Zero Degree Read online

  With love,

  Nano

  24

  THE RIVER FLOWS. On the banks are the smoking embers of the corpse burnt the previous night. A lone crow caws, bobbing its head. A path winds through the black babul trees. A serpent, shedding its skin like a magician, slithers into its burrow.

  Gathering courage from the solitude, brimming with sensuality, she strips herself naked and dives into the cool water. She swims away from the banks, and then her head surfaces with a splash. She dissolves effortlessly into a mermaid with a swishing tail. She sweeps the water with her arms, swimming against the current back to the bank. When she gets there, dripping wet, the corpse reaches lustily out for her. Nano disappears into the shadows among the words in the stack of books.

  25

  Stars More Than about 1.35 times the mass of the sun will be compressed to neutron stars of radius about 27 kilometers. It is possible to have stars with even greater masses, and therefore even greater compression, so that gravity will squeeze the matter out of existence to form black holes.

  26

  OMEGA CHANGES INTO alpha or beta or gamma or whatever the last letter is what is the end what is doing the writing algunos aspectos del cuento Muniyandi’s omega is followed by Nano, Nano’s omega is followed by Aadhi, Aadhi’s omega is followed by Chromo…

  27

  SURYA TOLD HIS TRAMP FRIEND who aspired to become a nomadic artist like Henry Miller: “There’s no need to worry. The state has taken over the responsibility of making you, and several crores of others, into Henry Millers. If you really want to become this country’s Henry Miller, you should go out right away and buy yourself a helicopter or a horse. It would be even better if you learned to play piano, too.” After that, Surya tried his best to steer clear of beggars. In spite of his best efforts, as long as he stayed in the suburbs, he was unable to avoid them. Surya was terrified of the electric train, the new symbol of the pathetic middle class. Even the tracks terrified him. On a drizzly evening, a middle-aged man had been crossing the tracks when he was attacked by a cobra; trying to escape, he ran onto the next track and was crushed under a speeding express train.

  Yama, the Lord of Death, who had come to Thirunelveli for the wedding of a dear friend, was surprised to see a mouse at the entrance to the wedding hall. “How is it that this mouse is here, at this place, at this time?” he muttered to himself as he entered the hall. The mouse noticed Yama looking and whispering something to himself, and figured he would do well to get out of there before Yama came back. He called out to an eagle that was flying overhead: “Sir, if you would be so kind as to do me a great favor, can you carry me away somewhere far from here?” The eagle answered, “I am on my way to Thongumalai, near Javvaadhumalai. Can I drop you off there?” The mouse, who didn’t care where he went as long as it was far away from Yama, agreed at once. As promised, the eagle dropped the mouse off at Thongumalai.

  Back in Thirunelveli, as Yama came out of the wedding hall, he noticed the mouse was gone. Then he, too, went to Thongumalai. There he saw the mouse happily nibbling away. He went up to him and told him, “Good thing you reached here before me. It has been fated that you should die now, here, at this time, and that was why

  I was surprised to find you in Thirunelveli. Now my job is easier.” Saying this, he took his death lasso, the rope that frees the soul from earthly desires, and threw it around the mouse’s neck.

  The moral of this story is:

  Fuck Yama. Fuck you. Fuck the universe. Fuck the big bang explosion. Fuck everything.

  At the train station, he saw several different sorts of beggars: the blind man singing devotional songs for the omnipresent lord; the guy singing old film songs, playing a harmonium strung around his neck; the woman with a newborn in her arms. In addition to these, there was a youth exhorting the public to “Protest! Boycott the election!”; a preacher warning of the Second Coming; a woman with a basket of sweet lime yelling out “Nine fruits for nine rupees” over and over again; a little boy with tiny lime-size apples, which he was trying to pass off as Kashmiri apples; a blind vendor selling everything from nail cutters, covers for ration cards, identity cards, electricity cards, milk cards, season train tickets, ear buds, and toothpicks; a thin man with a nail as long as a knitting needle pierced through his tongue, his body streaked with turmeric and ash, the words Om Muruga printed on a yellow cloth around his waist, spittle dripping from his hanging tongue. Surya skirted around the man’s begging bowl and walked on. Outside the station were a group of blind singers with a harmonium, accordion, dholak, and a small megaphone, singing songs from a thirty-six-year-old Tamil film. The music directors of those days must have had these blind beggars in mind when they composed their songs. It may be impossible to avoid all this outside the station, but at least the preachers, beggars and vendors inside the train might be avoided, Surya thought, and began traveling by first class.

  28

  AFTER MUNIYANDI had spent some time in Rwanda collecting notes for his novel The History of the World, his girlfriend carefully gathered them together, along with his newspaper clippings, and mailed them to me. At first, I wasn’t sure what to make of the huge sackload of papers; slowly I started selecting things that I thought seemed important. As I went through them, it began to look as though Muniyandi was vacillating between documenting culture and counterculture. He would justify the massacre of eighteen lakh Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge, and then start writing about fossils of Homo habilis found in Tanzanian rocks.

  Among the mountain of notes I found the following passage:

  Ninth-Century-A.D.-Dead-Brain and The Honorable Tamil Writer have prattled on and on about recording the history of their forefathers, about going back in search of their roots. Don’t they realize that such a search would require them to go back eighteen lakh years? I can just as well claim that my forefathers were from Tanzania, since that is where the earliest human fossils have been found, and where man began evolving. So, you ask, is that why I came to Africa, to search for my roots? No, because if I shift my time machine into a higher gear, I can travel back many more lakhs of years and visit the very first form of life. Ninth-Century-A.D.-Dead-Brain and The Honorable Tamil Writer, who claim to write about their soil, should first educate themselves on the origin of the soil itself. Let them listen to the tale told by the Martian meteorite that crash-landed in the snowy Antarctic wastes.

  29

  WHAT WAS THIS SPACE, before this universe came to be, after the Big Bang?

  Is there a beginning or end to this space?

  What is limitlessness?

  What is time?

  When is timelessness possible?

  If this is how evolution happened, what evolved before evolution itself?

  Are our imaginations broad enough, temporally and spatially, to understand the origin of life?

  What comes after the end?

  Is it a lack of words?

  Is it a lack of knowledge?

  Why should I write in Tamil?

  Where did Tamil come from?

  If Brahmi, Greek, Devanagari, and Tamil letters all derive from that undeciphered script which originated in the Indus Valley civilization 5454 years ago, why shouldn’t I take that unknown language as my Mother Tongue?

  Is The Honorable Tamil Writer aware of how many ethnic dialects must have been vanquished for Tamil to emerge as the language it is today?

  30

  MUNIYANDI WENT to a man with a fortune-telling parrot. “Muniyandi is the name, draw a card for the name, Muniyandi is the name,” the man chanted to his parrot, “draw a card for the name, for Brother Muniyandi is it a good time, for Brother Muniyandi is it a bad time?” The parrot hopped slowly out of its cage towards the cards, and began to pick them off the top of the stack with its beak. When it picked up the ninth card, it threw it tow
ards the men, and hopped back into its cage. The card bore the picture of a maid fanning a king, with the maid shown more prominently than the king. Only when he looked at the maid more carefully did Muniyandi realize it was not even a woman. “Eunuch, eunuch! Brihannala!, Brihannala! ” the parrot cawed. Muniyandi ran away from the place as fast as he could, wondering if his fortune would ever change.

  He came to a stop at the Mount Road Post Office. In front of the building was a huge cut-out poster of a film star wearing a tiny skirt that left her practically naked. Below her, the male star was looking up at her. A few representatives of the Tamil Society were also standing there at the bottom of the poster, watching and waiting for the skirt to flutter in the breeze.

  It was in 1980 that rural and suburban theatres began to openly screen blue films. For the typical Tamil husband, who had never even seen his own wife fully naked, the blue films were manna from heaven.

  Muniyandi wasn’t aware of this phenomenon. He had grown up watching record dance and listening to comedy dialogue cassettes, blasted through the village loudspeaker at functions celebrating a girl’s coming-of-age, or whatever.

  Characters: A woman selling vadai and a traveling blacksmith who mends broken vessels. The vessel the woman uses to fry vadai has a hole in it, so she comes to the blacksmith to repair it.

  HE: What is this? Your vessel has such a huge hole!

  SHE: What, don’t you have what it takes to fill the hole?

  HE: Why not? What I’ve got will fill this hole, and even a bigger hole. Show me, I’ll fill it right now.

  Wanting to see the film, Muniyandi went into the theatre hall. The newsreel was playing. The Chief Minister was formally opening a rehabilitation centre for the disabled. He went on to inaugurate more relief centers, for beggars, lepers, and orphans, and then to increase the

  compensation amount for women raped in police stations from 1008 rupees to 1188 rupees.

  Aarthi’s Story

  SURYA, EVER SINCE I read Existentialism and Fancy Banyan I’ve been wondering where that Aarthi woman is.

  Lady Reader, I have no idea where Aarthi is. It’s been years since I’ve seen her, I don’t even remember how many. I haven’t seen my Amma either. I’ve been keeping distance from everybody.

  Why haven’t you seen anybody?

  I don’t like the way they’re behaving.

  Why should you care? Let them behave the way they want to, that’s their nature. Why should you change for their sake? Don’t you know the story about the scorpion and the ascetic? It is the scorpion’s nature to sting, but the ascetic’s nature to love all living things. So, even though the scorpion kept stinging him, the ascetic still saved it from the water and took it to the riverbank.

  Lady Reader, everybody knows that story already. Here, I’ll tell you a story that nobody’s heard before. Asuvam, the horse, was standing on a riverbank wanting to cross to the other side, so he stepped into the water, when Virchigam, the scorpion, also wanting to get across, but not knowing how, called out to him, “Asuvam, Asuvam, I want to cross the river, can you take me on your back?”; and so Asuvam placed poor Virchigam on his back and began swimming, at which Virchigam asked, surprised, “Asuvam, Asuvam, how is it that you can swim so well?”; to which Asuvam replied, “It is my nature to swim,” at which point Virchigam stuck his stinger into Asuvam’s neck; and as the venom traveled to his head and he began to drown, Asuvam cried out, “Virchigam, you idiot, why did you have to sting me now? Both you and I are going to drown!”; to which Virchigam replied, “Because it is my nature to sting,” and then they drowned together and died.

  Dey! Idiot, never mind about your nature, you need to be smart, too.

  If I have to meet Aarthi, I have to meet Amma too. I haven’t seen her for years.

  So, at the urging of the Lady Reader, Surya began searching for his mother. Finally he discovered that she had been living on the next street all along, and went to visit her. But even she did not know where Aarthi was. He did, however, learn something from her about Aarthi’s life story.

  Aarthi, her husband Kamalanathan, and his mother, Kamatchi, were living in a tiny village near Madurai. They got no support from Kamalanathan’s father, Rajangam, who had gone off to Chennai with a dream of getting Kamalanathan a chance as a playback singer for the movies. Meanwhile, young Kamalanathan slowly graduated from committing a few petty thefts for cinema tickets to working as a full-blown professional pickpocket.

  He loved Aarthi very dearly, but she did not understand his love. She hated him, and she hated Kamatchi even more. Her fights with her mother-in-law would end with them grappling in the streets. That’s when Kamalanathan would step in.

  And what shape he would be in when he arrived! These days there’s no need for policemen. The general public has taken over the role of enforcing the law. If they caught him picking a pocket, the people would band together and beat him to pulp.

  Imagine how he felt, after a public beating like this, returning home to find Aarthi and Kamatchi at each other’s throats in the streets. He picked up a piece of firewood and gave Aarthi a whacking.

  “Get lost, pickpocket,” she said, and actually hit him back.

  “How dare you disrespect him!” said Kamatchi, taking the firewood from Kamalanathan and contributing her share of clobbering.

  As Aarthi’s head cracked open and began bleeding, Kamatchi suddenly switched over to her side. “After all, you are my younger sister’s daughter. Why should you have to suffer for marrying a pickpocket?” she wept aloud, holding Aarthi in her arms.

  While there are many people who have made it big picking pockets, it must be said that Kamalanathan did not excel at his chosen profession. He was often caught by the police (which wasn’t so bad) or by the bus passengers (which was hell).

  But there was no other source of income. Aarthi had become pregnant. Kamalanathan had a beautiful voice, but was yet to get a chance in the movies. How could he have, in such a godforsaken place? He would have had to make the trek to Madras himself, and make rounds at the studios, begging for a break. Trying to use his talents here would be like practicing horse-riding inside a mud pot.

  Get lost, you dog. Go, like that fellow Rajangam and those other fools did.

  They had a point. There was no news yet from Rajangam. And Kamalanathan couldn’t just keep picking pockets his whole life.

  Back when Pappamma was alive there was no problem getting enough food—at least, whenever she wasn’t in jail. But when prohibition was lifted, her business collapsed. Whether it was due to that, or simply to old age, Pappamma fell ill. She, who had been at the top of the game, earning money like a man, running liquor bottles and casually walking in and out of prison, was now beached like a whale. She fell bedridden and never got up again. Even then, she laughed about it. “I am a Taurus. We never lie down, and if we do, then we don’t get back up.” It was true; she died without ever getting up again.

  After Pappamma died, Kamatchi, too, fell ill.

  In that village there was absolutely no way to earn any money. Even to find work as domestic help, you had to go to the city.

  On the rare occasions that Kamalanathan made any money, he would be very loving to Aarthi. He would buy her flowers, take her to the movies. But even then, the day would end with him giving her a sound beating.

  When she was full-term pregnant, they had their last fight. He called her a thevidiya. Her reply froze his blood.

  “Yes. Of course I’m a thevidiya. I’m a whore. Even this child in my womb wasn’t fathered by you. I swear on God’s name.”

  Kamalanathan did not beat Aarthi that night. He couldn’t even protest; without money he was powerless. He realized that was the source of all his problems. So the next day, he decided to pull a big job. He snatched a moneybag from a man coming out of the bank, and ran for it. But the bad luck that had followe
d him everywhere didn’t let him off that day either. He was caught. He was lucky to survive the thrashing he got at the hands of the crowd; his life was saved by the police, who rounded the corner in a jeep just in time to rescue him. He still believed that it would be easy to strike it rich, someday; all he needed was a little bit of luck. Who would have guessed that he would get caught? That road was almost always deserted. It was high noon; the trees were motionless in the heat. It was just his rotten luck that a raucous funeral procession had to come by right then. The procession poured into the street just as he grabbed the man’s moneybag and turned to run. The drummers and dancers pounded him into the ground. He still couldn’t believe that he hadn’t heard their loud drunken racket. He was convinced that the only reason he had survived to land here, behind bars, was that he was destined to someday make it rich.

  The fetus was rolling around in the womb. It was difficult to sit, so she stood; as soon as she stood, she wanted to lie down. If she turned to her left, the fetus rolled to the right; if she turned to the right, it rolled to the left. It swam up and down searching for the exit. She sat up, tired, but could not stay in that position for long. She couldn’t remember when the pain began. It started at the base of her spine and slowly spread until it seemed to engulf her entire body. Thank God for the old woman in the next hut; without her she and the child would have been dead and gone long ago. But where was that ayah now? Maybe the old hag too had pushed off to Madras, looking for a chance in the films. There was always a demand for mother characters.