I lit a cigarette. Virginia was black—burning up. The number seven bus was coming from a distance, like a swollen street dog. It stopped and poured out around a dozen people—something it usually did when it spotted a tree—and went on its way again. Bhagavantam wasn’t in that group.
A leper-gang was walking across the road, singing. Like fishermen’s trap-net. To no use. “No change.”
Would he come in the next bus? In the number thirteen?
Would he come from the other side?
Across from me, a house that looked like pneumonia given form. Like it was desperately coughing up its lungs and thinking about putting them out to dry. Surrealist stains and stripes on the wall. Behind the wall, dusting off the water from the air like a green ray of sky: a banana tree, confidently, innocently. Poor foolish thing.
Bhagavantam would arrive without saying anything. Even if he did give notice, no way to know which way he would come from. Even if we knew which side, he wouldn’t come at the agreed-upon time . . . even if he did come, what to say to him?
Short, dark, introspective snail-walking thoughts on the road—like convicts. In the distance, the mute ocean was roaring meaninglessly. Rain falling on half-burnt stubs, soft wet lumps, the color of bile . . .
I leaned on the lamppost and took out the old letter from my coat packet. A letter Bhagavantam had written fifteen years ago. Rust-colored. “I know your fears and your suspicions. If you think you can’t bear it, come running. Leave them. My door will always be open . . . ”
Poor man! Bhagavantam had aged, far away from the changes of the world. I’ll go to this hotel and sit down to wait. The road was visible from the window. Which way would he come from?
Look at the hotel. I’m disgusted when I look at it. Hatred when I see the manager. Fear and suspicion when I see its waiters. The manager’s face looked like shards of glass had been rubbed into it. I hated it.
Hatred when I saw the people who entered it, ate the crap that he gave them, and then left like snakes that had just eaten frogs.
I liked this hatred, loved it. The hate coming on like waves spread through my body like the nervous energy from a third peg of gin. I sat in this corner table here. The traffic on the road was visible through the window. I could hear the chatter of these insects inside.
There was an eternity in Bhagavantam’s name. The old order, the tufts of hair, the slippers, the earrings, and the loincloths out to dry—all could be heard and seen in that name. And I waiting for him at this hotel!—a big paradox!
“Independence for us? We’re complete idiots! A character, us? Country full of damn fakirs . . . ”
“The man’s roly-poly. He does yoga. But a godly constipation . . . ”
“My destiny line is full of breaks . . . ”
“Can’t borrow a single . . . ”
“Yawning at work. What a job . . . ”
“My Bujjigadu only has to see a millipede, he just crushes it in his hand . . . ”
“They just beat up the referee in the midfield . . . ”
“He didn’t see. He was cleaning his gun, and right through the heart . . . ”
“Who knows why my boy’s joint broke—Kubera is supposed to be looking at him with mercy!”
“Went mad, I heard. Chopped up his wife and kids with a knife-board . . . ”
“Don’t know why my promotion’s stalled—Saturn, probably . . . ”
The waiter brought coffee. Coffee! This isn’t coffee. Just brown heat. The insults I wanted to use hovered like flies around my head.
“What’s your name?” I ventured to ask. My face looked as though I was about to discover a huge secret.
“Unnithan.”
Unnithan, Unnithan! Coconut fields. Boats that moved heavily over the backwaters! Leaving . . . Black curly hair shining. Cloves, cardamom, copra . . . fragrance!
“Go,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Must be decided today. Me or him. This is all meaningless. Go inside and think. Unnithan’s being is as meaningless as this cup of coffee. Okay phat-a-phat!”
Unnithan adjusted his knee-length lungi and walked away, cursing in Malayalam—cursing his foolish self that had thought it had seen all the strange things in the country.
. . . Bhagavantam didn’t come. He didn’t come in the bus. He didn’t use rickshaws. He doesn’t walk.
“Fits, probably. Pour two buckets. He’s foaming at the mouth.” The crowd on the road. Fun. But free. Some pastime, entertainment. The body trembled. God would do good. Otherwise, we’d be like that. Ammo! A different thrill.
Humid. Sweat. Bugs.
A salty breeze now and again.
Sticky.
Hot.
He was moving through the tired evening sky, spitting out a paan—the Sun God.
Unnithan was leaning on the wall, one leg folded up, pulling on his nails. I called him lovingly, “Unni!”
He came over, trembling. I told him to get another cup of coffee. In a begging tone. He went to the hell in the back, like a piece of something that had suddenly appeared in a dream and melted away.
How much longer this torment, this waiting for Bhagavantam? How many hours? How many years?
“Purifying this slate of a mind, and consciousness . . . ” As I thought this, a wave of laughter rose from deep inside, and I pinched my left wrist. That was a sign. A sign that said, “stop the drama, take off the masks—think.”
He was coming like Mephistopheles from hell. He came closer with the smoke-vomiting coffee, put it on the table, and was about to leave, scared. I looked into his eyes and forced him to stop with my own. “You’re not here. You’re just an illusion. You have no Being. Have you read Hume? Do you know what Locke said? Kant? Kirkegaard? I’m thinking that you exist, you’re thinking that I’m talking to you, I think that I think—”
Unnithan’s lungi ruffled in the southern wind like a sail. “Ayyo!”
Looking along the border-line of my nose, starting with pneumonia-like house’s left window-grill’s third iron bar, cutting across the road and touching the bald head of the manager, and finally merging with the shining foam of the coffee that Unnithan had put on this table . . .
Coffee on the table. Coffee! This isn’t coffee. It was hot brownness.
The number thirteen arrived. It stopped and unloaded a Marcovich-face, a Ulysses-like wide face, a Terylene suit of armor, a stethoscope, and an Arjuna, incognito. No Bhagavantam. Would he come in a different number from the other side?
Unni was whispering in the manager’s ear. The manager turned his face—a glass-rubbed face. Two swollen dogs under his eyelids—sleeping on the road, lazily, yawning like two buffalos—growling softly. Two big bat wings when he closed his eyes. He set the dogs on me.
That very moment. That was the revelation. As someone threw down thunderbolts, like sharpened knives, as the demon-chariots ran, as the angels offered to grant wishes . . . as somebody peeled the banana of the world . . .
A momentary revelation. The manager closed his dogs with his bat-wings.
It was no use waiting. A disaster. I got up and went to the counter.
“Here, I’m giving you four coffees' worth. Nothing to fear. Call the mental hospital if you want. Nobody’s escaped from there. Everything’s safe there. Unnithan is my long-lost friend. Are you raising Alsatians, Dalmatians, or Dachshunds under your eyes?”
I came back to the table. What do I care for answers?
Unnithan was leaning on the wall, standing like a cynical, crooked, introvert coconut tree occasionally seen among neat, straight rows. He looked like a chaotic congregation of punctuation marks jumbled up together.
“Will you separate out the semicolons and exclamation marks and come here, Unni?” He came. “Bring me the third cup, please.”
He walked back inside as he dropped punctuation marks one by one, like Hemingway’s sentences. Neat, brisk, and no overtones.
Had Bhagavantam broken some bones on the way here in an accident . . . ?
A gang of four students sauntered in. They were in between the peach fuzz of babyhood and the rudeness and energy of adulthood.
They moved the chairs—arranged around the table in a square—in every which angle, twisted their legs around, and sat down, spreading themselves out.
Unnithan brought the third coffee. Coffee? This wasn’t coffee. It was heat-colored brown fantasy.
“What did Benji-gadu say today?”
“Tony Curtis and Elizabeth at the Saraswati . . . ”
“Sujata sits in class like some nun, but she’s got two lovers . . . ”
“Don’t be a gossip . . . ”
Bhagavantam probably wouldn’t come. I counted to ten and got up. As I went up, I stopped and said in a sorrowful tone: “Connect everything. Connect everything like in a chain, one after the other. You’ll understand. After that, it’s all easy.”
At the counter, I said, “I drank only three. I gave you money for four. That’s the justice of the world. You can give it to me when we meet in purgatorio. There’s no time. Give Unnithan my regards, too. Bye-bye!” and I left.
A shower of stars in the sky. Bhagavantam wouldn’t come. He wouldn’t come from this side on the seven, nor from that side on the thirteen . . . just my madness.
