Zero Degree Read online

  It irritated Surya no end that the evening’s discussion, which had ranged widely over Louis Althusser, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Gilles Deleuze, had now suddenly devolved into an argument about rupees, annas, and paisa. It was all the more annoying because he was quite certain that he had paid for the first quarter. He reminded Thirumalai that his memory had been failing recently; Thirumalai retorted that these days, there was no longer any need to hunt in the vegetable market for vallarai keerai to improve the memory; now it was easily available in capsule form. Surya felt that everyone was out to cheat him. His wife, his parents, his friends—everybody was just trying to swindle him out of everything he owned. They all think I’m an idiot, he brooded, self-pityingly. Surya was of the firm opinion that those who wallow in self-pity are lower than the worms that live in shit, so the fact that he was pitying himself only made him pity himself all the more.

  He had sworn then that he would never join Thirumalai for another drink. So, that day on Mount Road when Thirumalai invited him for a beer, Surya refused.

  “Okay. Let’s have a smoke together, at least,” said Thirumalai.

  “Avanthika’s waiting for me at Museum Theatre. I’m in a hurry.”

  “Hmm, what’s this? You’ve given up drinks and cigarettes, have you? But you haven’t given up lying. Your girlfriend is waiting for you at Museum Theatre, in this hot sun? If that’s really true, then your life is made, man. Next you’ll build a house, buy some sweaters. You’ll become a typical middle-class guy,” Thirumalai said knowingly, nodding his head. But what Surya heard was the string of curses behind these words: “May you be ruined, may they start preparing your funeral bier, may the pox take you.” Surya took to his heels.

  Thus ignored by the literati, and ignoring them, Surya was isolated. There was only Nila Magan left to help with the wedding preparations. When Surya first came to know him, he did not like Nila Magan very much. What crazy sort of a name was Nila Magan, anyway? But after a while, Surya began to find his idiotic antics endearing.

  He was funny. Nila Magan would write twenty-seven-week serialized stories for popular magazines, and accept the nine hundred rupees they’d pay him with gracious servitude. The magazine even once ran a state-wide advertisement for his story with color posters featuring a photograph of his smiling mug.

  Nila Magan had thirty-six girlfriends that Surya knew of. Some were married, some unmarried, some widowed, some divorced, college students, lady doctors... an astounding variety of women. I need to have sex with you. At the very least, I need to kiss you. I’m still dreaming about the last kiss you gave me, on September 27th. My eldest son is in the ninth standard. I can’t forget the last time we had sex—I’ve never felt so happy. Such were the love letters Nila Magan would receive from his girlfriends. It made Surya want to get into writing detective fiction, too.

  Surya thought about his stale literary world, all the boring seminars in which he participated. Once, standing in front of a microphone, it had struck him. “There are no women here. It looks like the meeting of a gay club. I don’t feel like talking,” he had said into the microphone, and sat down. He barely escaped with his life that evening.

  Surya often regretted that his chosen field was so devoid of women.

  The few women who did show up to the seminars made him want to become a member of a gay club. Or else they were terrorists, equipped with meat cleavers, eager to chop off the dicks of the men around them to avenge their anger. He felt a great weariness in his heart at being stuck in such a dangerous field. But Surya had a bad habit of never being able to give up his habits. And doing the literary thing was a habit.

  Nila Magan took the time to answer every piece of fan mail he received. Surya found that most surprising. He thought of Vazhipokkan, editor of Prabanja Kaalam, who had sent him sixty-three post cards asking him to translate a short story of Julio Cortazar’s for his journal—all of which he had studiously ignored. (Vazhipokkan is still writing him these postcards… but that’s another story.)

  Nila Magan engrossed himself in the wedding arrangements. Mindful of Thirumalai’s warnings about bigamy and arrest, they kept everything a close secret. Surya told the temple authorities not to register his marriage because he didn’t have the divorce papers yet. The temple authorities said they wouldn’t allow an unregistered wedding. But Nila Magan got in touch with a friend of his, the editor of a big magazine, who intervened and solved the problem. “It’s in cases like this where it helps to know a few influential people,” said Nila Magan. “You’re right,” Surya agreed.

  Next, the stress of finding a house to rent and gathering all the money for the wedding expenses resulted in Nila Magan having a mild heart attack. That meant twenty-seven days of total bed rest.

  Then came the wedding day.

  Surya had told none of his literary friends, but had invited his relatives, and Nila Magan’s friends.

  Surya had given his mother money to buy a thali. But his parents were late for the ceremony, so he sent Nila Magan’s friend to buy another thali. Just as the friend left, his mother and father arrived.

  “Hee hee, we stopped for tea. That’s why we’re late,” said his father.

  “First give me the thali,” Surya said, almost snatching it out of his mother’s hands.

  Thirumalai’s words were ringing in Surya’s head. Bigamy! Arrest! Bigamy! Arrest! Even as he tied the thali with trembling hands, he imagined Nalini gatecrashing the wedding with a pack of police like a Tamil film heroine and having him arrested.

  When he had confessed this fear to Avanthika that morning, she had said, “If anything like that happens, and you have to go to prison, I’ll kill her myself and end up in the prison even before you do. Don’t worry about such things!” But it had only made him more terrified.

  “What is this? Why spoil such a happy occasion by talking about things like murder and prison? We should be celebrating now!” said Surya.

  But he could not stop imagining himself and Avanthika behind bars in separate prisons. He remembered that Thirumalai was the cause of all these anxieties, and that made him even angrier.

  None of Surya’s fears materialized. The only unexpected thing that did happen was that The Honorable Tamil Writer had heard about the wedding and decided to attend. “Congratulations, Surya!” he complimented him. “You have successfully Brahminized the entire Gounder culture!” Surya did not know what to reply. Nine days after the wedding he finally got the divorce papers from the court. Only then did he stop panicking about prison.

  “I want to gift you with our child,” said Avanthika.

  “Please don’t say that. You are like my child. Why go for another?” Surya asked dramatically. But Avanthika would not listen. She became pregnant, and then he too started eagerly awaiting the child’s birth.

  But the fetus was miscarried. Avanthika had to go in for D&C. “We don’t need to have a child,” said Surya. “You are all that’s important to me.” This time Surya really meant it. But Avanthika wouldn’t listen. She believed that some strenuous work had caused the miscarriage, so the next time her pregnancy was confirmed, she refused to allow Surya to come near her, and avoided all strenuous work.

  She miscarried again. Doctor Jessie, who did the second D&C, called Surya aside, and pointed out various features of the smashed fetus.

  Avanthika wept for nine days after the miscarriage. “I wanted to take a bit of both of us, and make a child for you, Surya. Now my womb has become a burial ground for your baby,” she wept.

  TORCH panel, toxoplasmosis, Rubella, anti-sperm antibody, Chlamydia antibody—all kinds of tests were done, and all of them turned out positive. Jessie confirmed that the problem was a virus.

  “Will I be able to have another child?” sobbed Avanthika.

  “Chee, chee! Come on, don’t cry like a baby. You’re an educated woman. These days there are m
edical treatments for all this. The virus can easily be cured,” said Jessie, prescribing more drugs.

  Just as they were stepping out of the clinic, Diwakar walked in, along with his new wife, her arms covered to the elbows in colorful vallaikappu bangles.

  34

  THE LETTER FROM Muniyandi’s girlfriend in the Rwandan drama troupe, and the papers just given to me by the wandering ascetic, seem to contradict each other. The girlfriend claims that Muniyandi died in Rwanda. But here are handwritten notes showing that he met with this ascetic in the Himalayas. I couldn’t get any more information out of the ascetic; he had taken a vow of silence. He informed me, signing with his hands, that he had stopped speaking many years ago. He looked like the physical embodiment of silence. Time had etched deep lines into his skin. His body was thin and dessicated. There was a light in his eyes that pierced my heart. I felt a strong desire to remain in his presence for as long as I could. But he simply handed me the sheaf of papers and disappeared.

  NOW FOR TH E LETTER S TO

  MY DAUGHTER

  MY DEAR GENESIS,

  It must be Fate that is stopping me from meeting you or talking to you, compelling me to write letters instead. I don’t know when you’ll get this letter, or who will deliver it. Being separated from you is too hugely painful for me to think about anything else.

  A scene from the Mahabharata: Bhishma and Arjuna are fighting. Then Arjuna sends a volley of questions to Bhishma. “This is not the time for questions,” says Bhishma. “Turn your words into missiles. We will converse through our missiles, rather than through our words.” Oh Genesis, I have forgotten your smell. Until recently, every time I thought of you, your smell would surround me, suddenly, from nowhere. But time has stolen it away from me. This letter is the only thing I have left. I have only language.

  It was wonderful to think of you on this Christmas day, here, among Christmas trees. That wonder inspired me to write my very first poem.

  Frozen time.

  Numb universe.

  Mountains, trees.

  Nature’s undisturbed meditation.

  Guns’ and bombs’ destruction.

  Land, water, air.

  A boy selling sundal on the beach.

  What saambaar and rasam shall I make today?

  Okra fry? “Chee, what nonsense is this?

  Does it have to be the same every day?”

  She could hear her husband shouting.

  A middle-aged woman

  at the LIC bus stop, boarding the 1J*.

  God silently humming

  his requiem for the death of mankind.

  Somewhere in the distance a tiny sparrow

  is translating that requiem for me.

  Mind

  yearning to leap from the ledge.

  Violet and maroon flowers

  like babies’ laughter.

  God stops his requiem.

  Angels descend from heaven like snow.

  The cold penetrates the marrow.

  A bearded man was asked, “What is the philosophy that will last to the end of the world?”

  The bearded man answered,

  “Leave alone my philosophy,

  no philosophy will last that long…

  except Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.”

  The Fifth Symphony,

  long forgotten by communists,

  is being hummed by these Christmas trees.

  That face might seem beautiful to you and me, but it irritated that little boy no end. It made him want to puke. The face haunted him in his classes, and he stopped going to school. He took whatever work he could find. He got a job as a daily laborer in a factory, and started writing poetry in his spare time. He was arrested because his poems were anti-national. His background was checked. The judge was surprised that such a good poet had no formal training in literature. “God sends me my poems from up above,” he explained. The dictatorship of the proletariat

  was infuriated by this answer, and he was exiled.

  God has sent me this poem today, Genny…

  We came to this mountain yesterday. There were seventy-two hairpin turns on the road here. At each turn, there were signboards that read THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH. Surya wanted to get down; I could hear the distress in his voice. We hiked up a mountain path and lost our way. But the beauty of the forest calmed Surya’s fears. The flowers on the jackfruit trees were in various stages of bloom. We wandered this way and that, and finally came upon some rocks, and sat down. From somewhere came an apocalyptic noise. We turned around in surprise to see a giant swarm of bees rushing towards us. We lay flat on the ground. When the bees had passed, we tried to find our way again. There was a hamlet in the distance. The way down the slope to the hamlet was thick with pineapple shrubs; the thorns tore at our legs. We were faint with hunger. We asked a passerby where the nearest hotel was. He said the closest was in the next village, a long way off, but that the guava tree there was his, and that we were welcome to pick as much fruit as we wanted from it. Once we had eaten the guavas, Surya asked him if there were any rice trees in the forest. The man

  laughed, and told us how to get to the village where the hotel was. But when we reached the hotel, they were out of meals. We asked for omlettes, and ate those.

  We rested well and set off to a nearby waterfall—a deep gorge between mountain peaks that touched the sky. We had to go down the gorge before we could see the cascade. There were 720 steep steps to get there. The torrent seemed celestial, as though it was falling from the heavens. The place was totally uninhabited. To reach the waterfall we had to swim a ways. What a roar, what a tumult! I held onto a rock and stood under the fall. Ecstasy! Delirium! Experiential wisdom! When I stepped out of the waterfall, I was encircled by a rainbow.

  I was never once away from you until you were nine, Genny. If I had to go out of town on work, you would whisper, with tears in your eyes, “Appa, I’ll be thinking only of you.” And I would cancel my trip. Instead, we would play Alisha on the stereo and dance.

  Trying to escape these suffocating memories of you, I tried reading the Ramayana.

  When he is asked, “Why do you sleep all the time?” Kumbhakarna answers: “I choose to sleep because I cannot bear all this injustice. I cannot surrender to Rama, as my younger brother has done. Whether I am to live or die, I will do it at my elder brother Ravana’s side.”

  On the battlefield, Kumbhakarna realizes that the moment of reckoning had come. Rama comes to him and

  says, “I will give you anything you desire. Ask.” Kumbhakarna says, “It should never be said that I was defeated. Slice off my head with your arrow, and it will drop in the ocean. Do not let go of it here on the battlefield. And if my younger brother Vibheeshana ever abandons you, the way he has abandoned our elder brother, do not use your arrows on him. He will not be able to face it. Let him go. Spare his life.”

  Can that kind of unconditional love exist in today’s world, Genny?

  GENESIS, MY DEAR LITTLE PRINCESS…

  My love for you is torturing me Genny… like this cold…

  Since Misra came without a reservation, he couldn’t get a train berth. So we made the arrangement that he would sleep half the time, and I would sleep the other half. He had brought his walkman along, and we listened to Kenny G, Richard Clayderman, and Eric Clapton for a while. The second night of the journey, in the wee hours of the morning, at Jhansi station… we were chilled to the bone. Our toes and fingertips felt like icicles. The cold penetrated even our cheeks, our earlobes, our foreheads.

  Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. Death and fire, memory and ice. This chill called for a cigarette. Misra went to the stall on the platform and asked the shopkeeper, “Wills hai?” “Bills nahi hai,” replied the s
hopkeeper. “What a language,” Misra grumbled. “It sounds like he’s got a bad toothache.” Misra hates his own mother tongue. “Have you heard?” I asked him. “The IP College girls speak good Hindi.” Not able to find a cigarette, Misra finally fell asleep. I stood. After some time a stranger came and asked me if I wanted a smoke; I nodded. He even lit it for me. Perhaps cold weather reduces the distance between humans.

  A short time passed. Gwalior station. Tea in clay matkas. With each sip came the smell of mud. I felt as though I had entered the womb of the Earth.

  Again, thoughts of you took over. From the moment the nurse placed you in my arms in the delivery room, until you were nine, I never let go of you, Genny. Maybe that’s why I’m not able to bear this separation.

  I don’t want to talk to anyone. So instead, I’ve got hold of some paper and I’m writing to you. Genny, I think the entire human race has given up on love and caring, and is headed for ruin. The nations divide themselves with armies along their borders. Man uses various survival techniques to protect himself, invisible weapons to hurt his fellow man. Aandal’s lyrics ring in my ears:

  As the candelabra burns, He slumbers, on a diwan with legs of ivory Resting His head on Nappinnai’s soft bosom

  Flowers woven in her tresses, she woos Him:

  “O broad-chested Lord, kindly speak!”

  The fragrances of camphor and lotus;

  How can they compare to the sweetness of those coral lips?

  O white conch from ocean’s depths, please tell me

  Of the transcendent taste and fragrance of Madhava’s mouth!

  All conchs are white. So why call it a white conch? You must listen to the harikatha of Velukudi Varadhachariyar, Genny. He says Kannan’s lips are so red that when the white conch rests on them, its whiteness is intensified.

  “I will lie prostrated here for eternity for a glimpse of those coral lips. If I am not able to climb up the mountain, then I will become the very steps, in order to see those coral lips against the frozen snow,” Velukudi Varadachariyar exclaims, melting with devotional ecstasy.