Mood:
incredulousNow Playing: If you are part of the solution, how can you be not part of the problem?!
Topic: SEX AND SENSIBILITIES
Recently, I met an old friend after more than two decades, when I was in the midst of tying up some loose ends of an official event; and as is the norm we went straight to combining work with pleasure -- hit the bottle. My friend, who works for a mobile network company, has set his eyes on leading the company very, rather very very soon, as a director. From his animated speech and flailing hands that could knock anyone who comes in his way to become the CEO of the company, I knew he was a born success. Success of my friend -- let's call him Prakash for the purpose of this blog, is a foregone conclusion. Just like all my friends are, for that matter.
What is so engaging about Prakash is his rags to riches story, the stuff Mumbai is made of. He was born in Vikhroli, a suburb in Mumbai known for sprawling slums and housing board residents. His father was, incidentally, a lowly peon in a telephone company, and was exceedingly poor even by Mumbai standards.
I and Prakash became friends in college for a reason. He had a fetish for fighter planes and international affairs, some thing I was immensely impressed with. In the 80s he would explain to anyone who cared to listen to him, the latest crises brewing in Trincomalee, Nicaragua, or Johannesburg, with consummate ease. At that age [and even today, for that matter] I had not seen someone with such unbelievable knowledge and ability to decipher complicated international political scenarios. There was no Google in those days to counter-check if he was right about everything that he said, but occasional newspaper reports would testify to his depth of knowledge and understanding. I was one of the few students in the college who conversed in English well, so he chose to sit with me in front benches in the class. He also had, as a hobby, a large collection of fighter plane pictures, mostly Russian. The pictures were stuck into a couple of dog-eared ledger books. He was an ardent admirer of Russian planes and their ability to give Americans back in the same coin, but he simply did not trust Russians. He was an ardent supporter of the non-aligned movement, which was quite fashionable then, because he wanted to keep India away from Russians more than India getting close to the US. Even today I am reminded and struck by his knowledge and insight of global politics when I meet think tank experts who can't make out the difference between Lahore and Islamabad. Prakash belongs to that class of people, specially made by god, with limitless talent and abilities, but who are few and far between.
After taking 12th standard exams, both of us were quite keen not to know the results. I did not have any doubt that I would fail, and he did not have any doubt that he would pass. After all, you have better things to do when you are 16 years of age than study algorithms or organic equations. A day before the results were to be declared by the board, Prakash called me on the phone to take my seat number. His father was in a telecom company who could access state education board results a day earlier.
On the fateful day I bought a fiction novel by Jeffrey Archer from a book shop near my house and travelled up and down the Mumbai suburban line twice. By the time I was on the second trip in the local train, I had finished half the book. Then I finally got down near my college. I was sure that I had failed in the exam as Prakash did not call me even after accessing the results one day earlier. I did not want to meet any of my friends that day. It was a shameful day to go through. Finally, when I reached the counter on the first floor of my college to collect my mark sheet, I saw several of my classmates lined up behind the counter. Some had exhilaration and some quiet disappointment when they collected their sheets. I decided to scurry out of the place the moment I was handed my the results. At the counter the peon only looked at my hall ticket from far without taking it in his hand, and fished out a mark sheet from the huge pile. I wrote my name and details on the foolscape sheet to acknowledge receipt of my marksheet. Even before I could hide the sheet from any prying eyes, the peon had started to fish out the next one for the guy behind me. After I left the queue I slowly opened the sheet. Several friends had gathered around me by then. At the bottom of the mark sheet, the column on percentage read 56 per cent. I turned around to tell the peon he had handed me someone else's marksheet. But then on the top of the sheet the name was mine. Something is wrong, I knew, and my first reaction was to get in touch with Prakash. I ran out of the college and at the electronic shop which had a public phone I dialed Prakash's residence number.
''Congratulations, Anil'', he said the moment I said 'hello'.
''Oh, if you knew I had also passed why did you not call me?'' I asked, a little irritated.
''It was not about you, dear'', he said, still with cheer in his voice, ''I could not make it through''.
I met Prakash that evening at his house in Bumkhana. He was crestfallen. That year, everything seemed to be going against him. Six months ago he had fallen into trouble, the kind of trouble we usually get into in our teenage. Prakash was living in a slum colony. His house had just two rooms with an attached large sink for ablution. For toilet and everything else he had to use common services close to his house.
One day, on his way back home from the public toilet and wearing only a towel, he met his next door neighbour girl. The girl was older than him, but quite an attraction for men of all ages. Prakash was known for his shy, introvert nature in his locality, and had never been seen talking to girls. That day she stood in his way and spoke in Gujarati. Being better in English than most boys in the slums, he was considered a hero by his friends and role model by their parents. After a few minutes of sweet nothings the girl suddenly pulled his towel and ran away with it. Naked, he took to his heels after her. She ran into her house, down the narrow lane, but Prakash noticed a few of his neighbours peering at this ungainly sight that morning. Young boys running nude or girls consorting with boys in slum colonies was not unusual even in those days. If the boy is rich, then the girl's parents don't even take cognizance of it, even if the young couple is found nude in bed. But Prakash was poor and unemployed. When he entered the girl's house he found they were alone, the girl's folks were away. As he entered the second room of her house that was similar to his, he saw her undress in a hurry.
First mistake, Prakash admitted to me later over a beer at a local bar, was that he should have avoided her advances that day. Second, he should have run to his house when he was stripped. And mistake number three was he didn't use a condom that day. He always had various brands of condoms in his wallet gifted by his friends, but he was already nude when he visited the next door girl. After that day he had even forgotten all about her chances of getting pregnant. Until almost a month later all hell broke loose. Police came to his house with an arrest warrant. He was hauled to the station, beaten mercilessly by the police and others in the cell, and finally told to produce Rs50,000 if he wanted to escape, while the police would look the other way. Prakash's family could only muster Rs35,000 that night. In the morning he was produced in the court and branded a rapist. The case has gone from court to court in the last 20 years, the girl is married with three college-going sons, while Prakash completed graduation and is now in senior management in a private cell phone company. He lives in Thane with his wife and two kids. Neither his wife nor the girl's husband knows about his shenanigans and police cases.
It was quite incidental that the same day I met up with another close editor friend who loves to discharge himself in front of television cameras on anything from Manmohan Singh's lack of clarity that is now proving to be an embarrassment to BJP's communal politics. We started chatting about Shiny Ahuja who is, like my friend Prakash, paying for his indiscretion and of course, his celebrity status. But my Leftist editor friend, who I thought would beat me to a pulp for taking Shiny's cause, gave me a patient hearing. Then finally shrugged and said, ''that is usually the case. The guy cannot always be blamed for sexual encounters''.
I thought this was the best opportunity to drive the peg in. I said,''then why does the media not pick up the cudgel on behalf of all those guys who have been wronged?''
''Ah, there are some things we have to grin and bear. Rape is not like terrorism or capitalism that we need to split hair over.''
''Oh, then why is Shopian case threatening to bring the Kashmir government down. People have protested on the streets for almost two months. Why don't they just grin and bear it?!''
[This is a true story heavily embellished to build narrative interest. If you find your life close to this story it's nothing but coincidence. I must thank all those who wrote in after reading my last one on Shiny Ahuja, and guess this piece can further muddy the water!]
