A man in love doesn't pay heed to the simplest warnings
It was a nice evening. Even the bats were in a good mood. Of course, King Vikram had to spoil it all by walking up to my tree, hauling me on to his back and threatening to kill me.
I resorted to my usual routine.
-Listen up, O’ King, I said. I will tell you a story. At the end of the story, I will ask you a question. if you tell me the answer to the question, I will escape and fly away. But beware! If you know the answer to the question and remain silent, your head will burst into a thousand pieces.
-Proceed Foul Devil! King Vikram said rather rudely.
-Ok, here you go, I began gamely. Not very long ago in a town not very far away lived a boy named Vijay. One day Vijay saw a girl. As he gazed at her, the earth became fragrant with tulips and lilacs and such, and Vijay began driving on the left hand side of the road as though he were not in India, but in some other country.
When he nearly came under an approaching truck for the third day in a row, he knew that he was in love.
Vijay did what most young men in love do. He went to his friend and told him that without this girl, his life would be emptier than a church on Monday morning.
His friend who was more astute in the matters regarding the gentler sex said Worry Not (or words to that effect). He first located the address of the Yoga class that the girl attended. Together, they began attending the class and twisting their bodies into all kinds of shapes and contortions. With the clever placement of Yoga mats and the facilitation of easy conversation, he succeeded in helping Vijay get talking to the girl. By the end of four weeks in Yoga class they had agreed that Bombay was “humid” and the traffic on Marine Drive was “Oh my God, let’s not talk about it.”
Week five dawned. Vijay’s friend told him to keep away from the Yoga class for two weeks. Vijay couldn’t fathom the reason for his friend’s most unreasonable demand. With visions of the girl beckoning him incessantly, he charged at the door with the nervous energy of a dog on a leash and nearly disregarded his friend. But his friend kept him to his room with dire warnings that served as chains heavier than elephants. Trust me, he said cryptically, as though he were the God in Charge of the Monsoons speaking to a hapless farmer.
But as all things must, these two weeks also passed.
Week seven found Vijay straining at the door of the Yoga class with the nervous energy of a dog on a leash. He expected the girl to be angry or even worse indifferent towards his prolonged absence. But to his pleasant surprise, she was more effusive than usual. In her voice, there was the curiosity of a scientist, and in the curves of her Downward Dogs, there was the promise of Willing Swans. She smiled encouragingly at Vijay, and helped him accomplish milestone upon milestone till they were what is technically referred to as an “item.”
But the pleasant condition of smooth sailing is seldom achieved on the turbulent sea of love. Each party had to put in effort to nourish the relationship.
The girl was a budding astrophysicist who dealt with nuclei casually, as though they were cream cheese on her bagel. Vijay was not a bright man. He was incapable of recognizing an atom even if it mugged him in a closed telephone booth. The girl did what all intelligent women in love do – she invested Vijay with her imagination and filled in the gaps of his personality with the dashing flights of her imagination.
Some Indians described her father as traditional, while Indian pyschiatrists described him as paranoid
On Vijay’s part, he had to make every effort to conduct the relationship with the utmost secrecy. The girl’s father was what Indian society called ‘traditional’ and what Indian psychiatrists called ‘paranoid’. In his mind the world was filled not with rivers and flowers, but with amorous bees whose sole purpose in life was to spoil his innocent daughter.
Thirty days passed to the fragrance of sweet swelling shampoo. Vijay was enveloped in softness — too much softness, some would say. He realized that he hadn’t met his friend for over a month now. His mind felt mushy and was in sore need of a chiseling by the hard statistics of a cricket game.
-Honey, he told his girl, I want to meet my friend.
Vijay should have stopped there. But he didn’t. He was in a tender mood and felt the need to confide. He told her about the stratagems deployed by his friend to win her affections, the yoga mats, and the deliberate two week absence from the aforementioned yoga mats.
The girl was offended on many levels. It hurt her intelligence to think that she has fallen victim to such a cheap trick. In addition, her carefully constructed love story in which Vijay was a dashing hero now came apart like a carpet purchased at a second hand market. Vijay was no dashing King Arthur, she realized. He was a wimpy Michael Bolton.
Like a self-respecting woman, she resolved to get revenge on Vijay’s friend.
-Vijay darling, she said in a voice as soft as ice-cream. When do you want to meet your friend?
-He wrote me an email saying he leaves for America tomorrow, Vijay said. I would like to see him today.
-That’s great, she said. You definitely should meet him. I was wondering if he could do me a favor. I have an aunty in America. Can your friend deliver a letter to her from me once he gets there?
-He would be delighted to, Vijay said delighted to see the worlds of friend and lover come so neatly together.
-That would be so great, she said. She went into her room and filled an envelope with cocaine (which she kept for the days she couldn’t do yoga – she was after all a girl conscious of her fitness.) Give this to your friend, she told Vijay. And thank him for taking this on the plane.
Now if there is one thing worse than being a brown man at an American airport, it is a brown man at an American airport with cocaine on his belongings.
TO BE CONTINUED AND CONCLUDED TOMORROW.
