Marginal Man Read online

  by the same author

  1. Zero Degree

  2. To Byzantium: A Turkey Travelogue

  3. Unfaithfully Yours

  Original in Tamil, Exile: ©2011 Charu Nivedita

  English Translation, Marginal Man

  English translation and all editorial material copyright © 2018 Zero Degree Publishing

  First Edition: January 2018

  By Zero Degree Publishing

  ISBN 978-81-935283-3-4

  ZDP Title: 5

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, psychic, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  Except a few historical names and incidents, the names, characters and incidents portrayed in this work are of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

  Logo design: Aditya R.

  Zero Degree Publishing

  12/7,Bay Line Apartments, 2nd Cross Street,

  R.K. Nagar, Thiruvanmiyur, Chennai 600 041

  Mob : 9840065000 | www.zerodegreepublishing.com

  Email : [email protected]

  Typeset by : Compuprint, Chennai 86.

  Printed at : Manipal Technologies Ltd., Manipal

  Publishers’ Note

  Writers are the cultural identity, the memory of the aeon, the conscience and the voice of the society. By the sheer magic of their art, they surpass the barriers of language, land and culture. Any country should pride itself on possessing writers – national assets – whose works in translation have the potential to catapult them into international renown.

  The Latin American Boom during the 1960s and ‘70s was a launchpad era that thrust names such as Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Jorge Luis Borges and Mario Vargas Llosa into the Anglophone literary world where they enjoyed a plausive reception.

  Publication of translated nineteenth-century Russian literature fetched Tolstoy and Chekhov iconic status. Due to the availability of and the demand for their works in translation, Haruki Murakami of Japan and Orhan Pamuk of Turkey have become bestselling writers to watch in the present day and age.

  What we understand from all of this is that translation and publication are fruitful endeavors that engage national writers and their oeuvres with the world at large and vice versa.

  Zero Degree Publishing aims to introduce to the world some of the finest specimens of modern Indian literature, to begin with, we take great pride in introducing Tamil literature in English translation because, as Henry Gratton Doyle said, “It is better to have read a great work of another culture in translation than never to have read it at all.”

  – Gayathri Ramasubramanian & Ramjee Narasiman

  Publishers

  to

  gayathri, sriram and ramjee

  who made this

  happen

  Freshness in fiction is like freshness in fish. Go down to the market, prod a carp or two, check the gills, watch for eyebright. Give the great white NATO shark a miss (bland), pass on Bengal river fish (duff), steer clear of the latest electric eel from Norway. They’ve been poked to death. But what’s this piranha doing here? Don’t let the name scare you. Charu Nivedita’s reputation runs ahead of him. Stick your toe in the water. He could make short work of it but watch him size you up: he’s alive and watching you back, unlike your average punter who puts out a book and turns away. He’s said to eat human flesh, but don’t we all. Don’t be deceived by the devil-may-care attitude: he cares deeply, insanely, oceanically for life and love and the things that matter. I could list them but it’s best if you find out for yourself, and have a feast in the bargain. Piranha’s delicious, daring, and doesn’t cost the earth. Take Charu Nivedita home, scale him, gut him, grill him; take him with a pinch of salt, a twist of lemon. You’ll never eat better, and you’ll never touch stale fiction again.

  IRWIN ALLAN SEALY

  Autobiography? No, that is a right reserved for the important people of this world at the end of their lives, a refined style. Fiction, of events and facts strictly real; autofiction, if you will, to have entrusted the language of an adventure to the adventure of a language, outside of the wisdom and the syntax of the novel, traditional or new. Interactions, threads of words, alliterations, assonances, dissonances, writing before or after literature, concrete, as we say, music.

  Serge Doubrovsky, “Fils”

  Prologue

  In 1914, the king of Nilambur prayed to Lord Guruvayurappan to solve every problem that dogged his kingdom. To return the favor, he donated one of his elephants to the temple. The ten-year-old elephant was named Kesavan. This elephant, like the smartest boy in the class, was the smartest in the herd. It kept fast with the humans twice a month on Ekadashi days. This smart-as-a-whip elephant was special in more ways than one. It would deign to carry only Guruvayurappan, no one else and nothing else. No matter how much you cajoled it, bribed it or threatened it, it would not participate in any other temple feasts and fests. Any number of jabs with the mahout’s goad would elicit nothing more than a few silent tears. Such was the steadfast stubbornness of the elephant.

  The festival idol is called thiruveli in Malayalam. In Kerala, the thiruveli is placed at the center of a flat wooden plank. Kesavan would stoop only to the bearer of the thiruveli, in order that he might climb onto his back. Even if a person brandished the biggest bunch of bananas in front of him, he would have to climb the elephant from the back just because he was not holding the thiruveli.

  Starvation and isolation were the consequences of his stubbornness, but even the lack of food and company did not alter his nature. He endured all with silent dignity and tears. One day, it was decided that Kesavan would not carry the thiruveli any longer. In its stead, he would carry loads. The elephant, though obstinate, did not have a rebellious streak. The mahouts feared he would go into musth and run amok, leaving powder and pulp in his wake. No grinding spree ensued. The elephant carried on like a martyr.

  In 1970, on the Ekadashi day of the month of Margazhi, another elephant was supplied to bear the thiruveli. Kesavan lay all alone, weeping during the merrymaking.

  In the beginning there was the sky. From the sky came the air, and from the air came fire; from fire came water, and from the water came land. So says the Pancha Bhoota theory. That day, however, water turned into fire when Kesavan’s tears turned into drops of flame. Soon there was a fire raging round the temple, threatening to make ash of all and sundry. Kesavan trumpeted like never before and the whole of Guruvayur heard it. He started to dump sacks of sand onto the flames that were soon snuffed. If not for the elephant’s intellect, Guruvayur would have turned into a crematorium.

  Due to his heroic deed, Kesavan was allowed to carry the thiruveli like he did before. Like the tiger that never changes its stripes, Kesavan never changed his ways. Only the bearer of the thiruveli was allowed to climb him from the front.

  On the day of Vaikunta Ekadashi, as Kesavan was carrying the thiruveli, he collapsed. The idol was simply transferred to another elephant’s back. The last sight Kesavan’s dying eyes saw was the idol being carried by another elephant. He had made good his resolution to carry only Guruvayurappan all his life and to bend his knee before him and no other. This was the elephant’s dying thought as he breathed his last.

  * * *

  Dear Reader,

  Perhaps you will like this novel, perhaps you will not.

  Regar
dless, to those of you who have bothered to pick up this book, I would like to return the favor.

  Here’s a print of a yantra for you. Keep it in your house. It should face north or east. Karuvurar, a renowned siddhar, recommends it, not this marginal man.

  It doesn’t matter whether you are a believer; you have nothing to lose by giving the yantra a try. Karuvarar holds the copyright to it. I’m not sure what the man’s real name was. No siddhar worried about such things back then. He is called Karuvurar because he lived in Karur. Many of the books he wrote are still in existence. In them, he compiled the many secrets of mantras, tantras, yantras and yoga.

  These days, if a bloke donates so much as a light bulb worth a couple of hundreds to a temple, he gets his entire family tree painted on it – “Donated by Mylapore Muthukumarappa Mudali and Brothers” – in the hope of being remembered for all eternity. But the siddhars of the past, who knew the art of transmuting copper into gold, preferred anonymity.

  Karuvurar was a disciple of Bhogar, but I am not going to explain why Bhogar’s name is Bhogar, where he comes from, who he was and what he did, because if I do, this might become a work of spirituality which the literary world will frown upon because it is in vogue to frown upon all things spiritual nowadays.

  PART – I

  Chapter One

  1 – Of Mongrels and Scoundrels

  Early one morning, I was walking along the Marina. It was bustling with roller-skating youngsters. The more seasoned and skilful youth on wheels were whizzing across the road at a breakneck speed. Traffic was barred on Beach Road from five to seven in the morning. Four policemen were posted – two at Gandhi’s statue and two at Netaji’s statue – to ensure that nothing on rubber wheels passed. There were, of course, days when the policemen left Gandhi and Netaji to watch the motorcyclists having a field day.

  Wrestlers, members of laughter clubs, yoga and karate enthusiasts – there was no lack of action on the beach that morning. Large crowds were pooling around the roadside stalls that sold papaya and raw vegetable salads. Pushcarts selling vegetable soups and fresh juices jostled for space. Gooseberry, curry leaf, amaranth, carrot, ginger, thoothuvalai and bitter gourd – the vast array of botanical specimens being pulped and squeezed for the health-conscious crowd boggled my mind.

  I walked from the lighthouse to the public swimming pool and all the way back. It was at some point during my walk back that I noticed a stray dog on the pavement, blood oozing from his ear. A speeding car must have hit him. Strangely, he wasn’t howling in pain. That left me wondering: was the animal shocked, or was it I who was blind to his pain? The dog licked the blood that had dripped onto the ground and limped away.

  The plight of strays in this country is pitiful and pathetic. They have to scrounge and scavenge for food. Their spaces and their lives are under constant threat from the Homo sadistic sapiens and their equally sadistic smoke-breathing monsters on wheels. Young hooligans pelt stones at these dogs like they’re the whores of Babylon. When they fall ill, they just keel over and die, often in great pain and agony.

  The only thing their dismal lives allow them is sex. This privilege they enjoy freely and to their hearts’ content – whenever, wherever. No indignant protesters accuse them of running the morality of Indian culture. Cops don’t harass them by asking to see their marriage license and then thwacking them with lathis. They don’t have to marry or sweat over in-laws. They are not hit with scandals of illicit sex and do not face the ignominy of men who suffer from erectile dysfunction. (It is said that blood pressure tablets are responsible for erectile dysfunction. Medical research suggests Indians are more susceptible than others to hypertension and as a result, to pill-induced penile problems. As this is a sensitive issue that concerns the male ego and honor, nobody speaks openly of it.)

  Traditional Siddha medication offers a number of remedies for this condition. One of the most useful methods is the use of the ashwaganda root. Theraiyar cites yet another affliction and another remedy. Let me introduce you to Theraiyar on paper. Like Tolkappiyar, he was also a disciple of the sage Agasthya, one of the seven most important sages of the Indic tradition. Both men lived in Kabadapuram during the second Sangam era – 4000 B.C. or thereabouts.’’

  The story I am about to tell you can be found in the Bogar Nigandu.

  Tholkappiyar suffered from persistent headaches that seemed to have no cure. It was Agasthya who discovered their cause. Hatha yogis practice a cleansing ritual in which water is passed through one nostril up into the skull and then pushed out through the other. When Tolkappiyar was engaged in this ritual, toad larva entered his skull along with the water and remained there. In time, the larva developed into a fully formed froglet.

  Agasthya cut open Tolkappiyar’s head with a knife. He planned to surgically remove the frog using a scissor-like blade. One of his students expressed concern that the instrument might cause brain damage. This student took a vessel filled with water and held it near Tolkappiyar’s head, and out jumped the toad! This student was none other than Theraiyar. He became one of the founding fathers of Indian medicine and discovered the secret of eternal youth – fresh ginger in the morning, dried ginger at noon, haritaki in the evening. Being on this diet for forty-eight days will have even a nonagenarian gamboling about like a lamb in spring time. I owe my sex drive to this diet. It helps me have sex with Anjali for hours on end.

  As I was saying, dogs don’t have the same problems with sex that humans do, but post-ejaculation, the canine’s organ turns stiff as a post and the bitch is unable to extricate herself for a good thirty minutes. This results in considerable pain and embarrassment for mating dogs. Disgusted women often spit at them and young boys stone them.

  There was a stray dog that lived in a dump near my house. Blood and pus oozed from its sores which it scratched at continuously. Like some religions preach, this dog or its parents or some forefather must have committed some grave sin in this birth or one of their previous births to have been born a dog and to suffer this predicament. Pelting stones at this dog was a sport – like darts – for the little scoundrels from the slum who would harass the creature on their way to school. The animal wasn’t clever enough to seek a safe haven. Perundevi would shoo the little human aggressors away if she had to see them. I ignored them. After all, breathing slum-air does a number on your brain.

  As was custom, on one particular day, the boys stoned the dog. Suddenly, a guerilla war broke out. The little midgets were ambushed by a pack of dogs that had been hiding behind the garbage dump. I made no effort to intervene.

  The next incident I am going to describe involves these same boys. One of my neighbors, a sixty-five-year-old man has a Great Dane called Bruno. He lives with his wife in their own little house with a garden. The wretched brats didn’t spare Bruno either and they lobbed stones over the gate at him every day. Bruno’s angry barks roused the entire neighborhood, but this only seemed to stoke the boys into playing the stoning game with greater delight.

  I have two dogs – Baba and Blackie. Baba is a Labrador, an affectionate creature and a stranger to anger. He licks everyone he meets and likes cuddles, no matter who they come from. Perundevi says that even if a thief were to enter the house, Baba would run off with him. Blackie, on the other hand, was cut from an entirely different cloth. Like most Great Danes, he has an intimidating presence and will not let even a fly enter the house. Fearing for both the boys and the Great Dane, we kept the dog from the garden. Hence, they focused on Bruno.

  My neighbor actually did try talking to the slum boys. He scolded them and even chased them away. One day, during this tamasha, one of the boys unzipped his fly and flashed his willie at the old man. They returned the next day too, armed with stones. Suddenly, the gate opened and Bruno leapt out. The old man finally allowed the dog its much deserved canine revenge. One of the boys, who was running for his life, was knocked down by a car and died on the spot.
r />   2 – Pussy’s in the Well!

  It upsets me that Perundevi appears in my dreams to spy on me. It makes me feel vulnerable. When I was a student in Thanjavur, I sometimes had sex with my neighbor, a thirteen-year-old girl called Mekhala – or as much sex that is possible with a girl her age. I didn’t know much about sex then, but those breasts of hers seemed to be beckoning me so desperately to squeeze them. Whenever we found ourselves alone, we would grope each other. There was no love involved though, and, truth be told, when I left Thanjavur for Delhi, I hadn’t really mastered the art of entering a female body.

  One night, Mekhala appeared in my dreams. When Perundevi woke up the next morning, I noticed that she looked a little upset. When I enquired after the reason, she said that she had dreamt of me cavorting with a girl. When I realized that this woman had managed to slither into my dreams like a thief on the sly, I was consumed with fear. I tried not to dream from that night on, but that endeavor led to a different problem altogether. Without dreams, sleep abandoned me like a fickle lover.

  One night, I was startled by the wailing of an animal while desperately trying to fall asleep. There was a slight drizzle outside. We were then based in Chinmaya Nagar, a snakepit. Perundevi could instinctively sense the presence of a snake. It had to do with the smell of screwpine when the snake was about. The Chinmaya Nagar snakes never did transgress their boundaries. They just spread the screwpine scent wherever they went, sticking to their non-interference policy.

  The mating ritual of snakes is a wonder. In Indian mythology, they represent lust and sexual union and a tantric mudra.

  In a village near Nong Khai in Thailand, I once drank the warm blood of a snake obtained by making a slit right below its head. The drink was sold on the streets and it had quite a novel taste. These days, I don’t think I can find it in me to even swat a fly. Perundevi is chiefly responsible for this transformation. One day, I watched from the balcony as she was drawing the kolam on our street. Several crows, perched on the compound wall, watched her in action. As soon as she had finished and left the spot, they flocked down and began to eat of the rice flour, filling their mouths with as much of it as they could. I noticed that they inclined their beaks at an angle to ingest more of the flour than would be possible if they ate it with their beaks in a straight position.They looked beautiful with the beaks coated with rice flour. When I recounted this to Perundevi, she told me that she never used the cheap version of kolam flour that people generally use.