GIFTS OF DAWN

allan.aquarius@gmail.com

Allan D'Souza

Synopsis

Prologue

Friends in Need

Chapters 1 & 2

FRIENDS IN NEED 

(Synopsis)

The mystic philosopher Master Osho – nee Bhagwan Rajneesh – was known to have said: “A child’s development is complete by the age of five. Whatever he experiences by then will, formulate his later character and nothing you do or try to do, or undo, for that matter, will help in any way.”

This being so, the central theme or concept of this novel is how childhood rejection, ragging and bullying can mould – rather, mar – a man’s character. Irreversibly, irrevocably and for all time!

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FRIENDS IN NEED is a 135,000 word venture, divided into 15 chapters and 5 parts. Here Fanny, all-woman and then some... Surinder, trucker's son with big-wheel drive…. Ranjit, small-time Mafiosi with grandiose dreams…. and Aamlan, truck-driver, bootlegger, dope-fiend, resourceful purveyor, pimp, live out their frenzied karmas confounded by the inscrutable Eddie, with whom their lives are interminably intertwined. And Eddie – sly, wily, crafty, tricky, Roman Catholic Systems Analyst by day, by night chief-strategy-planner of a fundamentalist Hindu political party, and lifelong shadow of this, that and the other – plots his ruthless vendettas for errors of omission and commission. And for services rendered in the name of friendship.

They’re pals, one and all, arriving and departing – some tarrying, as and when they wish – but scarcely like the script warranted. Together, they play their respective parts on screen, directed by the highly enigmatic Eddie, central character of the story, our little hero turned…….well, whatever. There are girls, lots of them, ladies-in-waiting, men on the move, boys, friends one and all. Set predominantly in Mumbai – Bombay, in days gone by, a la Salman  Rushdie's Midnight's Children – the novel pinwheels across 4 decades, 1955 onwards, and revolves mainly around the protagonist Eddie with the others, fair-weather friends, one and all, coming and going as they please. 

And Eddie, born persona non grata, the son of a motor-mechanic and an English schoolteacher, his father wants him aborted, but his mother, a staunch Catholic decides to go ahead and have the baby. And that’s how he comes to be born. Unwanted, to begin with, rejection, rebuff, snubs, slightings and ostracism dodge his early footsteps. But then, it’s a way of life in the neighborhood, that nobody seems to mind, really. Except this li’l ‘un. Until, suddenly, he steps upon a dark secret, an esoteric revelation, so to speak – something whispered into his nocturnal ear, telling him he’s soon due for a breather.

And so it is that Eddie ends up doing the sketches for sexy Fanny’s science journals. They’re the building bigwigs, Fanny’s family, keep largely to themselves, save the select few hi-fi friends and relatives they mingle with. More importantly, they’re rich, Soon after which, the harassment stops and, together with it, the whisper campaigns, the ostracism, everything. From all quarters. Meaning to say, from then on, he’s accepted into the fold.

Emboldened by this success, Eddie goes on to replicate his feat all through life – doing favors for the biggies – and that’s how he comes to be an exam jockey in college, bearer of innocent looking briefcases to surreptitious spots, pretty girls’ escort to fancy hotel rooms and finally, social worker (sic politician) in a fundamentalist Hindu political outfit………from where he really starts firing. And then, the mayhem really begins – a bloody malady of settling scores, an interminable strain of paying-off-old-debts, returning compliments, giving more than you got – that escalates into acts of arson and rioting, stray murders, even, recounted mostly by way of press reports.

FRIENDS IN NEED is a novel about love and hate, the flip sides of the same old, grimy coin. It recapitulates the making of a modern day terrorist, the white collar criminal, who controls the fate of dozens – nay, hundreds, even thousands, perhaps. A miasmic mishmash of many real-life characters including the fabled Adolf Hitler, Carlos, Charles Shobraj and Gary Gilmore, our protagonist Eddie D'Costa, likewise, suffers rejection, ostracism intense humiliation and mortification since birth and childhood. Why even earlier; he is an aborted abortion, unwanted by his father and family; and all because they're one too many.

As the mild-mannered poet Philip Larkin has aptly put it: "They fuck you up, your mum and dad." And, right to the end of his life, he's unable to reconcile those early experiences. Essentially it’s the tale of mother’s milk turned sour in a boy, so sour, in fact, he grows up to be one of the bitterest and most acerbic men of his genre.