by Pawan Mishra
8. The Seeds of Debacle
Hukum’s promise to the victims of the coins cleverly camouflaged a personal clandestine agenda. He had waited patiently for the right opportunity—there couldn’t be a better one.
Hukum’s mind was unbearably defenseless at the sight of a lonely individual, and the susceptibility grew with the persistence of such a sight—a sticky condition he’d frequently had to abide during school days, too, at the sight of lonely children. Throughout his childhood, his sincere attempts to alleviate the situation by confronting the lonely children directly brought about gripes from teachers, students, and neighbors alike.
Over the years his mind developed extraordinary skills, such as identifying such kids without confusion, secretly shadowing them to cause fear, pushing them when they least anticipated it, spreading false rumors about them, leaving threats through anonymous notes, singing derogatory songs using their names, and whatnot. As a result, many a kid around him was afraid to come out to play with friends; kids skipped school for the fear of facing him. Some even felt depressed, for they considered themselves forever trapped, hopelessly, in Hukum’s horrid den.
He was quite a nightmare to lonely kids. They tried to take cover in the company of an adult. For this reason the teachers were surrounded by such children, something that eventually played to Hukum’s disadvantage, as numerous complaints started pouring in to his parents.
His parents consulted psychiatrists, one of whom, after a carefully distant but comprehensive examination, told them that hidden at the core of his bullying of the forlorn children was his feeling of insecurity. As the psychiatrist got into specific history, the parents revealed that they had a lonely child, Teju, among their relations who happened to be a psychopath and secretly hurt other kids his age very badly. The parents then revealed how they had discovered Teju’s behavior, rather the hard way, only when they had come back from a month-long trip to pick up Hukum from Teju’s place. Hukum’s parents had planned a month’s stay for him with Teju’s parents, thinking he would enjoy spending part of the summer vacation with Teju, who was seven, as was Hukum. But it was everything but a vacation for Hukum. His parents heard the horror stories from their kid after they got home: how Teju, who never spoke a word, inserted a screwdriver in his right ear, threw him from the stairs once, pulled down his underwear once, locked him in the shoe closet once, pinched him with a sewing needle once, etc. Every time, the parents said, Hukum wanted to make Teju talk and explain why he would do that, but Teju wouldn’t speak or even pay attention. This close encounter with Teju, and several other such kids that he came across thereafter (he had his luck written by the darkest of ink), led Hukum to believe that every lonely child was a psychopath. The psychiatrist concluded that since lonely people were hardwired as psychopaths in his brain, he felt that they had noxious hidden intentions.
The parents heaved a sigh of relief on finding the truth behind his behavior and took these findings to the school authorities. The school instated additional scrutiny around Hukum to help the other kids. It caused a constant trauma to Hukum: not only was he deprived of taking a protective measure regarding the psychopaths around him, but also it seemed that the authorities considered him a psychopath.
By the time he went to college, his instinct of insecurity had turned into the joy of bullying lonely and eccentric people. The change was so gradual and subtle over the years that he wasn’t able to notice the transition point himself. But at the same time, when in college, he had to put more sanctions on his instinct, because adults are not pardoned as much for their mistakes as the kids are. So to bandage his craving instinct, he acquired another outlet, that of writing poems, lewd masterpieces. These poems of offensive content could be celebrated only in a limited circle of friends, sadly causing stillbirth of his writing talent.
Now, at the office, Coinman refreshed his old instinct. A dog that has lived without a bone for years, when presented with a bone again, couldn’t be expected to control itself.
The stories of Coinman’s lack of retaliation against bullying boosted Hukum’s instincts even more. The one he remembered the most took place during Coinman’s early days at the office and concerned a booze party arranged by the first-floor bachelors at a small apartment. Although Coinman wasn’t into alcohol, he regarded it as important to be social with people at the office, so he went. As alcohol gave way to more alcohol, it took a very little time to travel to the attendees’ brains.
It was a wild party, full of music, alcohol, smoke, and dirty talk. The partiers openly talked in lascivious ways, cracking graphic jokes, even commenting on anyone they could see from their balcony. After spending hours entertaining themselves that way, they got bored of it and started teasing each other by making up funny stuff on the spot. Even if the made-up stuff sucked, they still laughed loudly.
Then their jokes dried up and they needed a new catalyst; that was when they took Coinman to the small study room in the apartment and locked him in. They laughed, with their ears against the closed door, and then soon forgot about him. Coinman continued to gently knock on the door, but, heedlessly drenched in alcohol, his companions didn’t care much. Coinman made himself busy with books in the room for a few minutes to allow the inebriated souls some time, then came back to knock again. By midnight the smashed company had crashed all over the place, yet, oblivious that his colleagues were all asleep, Coinman religiously repeated the knocking process till morning. Someone finally woke up around dawn and opened the door, half-asleep.
Coinman smiled at him and said, “That was a very nice party! I would’ve enjoyed it even more if I hadn’t been mistakenly locked inside the room.”
Thus Hukum knew how he’d find a way into Coinman’s world: by pretending his interest was nothing more than sympathy for coin-stricken souls. He let himself float in Coinman’s vicinity whenever an opportunity presented itself. Spending more time near Coinman meant more subjection to heartless coins. But Hukum was determined.
On noticing Hukum’s increased presence around him, Coinman got suspicious, because he had already mentally labeled Hukum as someone he could never manage to feel comfortable with: daring, physically strong, arrogant, and stubborn. He thought that people with such traits always saw decent men as more vulnerable targets for the recreational ventures their extra power allowed them.
So whenever he saw Hukum approaching, Coinman engaged himself in something else: he’d adjust his wristwatch, or focus entirely on pulling a food fragment out of his teeth, or the like, till Hukum was past him. He noticed out of the corner of his eye that Hukum continuously stared at him, making every attempt to make eye contact with him. Hukum patiently overlooked Coinman’s avoidance tactics initially, but over time they began to grate on him. Pissed off by the avoidance, he schemed to teach Coinman a lesson. He knew how; he’d done it for years.
One night it came to him, the perfect tactic. Sitting on his bed, he worked all night to write a poem on Coinman. Enthralled by his masterpiece, he ditched work the next day, citing a feverish condition—but called up his gang, one after the other, to recite his work. The next day, when the management was coincidentally out for an off-site seminar, the office workers took the poem from one desk to another cleverly, without kindling Coinman’s suspicion, and praised his caricature in collective chorus. After everyone had had a good laugh, Hukum stuck the poem on the first-floor notice board.
From the **** of his own mother,
Came smiling this crazy ****er!
His father forgot to use a ****er,
But we are the ones who suffer.
Is it hard to guess for any soul?
Who the hell is this ***hole?
Nauseating us is his only goal,
For ringing coins he must pay a toll.
We could have been spared in whole,
If his father had only rested his *ole!
If on that evil night he wasn’t on a roll,
Or had used a few coins on birth control.
T
he notice board endowed the poem with an official touch, making it even more enjoyable. Everyone wanted to read it again.
“Damn, the good words are all asterisked!” Hukum expressed his disappointment to his gang.
“I am not sure if they will understand it,” Saarang said.
“The men only understand the asterisks. My worry is if they understand the rest.” Panna killed everyone with laughter at that.
Coinman scoped out the entire activity from a distance until the notice board was lonely again. He then stopped by the notice board to have a look at the poem. He didn’t believe it could come from his own colleagues. First disappointment, then turbulent anger overcame him in a matter of seconds. He wished he could shoot everyone on the spot. He tore the paper off in anger, ripped it into small pieces, and threw it in the trash bin.
Still angry, he found plenty of courage to walk straight to Hukum.
“You did it?” he demanded.
“Did what?”
“That shameful thing,” Coinman pointed toward the notice board, “that you should not have done.”
Hukum laughed slyly at this and said, “Oh, dear, dear! There’s a mountain full of things that I have done which I shouldn’t have done.” He looked at the gang and passed a secret smile. “And of course, just as tall a mountain full of things I haven’t done but I should have done; now tell me, what the heck are you talking about?”
“I know you did it,” said Coinman. “Stop making fun of me now. As a social obligation, even a witch spares seven houses in her neighborhood.” Coinman’s entire body vibrated with rage, chin leading the pack.
Hukum barely resisted the urge to knock him off his feet. Instead he smiled, looking sideways at his gang. “What do you guys say? Shall we take him to our favorite place? The son of a constipated lizard is forcing us now. He surely could do with some mambo.”
They burst into laughter. Coinman had hit the ceiling by now.
“I know the shamefully sleazy place that you talk about! Maybe you and your disgusting sidekicks here—and your respective families—along with your respectable mothers and sisters, all of you treat yourselves to a mambo binge there.”
“Dude”—Panna couldn’t stay quiet—“your pocket monster is getting out of your hands. Ding the bugger on the head before it’s too late.”
“Hey, don’t cross the line here. Watch your rotten mouth. Do you really eat with that same mouth?” Coinman shouted.
“What the heck could you do?” Hukum brought himself forward, stooping over Coinman, his nose next to Coinman’s. “And who crossed the line first, douchebag? It’s clear that your ancestors have had a tradition of family mambo bingeing.”
Both of them had had enough shots of adrenaline to get into a scuffle. Fortunately, the rest of the gang intervened to cut short the brawl by dragging them apart, but that didn’t stop the two combatants from flailing at each other in the air.
“Too much for a day,” Hukum said when the gang was back together in private. “The asshole has forgotten his place.”
“Hukum, did you make a copy of your poem before the bugger trashed it?” Daya asked.
“That’s a pure bummer.” Hukum held his forehead in his palms.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Panna, “I remember it word for word.”
“You deserve to get weighed in gold.” Daya said.
“I need to go to the Unique Bar right now.” Hukum wasn’t in good spirits yet. “Who’s with me?”
All hands went up.
9. The Standard Pain-Killer
Disappointment has quite a penchant for taking one by surprise. As the group arrived at the bar this evening, they found it closed. The bar had been as accessible to them as their pockets; and such was their rapport at the place that the bar staff often extended the closing hour to allow them to drink more. With such a mutual bond they had enjoyed with Unique Bar, they never considered other bars in the city. So they knew no other.
“That’s a disaster. No worries, let’s go to another place,” Daya said, trying to uplift the mood.
“This shit sucks my soul.” Panna was giving up already, “Now what next? I don’t want to be an ass-can standing here.”
“Take it easy, dear friends,” Daya replied. “After a recent breakup with his psychonaut girlfriend, my flatmate has turned into an encyclopedia of the bars in the city. Let me give him a shout.”
Daya buzzed his encyclopedic friend, and apprised the others after the call was over: “My buddy seems to have a fetish for this place called Apna Bar. He says if we don’t go there tonight, he’s not going to recommend anything again.”
“Maybe he gets a cut,” Sevak said, laughing. “Let’s get rolling.”
The gang arrived at Apna Bar half an hour later. The bar was very dimly lit inside. All the tables were separated by murk; that made them wonder how the waiters gauged which table needed their attention. A waiter steered them through the gloom to a table, the only source of light on it being a small candle in the middle. They needed to stoop toward the center of the table in order to see each other.
They ordered large glasses of their favorite locally made whisky with automatic refills and drank in silence before Hukum spoke.
“Fricking son of a popcorn pimp.” he muttered, lighting a cigarette. “Motherfucker, the lover of his own sister, he had the balls to stand up to us in public. You tell me, Daya, why a worthless creature like him should be let off after pouncing upon the respect of an individual of honor, like me?”
Daya just laughed, which infuriated Hukum further.
“Why are you laughing? Did you hear me say a rib-tickler? Or has my face suddenly turned into a clown’s? Maybe you are showing off your new toothpaste? But…no, I do not want to force a reason on you. Please tell me why are you splitting a gut at such a serious topic? Sevak, Panna, you tell me, did you think I was joking?”
“No, dear Hukum,” said Daya humbly. He was scrambling for a story, because he had actually laughed at Hukum’s self-flattery—the narcissism of calling himself an individual of honor. “I swear to God, I did not intend to poke fun at what you said. When you spoke about Coinman’s mother and sister in that manner, and even as I understood that it was only figuratively, my mind flashed to many mothers and sisters I know; innocent women who don’t have the slightest clue how frequently they appear in such conversations, through no fault of their own. I couldn’t conceal my giggle on thinking of pious mothers and studious, homely sisters.”
“If that’s why you laughed, then I have to say that your sense of humor has been mis-calibrated. Assuming that’s something recent, I am worried that your face is going to look like a retard’s soon, because you will laugh at everything,” said Sevak to Daya, and then looked at Hukum. “I do not think that this guy’s laugh was sufficiently justified.”
“Why? Don’t you see a point there?” Daya retorted, unaware of the teasing expression on Sevak’s face. “Anyway, let’s refocus on the booze.”
“You’ve got a good point,” Hukum said. Alcohol consumption always brought out the teacher in him. “But even under the influence of extreme feeling of any kind, one should behave as the situation demands. Imagine if you are reminded of such funny things at the funeral of a person whose life has been of great emotional importance; would you still laugh? You’d better not. So that’s my point.”
Panna exuberantly shook his head in agreement, as though Hukum were somehow reading straight from his mind. As soon as Hukum took a pause, Panna grabbed the opportunity.
“I cannot agree more,” he said. “I am a firsthand witness of how my friend, Sandy, had his ass in a sling for laughing during a heart-to-heart conversation. It actually caused the end of his love affair.”
“I am impatient to hear the story,” Sevak said, after he’d done droplet drawings all over his sweating glass.
“Sandy, the most decent guy I have known in my entire life,” continued Panna, “had a love affair with one of his childhood friends. They wer
e neighbors since their early childhood. But due to the conservative atmosphere at the girl’s house, Sandy couldn’t meet with her as frequently as he would’ve liked to. Actually, forgive my drifting thoughts, they never met. She barely came out of the house. Her old man was such an animal.”
“Where is the love in this story,” Sevak put in, thumping the table with his right palm, “when they did not even meet?”
“Have patience and hold off your opinion until I finish,” said Panna, without even looking at Sevak, as the waiter refilled his glass. “This is a real story, not the kind of story found in the books you read, I can’t have this story start with tonsil hockey. Sorry, guys.”
“All right, enough. Can you continue the story now?” Sevak said, looking surprised.
“Sandy had a mind as free of dirt as mankind had ever known. In fact, as a young teenager, I have to confess, I often thought of becoming a scientist to be able to research his mind to find out what kept it so virgin, despite pricks all around him.”
As he said this, Panna couldn’t avoid staring at Daya, whose fingers were gang-raping his two nostrils very earnestly. Several glasses of alcohol were greatly showing up in his “couldn’t care less” disposition.
“There was no shit he ever seemed to be hiding,” Panna continued. “No one ever suspected that his projection to the outside world was any different than his inner world. But despite him being awesomesauce, the dude was widely known as a nitwit.”
Panna paused and took a cigarette from Hukum’s cigarette box. Panna rarely smoked; only when he got extremely intoxicated and excited. “Give me a match? Yes, here,” he said to the attendant, and continued with the story while lighting. “He was always laughed at by the people for not being able to grasp the most trifling matters, and no one really expected him to find a decent job. His father had some reputation in society—some kind of a prominent man, so he would not have allowed him a menial job. So that pretty much meant he was going to remain unemployed forever.”
