by Manu Joseph
‘Nothing has happened.’
‘People say you’ve found something. That’s why you’re hounding all his classmates again.’
‘They don’t know what they are talking about.’
‘I hear you have been trying to meet everyone.’
‘That’s true.’
‘Why are you doing this now? Why now? After three years. Why?’
Why now? Why now? That is what people ask Ousep every day.
‘Just give up,’ Sai says. ‘Get on with your life. That’s all I can say.’
Sai wades through the layers of damp bodies on the footboard of the bus, and makes his way in. He will squeeze himself safely between the men, feel his wallet at all times, and take great care to ensure that he does not brush against the women because he is precisely the sort of harmless fruit the ladies in the bus wait to slap and punch and stab with the sharp end of their floral umbrellas for the times when they are touched and poked, the elastic of their underwear pulled and released like a catapult by the flying squads of college boys who board the packed buses just to do that.
There is an untitled comic by Unni about one of these squads, which shows how they do what they do, and how much they enjoy it. The comic ends in the distant future of the five boys of the gang. All of them are respectable men who go home every evening to a loving traditional wife and two adoring children.
After Sai’s bus leaves, only a young woman and her little daughter are left at the bus stop. The woman and the girl have yellow faces from a turmeric treatment the previous night to make them fairer. The daughter is playing a private game. She pats her mother’s buttocks and runs away giggling, returns to pat again and run a few feet. She keeps doing it. The mother stands looking in one direction, hoping to see her bus. A man appears and stands behind the woman. The daughter stops playing the game now and begins to toy with a chocolate wrapper she has found on the ground. The man gently pats the woman’s back. She thinks it is her daughter, so she stands there without any expression. The man pats her again and looks away. He pats her at short intervals, and finally he lets his hand stay on her. Ousep stares at the scene without opinion, without outrage. A man’s hand on a woman’s arse and the woman, yawning now, looking at the world go by.
It is a moment that has no meaning. It is as if the tired charade of human life with its great pursuits and history and wounds and deep convictions has collapsed, and the world has been suddenly revealed as a place that has no point, that does not need the hypothesis of meaning to explain its existence.
IT IS A MISFORTUNE to be in the presence of a writer, even a failed writer, to be seen by him, be his passing study and remain in his corrupt memory. It is like the insult of a corpse on the road by a war photographer. Ousep wonders whether cartoonists are writers, he hopes they have different minds. He is with a lot of them and all of them are looking at him. What do they see? A man with silver-and-black hair that falls in curls at his nape, and a journalistic French beard. Surely a creative type, like them. Or do they see more than that, do they see a man illuminated by failure, a tragic father who is still probing the life of his son? Should he try to achieve a feeble stoop and somewhat moist eyes, look weak and dependent, make them careless about what they choose to say?
The Society of Amateur Cartoonists meets once a month in the Madras Christian College, in a portion of a long corridor. The far end of the sunlit corridor frames a huddle of ancient trees that pretends to hide a thick forest within its darkness. Usually, not more than twenty cartoonists attend these meetings but today, because word had spread that Unni Chacko’s father wanted to see them, there are nearly fifty cartoonists of various ages, all of them sitting in a crescent on the ground. Ousep is among them, he has refused the offer of a foldable chair. In the small crowd, there are five identical bald Buddhist monks in saffron robes, who look like giant infants. And just two girls in jeans and T-shirt who survey the others with the amused look of a newsreader who is finished with political news and is about to announce that the lioness in the Vandalur Zoo has delivered four healthy cubs.
Ousep did not know that his son was a member of such a group until a few days ago when someone mentioned it to him in passing. Unni was in the society for just a few months, he was among the youngest they have ever admitted, but people here remember him in a way that suggests he was important. When Ousep walked into the gathering, everyone stood up and clapped. After the fuss ended and Ousep did not have to nod graciously any more, the president of the society formally introduced him as ‘chief reporter of the UNI’.
Ousep cannot deny that, but it reminds him that he would never be introduced as the greatest writer Kerala has ever produced. When he was young, everybody said that was his destiny. But then the years passed and somehow he did not write his great novel. He decayed in a state of gentle happiness. Or is it just that he did not truly believe he could write a brilliant novel? Many years ago, when Mariamma was still interested in him, she had told him, while sticking a stamp on an envelope, ‘Strong people write bad stories.’ Why has the comment stayed with him? Was she calling him strong or was it a cruel review of his short stories?
OUSEP TELLS THE CARTOONISTS, ‘I don’t want you to solve the puzzle for me,’ which is a lie, of course. ‘I want you to tell me what you remember. I want to know Unni Chacko better, that’s all there is to this.’
Nobody speaks after that, they stare at him. It is as if he is a wounded presence. But then, slowly, the silence gives way to festive murmurs and even laughter. Through all this, Ousep’s eye scans the gathering for the quiet ones, who may know what he really wants to know.
‘Way beyond his age,’ the president is saying. He is a large man with an enormous paunch and a thick moustache. ‘Unni was way beyond seventeen.’ The man is probably in his late thirties and Ousep finds it hard to accept that his child used to know such men, grown men, fat men. ‘Unni didn’t like to get into the conventional superhero-supervillain kind of stuff, you know,’ the man says. ‘But he created a superhero series. Stunning work, stunning.’
Unni’s superheroes, according to this man, did not have any useful powers. They could not fly, they did not have muscles, they did not even wear tight outfits. They wore shirts and trousers, and they possessed silly gifts. The Styleman, for instance, could comb his hair by just moving the skin on his scalp. The Staplerman could staple anything with his fingers. These heroes somehow valiantly fought equally ridiculous villains. Ousep has not seen the series, it is not among the collection at home. There were probably several works that Unni destroyed for some reason.
‘I remember a single-panel cartoon by Unni,’ a pleasant boy with affluent skin says. ‘It has an old woman telling her old husband, “Let’s go to a restaurant for dinner tonight and talk about you, you and you.”’ There is mild laughter, like a passing breeze.
A delicate silence falls as people decide what they want to share. Someone begins to giggle. It is a slender effeminate boy with a jovial face. He says, ‘Unni had a very serious problem. He had this artistic objection to the love symbol. He said it doesn’t look like a heart, he said it looks more like a red arse.’ Everybody laughs but soon a debate erupts over the red heart. Some like the symbol, they think it is a stroke of genius on a par with something called the Smiley. But others take Unni’s side. They do see it as a red arse. As the debate collapses into a good-natured commotion, the jovial boy stands up and threatens to take off his clothes to prove his point. Everybody begs him not to do it. Some cartoonists throw nervous glances at Ousep, probably to check whether they are being disrespectful, insensitive maybe. So Ousep maintains a sporting smile. The boy bends forward, raising his arse in the air. ‘Look at it from this angle,’ he says, and runs his long thin hand over the shape of his haunches. ‘See, can you see, my bum is the symbol of love.’
As the debate continues, Ousep whispers to the president, who is sitting beside him, and asks why the two girls have nothing to say about Unni. ‘They joined us long after Unni sto
pped coming here,’ the president says. ‘They don’t know him but they have heard of him. Everybody has heard about him. We talk a lot about Unni.’
It appears, at least for now, there is not a single girl in Madras who knows Unni well. How unfortunate it is for Unni that he does not live in the extravagant memory of an infatuated young woman.
There is a full-bearded young man in the gathering, who is somehow isolated from all that is going on, but he has been staring at Ousep for a while. He looks away when Ousep catches his gaze. ‘Who is that?’ Ousep asks in a whisper. ‘That bearded boy in the T-shirt which has a cow’s skull on it.’
‘That’s Beta,’ the president says. ‘It’s his pen name. Nobody knows his real name.’
‘Beta as in alpha, beta, gamma?’
‘I think so. Yes. I am surprised he is here. He does not come often. Mr Chacko, if he says anything about Unni, don’t mind him. Something is wrong with him.’
Soon, the cartoonists forget Ousep, which is a good development. They are still talking about Unni but they are talking among themselves and not putting on a show any more. They have even stopped throwing glances at him, except Beta, who stares like a child. Ousep listens with full attention to what the cartoonists are saying, though he has heard versions of all this before, many times – Unni’s theory that the unfortunate are not as miserable as the world imagines. That urchins, the handicapped, orphans, prisoners and others are much happier than people think. And that language is a trap, that a dark evolutionary force has created language to limit human thought. That writers are overrated fools. That all religions came from ancient comic writers. And that the ultimate goal of comics is the same as the purpose of humanity – to break free from language.
There is now a sudden silence as if everybody has finished talking at once. And it appears that nobody has anything more to say. But then a feeble voice from somewhere in the last row says, ‘He read my mind, he actually read my mind.’ It is a boy with expensive rimless spectacles. He tries to laugh to convey that he does not really believe in the paranormal.
Ousep has heard this, too. Unni’s classmates have told him about his son’s rumoured ability but Ousep has met only three before this day who have experienced it first-hand. The cartoonist here is the fourth. The boy says, ‘He asked me to think of a number. I thought of a number and he guessed it. Simple.’
‘Do you remember what the number was?’ Ousep asks, though he is certain that the answer is ‘thirty-three’.
‘Interesting question,’ the boy says.
‘Do you remember the number?’
‘I will never forget the number,’ the boy says. ‘It was thirty-three.’
As the evening grows, the silences stretch longer, and the cartoonists clearly have very little left to say. Ousep asks, ‘Does any of you know who Somen Pillai is?’ The cartoonists shake their heads. Nobody knows Somen Pillai here.
The silence that follows is long and decisive. The society looks restless now, the cartoonists want to leave. Some boys are wearing their bags around their shoulders, ready to stand. How long can people talk about a seventeen-year-old boy, really? The president grabs the chance to raise his oversized black pen and says, ‘Unni Chacko.’ The cartoonists raise their pens and repeat, ‘Unni Chacko.’ The president makes a squiggle on a sheet of paper and gives it to Ousep. It is a caricature of Unni, a very good one considering that it was made in just seconds. Others stand in line to hand their quick squiggles to Ousep. In most of these comic portraits, his boy has acquired angelic wings and a halo. One has him sitting in the clouds, looking bored. That breaks Ousep’s heart. To imagine the eternal boredom of his child. He wishes there to be no eternity, he wishes that even for his foes.
Beta is not part of the queue of cartoonists who are handing in their tributes. But he stands leaning on a fat, ancient pillar and looks on. When everybody is done with their tributes, Ousep holds the thick bunch of papers in his hand and walks to Beta.
‘What is your name?’ Ousep asks.
‘Beta.’
‘What’s your real name?’
‘What’s real about a name?’
‘Why are you not Alpha?’
‘Because I am Beta.’
Some of the cartoonists who are leaving look with passing curiosity at Beta, who does not meet their eyes. He appears clever and formidable, the type of bearded young man who would call himself Alpha. But he has restive eyes and they throw suspicious glances at distant objects. He is now staring at the five monks who are walking away down the lawns in a swarm of college girls.
‘I feel you want to say something to me,’ Ousep says.
‘Yes,’ Beta says, returning his steady gaze to Ousep. ‘I’ve something to say but it is nothing important, is that all right?’
‘That’s all right. I am not here to dig out important things.’
‘That’s not true. You’re here to solve the puzzle.’
‘I am here to understand my son better.’
‘As you say. I won’t argue with you,’ Beta says. ‘I remember once when I attended one of these dumb meetings, Unni told me that he was working on a graphic novel. He had an idea but he didn’t know how to get into it.’
‘What was the idea?’
Ousep takes a moment to realize that Beta has launched straight into the story. Thousands of years ago in the history of man, a great darkness has fallen. The war between good and evil has ended. And it has ended with the complete triumph of evil and a total, irrevocable extermination of good. Evil is cunning, it quickly splits itself into two – into apparent good and evil, so that mankind is under the delusion that the great conflict is still raging and it will not go in search of the truth.
‘So all that we think is good,’ Beta says, ‘love and art and enlightenment, and all that we think is the pursuit of truth is actually a form of evil. That was the idea. He had to work characters into it. Make something out of it.’
‘It is a good story.’
‘It’s an idea. It’s not a story. He had to find the story.’
‘It is a good idea.’
‘It’s a lousy story,’ Beta says. ‘In a story, good has to triumph over evil. You cannot start a story by saying that good is finished for ever. You have to give good a chance to defeat evil in the end. That’s the con. That’s the structure of every story in the history of stories. Every storyteller has to work within this con.’
‘That’s true,’ Ousep says. ‘That is very obviously true. I am so glad I am talking to you.’
‘I don’t think Unni was working on that comic,’ Beta says. ‘I think he really believed that.’
‘Believed what?’
‘What I just told you. It was not a comic. I think he really believed that good was destroyed thousands of years ago, and evil split into two.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Unni was like that. He used to tell me, “What if the meaning of life was realized ages ago by early man, the whole business of truth settled, and the world today is merely a post-Enlightenment residue?” I think that’s why he was very interested in delusions.’
‘Did you say “delusions”?’
‘Yes. He said every delusion has an objective, and the objective of a delusion is not merely to colonize one brain but to transmit itself to as many brains as possible. That is the purpose of every delusion, that is how a delusion survives, that is how it succeeds. By spreading, maximizing its colony, like a virus. According to Unni, any philosophy that can be transmitted to another person is a delusion. If two people believe in the same idea of truth, it is a delusion.’
Ousep feels silly asking a young bearded man this but it is a reasonable question in the circumstances. ‘So what is truth, then?’
‘Truth is a successful delusion.’
‘According to Unni?’
‘That’s what he said.’
‘Do you know who Somen Pillai is?’
‘You ask this again. Who is that?’
‘He was in Unn
i’s school, his class. His closest friend, everyone says.’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘I do feel silly asking this, Beta, but I can’t help it. Why do you think Unni did what he did?’
‘Why have you started digging again, Mr Chacko?’
‘I never stopped.’
‘Is that the truth?’
‘Yes.’
‘I have no idea why Unni did that, Mr Chacko. I am sorry. I know that’s why you are here.’
And so it goes every day. People have a lot of things to say about Unni Chacko, they show his world as a surprisingly large place, but nobody can explain his final act. Ousep wonders whether anyone truly knows why his son died, if a day will ever come when he finally solves Unni.
That a mystery must have a resolution is obviously not a requirement of nature. It is, in fact, another deceit of writers. A plot device, like the idea of a beginning, a middle and an end. In the real world, are mysteries usually solved? What are the chances? Was there ever a person in this world who went in search of an answer and actually found it?
Ousep has been searching for three years, since that Saturday when he had returned to his office after the chief minister’s lunch. He found almost the entire staff, more than twenty of them, standing near his desk, in a huddle. When they saw him they grew nervous, he could see. They stared at him. He stopped a few feet away and looked at them with his hands on his hips. It is a moment that comes to every person in the world. It may come as a phone call, it can arrive through a stranger at the door, or it can happen this way – when you return to your desk to file a quick report, people stand waiting for you. And someone gathers the courage to say, ‘Your son is dead, Ousep. He fell from the terrace. That’s what your neighbours say. They say he fell.’
When Ousep reached the hospital he saw Thoma standing outside the gates with a neighbour. Ousep was mad with relief and joy. Obviously, there had been a mistake. The boy was very much alive, Thoma was alive. But for some reason the boy was standing outside the hospital gates. Then, for the first time in his life, Ousep went numb with raw fear. Could it be Unni? But how could it be Unni? Only little children fell, wasn’t that true, only children died falling. And if there was a person in the world who was sure of his every step it was that boy. Minutes later, in the morgue, Ousep saw the corpse, the still, cold body of Unni Chacko, a boy of seventeen. By evening, people were beginning to tell him the most absurd thing he had ever heard.
