Straight out of a redeemed and revised novel
with all the particulars regretted, refitted, reconfigured and reconciled
and
with an honorary doctorate from the University of Prague
Dr K stepped out of Indira Gandhi International
To be garlanded and warned that one only sleeps badly here
and was sent further
clutching a letter from the Registrar for a Nirala Chair
On the first day alas he sat only on an ordinary chair
shifting his body with some humility a bit here and a bit there
by the Registrar Assistant’s desk
learning how busy the Registrar was with an Inquiry
He was offered Chai
It was sweet
He met the chai man later by the students’ hostel
at dusk
who said “no problem sir”,
“I am a magnificent chaiwallah Just for You
You can have a ton of Chai on credit
You have a letter from a Competent Authority
We are doing nothing unnatural at all”
He was offered Chai
It was also sweet
He slept under one of the dhaba’s outdoor tables
He woke up with a dog licking his face
He used the hostel toilet
And washed his rancid armpits
With a mosquito swaying above his nose
-it gathered speed and left him quite alone
it was a good omen
He was offered another Chai
It was sweeter
He returned to the Assistant’s desk
learning that the Inquiry had taken on a Radical turn
“For the Good?”-he asked
The Assistant gave him a piercing look
“Villainy”, she chortled.
He waited
He slept with the dog under another one of the dhaba’s tables
He used the hostel toilet
He got Chai again
He wondered to the Centre for World Literatures
Not out of impatience or malice
But out of a need that something had to be done
And received a broad smile from the Administrator
Who said “Welcome”
He received a form to sign, with Chai and a Samosa.
He signed the form
“It will be sent to the Competent Authority”
“And then?”
“The Then will follow!”
“Thank you”
“You are Welcome”
He asked after Dr Desai
Who was to be his host
But Dr Desai was indisposed
With a serious strike
“Stroke”? He asked
“Maybe”, he was told.
Ailments strike with regular abandon
he noted in his Diary
But then out of the blue
He was told by a Security Guard
Who spoke English with a fair quantity of hissing
under his moustache
That due to situations turning Bad AND Radical
He could not sleep under any of the tables of the Dhaba
This was on a VC circular and the VC circular is law
But… for a small fee he had a cousin
who was also the cousin of the ChaiWallah
who could erect at no pain whatsoever sir
a little shack just for you on credit of course
by the workers’ hostel
And since he had a letter from the Competent Authority
he could have a man or a woman cooking Very Nice for him
With shack in place and with Sarita Ma’am
in charge of cleaning and cooking and anything sir
he pursued his mission
He was informed after a while
That he should get his head into the “Hothot Air Place”:
-the Academic Cell
to see whether any actual letter was there
because to all intents and purposes and another Chai
they had not received anything looking like a letter
They searched for an hour there
through piles and piles of files but no letter.
Next day a Letter was found
But it wouldn’t do
-they needed another Letter to precede this Letter:
from the Finance Officer instead
Before they could process this Letter properly sir and without hesitation
He sat by the Finance Officer’s desk
Who offered him Carrot Halva and Chai
(the Chai, sweeter than the halva
as was to be expected)
He said he could NOT provide a letter to Human Resources
that he would be Paid as a Nirala Whatnot and Etc unless Human Resources
gave him a letter instead
saying that he or so and so could or should be paid.
He noticed that there was an angry clerk
addressing what looked like a Skeleton of a forgotten student
about the impunity of needing some fellowship or other.
He returned with a compromise letter
The kind of “we need a compromise now and then Sir”…letter
It said he was to be receiving a Card
once and only once the Competent Authorities had an audience
with the Registrar , who was extremely busy
with revolutionary matters of class and caste
He noticed that his garland had turned brown
and gave out a sickly sweetish smell
He was unsure whether it was impolite to take it off
On the 27th day the tenor of things changed: he was told
that he needed a card from the Human Resources Cell
Urgent Urgent
It was difficult to continue with the Chai provision
because the Suppliers wanted proof to grant the Chai Wallah credit
and without that credit there could be no other credit
Why they were to impound all the chairs from his Dhaba sir
And as for Sarita Maam she needed that card because
the situation was getting Bad if not more Radical
and she needed evidence that she was working for a reputable man.
“This will not do” the ChaiWallah said with the sternest of purpose
“Indeed” said Sarita Maam who tossed his rotis
and as was obvious stirred the beans and swept the floor
“How long must we suffer from his delays and inconveniences?”
“Here have your last free Chai” he was told
“And you call yourself a Dr Sir!”
“I will only continue if I get the main bed”, Sarita Maam said
“Credit has ran out” the ChaiWallah said
“From now on you sweep the Dhaba and light the fires
cut open the sugar bags
Impose yourself Dr Sir on some decent labour
It is only fair Dr Sir”
Dr K had to sleep with the brooms
by the back of the shack
it was fresher there anyway he thought
but the dogs ate his shoes
as dogs do in the night
Dr K sighed, he knew all about the necessity of suffering
It was still a vague sensation
but he had a deep memory of suffering
in his bones
and although hard to sequence his sensations, he recalled he was on trial
and in kind of confinement in times past.
The mere sight of security personnel with their epaulets
made him want to scratch
Sarita Ma’am was very impressed
with the Chai Wallah’s patriotism
He described how inspired he was to find
that each successful rags- to- power story
in this Holiest of Lands had a ChaiWallah as its hero
“His eyes were burning bright like stars
on the Ganga’s face” she said
“You are looking at a hero” he told her
That night she let him touch her knee
“I can’t believe this moonfaced” the ChaiWallah said,
“He feeds his shoes to dogs!!!”
Give me your papers I will go and get the Card
“Born? BORN?
Are you joking with me?
22.01.1906, Prague?”
He took his calculator out=110
He called his nephew to come count=110
“Leave me out of this” said Sarita Ma’am
“I am a Qualitative Anthropologist”.
It is my birthday today said Dr K
“My man you are a miracle!”
The Chai Wallah exclaimed
“You are getting younger
You have reversed time
You turned your bicycle the wrong way round
You are one Big mistake!!!”
“I am out of a redeemed and revised novel sir
All things are possible in art”
-confided Dr K
“Sarita Maam, get this man some Chai, he is a miracle!”
“I’ll give you one on the head with this pot she said
And then you will see miracle you good for nothing good-for”
The ChaiWallah spent three days and nights
gathering sadhus and mystics from all Temples near and far
from Connaught,
from Chandi Chowk
all the way to the infamous Kashmere Gate
He asked them to get their cousins
and hired a bus to cart them close
When lines and lines of cops tried to stop them
as situations were becoming more than Bad
and Radical
they could not restrain them
They walked against the tide of cops and of thousands of students chanting
They walked right through their slogans and their raised fists
“Ho Chi Minh, Ho Chi Minh/We shall fight/
We shall win!”
to come and verify the miracle
Dr K felt that being on display reminded him
of another time,
there was something lurking
deep inside his soul from a bygone time
had he written it, or was he the character already scripted?
It was something about being on display as a hunger artist
a thought that struck him also when on the way
to the Registrar’s he saw young people
under a banner stating: hunger strike.
It was something about Bhagat Singh he read and heard
“Bhagat Singh, Baghat Singh we shall fight, we shall win”
The Sadhus declared the miracle to be pure fiction
“Oh the treasures we will make
Just to touch the miracle man
Just to talk to Dr Shriji K”
He imagined new menus and prices
for the Chai
and his infamous Aloo Parathas
“Oh the treasures I will make” Sarita Maam said
“What treasures?” the ChaiWallah asked with some irritation
“To touch me”, she said “since I slept with him
I would charge 50 000 a touch”, she beamed
“To sleep with me it will cost a Lak”
“You slept with him? “
He asked in outrage
She looked at him in disbelief. “Does it matter?”
“It matters more than you think”
He muttered bitterly
Sarita Ma’am confessed
that she was the most perfect anthropologist
she blended in so well
she was at one with her authentic
“You take field-notes?”- he asked
“I fill up notepads but each week
I burn them
they are inauthentic
it is always me who is writing
and never the Authentic”
she said in some despair
Dr K enjoyed the return of his bed
But most of all he cherished
his long meditative hours
in the jangly reef that still survived
and the peacocks and the nilgais
and his thousand and one
observations that he transcribed
with a special pencil in his notebook
about asymmetry-
even about the Transcendental Ego
Sarita Ma’am even took him to the dump
By then her Assistants
had made mounds of the beedies and the cigarette butts
the bottles of foreign and local drink
alcoholic and non-alcoholic
the syringes and condoms
“look” she said: Material Culture
she counted and recounted
she noted and re-noted
and placed the notes in neat envelopes
Dr K was hesitant
“what if they love their job so much
that they import condoms from afar?”
“How far?”-she asked irritated
From Pakistan he thought but didn’t say it
But did say something hurtful:
“What if they don’t use condoms at all?”
She was very upset.
Dr K was getting strident
He even started “finding” himself he wrote
perched high on rocks
atop enormous Water Reservoirs and
he could even sense a music in each thing
and the undulations of the notes as the wind
rose up to modulate and hide them again
and again
The last entry in his Notebook
was that Derrida was wrong on
Logocentrism
The dogs found him first
The desperate ChaiWallah found him second
just before they gnawed his knuckles off
He shooed them off with a big plank
He seemed to have slipped off the
Water Reservoir
or tried to fly in vain
On this point the Security Guard showed some discomfort
that all of this happened on his shift.
The body of Dr K
was small and broken
“such tiny hands” said Sarita Maam
So it easily fitted in a crate
So sad and diminished he looked
His sad death did not cost much
Crest-fallen the ChaiWallah
sent Sarita Ma’am to Security
to fill in the particulars for the card
just in case
“Photograph” said the bored security man
“Go stand there you stupid woman”
She checked herself in her mirror and said No
I am not wearing the right Bra!
She returned tomorrow
He clicked and clacked and grunted
“Those water melons would make you truly Indian Ma’ ám”
…Best flickflack photograph ever!”
“What?” cried the Chai Wallah
“Jump to attention and show intention
What have you done…Sarita Ma’am?
They will hang you with Boxcar rope”
“I killed no one” she said
Look, look, I look gorgeous as Dr K”
It took her a week to recover from the blow
she received
the Big Chai kettle dented her skull more than a bit
The ChaiWallah so bereft and so remorseful
took some of the Crematorium ash
and placed it in a plastic urn
he had a small and vulnerable figure made of clay
added four sugar containers of different hue
a packet of tea bags, and the notebooks
he even made delicate oil lamps and set out a shrine
He told no one that the Sadhus declared his plight pure fiction
Sarita Ma’am
remembered the sense of dread
when deep in the night she and Dr K
talked of their respective hauntings:
the feeling that you are already scripted
the ancient-old literary dread
sent shivers down her spine
She recalled that deep conversations about
Being and Existent
could not extirpate his bad breath
It reeked of cat-piss.
Sarita Ma’am was banished from the shrine
There is no time to ponder now on justice and the like
she thought
Instinct told her that she should rush and go clean and iron
for the International House
On the 74th day she counted 1002 used condoms
The VC was very pleased with her work on material culture
Sarita Ma’am he said you are a perfect Sanskrit Anthropologist
On the 75th day
The Registrar walked out of his Chamber
and with some distress noticed that his
favourite Administrator had aged
He wiped a tear from his eye and tried
to hide the next
She saw and she obliged with a silk handkerchief
as always Ever on his side
even in these most Radical times
He hoarsely uttered “Dr K, Dr K where is Dr K
a special Emissary from the USA is here to meet him”
“Why sir”… “how should I know sir”
“Ask Security to find him
You are getting younger by the day”, he added
The Emissary almost wet his pants from excitement
He was speaking to Dr Carruthers
of Guggenheim fame,
of Holocaust Memory fame,
of Smithsonian, Special Portfolio for the Arts fame
and not forgetting Shadow Minister of Culture
of the Grand Madam’s
Pending Administration fame.
And the man it was rumoured, was the most vitally/ sole/ important king-maker for
even the Nobel Prize in Literature that the USA was struggling hard to win!
“We have our Dr K”
“Is there a book?”
“There are fragments”
“Brilliant we will hire help…and?”
“Not only is Dr K, Dr K
But her re-rendition and revision has been perfect” “
“No funny insect legs?”
“No a beautiful metamorphosis, quite allegorical and true!”
As stories go these days, to avoid being labelled anti-national
Stories have to have an upbeat ending
Or do they?
Here fiction demands
as much respect as the VC does for example who,
might be offended
or perhaps the Registrar
or redeem once more the original Dr K
and return him to the ChaiWallah
Dr K
who
could be offloaded to the US
We could have her quite distressed and understandably so
with her ego slightly reconfigured
if you please
as she takes a brave step into the unknown
that was of course after Dr Carruthers shakes her hand with a
rather sweaty shake to confess that
his First Lady was trumped and that the Nobel people rushed it
and gave Bod Dylan the Nobel, yes
the guy who does Frank Sinatra covers
We can also guarantee her a swift and Honorary Doctorate from a College
But can we leave it vague? Shouldn’t we say for example a Baptist College?
We can have her leave the USA to disembark from the Delta Airplane from Atlanta Georgia
to touch African tarmac at OR Tambo International
clutching a letter from a Registrar for a Mandela Rhodes Chair
We can have her arrival distressing:
Her luggage is not found and
there is no one to receive her as
the taxi blockade of the airport for some
obviously important reason is
very effective that Highveld morning
A few months in South Africa
Would be good for her
As it does compete as the most gullible land in the known universe
And her ascent in the land of the purest fiction
Would be irreversible …pure Agni quite sweet
pure postcolonial fire
But with things turning radical though
Shouldn’t Dr K stay put
So India at last could
prize more fiction?
