“I hate girls. They smell so much like girls.”
Suddenly one day like a bolt from the blue you start liking the smell. Not smell, say scent. Smell sounds so demeaning. The contempt that you had for Annie for being a gal changes to a desire for Fannie. You don’t know what it is but you need to have it but how? Everyone seems to be getting the pie or should I say the kitten but only your tiger is deprived. Every day the problem seems to grow; the MMS trickles and then it pours. Everywhere it is going on, the car, the café, the pub and the rooms too. But you are always at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Maybe the school you are in is wrong. Everyone in there is a saint, and the kittens, nuns. Then suddenly you hear your best chum landed up with something and all hell breaks loose. The saint has suddenly become the talk of the class. He is conducting classes for his brethren. You are crazy to know what’s down there. The guy seems to have all the answers of carefree whispering life. But something is fishy somewhere in the story your friend is passing on to you. From the moment the light turns off till morning, that part is hidden. Why, you seem to question; is it the Hindi movie effect where the censor board has diligently edited the dusk to dawn moan? The fireplace, the rain, the song and the next day the heroine is behaving silly.
Then you join college. The torture does not end there. Everyone seems to have undertaken the pilgrimage. Most of the tigers have conquered the kittens and most of the Bs have their Gs. Those kittens left behind remind you of your trip to Haridwar when you were ten years old only. The pilgrims have left for their homes but have left their broken kamandal behind. You had asked your father why the pilgrims leave the mess behind when they leave and your father had answered that after a pilgrimage you take only the good things and leave behind the bad, the ugly and the unnecessary. The rag pickers collect it and sell it to the junk yard. The broken kamandals are symbolic.
Father was so right, he always is. But slowly you realise you have no other option but to become the rag picker. Every year you set yourself a target of losing it but somehow the ignominy of V’ity sticks to you like a pasted mosquito on a white shirt. Now even the broken kamandals have got an aura. And why should not they? When there is famine the vegetable peels also become much sought after. Sadly the creepy boy with thousand pimples on his ‘everywhere’ has also got a kitten to feed the tiger. The MMS are now coming in droves, the flood is on, yet you remain the beggar. How you wish you had a kamandal, deformed, broken, and shapeless; you give a damn as long as it has a kitten
Initially you blamed your high scores in the class. How you had to force yourself to sit in the last bench just to look cool but yet your tiger is hungry. Where are the hens? You have already earned a reputation of looking like a proverbial beggar. Your friend tells you one day in a hushed tone, “man what’s it with you, my kitten was telling me you stare at the B of every G”? He is not done yet. He shoves it some more, “Now the gals call you the tharki baba”.
You feel like crying but you don’t give up. After all you have learned in your convent school, never give up. Then one day you join the work-force. Your hands are now overstretched with all those years of unnecessary exercise and the office place is teeming with what else. Then one day an extremely hot, beautiful W walks up to you. She has liked your sense of humor and fallen for it. Then one fine day the night arrives. The tiger is growling to devour the kitten. Its pitch dark and you grope to know what’s where. The movies were all shot in broad daylight. But they never said how to do it when it’s pitch dark. You beg your babe to turn the light on and she says in her typical scathing tone, “you are sick man”. Then her rock solid heart melts for you and she guides you. The 15 years of second hand experience comes pouring out, everything is going as per the script. The babe is moaning or is it that she is repenting her selection. You wait, a wait amidst all the shaking to know if you are enjoying. Man, you are supposed to enjoy it, everyone told you so but the script waivers here. You suddenly realize the one and half a decade of self-help has made you a very egoistic self- sufficient creature. It’s like how you longed to eat a doughnut. The Yankees like it; right. But when you ate it you promised yourself “never again”. Yet when it comes to doing it, you do it again, because you strongly believe beggars are not choosers. What if you don’t get it tomorrow? Remember someone said “Kal Ho Na Ho”. Thrice the tiger is tamed by the holy kitten. Now it’s time to sleep.
Then starts the wait, wait for the dawn. How you long to get ready and run to office. You have never looked forward to going to office like now. The tiger has been tamed.
The long wait of so many years is over and the beggar is back on the street. The only positive is you have become wiser about why the “dusk to dawn” section is all beeped out. Your friend got to realize it at teen and you in your midlife. Both of you are saints again; now enlightened.
Doughnuts! Never again…
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