Zero Degree Read online

  Lal Salaam

  A man who appears to be the sergeant calls Muniyandi and Tamil Selvan over, and begins to speak.

  THAYUMANAVAN: So, Comrade, tell me. [TAMIL SELVAN remains silent.]

  THAYUMANAVAN [To MUNIYANDI]: Look at that, sir! Even when I speak to him respectfully, he still remains silent. How can I get anywhere with this interrogation if he won’t co-operate? Ahem. Well then—you tell me.

  MUNIYANDI: Yes, yes. Ask whatever you want, and I shall answer you.

  THAYUMANAVAN: There. See? An author is an author. But an activist can only be an activist. What kind of an activist are you? A wanker activist? Oh, Comrade, please don’t be angry with me because I said “wanker”. If you were in my shoes, you would talk the same way. I’m sick and tired of criminals. Sometimes I wish I could chuck this job and find work as a college lecturer somewhere. What was the use of spending my school days and college days learning all that philosophy, sociology, literature? It’s my sad fate to have ended up here. Of course, our Comrade will take issue with that statement. He doesn’t believe in Fate. But what about you, sir?

  MUNIYANDI: I’m not sure if I believe in Fate or not.

  THAYUMANAVAN: [To a CONSTABLE] Dey! Five-Naught-Four! We’re going to have a debate here. Go bring us some tea. [To MUNIYANDI] He probably assumes this is some petty theft case, the idiot. Nobody here has any brains, sir—including me. I used to have some, but now they’re gone. After all, I can’t very well cast myself in the role of a dog, and then refuse to bark, can I?

  Sir, please don’t misunderstand me. Go ahead and write; who am I to advise you? I won’t raise any objection. I’ve read your novel; I like your writing. I think your anger is justified. But I prefer the ironic passages to those that are just angry. Which passages do I mean? Oh, like this, for example: “The communists discovered collection boxes even before the world discovered tin.” Wonderful irony, sir.

  MUNIYANDI: But you shouldn’t attribute that quote to me. That’s a line from an anti-communist character in my novel.

  THAYUMANAVAN: Oh, yes, you’re pro-Left, aren’t you? [Turning to TAMIL SELVAN] What do you say, Comrade? Have you read any of his writings?

  TAMIL SELVAN: Yes, I have. They are clearly the signs of American decadent culture. His writings are an insult to my soil, my people, and my language. He has mortgaged his brains to the Euro-American dogs. He is a pervert who can write about nothing but sex. We, the People’s Front, will punish the likes of him.

  THAYUMANAVAN: So, you’re a militant sympathizer, too. I thought you were just a communist. Good, good! Even I support the militants—only moral support, though. The same way I support homosexuality. I’ve read that even Socrates was a homo. [To MUNIYANDI] I have just a single word of advice, sir. Write in support of whatever you want: armed revolution, cultural revolution, gay—there are so many causes!—but you must restrict such anti-establishment writing to English. What’s the point of writing in Tamil, and then ending up here? I feel bad for you.

  Yes, I read your novel, and I also read Dead-Brain’s review. Why did you have to respond to that? It’s almost as if you’ve exposed yourself in public. You should be mature enough to accept it if someone calls your novel shit. A writer should have that much pride. People are idiots; of course they will say such things. It would have been surprising if they hadn’t. It was only because you responded that the police department sat up and took notice. When you put everything out on the table like that, people start wondering whether it’s

  literature or politics. Do you respond to everyone who calls you for a fight, sir?

  Look at our Comrade. He’s hardly even opened his mouth. There are no misunderstandings between him and me; it’s just straightforward war. He wants to destroy the state, so he bombs us—and sooner or later we police will finish him off in an encounter killing. Why do you have to come in the middle and confuse everything?

  You want to know something? Your bank heist hero, Mayta— this Tamil Selvan here is his lieutenant. What do you say, Comrade? [TAMIL SELVAN remains silent.]

  The great Tamil poet Thayumanavar said: Be calm;unuttered. Our comrade follows that to the letter. I am a faker, not worthy of the name: you are the real Thayumanavan! Do you know how I got this name? My father was a Christian and my mother a Muslim. Theirs was a love marriage, even way back then. And this is how they named me. What communal harmony! I’m not saying this just because they were my parents. If everyone were like them, we wouldn’t have all these riots. Ahem. Fine. This interrogation is concluded. Now for the national anthem! All things should be brought to a proper conclusion. Comrade, what’s your opinion of the national anthem?

  TAMIL SELVAN: It’s the national anthem of India. We’ll have nothing to do with it. We are creating our own anthem for our new nation.

  THAYUMANAVAN: Fabulous! Dey! Five-Naught-Four! Are you listening to our Comrade here? You bunch of idiots! He’s got more brains than all of us put together. A man should be like him. I’m jealous of you, Comrade. [To MUNIYANDI] You tell me, sir, what is your opinion of our national anthem?

  MUNIYANDI: I look at it as a text, a literary text.

  THAYUMANAVAN: Aha! What an answer! You should be awarded the Nobel Prize for this reply. I wonder how your brain thinks this way. I was also like that, many years back. Ahem. Let us complete the interrogation now. I’m tired too. Let’s all rise and sing the national anthem and call it an end. Please rise.

  [TAMIL SELVAN remains seated, while THAYUMANA- VAN and MUNIYANDI rise up to sing.]

  THAYUMANAVAN and MUNIYANDI: Jana gana mana athinayaka jayahe / Bharata bhagya vidhatha…

  [The CONSTABLE tries to make Tamil Selvan rise forcibly, but to no avail. MUNIYANDI looks at Thayumanavan, who is singing at the top of his voice, gripped with patriotic fervor.]

  THAYUMANAVAN and MUNIYANDI: Punjaba, Sind, Gujarata,

  Marata / Dravida Uthkala Vanga…

  [The CONSTABLE signs to Tamil Selvan to get up.]

  THAYUMANAVAN and MUNIYANDI: Vindhiya Himachala Yamuna Ganga / Uthkala Jalasi Charanga…

  [The frustrated CONSTABLE punches Tamil Selvan in the face. MUNIYANDI, scared, raises his voice to match Thayumanavan’s.]

  THAYUMANAVAN and MUNIYANDI: Tava suba name jage / Tava suba ashisha mage / Kahe tava jaya gatha…

  [TAMIL SELVAN continues to sit. The CONSTABLE can only wring his hands and stare at him.]

  THAYUMANAVAN and MUNIYANDI: Jana gana mangala dhayaga jayehe / Bharata bhagya vidhatha / Jaya he / jaya he / jaya he / Jaya jaya jaya jaya he!

  [As they finish the anthem, THAYUMANAVAN, overcome by ecstatic passion, nearly collapses. He takes a moment to recover, and then turns to the constable.]

  THAYUMANAVAN: Dey! Idiot! What was that dance you were doing while I was singing the national anthem? Don’t you know that you should stand at attention?

  CONSTABLE: No sir, he was refusing to stand up, disrespecting the anthem. So I had to slap his face.

  THAYUMANAVAN: You may be as old as a donkey. But you have no brains. Tamil Selvan is not a constable like you. He is a revolutionary! Please excuse us, Comrade. I will punish this idiot who insulted you. You want to know what the punishment is? [To the CONSTABLE] Dey, you! Fuck Tamil. Now. What a punishment! Horrible! It just came to me in a flash. Come on! Ready, start! Everybody wake up, let’s give them a round of applause.

  CONSTABLE [Shouts]: OBEY THE ORDER!

  [He kicks TAMIL SELVAN in the stomach. TAMIL SELVAN groans and doubles over. More men come forward to hold him down tight and rip off his pants. The constable strips naked and begins thrusting his organ into Tamil Selvan’s ass. MUNIYANDI, scared out of his wits, starts to sweat profusely.]

  HALVES

  GENNY…

  The term homosexual did not come into widespread use until the eighteenth century. Until then, as far as sex was concerned, both women and children were fair game
. Sex was defined narrowly, as vaginal penetration, nothing more.

  Long, long ago, humans did not look like we do now. They were huge creatures with two heads, four hands, four legs, two sets of genitals, four buttocks, and two noses. Since they were endowed with super strength, they paraded their arrogance before Zeus, and in turn he tore them each into two halves and knotted up the skin so that they would never be able to regain their previous strength. That knot is what you call the navel. So each severed half is constantly searching for its other half to become full again. It is only when I can relate to my half that my existence becomes complete. It was Nano who completed me, Patroclus who completed Achilles, Jonathan who completed David, and Bheema who completed Duryodhana.

  17

  HE FLIPPED DISINTERESTEDLY through the newspaper. The previous day, eighteen bombs had gone off across the city within eighteen minutes… The state government reported eighteen people dead… The opposition claimed that the death toll was actually 108… The bombs were set off on a crowded city bus, in a hospital, in a school, at a place of religious worship, at a bus stand, at the railway station, at a vegetable market, at the police commissioner’s office, in the town square… The Chief Minister blamed the attack on a foreign hand… The opposition leader blamed it on the ruling party’s incompetence… Previously, when the opposition party was in power, and 333 bombs went off, they had fiercely debated the home ministry’s report on the death toll of 666… “It is a crime to set off a bomb; it doesn’t matter who sets it off. Even if it was God setting it off, it would be wrong,” the tired film star said in an interview immediately after returning from a three-month holiday in San Francisco… To the question “Why is there so much sex and vulgarity in your movies?” the RAW actress replied, “What, do you think I was born with clothes on?”…

  He shut the vernacular paper and picked up the English daily.

  The insistence of the White House spokespeople that no matter how many women sucked the president’s cock, or how many times he demanded that they suck his cock, it was wrong to expose these details in the media… the lack of accountability in America’s orphanages… pro and con arguments for America’s attack on Iraq… a massacre in Algeria… a report on an election propaganda poster that read “Do you really want to vote for a woman who owns 999 pairs of shoes and 9999 saris?”... a passionate op-ed piece from a Tamil poet asserting that the Tamilian breakfast was idly-dosai-vadai-uppuma-and-pongal, not bombs… an interview where an actress claimed that a scene from her forthcoming film, in which she stood astride two moving motorcycles while singing, was a cinematic first… a communist Chief Minister who had held on to the post for thirty-six years said he would resign to take the Prime Minister’s post if offered… a long report from the opposition berating the ruling party for not being able to eradicate poverty even forty-five years after chasing out the British…

  He put away the dailies.

  18

  SHE IS ALONE at home.

  She reads Eve’s Weekly.

  She rises and stretches.

  She gazes out the window.

  There are new shoots on the mango tree branches.

  He stares at her from the street corner.

  She sees him, too.

  What do you want, she says with a motion of the hand.

  You, he says.

  He flashes a secret smile.

  Come up, she motions.

  She disrobes.

  She gets him naked.

  She hands him the whip.

  She lies on the bed on her stomach.

  Lash, she says.

  He hesitates.

  Rising, she tastes his organ.

  She bites gently.

  He cries in pleasure and pain.

  She drops it, and lies back on the bed.

  Lash, she says.

  He lashes.

  Harder, she says.

  She lifts up her buttocks.

  The strokes fall and she groans with pleasure.

  She lies on her back.

  She lifts her breasts high to receive the lash.

  She spreads her legs.

  The bed is wet with her blood and her juice.

  She licks up both.

  She lays him on the bed.

  She tastes his organ.

  She rubs his cum over her face.

  SHE WAS THE BEAUTY of the town. She had brushed aside any number of young men bearing love letters and poems. He made her accept his love. Nobody understood what his trick was, but he made her want him. At some point, though, she doubted the depth of his love.The next day, he branded his thigh with an iron rod. Later, she swept aside his veshti, caught a glimpse of the wound, and became distraught. He expressed his love for her in this and countless other ways, until finally he ran off without informing her.

  There were crowds of girls streaming out the gates of Indraprastha College. The roads were empty except for these girls. He saw them from a distance, and unzipped his pants and took out his thing. When the girls caught sight of it, the thing reared its head. The girls ran away screaming in fear, Oh Shit Oh Shit! A few of them appealed to God, in English, for help.

  He always keeps a tiny pencil stub in his pocket, and never misses a chance to scribble on a toilet wall. His favorite game is to sketch famous godmen and intellectuals in the company of cabaret dancers.

  When venereal disease sores appeared on his lips, he whispered, “J.K., J.K.,” and then went around kissing every woman he knew on the lips, to pass on the disease.

  His favorite pastime was to send telegrams to people he knew informing them of deaths.

  Whenever he saw someone being beaten up by a crowd on the street or on a bus, he would rush to join in and give his share of the beating until the poor man dropped dead. Sometimes he would also use his secret varma knowledge of pressure points.

  While riding on the bus, he would take out his tool and rub it against the woman standing in front of him until he ejaculated his love juice all over her clothes. Once, he did this on a nun’s white habit. She was too deep in contemplation of the spiritual world to notice, but the women around her, realizing the grievous insult to God and religion that had occurred in their presence, raised their voices and demanded to know which devil was responsible for the dirty deed. He pointed at an old man standing next to him, and quickly slipped out.

  He thinks bharatanatyam should be performed in the nude.

  He believes women should also be able to wear the sacred thread.

  The following incident took place in the southernmost part of the state, during the tourist season. It was a bright moonlit night. He was walking alone on a road when he suddenly came upon a statue of a famous caste leader. He knew at once what he had to do. He went back to a cobbler he remembered seeing next to the bus station. The

  cobbler was lying asleep on the road, using his prosthetic limb as a pillow. Emboldened by the cobbler’s loud snores, he stealthily opened the sack of chappals lying next to him. His mind was busy concocting excuses he might give if the cobbler woke up, but his heart was fearless, focused resolutely on the mission. He pulled out as many pairs of chappals as he could. On his way back to the statue, he also found a length of old nylon cord on the road. Once there, he tied the chappals together in a string, and, looking around carefully, garlanded the statue. Then, before the break of dawn, he jumped on a bus and fled from the area. The evening newspaper reported that eighteen people had been beheaded in the ensuing caste violence. The rioting had even spread into nearby towns. After the riot had raged for nine days, the police arrived, with shoot-at- sight orders, and killed twenty-seven people. The policemen—well-built men who had been staying in camps far away from their wives and fed on chicken and mutton, so it was no real surprise that they had indulged in homosexuality to relieve their tension—tried to catch the rioters, but they fled to the hil
ls. So, instead, the police broke into their homes and sexually abused their women. (All this he learned only from the Tamil newspapers; the English dailies were preoccupied with the ethnic violence in Africa.) It was reported that thirty-six women were defiled. The police commissioner announced that all the suspected policemen would be immediately suspended. But eighteen of these policemen pleaded innocent before the Supreme Court, claiming that, since they did not possess the essential male organ (Chee! What kind of bullshit term is “male organ”?), there was no way they could have been responsible for the alleged defilement.

  During his college days—even before that; during his school days—he would pick on pretty girls in his class, find out their addresses, and send them guy-girl, girl-girl, guy-guy, guy-girl-guy, girl-guy-girl, guy, guy, girl, girl—ooh la la, there’s no end to this, let’s try a different tack—some- times alone, sometimes with multiple partners, sometimes with animals, sometimes with objects—no, no, no, no, that isn’t right either, let’s get to the point—he would send them smut books in the mail. Of course, it goes without saying that he would never mention a name or return address, and would always write with his left hand. At times he would laugh to himself in class, looking at the girls whose faces were swollen from crying all night. When he got especially excited he would write love letters (again with the left hand), and sign with the name of some other boy. Many a girl was forced to discontinue her studies because of this. He had been the persistent, anonymous nightmare of several girls’ fathers all through his schooling. When he continued this game in college, a girl named Shanthi sent a reply:

  Dear Surya,

  I saw your letter. Hmm… maybe not a letter, but a poem. A poem dripping with honey. But how daring of you to write to my house address! Imagine if my parents had seen it! Even the thought scares me. You shouldn’t be such a daredevil. But I guess you’re not really that daring—you sit at the desk right next to mine in class; why didn’t you give it to me there? It’s not like I’m going to eat you alive. Mmm… but I would so like to eat you. You have such cute chubby cheeks. I want to bite your cheeks and just sink my teeth into them, Surya. Imagine you coming to college the next day with my teeth marks on your cheek! Even as I’m writing this I can’t stop laughing—I almost choked! Aiyyo… I’ll write more later… Amma is coming…