. We stood and gaped at the future outflows of our hard-earned salaries. After a couple of flies died their natural death inside our mouths, we moved to one end of the pavement and started a mini GD where we evaluated the various criteria to identify the right shop to target.

As all GDs go, we shouted till we were hoarse. But there was a consensus. We randomized and selected a shop that seemed to look exactly like one that a girl would be interested in - colorful, bouffant and did I mention colorful? As we bustled through the milling gang of squeaking college girls, the bearded shopkeeper quit sizing the girls and began sizing us up. It was uncanny.

"Kya chaahiye?", he asked in a voice that subtly underlined the fact that we were guys. We did feel like a couple of polar bears let loose on Mount Road in summer.

We opened our mouths and that is when the faeces hit the rotating electrical appliance.

A small flashback. Both our ancestors loved dosai. All the subsequent generations too loved it. With a dash of chutney and drop of spicy sambhar, it was Amrit. Not the girl; the food. Both my friend and I were no exceptions. The relevancy of this information rests on the inference that both of us were hard core Tams. There was no escaping it. Inevitably, Hindi was French to us. So French, that we refused to acknowledge it even existed. Thousands of Amits, Poojas, Nehas, Ranbirs and Shwetanks advised us the importance of learning it, being in Mumbai. They said the probability of survival is very low if we were bereft of the ability of speaking the language.

We discovered that it was not low - it was zero. As we gestured frantically in broken Hindi and Kaveri-an gymnastics, a small crowd gathered outside the shop to watch the camaraderie. It was not at all funny.

My friend proposed his interest to buy slippers for his fiancee. We never understood what the shopkeeper understood but he went in and returned with a pair of horseshoes. It was racist to say the least. I stepped in to play my part.

I pointed to my friend and said, "Same height, what size?". The man again disappeared into the bowels of his establishment and returned with a pair of slippers that would have fit a hippopotamus. I gulped as my friend exclaimed, "Nahin! Nahin! Kuch kuch hota. Chotta Shakeela!". The shopkeeper acted bewildered. To the tee.

By now the crowd was in complete splits. I swore in rapid Tamizh to my friend and told him that we might as well go to Nariman Point and throw pieces of Medu Vadai at the Taj Mahal Hotel. And then a wondrous thing happened.

The shopkeeper said in clear, spaced words - "You from Chennai?". It was in perfect Tamil.

We looked at him and we looked at each other. We then hugged and laughed for the first time that evening. Though the hug evoked a nettled babble among the crowd, it was obvious that the show was over.

Twenty minutes later we were 300 rupees poorer and we had a fantastic pair of slippers. At least to us. We were  joyous. We were least bothered about the size, the color and the design as we went by male intuition.

Anti Climax:

The slippers fit alright. It was the right color too. Just that Mr. India's fiancee already had a pair like that which she had bought for 100 bucks at Spencer Plaza. He got an earful. At that exact time, I was busy assisting my cousin shop for handbags. Male intuition? Bollocks.