by Pawan Mishra
“Someone please bring an ambulance from the nearest madhouse,” shouted Daya. “We have a mental emergency here. Our noble pal Sevak has just been wickedly divorced by his mind.”
“I am sorry for my brief absent-mindedness.” Sevak said, smiling. “I swear, every time I hear this name it makes me laugh clear down to my bones. I feel victorious and comic, both at the same time, when I think about our role in dubbing him Coinman.”
“Mr. Sevak, you are entitled to only one sorry per month. But you have spent four sorrys just today. You have accumulated concerning debt already and need to watch your spending habits immediately. We have decided to help and accept not more than two sorrys a month from you from now on,” Hukum put in with mock authority.
“Why”—Daya had been waiting to respond to Sevak—“it is not that unusual. I happen to know this man called Sawaal Singh. He was born just five months after his mother’s arranged marriage. So when he was born, people said that his mother had not really given birth to a human but to a question. His real name was Sanjog, the destiny, but people only called him “Sawaal,” a question.”
A laughter filled the air in the room.
“But the story doesn’t end here.” Panna wasn’t going to give up yet. “Our esteemed superman was back to the bank the next day with his unfinished shit. His unsatisfied intercourse on the previous night with every paragraph in the agreement text was marked with yellow highlighter everywhere. The representative patiently explained the yellow poop. This incident has made our superman a legend at the bank, too. They now have a joke floating around. Whenever they confront a brain-eating customer, they classify him in their records as ‘Coinman.’”
“The legend of Coinman! We should make a movie, guys. I bet it’s going to be an instant hit,” Daya added.
The group laughed wholeheartedly.
“On a serious note,” Hukum said, seizing the opportunity, “without putting our veterans here on the spot, it truly amazes me at times that despite the dolor that the coins cause us, we have been able to put up with the pain for so many years.” He paused to assess the silent reaction, gauging the level of aggression the group needed to do something about it.
“This is no martyrdom that we are doomed to suffer for our entire lives,” he went on more gently. “It’s good that we are able to generate good humor out of this to somewhat reduce our anguish, but the coins torture us not only at the office but also at home. On the bus, in a taxi, while eating, playing, sleeping—I can hear that shameless, wicked sound all the time. It’s like the coins have been placed permanently in our minds.”
As soon as Hukum paused, Panna started clapping, in irony.
“What’s new in this shit, other than smelling of utter futility?” Panna said with brutal pugnacity. “Are you just waking from a ludicrous dream? Or maybe you’ve just been time traveling. Hasn’t it always been like that? Enlighten us, then—why this sudden melodrama?”
“You are right,” replied Hukum, suppressing his irritation. “All I mean is—we’ve got to stop this now. We cannot go on suffering like this. If we believe in ourselves, we can stop it. It just requires some clever thinking, planning, and team effort.”
Saarang had been trying to speak for the past few minutes; finally he gathered enough courage. “Coins jingling in that manner in the pocket are a sign of a poor man, and this may jeopardize the image of our company by leading outsiders to think that employees here are very poorly paid.”
That proclamation deserved askance looks, and got them. Many of them immediately lowered Saarang’s standing on their respective mental grids.
“That’s my feeling, too,” Daya said, ignoring Saarang’s remark but responding to Hukum. “I feel the same as Hukum does. But what can possibly be done? I am no pessimist, but at this point, like always, it seems all bark but no bite to me. Once we go back to our desks, it will be another day tomorrow, and we will again completely forget about the present emotion. Do you have any tentative action plan, off the top of your head?”
“The perfect thing would be for all of us to hijack all his coins together,” responded Hukum bitingly. “But knowing this would require a huge amount of planning, I suggest that we try a milder approach first. We should first try to open a dialogue with him to see if that can help. One of us should approach him and make him aware of our concern with his coins.”
Daya immediately agreed. “Yes, many times a huge problem gets solved with a trivial move. It’s only a matter of effort.”
“But who would put a bell on that cat’s neck?” asked Sevak, trying to gauge at the same time if he needed to shave by constantly running his left hand subtly over his lower face. “Hukum, why don’t you go and talk to him about it?”
“Why not? And all of you could sit there and enjoy the exhibition. Are you guys not afflicted as much as I am?” Hukum countered. “It’s a deadly sin to ask someone who has come up with a bright idea to carry it out as well. It’s like getting penalized for doing something good. It’s decided. We shall all go and talk to him.”
“No, that will not be a good idea,” said Ratiram firmly. “I hear you, Hukum, but if we go together, it may make it difficult. Firstly, he may panic by the enormity of our effort, and secondly, putting an excessively large team on a small and precise task could only multiply the unforeseen challenges. If you all have no objection, I can take this on myself.”
“Ratiram, I completely agree on employing only one person in this task. But I apologize beforehand for countering your proposal. I suggest that you do not get yourself involved in this,” said Sevak, while his left hand intimately massaged its owner’s face. “If you do, we will lose a bridge to access Coinman’s mind. He treats you as his best friend, in fact, and it’s only to you that he talks about his thoughts with indubitable honesty. We would lose this secret channel if he finds out you are a part of this.”
“So, here, it’s all decided now.” Hukum raised his right hand above his head. “I’ll take it on myself. I know it will be tough, I have never had a word with him; but to settle this business about coins, I will do my best. Bless me, my dear friends.”
“That’s a great spirit,” shouted Daya with excitement, performing an impromptu high five with Hukum. “Folks, isn’t that impressive? How my precious friend maintains two complementary sides of him? On one hand, he is the master of wit, the perfect humorist, and on the other hand, he is so sincere toward his duties. Ratiram, we need a few words from you, buddy. Have you ever met a person with such vividly different sides? Isn’t it a true mark of a genius?”
“Daya,” cried Hukum, “this is no time for pulling my leg.”
“No kidding,” Panna said, and laughed.
“Stop. I really meant it. Ratiram—please say something.”
All eyes immediately settled on Ratiram, who paused to think before he spoke.
“Sure. Hukum is a fantastic buddy,” he said quietly. “The high degree of wit that he possesses is seldom found in a dedicated man.” He took a deep breath, cast an empty look at Hukum, and continued, “However, I am not sure if demonstration of two completely distinct sides is truly indicative of a genius. If you talk in terms of likelihood, yes, a person with different sides probably has above-par chances to be a genius. But it’s not injective.”
“Injective?” Saarang caught the word.
“Yes. All I meant,” Ratiram explained, “is that if you pick a genius, he would have two or more distinct sides. But if you pick a person with two or more distinct sides, the person may not be a genius.”
“Got it. I understand it now. Thanks!” Saarang said.
“Saarang, dude,” Panna said quickly, “can you now explain it back to us? I am not sure if I necessarily understood it.”
Everyone knew that Panna was pulling Saarang’s leg. But Saarang’s face turned pale with nervousness. Thankfully, to his relief, Ratiram continued.
“As you know,” Ratiram said, “even the most sophisticated personalities are not reasonable in al
l situations. Many of the best people have an entirely different side, a rather dreadful one. For example—keep it within the four walls—Jay, our beloved unit head, is an ideal man for all office matters. But I have witnessed a completely different side of him—a horrible one, if I may say.”
Everyone was shocked at that. Despite the perfect setting in these gossip sessions to lavishly flout their supervisors, they had refrained from dragging Jay’s name in. They had big respect for him for his sincere attempts to improve the workplace. They couldn’t have been more impatient to hear Jay’s mysterious side.
“It happened a long time back,” Ratiram began, “when Jay was still a middle manager. He happened to make an urgent business trip to another city, and I accompanied him to help with all the running around. We had to put up in a hotel which had only one room available for the night. Back then we did not have many of today’s conveniences—like another department taking care of the travel in advance—so we had to find lodging on our own and get it reimbursed later.
“Anyway, Jay was visibly uncomfortable with the idea of sharing the room with me. I wanted to help him out by offering to sleep outside at the reception area. Even though I knew very well that the hotel staff was not going to allow me to do that, I wanted to convey to Jay that I was willing to assist him as best I could. He declined my proposal to ensure no inconvenience to me, but I also figured out that if there was another room available, he would have paid whatever price to sleep privately.
“His reluctance in sharing the room really intrigued me, because, as you know, it’s very common in our culture for two males to share a room with two separate beds. I am sure he would have had plenty of occasions to share his room with another male. So what could have made him so uncomfortable about it? He was also not a man who ever believed in ranks, hierarchy, or social class. I was very curious.
“After finishing dinner that we had ordered in the room itself, Jay opened a book and sank deep into it within a few minutes. On the other hand, I slept immediately, like a tired lion who returns to his house in the jungle from a wearing day trip to the city.
“I do not know what time exactly he went to sleep, but something strange happened that night—something that opened another facet of the human psyche.
“A loud shouting voice woke me up from my deep slumber. It was pitch-dark in the room. I rubbed my eyes, but couldn’t see anything, not the tiniest spark. I pinched my left arm hard—I even hurt myself—just to make sure that I wasn’t in a dream. It took me about a minute to be fully in reality, and my ears could now grasp what was being said. Jay was swearing badly.
“I was horrified at first. I brooded over the possibility of him standing next to my bed, even feared he might possibly attack me.”
“Come on!” Said Daya, “Jay can’t harm an ant in his dreams.”
“Daya, wouldn’t you agree that when you witness one immeasurably unexpected act from someone, all your trust in that person flies in a matter of seconds?” Ratiram said.
“That horrible shit would make me suspicious of my own mother. I don’t blame you.” Panna supported the argument.
“No analysis, guys,” Hukum said bossily. “You’re spoiling the flow of this mesmerizing story.”
“Then, Jay’s shouting became more and more meaningful,” Ratiram carried on. “He was naming people and seemed very offended by a certain girl who cared a lot about a set of individuals. I could not make much of who these people were. He was quickly changing the context. One moment he was shouting from the stands in a game of cricket, the next moment he had a complaint about his parents, and before you knew, he was confessing something to a vicar.
“By now I had a good idea of his location in the room. When it seemed safe to get up from the bed, and when lying down amidst this tornado was no longer possible, I courageously got up and looked for the switch for the light. Jay had operated it the previous night, so I could only make my best guess. I moved in the direction of the door with my hands stretched ahead of me to save me from stumbling. Luckily, I found the switch there and turned it on rapidly. The bright light pinched my eyes; and there he was, sitting in a yoga posture in his bed, with his back resting against the wall, still shouting. Surprisingly, that sudden intense flash of light had absolutely no impact on him.
“I went and stood in front of him with questioning eyes, but he failed to notice me. So I shook him by his shoulders. He gave me blank looks, stopped shouting immediately, and dropped onto the bed to sleep again. His instant dive into peace suggested that he was under some kind of spell.
“His behavior in the morning had no trace of midnight’s big incident. But surprisingly, about two months later, he asked me if I had slept well that night. Unless he suspected something bizarre had happened that night, why would he ask me about it? Suddenly, after two months! In all fairness, I could deduce that he smartly timed this question so that if nothing had happened that night, I would not think too much of it. At the same time, he wanted to assess from my response if it happened, what he thought could have happened, so that he could apologize and grab the occasion to ask me to bury the secret forever. To make him comfortable, I told him that I slept so deeply that night I did not know where I was until I woke up in the morning.”
“God bless you, Ratiram,” said Daya, still wandering in the story. “I have felt at times that there is something unusual about that man. You know what? Sometimes I have a feeling that Jay is secretly in love with our golden girl, Tulsi.”
“No. That’s not correct,” cried Saarang. “It’s not true.”
“Don’t you think your tongue is straying in the danger zone too much today?” Daya teased Saarang. “Can you disprove Jay’s love for Tulsi?”
“No,” replied Saarang feebly.
“Then zip your lip, would you?”
“Daya, excuse me, but let’s not bring our golden girl into this sort of conversation,” interrupted Sevak. “She hardly speaks to anyone.”
“Jay is no nitwit either,” Panna added. “At the office, he wouldn’t poke at a romantic possibility with a six-foot stick.”
“All right, OK, fine, sorry, wrong topic.” said Daya smilingly. “But the thought wasn’t so unreasonable as to deserve a miniature revolt. One of my friends works for an electronics company, and they recently hired a young girl of twenty-three. It was a rumor that a senior executive of fifty had a crush on her. No one believed it until the marriage invitation went out. Many young hearts were broken; but the girl wasn’t heedful of them in the first place. One never knows how these matters take turns. Sometimes, I feel that beautiful girls and money seem to go very well together.”
“Whoa! Let’s not doubleplus debase the entire good-looking female fraternity here.” It was Panna’s opportunity to play Mr. Nice, which he rarely was perceived as.
“Panna, firstly, stop going to cheap stores and start using branded earbuds,” Daya retorted. “That’s how we chat here. Remind yourself that I am not speaking on national TV. Secondly, I am not exactly the type of person who would think of a woman as loose if she has put on massive makeup, but also, I am not the one who wouldn’t express himself for the fear of how others might think.”
Sevak tried to mellow the conversation. “Also, it nauseates me how foolishly these pretty girls fall for those monkey sorts of guys. Hell, it’s enough to make me lose sleep at night when I see a lovely girl in the market going with a ridiculous guy.”
“I have a confession to make.” Daya spoke contemplatively. “I feel sorry about a momentary lapse of my reason in associating our golden girl with Jay. I have appreciated how she has carried herself in the most elegant manner. There are a thousand beautiful women out there, but only a handful of them possess the grace required by such beauty to stop it from looking ugly.”
This conclusive remark from Daya was given a standing ovation by everyone before the long gossip session was dismissed.
5. The Pizzazz
Tulsi’s charisma, the Elysian dazzle, was the on
ly other theme that could compete with Coinman’s in the gossip sessions. Tulsi, beyond any perceivable clouds of skepticism, was the best living form of beauty known—the matchless delight, the most generous blessing granted to a human eyeball. Her beauty effortlessly managed to arrest the pulse of each heart at the office and keep it in a dreamlike cage where she could have a look at each at her will and derive pleasure that, it had to be said, was a touch malicious in nature. This is where the whole thing entered into a vicious cycle, for her proximity always inebriated the hearts, thus only deepening their desire to remain hostages in the cages so that they could booze even more on that beauty.
She had a mischievous pair of feet, not less beautiful than her whole self, slender, soft, with long thin toes unfailingly adorned with trendy nail polish, easily visible through her thin, flat sandals. She frequently meandered around on those restless feet through the office on the slightest opportunity, to walk, to cut, to tease through the devoted fondness that the office staff possessed for her. As she walked the narrow zigzag pathways among desks, one end to the other, everyone ogled her with eyes growing bigger by the moment.
During these proceedings at the office, when she walked through royally, almost doing an unreturnable favor to the ground beneath, and the men around, everything seemed to come to a halt. The splendor of her walk mortified everything else at the moment. She was no less than an angelic cynosure, viewers’ unanimous choice among all other captivating distractions; the ruthless empress among indebted slaves.
During these magical walks, she was consummately aware of the starving yet modestly unclaiming eyes that moved in harmony with her motion. She never failed to seize the opportunity to add special effects to make the whole phenomenon look even more extraordinary: walking in slow motion as if gravity had bestowed an exceptional beauty allowance to her by reducing its strength to half; or running her hand slowly through her long, silken hair while smiling randomly into the eyes of the gaping faces.
