When I woke up suddenly in the middle of a dream, the train was speeding along. Sometimes, it’s quite a relief, when one wakes up mid-dream, to discover that after all, it was just that – a dream. I have the same feeling of relief on emerging from the dark corridors of Bollywood films loaded with violence – that real life hasn’t descended to such dismal levels yet. But this dream had an element of truth. Why has the truth of 1962 come back to haunt me all of a sudden in 1972?
‘How much longer will it take to reach Dadar?’ I ask the man on the next berth.
‘We should be there by noon so you better start getting ready.’
I look at my watch. It’s only nine. I begin to wonder why this son-of-a-bitch, Babadin, had to appear in my dream today? In the dream, he had landed up at my house. Look at his cheek. The holidays had begun after the class 9 exams and I was lazing around, busy reading comics in Parag, when the housemaid informed me, ‘Somebody called Babadin is at the gate. Says he’s come to see you.’
Shit-scared, I hurriedly make my way there to make sure the goon hasn’t got past that barrier. Also, to ensure Pahelwan Uncle doesn’t notice him. There stood Babadin, smiling like only villains can. I dragged him to a little bridge close by.
‘Why did you have to turn up here? Didn’t I tell you not to show up at my house?’
Babadin’s cheap grin broadened. ‘Yesterday, I managed to get hold of Vijay as well. The bugger turned out to be quite a smooth creature.’
The humiliation I had to suffer during the exam days had been nagging me for quite some time. This Babadin, the classroom tough guy, was always on the lookout for ‘smooth’ boys. He had a particular crush on Vinay. One day, he even had the audacity to kiss him in front of everyone in the class. Vinay was left stunned and speechless. But even though I was not counted among the smoothies, one afternoon while I was with Vinay, I too became a victim of Babadin’s nefarious plan. Three goons had hatched this idea to rape us two guiltless boys. I am unable to get over that humiliation even after a decade. Babadin had come over to inform me they had some photographs. ‘Vinay has paid a hundred bucks without demur. Now it’s your turn…’
I had no strength to fight this notorious goon. But God knows where the frail boy in me found the courage to stand up to him. I screamed at the top of my voice, ‘Do what you want. It’d be better if you put up the photos on the school board. At least, people will then come to know the extent of your black deeds.’ Babadin was dumbstruck. In his confusion, he couldn’t even take out his folding knife.
But after ten years, as I was on my way to start my first job, the same Babadin appeared in my dream trying to browbeat me by menacingly flailing that knife.
At Dadar railway station, Vikram, a young man from Bombay, was to receive me. I didn’t know what he looked like and he didn’t know me either. I had just one piece of luggage – a rather heavy trunk. It weighed around 35kg. Mother had packed it with a lot of goodies in Phaphamau.
I somehow dragged the trunk onto the platform and the train left the station. I realized only then that nobody was looking for me. Soon, the crowd thinned out. Then, I noticed a smart-looking boy hurrying towards me. It was Vikram.
I was supposed to stay at Vikram’s house for a week at most. His father was the son of my mother’s uncle. In his youth, he had lived with my parents in Allahabad. Father believed that since I had landed a job in a megapolis like Bombay, it was better if initially I stayed with PL uncle. I tried to remonstrate. But Father had his retort ready, ‘You’re an ass. Listen, PL shamelessly lived off us for two years. He would even borrow my new shirts. So now that he’s a big man, he can very well afford to pay back something.’
PL uncle was a bright and successful star of the Bombay film industry. He’d been the manager of many famous actors. Of course, his flat was rather small but it had been done up in an absolutely modern style. He had two sons. The younger one, Vikram, was fifteen and had come to pick me up. The other, Vinayak, had got married just six months earlier. His wife Meena was the only daughter of a leading musician in the industry. I had barely arrived at their Khar flat when I learnt that she preferred Coke over plain water.
When this scrawny and backward-looking young man from Phaphamau brought up Stanley Kubrik’s new and much-discussed film A Clockwork Orange in the course of a conversation with Meena on the very first evening, it was nothing short of an electric shock for her. ‘Where are you from? Phaphamau? And you talk about A Clockwork Orange! Quite smart.’
At dinner that evening, Meena was referring to this miracle, time and again. PL uncle was also impressed. ‘I know IS Johar very well. He wields a lot of influence in your company. Shall I ask him to put in a word for you?’ he asked.
‘No, uncle, I am already selected. I don’t want a comedian to recommend me.’
‘That’s the trouble with young people like you. Johar is a highly educated man. An intellectual actually. Being a comedian is not a crime.’
‘Papa, please try to understand. The boy is an intellectual. He wants to be recommended by Fellini or Bergman. Even Mani Kaul will do…’ Meena was pulling my leg. I picked up a glass of Coke instead of water and downed it in one go.
I was supposed to stay in that house for about ten days. But I got bored in just two. When I went into the bathroom, I was welcomed by Meena’s expensive and imported lingerie. To tell you the truth, that was the only one solace I found in that house. To be able to touch and feel that lingerie. Yes, I didn’t merely touch it, I felt it too. And quite enjoyed the feeling. Some escape from the horrors of my dream!
Two days later, I took a bed in a guest house near VT Station. The room had three beds and three of us – trainee journalists in the same company – occupied them. One was a bookish guy. His name was Harish. The other was Lakshman Bhatia, who would stay miles away from books.
I found it torturous to stand in the queue outside the toilet every morning. Those used to life in hostels were familiar with this exercise. One would be brushing his teeth as he stood there, the other would be reading the morning paper. One’s time started the moment they managed to wrestle their way into the toilet and exactly two and a half minutes later, people would start knocking on the door. ‘Now come out, sir. This is not a place for philosophers … You have to go in and be done with it … It’s Bombay, sir. Here, everything has to be finished quickly.’
I endured this for a month. But I was lucky. Thanks to the contacts of Harish’s family, I got a room of my own for one year in a lovely flat on Nepean Sea Road owned by Mr Toshniwal. Harish had his own room too. The flat had three bathrooms so I could now go through the newspaper at leisure, without the fear of anybody knocking on my toilet door. It was a big luxury.
The trainees had a lot of fun for the first three months. I didn’t know, though, that I’d be able to enjoy it for only two. The nationally known editor of the popular weekly Yugchintan, Ranvir Saxena, plucked me in the middle of my training to hand over to me thick files of some third-class material.
The assistant editor C.C. Verma dumped a pile of files on my desk. One of my chores was to translate the weekly horoscope from English to Hindi. Another file was bursting with cultural news from all over India. A third was full with stuff for the popular satirical column. Verma would mercilessly tear up a good number of submissions every day and fling them around his table. Some of the contributions which came with self-addressed envelopes bearing postage stamps were returned to their authors; some such envelopes were stored away in another file to be used on another day. The peon had to, time and again, clear away this discarded material.
On that day, when I returned to office after lunch with my trainee colleagues, I felt depressed on recalling their carefree routine while I was to handle all the rubbish. I tried to mitigate my anguish by adding a few lines of my own to the weekly horoscope. For example: ‘Be careful on Friday. If you encounter a pretty face with a pink bag, it means your weekend is going to be quite enjoyable.’
Verma’s job was to vet my translations. He would scratch out my contributions to the horoscope with a vengeance and even threatened to speak to Ranvir Saxena about my capers. Balwant, the peon, told me that when Verma went in to see the boss with the files, he was in a sweat. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he was also wetting his trousers.
I told Balwant, ‘I have to see Mr Saxena.’
He laughed rather boorishly. ‘The boss is a busy man. He has no time for trainees.’
I wrote a couple of lines on a slip of paper and told him, ‘Leave this on his table. Maybe he’ll call me.’
The office closed at 5 p.m. At 4.30, Ranvir Saxena called me into his office. The cabin was suffocating, having filled with cigar smoke.
‘So, tell me. How did you like the work?’
‘It’s good. But…’ I was a little hesitant. ‘It’s not to my liking.’
‘You see, you’ll have to learn everything. Yugchintan is India’s number one weekly. Our last cricket special had a run of half a million.’
I kept my counsel and came out of the cabin. Next day, I called up Rastogi, our training officer. ‘I think I have contracted jaundice. I need to undergo a blood test.’
This was how I managed to escape Yugchintan’s files loaded with rubbish and was back in the training department. I was replaced by a storehouse of knowledge, Pandit Raghav, who seemed quite happy with his new responsibilities.
While I had declared that I was suffering from jaundice, all my tests were pointing to my perfect health. I was under the illusion that I had found freedom from the boring life in Yugchintan. But two months later, I was again told to report to Saxena. This time round, as I emerged from his cabin, I was carrying Andre Malraux’ Anti-Memoirs. Saxena wanted me to do a long write-up on Pandit Nehru in Malraux’ eyes.
In that magical interregnum of two months, I had discovered Sonakshi, an artist and also my neighbour on Nepean Sea Road. She was a lissom and attractive woman of forty-two and was a reputed painter. I was all of twenty-two. Though she hadn’t officially divorced her husband, she preferred to live alone. Her flat doubled as her studio.
I had written a comment on Sonakshi’s solo show in an art column of a Lucknow daily which carried it with her photograph. She was over the moon and invited me to her flat for a gala dinner. I took the conscious decision to fix my eyes on Sonakshi’s magnificent breasts, with a glass of red wine in hand and looked at them in its shadow in the style of Nirmal Verma … and continued to stare.
‘You embarrass me!’ Sonakshi protested, adjusting her blouse. ‘And yes, I am sure you’ve heard the name of Van Gogh.’ She was desperate to change the subject.
‘I had read Lust For Life while doing my BA It’s claimed that Van Gogh could sell just one painting in his lifetime. Of course today, his works command outrageous prices.’
‘Wow. You are a connoisseur, I must say. What did you eat in Phaphamau? Would you tell me?’
‘Guavas. I would eat a lot of guavas. In fact, my friends would call me Allahabadi Guava, Made in Paris,’ I replied in all seriousness. And again fixed my eyes on her chest. I would, time and again, rove over her cleavage but couldn’t look into her eyes.
‘Look at me, Sudhir. Why do you look here and there? Look into my eyes and talk.’
Just then, that son-of-a-bitch, Babadin, somehow entered my thoughts. I was a desperate victim of the Babadin Syndrome. My limbs began to turn cold and the sexy Sonakshi now seemed like nothing more than a dry stick. I could feel an uncomfortable sensation creeping up my legs.
I would often enter that den in A Clockwork Orange where its violent juvenile protagonist and his cohorts continued to attack an old beggar for no particular reason. But I did have a reason. I would fall under this illusion that he was not an old beggar but Babadin. I would then turn into Alex and launch a merciless assault on him.
‘What happened, Sudhir? Why are you so nervous? What’s come over you all of a sudden?’
I felt I suddenly had a fever. God knows why, but I began to babble in front of Sonakshi. Babadin, my ‘smooth’ friend Vinay, that fearful feeling of being sodomized, the pain of rape. Sonakshi continued to ply me with wine. She too was busy drinking. I didn’t know that wine had such an electrifying effect. Eventually, I was unable to get up. All I remembered was that, suddenly, we were no longer in our clothes and the monumental breasts I had been staring at were now in my hands. In fact, my head was banging against them. And Sonakshi had turned into some kind of goddess out to exorcise me of all my primordial ailments.
The next afternoon, Sonakshi rang me in my office.
‘Hello, Sudhir.’
‘Hi, madam. I am sorry but I can’t recall anything from last night.’
‘You are a strange and brainless boy. Are you feeling guilty? But for what?’
My nervousness subsided a little.
‘Okay, Sudhir, tell me. Is your passport ready?’
‘Yes, madam.’
‘No madam-vadam, please. Sonakshi is not a bad name. You could call me Sona. No complaints there. I am not your bloody madam.’
‘But why do you want to know about my passport?’ I barely fell short of calling her Sona.
‘Listen, the Van Gogh Museum was being built in Amsterdam for the last ten years. Finally, this year, it’s been opened to the public. I can’t wait any more. I want to be the first to see it. Van Gogh’s brother Theo kept all his treasures with him. Much of that stuff was sold but this museum still has some 200 paintings, 500 drawings, 750 letters … I am desperate to go see it.’
‘First of all, I do not have enough money. And I don’t have any leave either. In any case, the one thing I want to see in Amsterdam is the Casa Rosso Theatre. I am desperate to visit that, not to see Van Gogh’s works.’
‘Don’t you worry about cash. Once you begin to earn a fat salary, you can pay me back. Consider it a loan for the time being. And don’t worry, we’ll go to the theatre as well. I am making just a week’s programme. The visa wouldn’t be a problem either. After all, I’m an artist and you’re a journalist.’
In the new and glorious light of red wine that evening, Sonakshi asked me, ‘Which theatre is this that you want to go to in Amsterdam? Is it a famous place?’
That was the first time I dared to address her as Sona. I was filled with a new strength. Almost as if I had finally got rid of the Babadin Syndrome.
‘Sona darling…’
‘Great! You are a fast learner, I must say.’
‘Sona, Casa Rosso is not the cultural landmark in any great theatrical tradition. It’s a famous theatre in the city’s red-light area where women too can be seen in large numbers watching live sex. Now you are the artsy kind and a serious Van Gogh fan. As for me…’ I was chuckling inside, trying to project myself as a street-smart loafer.
‘Just yesterday, you were still a shy and clumsy boy. And today, you are trying to browbeat me! It’s okay. I too will watch live sex. In any case, Van Gogh’s works are a little depressing and you tend to develop a sense of deep anxiety when you look at his brush strokes.’
That’s how the yokel of Phaphamau, a catamite called Sudhir Chandra, got his sudden promotion. And complete freedom from the cricket specials with a circulation of half a million. No weekly horoscope either. Just a tiny piece of cultural news: ‘Phaphamau’s gifted young journalist Sudhir Chandra was seen clapping in Amsterdam’s famous theatre Casa Rosso in the company of Bombay’s well-known artist Sonakshi Mathur. The stage decorations were of the highest order and the lighting was excellent. All the characters on stage were naked.’
I didn’t know that within a span of seven days, this bit of news would transform itself into a posthumous tribute. We flew out together, stayed together, went about sightseeing together, but returned home separately. On our arrival in Bombay, while waiting to pick up our luggage at the airport, we avoided each other completely.
But of course, we were headed for the same building on Nepean Sea Road. And to neighbouring flats too. We were bound to run into each other in the elevator. Fearing this, I lifted my suitcase and ran for the stairs. I was panting as I climbed the five floors. Once I had settled down in my flat, the first thing I did was hang up the Van Gogh poster showing crows on the wall. I thought Sonakshi was busy doing something similar. I could hear some kind of hammering in her flat.
What could have happened in those seven days? Before catching the flight to Amsterdam, we were having sex twice in one day. But in the six days we were there, we had it only twice. I tried to analyze it. She was quite a nag actually. There was a constant stream of complaints flowing from her. Why have you occupied the window seat in the bus? Why did you go to take a bath before I could? Why do you want to go there? She wanted to spend an entire day in the Van Gogh Museum; I didn’t want to spend more than just two and a half hours in any museum.
‘You are dying to watch the live sex show. What do you care for art? You are a bloody pervert.’ I came to notice this domineering side of her personality pretty soon.
But eventually, she did come along to watch the live show, even though I had told her, ‘You are free to spend time in the museum. I have no problem.’
One evening, I was going to see the Erotic Museum. It remained open till late into the night. Sonakshi said, ‘I am not interested. I am dead tired. One needs a lot of energy to see Rembrandt’s Night Watch in the Rijksmuseum.’
‘You are absolutely right. If you don’t mind, I’d like to lock you in and go, so when I come back late at night, you won’t be disturbed.’
‘That’s okay, no problem.’ With that, Sonakshi quickly changed into her nightgown right in front of me. For a brief while, she appeared relaxed. ‘Is the Erotic Museum any better?’
‘No, when did I say that? Indeed, you are the super-goddess of eroticism.’
And we had sex for the second and last time on the trip. Then I locked her in and left for the museum. When I came back late at night, Sonakshi was snoring. Yes, beautiful women snore too. In the Lucknow coffee house, Yashpal, the revolutionary, would often tell his young writer-friends, ‘I have never been able to figure out what pretty women do once they are inside a toilet.’
We continued to remain neighbours in our Nepean Sea Road flats but our dialogue was over. My transfer to Delhi in December was another long tale of woe. About ten months after I had moved to Delhi, one day I received a registered letter from Sonakshi. Since it had come out of the blue, I wondered if it was a court notice. The letter actually carried a strange tale involving a true lie. Sometimes, I have this feeling that through my twenty-five years of journalism I have only lived through true lies. Sonakshi’s letter stated this: ‘I am at a loss as to how to address you. But I am unable to forget two things. One, that a dissolute intellectual fraud like you should take along an educated and cultured lady to watch a live sex show. I feel ashamed when I look back. Two, you locked me in our room and went away to see the Erotic Museum. I had borne all your expenses. You owe me one lakh rupees. You better send a cheque for the amount or else, I am not going to remain silent.’
I never sent the cheque and nor did I send her a reply. I never heard from or about Sonakshi again either. Someone told me recently that despite having crossed the threshold of eighty, she was successfully maintaining her ‘graceful presence’ in the world of culture.