allan.aquarius@gmail.com

Allan D'Souza

Synopsis

Prologue

Friends in Need

Chapters 1 & 2

Chapter I

The boy in the bubble

It happened once again.

On March 4, 1996, in the pre-budget session of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly, a Bill was passed whereby Victoria Terminus, Bombay’s premier Railway Junction was rechristened Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus – CST, for short – after the 17^th century Maratha warrior-king, celebrated, amongst other things, for his success at keeping the Mughal invaders at bay. In the same vein, he was also credited with being the father of the State of Maharashtra. Seemed only logical, and appropriate, therefore, that the station be named in his honour.

“But why not the entire state?” an irate Eddie grunted, reading the newspaper report.

“What do you mean?” his wife snapped. She was a staunch Catholic, and his frequent outbursts in favour of what she considered a fundamentalist, right wing, Hindu political party were beginning to get on her nerves. Furthermore, like she said, they had no locus standi in the matter and such issues were well beyond their purview. Little did she know it then, but two years down the line, Bombay itself would officially come to be renamed Mumbai. But, what irked her most – and for that she’d never forgive him, not so long as she lived – was that they had wrecked her plans of settling down in Australia.

“I mean to say,” he growled, “such a great emperor is deserving of much more than just this!”

“You Parishadis,” his wife retorted, still not batting an eyelid “if you had your way, you’d change the whole country.”

“And why not?” he snarled. “Just look at the shape it’s in now.”

They were like that, forever quibbling over triflings. Sometimes it was personal, sometimes political, their difference of opinions covering the entire gamut of issues, from the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, to the Narmada Valley Project, Laloo Prasad Yadav’s involvement, or otherwise, in the multi-crore fertiliser scam, the leaked exam paper scam, the city’s drainage system, the roadside hawker menace, the pathetic performance of the Indian cricket, hockey and Olympic teams, who most deserved to win the Wimbledon, U.S., French or Australian Opens, was white warranted at Wimbledon, and which, by the way is the best, most honest political party in the country, the wars in Chechnya, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Sri Lanka-LTTE crisis, the Kashmir border dispute, the dilemma of domestic help, which was the best religion on earth, whether mini skirts ought to be back in fashion, are chuddies better than panties, or are both the same, is post-marital-masturbation sinful and, if not, what’s sin and what isn’t, right up to the Clinton-Lewinsky affair and, in its hilarious aftermath, who was the real winner and who the loser and ‘jus-where-the-hell-are-my-socks?’ ‘Go-find-them-yourself-I-can’t-find-my-own-damn-panties!’

Not even the state of the economy was spared and no telling when what would set them off. The points of divergence were, indeed, innumerable – times were when even the weather would be cause for conflict – for, whatever one mooted, the other almost invariably booted, ending up making a song and dance about the whole thing.

And since their return from Singapore things had only gotten worse.

That morning there’d been another row, the bone of contention this time, the computer table. She wanted it moved to another part of the room, and kept at an angle, facing the door; but he had his own ideas. He fancied his privacy, and insisted on the same corner. That did it. Another one of those times he’d succeeded in proving a point and ended up losing the war. Or was it himself he was trying to prove, all over again? He never could tell.

But she was smarter in that respect. Having picked up, somewhere along the line, that invaluable lesson about losing battles and winning wars, she chose, in her feminine prudence, to hold her tongue rather than retaliate. A practical tenet – and one she wasn’t likely to forget so easily – that had always held her in good stead. Better shut your mouth and let people think you’re a jenny-ass, rather than open it and dislodge all doubt! Whatsay?

But that still didn’t preclude him from making her feel jejune, every once in a while and then, finding himself at a loss, stalk off in a huff. On this absurd occasion, he went mooching around the house, grumpily, kicking furniture, muttering to himself. Actually, he was foraging for something; what exactly he wasn’t quite sure, right then. Finally, it dawned on him. Oh yes, he was looking for a bag, something in which to carry his personal effects home from office. He’d just quit his job and had to cart things back. Funny, how a guy could pile up so much impedimenta; at work, that too. But with him anything was possible.

“Hello, wardrobe,” he mumbled, “can you help me?”

She was still sulking in the kitchen a while later, when she heard him holler, “Where’s that bloody bag?”

She would not dignify his question with an answer.

“Hello!” he yelled. “Anybody home, or am I talking to the bloody walls?”

“Which one?” she called back, curtly.

“The one we took on our trip to Goa.”

“I don’t know,” she answered, not so much as bothering to raise raising her head, even, “go find it yourself.”

He saw no point in arguing, but ten minutes of ransacking, saw him get fed up and decide to yell, once more. It usually ended like that. He was just on the verge of howling all over again when, all of a sudden, his eyes alit upon a small attaché case he’d been ignoring for some time. He opened it and first glance told him it was his mother’s.

Everything was still in situ, like she’d just packed for a trip, except that, on this occasion she hadn’t bothered to carry anything along. There were three housecoats, two old, one new, two pairs of stockings, a few pairs of bras and underwear, stretched to the limits of their elasticity, crepe bandages for the winter – the sickly-sweet aroma of naphthalene balls wafting from them, like lilies on a breeze – three miniature statuettes of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, a silver-black abacus, a few aluminium crosses, a copy of the Bible, wrapped in burlap, a thick, hefty volume bound carelessly in black hide, peeling around the edges, its crudely-sewn-together parchment pages rendered so brittle with age, they almost seemed to disintegrate under his touch and, wow! what was that? Just what he’d been desperately looking for at Christmas!

Lacy, white cotton table-spreads, brocaded in myrtle and ivy motifs, embellished in delicate white tapestry all around the frilly fringes; the ones she’d so carefully preserved over the years. So, there they were, at last!

Then his face lit up again, as something else caught his eye. And to think, they’d lost them, too!

***

They dated back to the thirties and forties, even before his folks were wed; old photographs, most black and white, some sepia. Musty, faded pictures, yellowed with age and mildew. Only the more recent ones were in colour. Family portraits, wedding snaps, his parents, uncles and aunts, brothers, sisters, cousins; some of his grandparents even, on either side, with a couple granduncles-and-aunts thrown in for good measure. In short, the whole damn jing-bang. It was like his family history, chronicled in pictures, a testimony of what already seemed like a bygone age.

There, for instance, was his eldest brother, Peter, barely three months old and already grinning away like the world was there just to see him. His mother never tired of telling people how A.F. Rodriguez hooked up the picture right in the middle of his studio, the oldest in the heart of Panjim. To this day it stands, proud proof of his credentials as black and white photographer; even his grandsons refuse to take it away. Embarrasses Peter no end. And yet, in vain did he try to get them put it behind the counter.

There was Sr. Mercy, his mother’s younger sister. The surly nun. Turned nun no sooner than she turned thirty, somewhere in Calcutta, shocking everyone, by her impetuous decision. How come the urge to become a nun, all of a sudden? And why Calcutta, of all places? It was an itch in her groin, his mum finally told him, that refused to subside. For years.

“It’s a curse from God!” grandma hissed in a malevolent whisper, and Auntie Irene believed her. She promptly went and joined the convent. That’s how she came to take Holy Orders and become Sr. Mercy. But nobody knew the truth; the desperate years she’d spent, groping in the dark, secretly stalking eligible bachelors and, after ending up on the shelf, contracted eczema, a psychosomatic disorder, as the doctors at the convent diagnosed. But, by then it was all finished; over and done with. And nothing she did, or didn’t could ever alter the situation.

She was a wisp of a woman, the blue flags flapping like tailfins around her head rendering her the look of a dazed, wall-eyed jailbird. There she stood now, smothered from head to toe in blue habit and wimple, only the grim outlines of her puckered face, peering peevishly out of her robes of chastity, betraying the recalcitrance of true faith. But on holidays back home, he recalled, the coifed cenobite’s get-up, which the austere spirit of the convent made customary, gave way to the most colourful saris, dresses and housecoats, in fashions of utmost extravagance.

Standing beside her was her twin, Franklin. Uncle Frankie: Chief  Engineer. Rich man. Tough guy. One time body builder, two-timing, hen-pecked husband. For four decades he’d sailed the seven seas before returning home, finally, with multiple ailments under his skin, and many a ribald tale under his arm. Personal anecdotes, he called them, though everyone knew they were lies, all figments of his own imagination, concocted during his long, lonely hours at sea; utterly incredulous, out-of-this-world, sordid sagas of sex-love-and-death, mostly sex – more like revised modern day renditions of the Kama Sutra – narrated with the credibility of a Chief Engineer, in a manner that only an ex-seaman-cum-voyeur possibly could; just like the tall tales about his enormous wealth. Because, for all his fuss and bluster, this timeworn, sea-worn shippee, rather long in the tooth, his prurient acrobatics finally at an end, was as washed up as his bank balance.

Beside him was his own elder brother, Alfred. Oddly enough, he too had attempted the Marine Engineer’s test. Several attempts and an attack of jaundice later, utterly frustrated, he’d abandoned his quest for the unknown, his Christopher-Columbus-Sindbadish dreams evaporated in a whiff of yellow fever. But there he stood at four, a pot-bellied little imp, lugging an enormous camera case over his right shoulder. More resembled a deformed part of his porky anatomy. At that time he’d probably thought it was a family heirloom, or something just as priceless. But to Eddie it looked more like he was bearing the burdens of the world; at that age, too.

Poor chap; ended up doing just that.

There were some of himself too, taken since he was a child. Somehow, it felt silly looking at them, especially the nanga-ponga, nude, ones. There was a tradition in Goan families to click at least one picture of every child in the buff; and of him there were quite a few, crawling naked around the house, groping under furniture or in dark corners for little trifles and trinkets that had so excited his fancy then.

Suddenly, somewhere in the middle of a crowd, he spotted Fanny and, in an instant, a blood-tingling swell of nostalgia surged through him, making his hair stand on end – hope glows limpid in grainy black and white prints – as his childhood recalled itself. She used to be his guardian angel, his boyhood heroine, who’d helped bail him out of many a tight corner. Funny, how easily he could still call her to mind, if only he shut his eyes: that sweet, heavenly sprite who became his personal-guardian-angel, taught him a thing or two about planting his feet firmly on the ground, leading him by the hand down the tortuous passages of early life that had seemed so like hell.

You have made known to me the path of life;

You fill me with joy by your very presence. Psalms 16: 11

In years to come, he would even fallen in love with her and come to think of her as someone special, a Biblical sprite, sort of. For it was only thanks to her help that he had been able to see and do things correctly, things that had served to fill up, however ephemerally, the hole that had been created inside of him when… (But no, here I am taking certain liberties that would only confuse the reader; I must contain myself. I should, by all means, follow the dictated course of events. And so…)

***

He was born in 1955, a naked, nameless, bawling babe, the son of a motor-mechanic and English schoolteacher, the year the tenor Martin Rossi – that abominable slur on jazz and blues – swallowed a plum whose seed slurred over his gullet and slid into his wind pipe killing him, instantaneously. His uncle, Frankie, who had been residing with them at that time, summarily syncoped on hearing the news over the radio – moth sukoun, as they said in Konkani, having slipped his mind – then, in one smooth, uncontrollable gesture, slipped and fell off the stool, knocked his head on the ceramic tiled floor and suffered a mild concussion. Again instantaneously.

His mother had to rush to his side and revive him with cold water. It gave her such a fright, she was at a loss for what to do, whether to shake the man or slap him or singe him with a burning match, what with the suckling infant still at her breast. Finally she settled on cold water. Turned out it wasn’t too serious; as if she hadn’t enough problems of her own, poor lady. He used to be a great fan of the singer, Uncle Frankie; even had a collection of all his LPs, which he played over and over again on a battered, old, portable HMV record player, wired to an ancient, telefunken Grundig radiogram.

And when he wasn’t playing records he’d be tuned to Radio Ceylon. And the high arpeggios of music that oozed out of it, like psychedelic fumes, the harsh, discordant clamour of gramophones, accompanied by that continuous static hiss of the crackling radio, throbbed in Eddie’s stomach and made his ears ring. They also made big, ugly pictures form, foggily, in his head, making it spin. He detested every moment of it. But to the very end, the screwy sea-dog never managed to shake off his poor taste for things in life.

He was the youngest of four children, a fluky ingress, so to speak – and just as unwelcome. His father had always planned on a two-child family, a son and a daughter; but fate decreed otherwise. The firstborn, true to expectations, turned out to be a boy. His next attempt again resulted in a male issue. Disenchanted by his gender, his father dispassionately decided to call him Alfred. Finally, Ruby was born, the sole girl child of the family. It was before the days of sonography, so until the very end, he hadn’t a clue to the sex of the child. But when at last the man discovered, his joy knew no bounds.

It was only in a fit of exhilaration that he resumed sexual congress with his wife, she later told Eddie – and that was precisely what the word ‘Congress’ would always connote to him, for the rest of his life. That was how he came to be conceived. His father wanted him aborted, of course, but his mother, would have none of it. She was a devout Catholic and, by nature, almost preternaturally sanguine about such things – Devaachi khushi, God’s wish, she called it. She decided to go ahead and have the baby.

So Eddie was finally, and reluctantly, born – at Dr. Vitus Sequeira’s hospital, Mazagaon. He even remembered the exact day, date and time recorded by his mother – Sunday, February 6^th, 1955, 2 am. A month and a half later, to the day, he was baptized, at St. Vincent’s: Edward Francis D’Costa, thenceforth, and for all and sundry, to be known as Eddie.

His father didn’t go to see him, of course, nor did any of his kith and kin, even though they visited the maternity home. His mum knew as much. Neither did she, nor they, labour under any illusions on that score. It was a purely perfunctory gesture, a duty they were performing. Like some time-honoured ritual. And simply because it was expected of them. Apart from that, they continued to reject him; right to the very end. Peter, on the other hand, was the pampered one; and Ruby, of course, the apple of her father’s eye. Between the two of them, they had the run of the house; ended up hogging the lion’s share of everything, the attention of the family, in particular.

***

His earliest memories were of his mother, how she doted on him, poor thing; even lugged him around wherever she went – to the bazaar, the flourmill, the ration-shop, to the school where she had to drop Alfred. He was a frail, sickly child, given to moods of depression. How she managed to leave him to the care of the servant and go to school herself, baffled everyone. Times were when she’d even had to cart him to the loo with her. He used to be in awful dread of strangers; wouldn’t let anyone get anywhere within stroking distance, let alone carry him, even though everyone so wanted to, on account of how cute and cuddly he looked. More adorable, in fact, than his brothers and sisters, even cuter than all the other babies in the building. Except that his nose was always running, so his mother had to constantly be after him with a hanky.

There was a large playing field in front of their building – the tallest in the suburb, hemmed in by slums and shanties – almost half the size of a football pitch that would get inundated during the monsoons, and whose slimy waters they had to wade through on their way to school; a shallow pond that came into being with unfailing regularity for three weeks every year, splotched with natant water-borne filth, regurgitated by the cesspools that dotted the roads, only to be exsiccated by the scorching sun, leaving in its wake an iridescent, yellow-green mulch.

There was one at the back as well, half the size of the compound in front, which the kids later turned into a vegetable plot. It grew well, everyone’s patch did – thanks, in some measure, to their labours, as to the robust rains that were, as much the bane of their lives – until one day, Nelson, in a fit of fury at not being inducted into the football team, went on the rampage and vandalised the whole place, leaving the building committee with no other choice but to disallow the disportment and cement the grounds.

Earlier that year Eddie had been allotted half a plot to himself and, surprisingly, all but his patch was ravaged. But that was in sixty-six, shortly after he turned eleven, the year the family moved to a larger house in Kirol, an industrial area in another dingy suburb of Bombay.

                                                                        ***

But it was only Koliwada he could think of as home, preposterous as it may sound, for that was where he was tormented most. But then, it was a way of life in the neighbourhood that nobody seemed to mind much – and, if they did, were careful never to say so. Ragging without rhyme or reason, for the sheer fun of it, unless otherwise designed to gratify some perverse, sadistic desire (or, as they said, just like that. God forbid, in later years the city was to even come out with a not-so-popular youth rag by that name). ‘Fingering’, they called it, an Anglophone derivation of its Hindi equivalent, gaand-ungli: which literally means driving a finger up another’s arse, a term that gained wide currency during the days of the Raj. As a kid, his brother, Peter and pals, were made to kneel on grains of salt and pray the Angelus aloud, or the Rosary, should they ever be found wearing one. Sometimes stark naked, penis in one hand, Rosary in the other.

Fate intervened, and Peter was ransomed in the nick of time by his widowed maternal grandmother – that’s how much the brat was pampered – who, even though she loathed kids, after the way, she claimed, her own brood had sucked the life out of her, said she’d sooner tend to him than the boredom, that was threatening to kill her. Which still didn’t prevent it from prevailing, for that’s what she died of, eventually, after he ditched her in favour of a Bombay College education. But that was where he completed High School. Eddie was less fortunate in that respect; he studied at St. Jerome’s, Koliwada, which was okay, so long as Alfred was around. He was five years his senior and, in a manner of speaking, his custodian at school.

But even that didn’t stop the boys from bullying him.

They had the typical high-school hierarchy; you either belonged to the big-boys-gang, that fingered others, or you were a sycophant. And squealed. He was neither; he refused to lick ass, refused to rat, refused to mix. His only saving grace was his track record at studies; he stood first in class, which inadvertently won him the affection of his teachers. That, and the fact that he was frail and sickly, came from a poor family and was, for these reasons perhaps, ill favoured by his buddies, seemed to work to his advantage. And, but for his horrible nail biting, which everyone found so disgusting, he could well have been the odds-on pet of the staff and teachers alike. But try as he might, he couldn’t rid himself of the habit. In fact, it wasn’t until after he was well out of college and into work that he somehow managed to outgrow the rabid propensity. 

Even so, it continued to assault him every once in a while – just like the fog and the pee – like the time he entered college, ran into Loretta, then Maureen, when the peon copped it, when first he set eyes upon Giselle, or, worst of all, after the death of Joy’s son in that tragic motorbike accident. But all that is to come much later. Meanwhile…

***

There were four floors to the building, each comprising five one-room tenements that reeked, perpetually, of fish and meat – pungent fried fish on weekdays, pork-mutton-chicken on Sundays, fried onions and garlic all throughout. Then there was the boozy stench, emanating from dark corners of the corridors and public loos at the end of passageways, men so blissfully left behind. Squalid, squatting toilets constructed especially for use of the servants; smoky, stinky cauldrons, in which the big boys smoked beeris, wanked off, canoodled with each other or humped the lowly housemaids in upright positions. The pestilential air was forever acrid with beeri smoke, decaying faeces and other all-too-unmentionable odours. To add to it, heat intensified the stench of putridity and ordure; pools of piss and lumps of shit everywhere, mosquitoes buzzed viciously, cockroaches crawled all over the place, the walls pullulated with blotches of red-betel-spit, mucous, crud and other oh-so-filthy graffiti.

How they could bring themselves to do things in there was beyond reckoning. Worse still, they’d shove kids into it, right in the middle of the Rosary, then foxily turn the other way. Make it look like nothing had happened. They always worked in pairs and even though he was careful never to venture anywhere near it, every so often they’d manage to work things out in such a way – especially when Alfred wasn’t around – that it was the only spot left vacant. And, sure enough, Eddie’d end up in the loo, everybody’d burst out laughing and Willie, the Wimp, would try, vainly, to cajole them into silence and continue praying. But they paid little heed to his whimpers.

They were Catholics – Macs or Makapaos – every single one of them, Anglos, Goans or Mangloreans (otherwise called Mangys), mostly D’Sousas, D’Silvas or Fernandeses, with the stray Tamil or Keralite family – rechristened Karela Catholics, after a bitter gourd, on account of their alleged bitterness to everybody and everything in life – to mitigate the monotony, all forever vying with each other, bickering and snickering in a vain bid to prove the superiority of their castes and classes.

The Goan and Anglo-Indian women only wore dresses, the others were all sari-clad, with both groups constantly taking digs at each other, either for their dress sense or for their sense of humour, horse sense, house décor, the taste or smell of their cooking, husbands’ salaries, the growth or diminution of their kids. Add to it the fair share of wizened old moms haranguing hapless daughters-in-law, or bitching about neighbours and passers-by in the colony, boozards brawling in the compounds and you have it.  The perfect picture.

That’s where he grew up, in a Catholic neighbourhood, in a Catholic building, Eucharist Mansion, amidst Catholic neighbours, where a slip of the tongue or the slightest lapse of awareness could land you in deep shit, just as easily as the excuse, ‘jus-fingering-men’ could get you away with anything short of murder!

Friends the weirdo had none, right from the start. Until Sandra, perhaps, who, rather unwittingly, turned out to be the sting in the tail.

Chapter 2

The way the bubble burst

His only fond reminiscences of his early days were the commendations from his schoolteachers. He’d never forget the first – he was only in the second standard then – even though, at that time, he hadn’t liked it one bit, and simply because he didn’t understand a word it said. Besides, at that age he’d have preferred something more substantial, a book or a toy perhaps, like the other boys received, and all kids that age fancy, something he could read or put to use. Even so, a prize is a prize. And sensing, rather than seeing his disappointment, his teacher, Mrs. Carvalho, patted him, gently, on the head and said, “In years to come, Eddie, you’re going to love it the most. Meanwhile, don’t hide your light under a bushel.” But even that reassuring remark bounced way over the little fellow’s head.

It was a good thing his mother saved it up for him and, years later, it still found pride of place on the living room mantelpiece, where it remained until the very end. It was a wooden plaque that simply read:

His thoughts were slow, his words were few,

       And never formed to glisten.          

But, oh, what a joy to all his friends,

You should have heard him listen.

A short verse, pregnant with amplitude of nuance.

And yet, for all that, back home he largely had to fend for himself. His mother was there to watch over him as best she could, but even she wasn’t around at all times. Neither was Alfred; he had his friends, his own books and stuff to attend to. So, Eddie preferred to spend time with his sister, which subsequently earned him his first moniker: ‘Sissy’.

Next came Sandra, Uncle Eli’s daughter, he was oh-so-madly smitten by when he was barely eight and she not yet five, a chubby, bubbly, roly-poly lass who, even though several years their junior, and a head shorter than most, loved nothing more than to give the boys a run for their money; literally, at anything and everything – an atavistic trait, perhaps, that let her drub her playmates, regardless of their age, size, sex or stature – from racing to hopping, to skipping, arm wrestling, carpet wrestling, or sand wrestling, lungdi, catching cook or kho-kho, right up to tug of war, football and cricket, the end of which invariably saw them beat, shelling out their meagre pocket monies, a booty she always shared with the victor.

Only natural that everyone wanted her on their team. But they were like carrots and peas, she and Eddie; stubbornly stuck to the same side, no matter what, and nothing anybody did or tried to do would make them change their minds. Or hearts. What followed, therefore, were only to be expected – boos, hisses and nicknames.

***

Roly Poly, Roly Poly, up, up, up,

Roly Poly, Roly Poly, down, down, down,

Roly Poly, Roly Poly, out, out, out,

Roly Poly, Roly Poly, in, in, in.

Roly Poly, Roly Poly, huck, huck, huck,

Roly Poly, Roly Poly duck, duck, duck,

Roly Poly, Roly Poly suck, suck, suck,

Roly Poly, Roly Poly, fuck, fuck, fuck!

***

After that, he found himself gradually getting isolated from the boys; they didn’t call him to play, didn’t invite him over to their warm, smelly homes, or to any of their boisterous birthday parties. He, for his part, refrained form any move to camaraderie. From the very beginning, it was noticed he was not disposed to companionship.

To start with, were Terence and Joseph, pious Pecksniffs from the D’Souza family, both aspirants to priesthood and already, at that early age, the last word in diplomacy and tact. It amazed him to see them outdo each other in doublespeak, run with the hare and hunt with the hound, just to be on the good side of all.

“You know, Eddie, you’re right,” Terence would say, with the air of Solomon reincarnated, “but Colanco, you’re also right. It’s just a misunderstanding.”

“What’s that?” Eddie would ask, innocently, little realising he was inviting trouble already.

“There!” Terence would exclaim, theatrically, “If you knew that you wouldn’t have had any difference of opinion at all.” But in those early amorphous years, when reasoning had only just begun, he didn’t even know the meaning of such big words, and all their snooty English, their cut-above-the-rest big-talk was just Greek to him. It baffled him, as much as the Latin prayers they had at their finger-tips, like precocious little kids who rattled off their multiplication tables: from In nomini Patri et fili et spiritu santi to Ave Maria, Pater Noster, Gloria in excelsis Deo, Laudate Dominus, Ora pra nobis, Mea culpa to Dominus vobiscum, Amen, they just trolled off their tongues. They also knew the meanings of all those inconsequential, and in those loosely pious times, highly decorative words, like summum bonum, sanctum sanctorum, sic semper tyrannis! Resurgam! Gloria Patri, Requiescat in pace, Angus dei, Corpus Christi, Salvador, Deo gratias, Et tu Brut, et cetera, which they spieled off with gusto!

Their father, Willie, otherwise known as ‘the Wimp’, in Konkani, conducted the Rosary in the ground floor passageway, in front of a picture of Mary, Help of Christians, during the summer holidays, better known, for reasons unknown, as the month of May Devotion. Ironically, they were the first to step on to his uncannily deep attachment to his mother and lost no time in making the most of it. They promptly set about devising ways and means of chasing him off; first diddle him out of the right to bat or bowl, by screaming in the nick of time, “Eddie, go home soon, your mummy’s crying.” And, swallowing their bait, the poor kid would drop everything, turn tail and flee, his terror sending him scurrying blindly back home, in a state of wet-pant panic, only to find everything was fine. Soon everybody took the ruse to shoo him off.

At times, under the pretext of being admitted into the circle, he’d be set up, inveigled into saying and doing the wrong things, only to have the whistle blown and be trapped in the end, in a mulch of ugly accusations, then subject to the gentle, yet insulting, ministrations of the superiors, primarily priests and nuns, their tactful approbations echoing a quiet concord with the majority – those ugly, putative schoolboy scandals, naive yet grave, that few thought to take seriously, and none believed would go such a long way.

But then ‘Majority Wins’, a popular chant in the neighbourhood, had always been and would continue to remain the chief defining characteristic of their society, as he would learn, little by little, over the years. Even so, who could blame them? His befuddled gaze, crabby temper, almost trembling limbs and nervous gait seemed ever ready summons for derision, a routine, per diem already; sometimes, as and when the opportunity presented itself – such as the Rosary or midnight mass – nocturnal even.

At other times, he’d be sent out on fool’s errands – just like that – only to be sniggered at, eventually; the perfect, born-natural fall guy for their pranks. And for days after, they’d cast it in his teeth, grinning fleeringly, every time they saw him. No matter what he tried to do, or did, or didn’t do, for that matter, he failed to make the cut. But to all these affronts, his profound hurt and resentment, notwithstanding, he submitted passively. Another thing it was noticed, right from the start: he never talked back. Not that it would have mattered much.

Or would it?

Only time would tell.

***

Time it was, and what a time it was….

It was a good time,

A time for innocence,

A time for confidences.

Long ago, we were young,

I have a photograph………..

***

There was no dearth of opportunities to rag him and they never missed a single chance – opening, break, prospect or possibility – of fingering. They were upon him at every single turn. But it wasn’t just him. Could be anyone. Then again, once they got you, you were tagged. For life. Bakra, prey. You had to be on guard at all times, or else……….. They were like that. The whole building, the colony, locality. The slightest leeway or latitude, and they were on you, like a pack of wolves. And this poor fellow offered more than ample margin for mayhem.

A chronic bed-wetter, to start with, he was either getting spanked by his father or sneered at by his sister who, to add insult to injury, carried tales to the building kids, the morning after; all part of their sibling rivalry. She had that giddy impudence, so typical of the sole girl child of the family, a trait, which, somehow, continues to be her prerogative no matter how old she grows. Gave him the willies, but there was precious little he could do to curb her antics. Or that dreadfully disgusting habit. He’d even go to the loo, religiously before bedtime, but that still didn’t stop him from peeing in bed once or twice a week. Then, there was a problem with his stomach, which, like his nose, was always on the run, and nothing his mother did and no amount of medication would remedy.

“There’s nothing the matter with him,” the family doctor consoled, “it’s just his constitution. In time, everything will be fine.” Meanwhile, the problem persisted, another big source of embarrassment. And humiliation. There was no telling when he’d ask to be excused, which allowed even more room for ridicule. To make matters worse, his nervousness and insecurity were compounded by a morbid fear of ghosts. Never could enter a dark room alone, not if he had to fetch something, not if he had to relieve himself, even.

Add to it all the terrors of war – the 1962 Chinese Aggression, the 1965 Indo-Pak war, the 1971 Battle for Bangladesh, fought over Indian skies – wailing sirens, sudden blackouts right in the middle of the evening meal, aircraft howling overhead with whole families huddled around the radio for the latest news, all of which he was mute spectator to. God it was simply terrible! But that only made it so much more fun to scare the shits out of the kids, Eddie in particular, and most delightful grist for Betty Miranda’s mill.

She was Rowena’s aunt, still a spinster then, well into her thirties; eagle-eyed, hawk-nosed bird, she’d just swoop down on every chance of playing havoc with the little ones: you-hoo, our building’s getting bombed tonight! And, know what, everyone’s going to get blown right through the windows! She lived with her brother, Rowena’s podgy father and even chunkier mother, midgets both, who waddled about their third floor flat, making the ground quake underfoot as they stirred awake each morning. Ever so often she’d make it a point to drop in on the D’Costas, under the pretext of playing with Ruby, and invariably end up making Eddie cry – while everyone giggled and his mother watched in lock-jawed silence – then pacify the poor fellow and leave. 

“Just joking, baba, don’t cry.”

But he hated it. Hated having to be reminded that he’d wet the bed the night before, or a week or fortnight or month ago. Or whenever, for that matter. He hated himself for the horrendous habit and, even at that age, entertained strange fantasies of having his nunnu, penis, cut off and cast into the fire, once and for all, if only to spare himself any further embarrassment. Or, probably have it encased in a plastic contraption with a special outlet, that automatically collected all the pee, then drained it off on its own. But nothing like that ever happened, nor ever would. He’d continue to piss and Betty, to tease, with his sister and company in tow. And, just in case modern medical science did come up with such an incredible contrivance for draining pee, there’d still be a problem with his nose, and anus, all of which, invariably, and obstinately refused to stop running.

***

Also on the third floor, bang opposite the Mirandas lived Joaquim, self-acclaimed ‘fingermaster’ who, besides other things, initiated the boys into the pleasures of smoking and drinking, though he himself was careful to indulge in only sparingly. Sly bastard! The whole day he’d spend clowning around, then study all night long in the balcony with the curtains drawn, under the glow of a dimly lit forty-watt bulb, carefully shielded by a lampshade, so nobody would know. But everyone knew, and, seen from the outside, silhouetted against his window in that ominous pool of russet, jack-o'-lantern light, poring dolefully over his books, the fellow looked more treacherous than ever.

He was an ungainly chap, of awkward proportions and funny gait – pigeon-toed, he walked with a slight limp, his left leg being a tad shorter than his right. But despite his ambulatory awkwardness, he would not have cut such a sorry figure, had it not been for his obnoxious and totally absurd dress-sense. He insisted on wearing loose, bilious shirts and tight trousers, with pointed shoes, simply because they happened to be the fashion of the day which, when he walked gave the impression that there were two of him. His head and torso looked like they were his, while the waist, hips and legs belonged to another.

A creep, a no-good louse, if ever there were one, sneaky, to boot, this one also happened to be a pioneer of sorts. Squired most of the latest fads and fancies into the building, the words ‘bloody and bugger’, for instance, except that he pronounced them ‘bleddy’ and ‘beggar’, so that soon, everyone took to swearing ‘bleddy this’ and ‘bleddy that’, and, before long, the whole building was resounding to a chorus of ‘bleddies’. They either had to go to ‘bleddy school’ or have a ‘bleddy bath’ or eat their ‘bleddy grub’ or have to listen to their ‘bleddy pops’ or ‘bleddy moms’. Somehow, Nelson always found reason to call everybody and everything ‘bleddy shit!’ and as usual, reached his triumphant culmination in, ‘finger-de-bugger’, ‘finger-de-bugger’, ‘bugger dat bleddy Eddie!’

***

O bleddy, O bledda, life goes on, da,

Da, da, da, da, the life goes on!

And so it went.

***

In summer, it was customary for the kids to be sent for crew cuts; they’d return from the streetside barbers looking, for all purposes, like shorn sheep, salaaming everybody with a ‘Ram Ram’, or risk getting slapped on the nape of the neck. Mercilessly. It stung like hell, but it was another of those practices – again introduced by Joaquim – the neighbourhood didn’t seem to mind much. Somehow, our little fellow always ended up getting whacked the most – just like that – and always ended up scuttling home in tears.

Worse still were the grown-ups; not content with just egging the kids on, give them a foot up, so to speak, they even went so far as to precipitate monkeyshine. Like, they’d ask simple, apparently innocuous questions, “Hey, Eddie, why does everybody call you ‘Sissy’?” and laugh.  He’d make no reply, even though it made him cringe on the inside.

It was, besides other things, an expedient way of resolving grown-up conflicts. There were lots of them, and they were always homing in on the soft spots, each other’s kids. And Eddie, it turned out, was somehow always the softest target. But what nobody knew was that, all the while something else was transpiring within, transmogrifying the sissy into something else.

Finally, Aquilo Fernandes – Fuckandes to all – head of the sole East-Indian family in the building: Master Fingermaster, bung-nosed, swarthy and morose, who, at forty-eight, still joined the kids in play, ostensibly to help organise their games, actually for the sheer delight of terrorising the little ones. He was small built, even for an Indian, but fat, extremely fat and bald as a brown egg. His round brown face always glistened with perspiration – which he’d swipe with the back of his hands, then anoint the seat of his pants – and he always walked around with a few days growth of beard, his glabrous pate, hard, smooth and shiny, crooning a caustic counterpoint to his stubbly, protuberant chin.

The man was extremely slovenly, with small grubby hands, little beady eyes that were sharp and shifty, a bitchy wife – who was equally sharp and shifty – and two antsy daughters, spoilt rotten. Then there was his chronic bronchial-asthma, which sent him into tenebrous paroxysms of wheezing and coughing, leaving him gasping and sputtering for breath during which times, retching and with streaming eyes, he’d grope about wildly for the first support within reach, human, wooden or concrete. His hunched figure was a familiar sight, hacking and hawing, spitting copiously, or doubled up over streets and sidewalks, nose pinched between forefinger and thumb spraying snot shamelessly all over the place, sometimes even on the landings, then polishing his hands on the railings. Or on his clothes.

All of which, put together, made his life so miserable, he vented his venom, snot and spittle, on any and everyone he could – sending everyone scampering for cover, no sooner did they hearken his footfalls – Eddie in particular, whom he always found easy prey. It was he, in connivance with fingermaster Joaquim – the two worked like worms in a pod – who’d instituted the practice of tagging people with nicknames, imposing his frustrations, bully-fashion, on the neighbourhood! In later years, Eddie would work for a pain-in-the ass, one Joy Mukherjee by name, pretty much like this stinker, who, but for the fact that he wasn’t so slovenly, would otherwise remind him every inch of the fellow.

“What’s the biddle letter of ‘big’?” he’d ask Eddie in the midst of a large group, in his laryngitis-bronchitis-bung-nosed sotto voce, all the while digging his nose with relish.

“I,” the boy would reply, innocently, at which he’d holler out, “So that beads you’re a big, is id?” while the others laughed uproariously and the boy turned red in the face.

“Do’t worry,” he’d reassure the child, with a patronising pat, “I’b just jokig. I bead to say you’re a big boy, dot a big,” his gibes and taunts always followed by the customary consolations and backpats, oh-so-conciliatory, so very typical of their society. But somehow, the joking never ceased, nor were the tepid palliatives really effective. From there it was that the boy derived a nascent aversion to pats on the back. Even then, he was able to tell the difference between the honest and hypocritical, the real and the reprehensible.

But, for all that, Aquilo was a devout Catholic; attended daily mass, was on the panel of almost every church committee, including the Parish Council, the Legion of Mary and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, and always first-in-line for Saturday confession. For a while, he’d even been entrusted custody of the altar boys, where again he made sure to give Eddie the works. And thanks to him, the boy’s nicknames spread to church and school as well.

***

But all this Eddie suffered in silence – smarting on the inside, head hung low – not so much as a whimper of protest escaping those resolute lips, further earning their contempt for skulking shamefacedly away. It wasn’t long before it became obvious how much they hated him, a discovery so terrible for him to endure that, from then on, ad nauseum, he started to keep an eagle eye on the boys, minutely analysing their strengths and weaknesses, his prying eyes constantly on the look out for Achilles’ heels and, above all, what he called ‘a chink in their collective armour’. Socially he was already beyond the pale. He withdrew further and further into himself and there was no telling how he would turn out.

Subsequently, he was left with little choice but to spend time with Sandra and the girls. It vexed his mother no end, until, the boys of a neighbouring building, on seeing his plight, bid him join them. With Sandra, of course, in tow. Which only served to further fan the flames of rancour. The building boys promptly riposted, stepping up their persecution campaign with renewed vigour. They debarred him from all activities – Deep-six! Eighty-six! – including the idle jaunts that led them, chirpily, to school each day.

Their closing of ranks was absolute and executed with a flair that far belied their ages; the way they’d put their heads together and whisper – nudge-nudge, wink-wink – every time he made his appearance, then split every which way, that time-tested tactic, that is the most provenly lethal weapon of the pack. They did nothing, in fact, to hide their displeasure, shying away from him, as if he bore a dreaded disease; and whosoever he was with, made it amply clear they wished he were with somebody else. Soon even goody-goody Terence and Joseph, from the God-fearing D’Souza family, both contenders to cassocks, already the epitome of rectitude, in an act of silent solidarity, chose to cast their lot with the mainstream. For, eventually, as they said, Majority Wins.

But it was all done oh-so-diplomatically, so tactfully. First they smiled and waved at him, but didn’t speak; slowly they took to ignoring him then, finally, stopped speaking to him altogether. When asked why, they simply smiled and said: “Just like that.” This feeling of being amongst his own kith and kin, yet out in the cold was more than flesh and blood could endure. Even so, it didn’t end there.

For, finally, seeing how nothing would get him to toe the line, their line, in disdain, they took to scrawling ‘420’ against his name on the walls of the landings. In the Indian Penal Code, it is the act, under which a man is charged for dishonourable deeds. Quite natural, therefore, for an unpopular fellow to be dubbed ‘420’. So it went, without bar or barrier: sissy, arsehole, freak, nerd, twerp, mama’s-boy, ladyfinger, crybaby, namby-pamby, steel-body-Phantom, shit-pot, bed-wetter, snot-nose, piss-head, lakdi-pehelwan, chuthiya­-bugger, bleddy-Eddie, 420 and such like portmanteau-epithets that were not uncommon in that day and place. What an eddy of aspersion, swirling around one simpleton. Eddy, indeed! But then, as they also said in Konkani, the calf that strays from the pack always has a big name. Not big, as in big! But, BIG!

As in big bum, big boobs, big balls, Big Shit!

Alas, what a host of humiliations follow fools. But was he a fool, really? Only time will tell.

In the beginning, until the miracle of Eve, he dreaded, but could do little about it; and yet, heart-of-hearts it tormented him, driving him beyond the limits of endurance until, finally, it hounded him to his last resort. He started to withdraw within himself, retreating into an impassive silence; quietly, he stole into that mystery of inner space, with little or no interest in fun and games. Not for him the lively schoolboy shenanigans of a little lad’s life, its teetery-bender highs and lows, the devilish, little-angel-pranks of climbing trees and stealing raw-mangoes from a neighbour’s garden, the kid-stuff tom-foolery of knocking on doors or ringing doorbells, then running amok down passageways and back alleys, screaming madly, playing chor-police, gilli-danda, seven-tiles or marbles. Or learning how to ride a bike, for that matter. Call it fate, kismet or karma, all these things were denied him by virtue of his higher sensitivities, this earnest but rather solitary and inward boy.

***

And Solitaire’s the only game in town,

And every road that takes him, takes him down…..

While life goes on around him everywhere,

He’s playing Solitaire.

***

The American Nobel Prize winner, John Steinbeck has written, ‘…there are two possible reactions to social ostracism – either a man emerges determined to do better, purer and kindlier or he goes bad, challenges the world, and does even worse things. This last is by far the commonest reaction to the stigma.’

As he grew, this one continued to suffer from the affliction of silence and introvertedness and, over a period of time, unbeknown to him, not only grew accustomed to it, he actually came to relish his unsavoury status: the Mute Witness. Meanwhile, from his vantage point on the periphery of life he beheld the antics of those around, comforted by the knowledge that there he was impervious to all harm. Like Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha, aloof, incongruous, perched on the banks of the Ganga, saw the whole universe in the river of life flow by, so also did the flow of life in Koliwada offer this little ‘un a delightful insight into the mutating nature of the human mind, its piquant plots and plans, its tangy motives. Immured as he was, in the fog he was certain they couldn’t even see him.

Which was another thing. From his earliest days, he was plagued by a feeling of being swathed in mist, a cloud of blurring grey, the physical equivalent of surround sound, shrouding all familiar sensations – sights, sounds, smells, what the hell, touch, even! – out of existence. They seemed to reach him with diffused clarity, especially during the summer months when the air turned so oppressively gooey, mucilaginous, and his biliousness was at its peak, the manifest world, things, people all forms of matter appeared to be flicking about the gaseous haze like a profligacy of cold tongues of fire, and he was left with the feeling that everything was happening outside the realm of the smoggy air – automobiles, cycles, pushcarts, trains, buses, dogs, cats, people, two-thirds of their lives screened from his eyes; and he, likewise, from theirs. It was as if his senses were muted by a mitigating medium that let messages be transmitted only very faintly. And yet, he seemed to be soaking up an awful lot; surprisingly, even more than most other kids his age.

“There’s nothing the matter with him,” the irate family doctor, Thakkar, demurred, with an impatient wave of his hand. “It’s all in his head. Or maybe it’s his pith prakriti,” alluding dismissively to his biliousness, a metabolic imbalance, that’s said to result in hazy spells.  “He’ll soon get over it.”

“It’s all in your head,” his mother comforted. “You’ll soon get used to it.”

He didn’t. Never did, in fact. But already, at that early age, his mother thought she detected in her son an internal awriness, the effects of which, she feared, would never be fully altered. And, even though ungrudgingly optimistic about her little boy’s prospects, at the same time she was, secretly, not a little sceptical about his future. Her intuition could well have proved right, thanks to the exigencies of his sorry state, so peremptorily brushed aside with a cursory wave of the hand; for, even in later years, long after he’d passed out of school, after he had graduated from engineering college and successfully secured a management degree then become Systems’ Analyst, even in the finest hour of his achievement, when he’d become chief jan sevak of the Seva Parishad, a much coveted position, he still continued to be assailed, from time to time, by that strange, indefinable feeling of being trapt in smog.