Keep Off the Grass

by Karan Bajaj

  The author turned out to be a surprisingly sexy, spirited young lady who had quit an indifferent career in advertising to pursue her passion for writing. I was too blown to pay close attention to her lecture, but I liked the slow, measured movement of her lips, the lilting, silken notes in her voice and the animated movement of her hands as she stressed a point. From the few words I heard, she seemed to be encouraging us to have the courage to follow our dreams.

  Sure, I thought lazily, but what if I never had a dream? What if I never find anything I can be passionate about? Would I continue to be like this—jaded, cynical and immune to ecstasy? You don’t realize how lucky you are to have a dream and a target to chase, however elusive, I thought, as I stared at the inexplicably captivating sight of her pretty lips forming words I couldn’t hear.

  A sudden buzz of noise in the classroom distracted me. A question had been posed to the author and her soft, melodious voice had turned noticeably harsh as she answered it. I strained to listen.

  ‘It isn’t about talent any more,’ she said. Apparently, someone had touched a raw nerve by asking her why she wasn’t published yet. ‘Authors today have to peddle their work as if they are selling aphrodisiacs, underwear and cell phones. Publishers don’t want literature any more, they want soft porn, vampire capers and chick flicks disguised as literature.’

  B-school had forced capitalism down everyone’s throats, so the predictable responses followed.

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’ someone countered. ‘If that’s what the market wants, that’s what publishers should sell. Let the audience judge what is literature and what isn’t.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she replied. ‘But writing a book isn’t like creating a new flavour of toothpaste. At least I like to believe that writing has a higher purpose.’

  I paused to consider her point. Her lips quivered with agitation, making her look even sexier. I reflected on the higher calling of writing for a while before I realized, ashamed, that I didn’t even care a bit. Who gives a flying fuck, I thought, to each his own. Don’t be anyone’s moral compass or let anyone be yours. Write porn, write literature or don’t write anything at all. Make your choices, stick by them or don’t. We are all insignificant drops in the vast ocean of humanity deluding ourselves that our choices made an impact. To live your inconsequential life the best way you know is your only duty, your highest calling.

  Chetan raised his hand. ‘The highest purpose for a publishing house is to make profits,’ he said smugly.

  In another life, I would have called him an asshole. Now, he seemed just another guy staking his claim to happiness in the best way he knew. His doggedness was beautiful in its simplicity. Different strokes for different people, I thought.

  ‘Different strokes,’ said the author, startling me a little. ‘One man’s Shakespeare is another man’s MC Hammer.’

  I think I was a little in love with her by the time the class ended.

  I dropped in at Sarkar’s room after class that day. He had stopped attending classes altogether, and was lying shamelessly in his now familiar position—sprawled on the bed with a joint in one hand, an obscure philosophy book in the other, psychedelic music playing in the background. I positioned myself on the comfortable mat on the floor. Vinod entered the room just then and I related the events of class that morning. I told them I had fallen in love.

  ‘She is right,’ Vinod said unexpectedly. He seemed more interested in the author’s view on writing than my views on love. ‘Writing should serve a higher purpose. I used to read a lot in the bunkers at Kashmir, mostly fiction, to take my mind off things. Gives you a funny kind of solace, that you are not alone, and someone somewhere thinks exactly like you—and articulates it better.’

  I was surprised. I wouldn’t have pegged Vinod as a reader; I had barely seen him read his textbooks here.

  ‘I haven’t read in a while,’ he said reading my thoughts as usual. ‘Somehow after the war, fiction began to seem almost frivolous. You must try reading some Indian authors, though, I think you’ll like it.’ He looked at Sarkar. ‘Even though this bastard will tell you that they are trying to be American by writing in English.’

  The Indian authors I had read so far had been puzzling in their remoteness. They didn’t seem to write about the India I had heard of from Mom and Dad, or the India I had seen in the two years I had spent here. Slow, painful, ten-page reflections on a leaf ’s colour changing from green to yellow-brown in an Indian fall (I hadn’t even noticed fall in Bangalore!), an incestuous Calcutta family in which everybody is fucking everybody, pretentious magic-realism storylines with a river being used as a metaphor for life and assorted clichés—none of it seemed real, interesting or remotely useful (except perhaps to impress a date). Most of it seemed to be written to titillate a fat American wearing cargo shorts, camera hanging down his front, sunning himself belly-up on a beach in Hawaii, reading a book and pontificating on the plight of humanity in developing countries. However, Vinod had recommended them with such genuine emotion that I decided to give it another shot. Plus, I desperately needed help with my love life. If reading poetic descriptions about poverty-stricken Indian youth (as exemplified by Sarkar, no doubt) helped score a date in India, I vowed to become an expert on the subject.

  Under Vinod’s guidance, I started reading Indian authors I hadn’t heard of in the US—to unexpected, startling results. The vague restlessness of Agastya Sen, Upamanyu Chatterjee’s slacker, cynical protagonist of English, August or the growing pangs of Rusty, Ruskin Bond’s delightful underdog from Delhi is Not Far were uncannily similar to mine. In them, I found kindred, lost souls who touched me in much the same way that the original misfit of English literature, Holden Caulfield, had. Perhaps I was even more Indian than I thought I was. Or maybe genuine, heartfelt words had a magical, soothing effect no matter where they came from. That twenty years ago an Indian bureaucrat jerking off in a government guest house in rural India was feeling the same sense of dislocation that I was eating sushi in a swanky Manhattan restaurant made me realize that I needn’t have come this far to escape my dislocation (although I was glad I did, even if just to realize that I needn’t have come).

  The Kannada author was right—writing indeed had a higher purpose.

  *

  My newfound love for Indian writing did precious little to help my academic pursuits, and fittingly, Vinod, Sarkar and I were smoking up in Sarkar’s room when the final grades were released. We were debating whether to make the five-minute journey to the institute building to check on our grades.

  Chetan relieved us of our indecision. He came rushing breathlessly to the room and informed us that Sarkar had set a record of sorts for the most dramatic fall in rankings as he slipped from a gold-medal hopeful to well below 100th in the class of 200. This was somewhat expected as the subjects we had selected in the second year weren’t math, science or logic-based, and he had no God-given advantage in them. Coupled with my ranking of 160th out of a batch of 180 and Vinod’s hovering around the same, our trio cut a very sorry picture indeed.

  ‘What about you?’ I asked Chetan.

  ‘Second. Missed it by a whisker,’ Chetan said mournfully, referring to the gold medal.

  We stared at each other for a few moments after Chetan had gone out of the room, wondering what to think of our shabby performance. Then Sarkar and I looked at each other and burst into sudden laughter. The same thought had crossed our minds.

  ‘Really,’ Sarkar said, ‘is there any difference between being second in the batch or 160th? Neither of us gets the gold medal. Bastard just wasted his two years.’

  ‘Unlike us, who spent it so productively,’ quipped Vinod with a luxurious wave of his hand around Sarkar’s room where an unfinished joint rested in an ashtray, empty bottles of rum, vodka and whiskey stood against the walls and unopened textbooks lined the shelves.

  We collapsed into more laughter. One thing led to another and Vinod, the devoted Bollywood addict, coerced us into celebrating our mag
nificent academic performance by going for a movie that night. (‘They are playing an Amitabh Bachchan classic,’ he said. ‘Have you ever seen one? It’s a life-changing experience.’) I agreed to change my life on the condition that we smoke all our remaining joints to prepare for the three hours of mindlessness.

  The joints had their desired effect. Soon, the mad cacophony of sights and sounds in the movie theatre became pleasantly tolerable. Flashes of colour lit up the screen. The comfortable boom of the onscreen dialogue resounded in my ears. I could feel the uneven contours of the torn seat below me and became acutely aware of my arm resting on the warm armrest. The Pepsi tasted sticky and sweet. From the corner of my eye, I saw Vinod staring at the screen with a look of absolute contentment on his face. I turned to look at Sarkar, who was carefully examining every kernel of popcorn he picked up from his bag. I felt a sudden rush of warmth towards them. My two-year Indian odyssey is over, I thought in a vague, distracted way. I would graduate in a week. Could I really go back to my old life?

  I spaced out trying to focus on the problem when suddenly an onscreen dialogue from Amitabh Bachchan, the legendary superstar, caught my attention.

  ‘Hum jahan pe khade ho jaate hein, line wahin se shuru hoti hai,’ said Amitabh dramatically as he cut the queue of washed-up goons waiting for food in a prison cell. He stood tall at the head of the line. ‘The queue begins where I stand.’

  When all else fails, trust in Amitabh Bachchan.

  12

  The Queue Begins Where I Stand

  I made my weekly call to my parents after returning to the hostel that night.

  ‘Have you decided what you are doing next?’ my father asked immediately, though his tone was less reproachful than usual—or perhaps I was not listening for disapproval this time.

  ‘I just called up Goldman before I called you,’ I said.

  He heaved an audible sigh of relief. ‘So you are coming back then?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But not to their investment banking division. They have a newly created philanthropic arm that leads microfinance solutions for developing countries. No one wants to go there, as you can imagine, so there are a ton of leadership positions open. It pays much less, but I think I will be happier there.’

  I waited for the protests—but there was none.

  ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ he said evenly. ‘You know my views about charity. First help yourself, then help others, get something before you give it away.’

  ‘I know your views, Dad,’ I smiled. ‘But mine have evolved a bit in India.’

  Earlier, I would have shut off assuming he would never understand, but today I felt compelled to explain—maybe because I didn’t feel as if I was justifying or rationalizing.

  ‘I’m kind of tired of living this self-obsessed, Johnny-stuck-in-a-bubble life, you know; all I have thought about thus far has been my needs, my desires, my pleasure, my sorrow, my wins, my losses. I kind of liked it in Benares where I felt I was doing something for someone for a change, however insignificant. I just don’t want to keep trying to win a race that I don’t even want to run in the first place,’ I said.

  ‘There will be enough time for self-actualization later,’ he said. ‘Don’t make choices in your youth that you’ll regret your whole life.’

  ‘I don’t think I will regret it,’ I said. ‘And honestly, in the broad world order, it’s less important a move than Britney Spears shaving off her hair or Lindsay Lohan checking into rehab.’

  ‘Who?’ he said.

  ‘Never mind. My point is I am still working finance in Wall Street, just using my skills in a different—and I think better—way. The division is new and I could give it a lot of direction from the little bit I have seen of India as a developing country,’ I said. ‘I don’t know, Dad, it just feels right this time.’

  ‘Well, your life,’ he said. ‘We are just glad you are coming back.’

  ‘Don’t worry too much, Dad,’ I said. ‘As they say here: Zindagi apne raaste khud hi dhoondh leti hai. Life has a way of finding its own way.’

  ‘When in doubt, use flexible Indian philosophy,’ he said. He paused. ‘You do sound different, though.

  ‘Different how? Is the Indian accent more pronounced?’ I said.

  He laughed. ‘No, I mean, more silent, more grown-up, perhaps,’ he said. ‘I feel slightly more confident of your decisions.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ I said as I saw Sarkar with a brown paper bag in his hand gesturing for me to hurry up so we could kick-start the night.

  ‘You sounded happier in India, so much so that we were worried you wouldn’t want to come back,’ he said.

  ‘I’d be happy anywhere now that I am done running from myself for a while,’ I said.

  Sarkar looked as if he was about to break into the booth. ‘Ironically, I have to rush now, though,’ I said.

  I came out of the booth feeling an irrepressible, irrational joy. I could be whoever I wanted to be, I thought, doing whatever I chose to do. Like Amitabh Bachchan, I was right at the head of this race—of one.

  ‘Now that the good doctor is taken care of, let’s get started, shall we?’

  I wanted to accompany him, but I also wanted to be completely alone. In India, everything is true and its opposite is true as well.

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘But I’m gonna go slow on the funk.’

  ‘Hell, no!’ he said. ‘Not another of your turns coming on.’

  But I felt giddy enough anyway. Tonight, I would just keep off the grass.

  Acknowledgements

  My special thanks to some awesome folks who changed the trajectory of my life, a little bit at a time, and made it pretty rocking fun:

  Rupa Sharma, for believing when necessary and doubting when absolutely required; I owe the book’s completion to you.

  Mom and Dad—for your unconditional support always.

  Sonali and Avneesh Arya for being more friends than family—and for providing absolutely terrific inputs to the first novel you read in your lives!

  Hinoti Joshi; once a colleague, now a dear friend. Thanks for all your help and generosity. I think you rock.

  My editors at HarperCollins—Karthika V.K., Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri, Neelini Sarkar. Thanks for turning this into a novel I can be (mostly) proud of.

  Renuka Chatterjee and Kavita Bhanot from Osian’s Literary Agency; for caring as if it were your own creation.

  Bhaskar, Werner from Pink&White Consulting, Lipika, Dev, Debargha Basu; for going way beyond what was necessary.

  The Indian Army, BIT Mesra, IIM Bangalore, P&G—awesome institutions—and some of my terrific mentors there: Shailesh Jejurikar, J.P. Kuehlwein, Maile Carnegie, to name just a few.

  My friends from various phases of my life. I know I am judgmental sometimes, opinionated most of the time, and cynical almost always. So I feel lucky to be blessed with such unconditionally caring friends. My special thanks to Saurabh ‘Tiger’ Nanda, first reader, friend, philosopher, critic, believer; Vinod Raghuwanshi, Somak Dhar and Jason Chrenka—all of you will unwittingly find yourselves thrust in the middle of these pages (go sue me!). Dushyant, Tarun, Shaira, Ajay-gand, Naidu, Hapur, Sid J-Chipps and Koyal, Palthi, Rohan, Madhur, Trupti, Alex and many others—for reading, providing inputs and believing. But mostly, thanks for years and years of rocking, life-changing friendships. Friendship is often an under-appreciated bond, and I want to use this space to say that you mean the world to me.

  Finally, my thanks as a fan to Upamanyu Chatterjee and Ruskin Bond who unknowingly taught me the power of writing. If my book can touch even one person the way English, August or Delhi is Not Far touched me, the number of trees felled to print this would be justified somehow!

  About the Author

  Karan Bajaj is the author of two contemporary Indian bestsellers, Keep off the Grass (2008) and Johnny Gone Down (2010). Keep Off the Grass, his first novel, was a semi-finalist for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, a Crossword pick of the year and short
listed for the Indiaplaza Golden Quill Award, among other honours. Johnny Gone Down, his second, has topped bestseller lists since its release in May 2010.

  Born in 1979 into an army family, Karan studied in various schools in New Delhi, Shimla, Lucknow, Jabalpur, Assam, Ranchi and Bangalore and regards his interest in backpacking and travel as key writing inspirations. Besides writing, he pursues his Brand Management career with Kraft Foods, New York on the side and was named a ‘Top 40 under 40 US Marketer’ by Advertising Age in 2007. He can be reached at email@karanbajaj.com

  Praise for the Book

  ‘A racy and entertaining account of a romp through an ever-changing yet timeless India… wild, witty and wicked!’

  —Ruskin Bond

  ‘Gripping, captivating, surreal and believable.’

  —Ben Rekhi, international award-winning director

  ‘An unlikely, remarkable story… It’s well worth following Ratan on his journey from New York’s high life to incarceration in India.’

  —Publishers Weekly

  ‘A most interesting and unusual pursuit… a fascinating and entertaining look at life in India.’

  —Amazon Top Reviewer

  ‘Pacy, unpretentious and great fun to read!’

  —Outlook

  ‘Wild and racy… a huge success.’

  —Hindu

  ‘Endearing and likeably self deprecating.’

  —Business Standard