Smol
At the writing course where I show my face, I gave this prompt: Remember an incident which made you feel small, and write about it focusing on other selves that might have been in play in that moment. This was what I wrote.
Okay once I had a break up and it was like this. For months we didn’t talk, and then her uncle and aunt from UK were visiting, and she had to stay home, and before that there was girrburr girrburr between us like BSNL telephone lines after it rains and gulmohur trees fall in the next road. and all that was because we had broken up thrice already that year, including once on a Bangalore Bundh day that was unsuccessful, and there was no traffic and all in on MG Road, and it was really quiet. we could hear each other, and she said get lost. But I said, no, let’s try, it’s not so bad . And after three hours of talking, and not talking, and her looking away, and my looking away, she said yes, okay, but from her face I wondered if she wanted to say no, and whether she was saying yes only because I don’t know.
So, anyway, that was breakup no 52, and it was this series she was talking about when she called me and in a very adult voice said, we need to talk about things. I thought finished, ra, full bums-alli ballondu is coming,
Anyway, this she said at 7:30, she was going home from work, and I was waiting to see her, and falling asleep in that restaurant where old men come and fall asleep, even though I wasn’t old at that time.
So I rode home, and put my bag in one corner, and thought about making coffee, and then didn’t make it, because I thought what if she says FO, and I haven’t finished drinking my coffee, how will I feel, how will that coffee feel. Anyway, before I could finish having that thought, she called.
She said. Hi. I also said. Then she said, I have been thinking, like this was something new. Then she said I want to call things off, and I didn’t say why, nonsense, no, nothing, full dubdub big drops started falling on my hand, they were warm drops also, and I was wondering how come ra, it’s October no, full depression in Bay of Bengal, where is the boiler for all this warm water.
Then she said, see, you’re sweet, and we have fun, and you’re not a chuth, and these components are very important, but three components out of four are not enough. I want desire also, I want sex, and that I don’t feel any more, my body freezes up around you. At this point, all these silent warm drops stopped falling, bastards were behaving line some anime snake, joining, joining till they became one bloody Godzilla and made one funny noise in my throat. I thought it was like that faraway noise in the 2017 Japanese version, but she heard it and said Don’t Cry, like this was a chess game and she knew she was going to win. I thought shit man, she heard it, and she said component and all like some MBA lady, and my bum is freezing because it is cold and it is October, and there is Bay of Bengal, but suddenly everything is colder. So I said Okay, and hung up.
Then I went and said no coffee, I will drink whisky. So I drank two glasses. And my forehead began to buzz little bit. Then I went down to my father’s library and snuck one book of old Tamizh poetry out, and tried to read it out aloud, but bastard eyes were still wet, and I kept missing letters, and I closed it, and went to sleep, and went to work late the next day because when I woke up, it was 8:15, and I had 9 o’clock class, and rode in the wet morning with spray hitting my face like bleddy October was sneezing on me and I cursed Bangalore, that girl, myself, whisky, work and all the old Tamizh poetry in the world.
The next two weeks were not great. Nor were the next six months. The next day, Obasanjo came to see me, and like some Nigerian juju person he asked what happened to your lovelife rulz. I didn’t know what to say, so I told him. He didn’t know what to say, so he asked what will you do now. I didn’t know what to say, so I said I don’t know. Then we sat in that dark room where the computer was for five minutes in strange silence.
In those two weeks, I said to myself every morning, Be Columbus, if there is so much water in our life, let us cross it, not swim in it. Every day was long, even though it was October. Chetri was in town, so on some days I picked him up and we went to one bhuna place near his house, and then we went to his flat, where he would play the music he was tripping on that day. Fus was also in town, so we went and visited him, and met his mother, and ate her food on a festival day.
There was no way of cancelling the slowness, but this was better than the one day, ten days later, when she called and said, you’re chill, no. This was objective type with one answer, so I grunted instead of saying yes. Maybe yes would have been more graceful. But grace is not easy to find on any day, leave at a time like this.
I began reading Byatt’s Possession, and it was a nice warm tub to soak in, different from the other moisture staining my walls in imitations of maps of many worlds. I read a chapter every day, and rode to work thinking about a word or a phrase, and one day, I thought I should write to this woman and thank her for this slow acting ointment. But I didn’t.
Conversations with other people, the ones who knew both of us , were not fun. I met the Narrain, who asked because he didn’t know. So I told him in two sentences. He said, you should talk about it. I grunted. Then he began about a book he was reading, and I listened, and that was a better moment. This was at Infinitea, over masala tea and momos. JohnGregg came by, and he didn’t know what to say. Nor did I. So we drank coffee at Prime Time, and he left. The Mehar boy came up to me and said I heard. She told me. So I said okay. Then he talked about his band and I listened. The sister called, and then said damn. And then she said why do all of them do this. It wasn’t true, but I had no energy to argue.
In December, she called, and said, can we meet and talk about it at K over a meal or a drink. I thought about it and said no. I’m not trying to revive anything, she said. That was not what I was thinking about.
She called again two weeks later, and was upset because her mother had fallen and broken a leg. So I listened. When she finished, she asked again. I said no. She asked why. I didn’t know what to say. It was the civilised thing to do. But being civilised is playing complicated chess games, and I had only enough energy to get to the next day. The effort of chess called for more energy than I had. But I didn’t say that to her. She tried calling every month to see if I had changed my mind. My answer was still no. I suppose it was a kind of pride, and it was the only thing left, after a few years of putting it to one side. This may also have been a form of stupidity, but it was what I was capable of at that time.
The days grew quieter. Weeks passed. I stopped going out. It was the simplest thing to do. After work, I would toot off to Premier. There was something nice about the simple ritual of looking at the new arrivals, then turning that rotating shelf, saying Hello Mr. Shanbag, walking over to the Literature display, and then the small column of social science stuff, and then the academic Lit stuff on the left, and all the thrillers piled in a pyramid on the right, and then that narrow gap between his two ziggurat tables, to the Arts and Comics shelf, and then to the shelves with books for children.
Mr. Shanbag began doing something that he never did before, On each visit, he would stick a book out at me. And it would be something I wanted to read. This may have been the point at which the book-buying began going out of control. I ran out of space, and invaded my own kitchen where I hadn’t begun to do anything yet, and took over the shelves, the counters and the sink, and soon even the floor. I read some of those books, started many others and never finished.
One of the funniest things I’ve ever seen is when Dominque Lapierre visited Premier. He said I am Dominique Lapierre, do you have my new book. And Shanbag did. So he said, you bookshops are the lifeblood for people like me. And then somebody said photo, and Shanbag came reluctantly out of his lair behind the piles of books and half-smiled for the camera, and then LapIerre put his arm around him and said lifeblood, and Mr. Shanbag turned pink all the way up to his bald head. I think those evenings did more for me than a year of therapy could have.