Sunday, 12th April, 1987.
Four in the afternoon is not a
nice time to be waiting outside Matunga railway station on a Sunday. But,
Murali and I had no choice. This was our weekly rendezvous that normally
culminated with boarding the last local from VT station, the last local
actually leaving, officially, on Monday morning. We were waiting for Mohanan
(called Anna by all, probably even by his parents) and Sapkal (called Chotu by
all, including his parents). Anna was a stickler for punctuality and he would
arrive soon; we were early. Chotu would arrive about an hour beyond the agreed
time and would believe as if nothing amiss had transpired. This stop in Matunga
was a ritual. We visited RamAshray for their divine Vada and Dosa and the
nectar-laced filter coffee. Waiting outside Matunga station was a pain in the
ass. The pavement bookstalls were near the King Circle, a 10-minute walk away. Go
there and we will miss Chotu. The street (actually it was more of a lane) outside
the station had only some fruit shops and juice centers. Only a moron would
spend money on fruit juice when RamAshray was just 3-minute away. We were
doing the full-page jumbo crossword in the Afternoon Dispatch & Courier
till Anna joined us.
“Optical illusion,” Murali said
for 2 down – the clue was “unpolitical soil presenting something that was not,
maybe”.
The crossword gave way to
tentative plans for the evening when the duo became the trio. We did the same
thing every week, but still, the future managers in us liked to plan things.
Chotu surprised us by turning up just 32 minutes after the agreed time. We were
past the period where lame excuses were made anymore. We proceeded to RamAshray
and the place was packed with people waiting outside. The day could be wasted,
but evenings and nights were precious to us. Chotu led us to the family
section and occupied a table. The waiter strode confidently to us and declared
“Sir, this is the family section.
Only families are allowed”
Chotu replied
“We are family, we four are
brothers”
In spirit yes.
There was not one feature that we
could agree was in common, other than the fact that we were all clearly
males.
The waiter’s training had not
factored in the wily ways of Chotu and his likes. He faced a question or a
statement that was out of his syllabus.
“Er.. Hmm.. but Sir, there is no woman” he blurted
out with a certainty of Lord Subramanya who circumnavigated the world and
returned to collect the sacred fruit and was equally disappointed when Chotu
replied with all the pseudo-indignation he could muster
“A woman could make us complete
and the assembly of four brothers is not enough for you! Call the manager”
The waiter was by now not only out
of syllabus but out of his depth too. He
swallowed his pride and set about serving us. For the three of us, it was an
exceptional victory but for Chotu, it was just another day in office.
The distance from the VT station
to the Café Royal (there is a new swanky one in the same location today,
visited by billionaires before 40, Obama, and the likes – but in our time it was
a simple adda – chosen for the singular reason that they served alcohol by
quarter and not by pegs) should not take more than 30 minutes when your legs
were young and the evening still fresh with last traces of dying daylight. We
never traveled like an arrow.
We meandered like Brahmaputra.
Checking the films being shown
(Excelsior / Sterling), bargaining for tees with AC/DC or Pink Floyd on them,
stopping at the footpath book collection near Flora Fountain, where the
shopkeeper was well versed in anonymous as well as Satre!
The routine once we were seated in
Café Royal was always the same. Order as much alcohol as you can consume in
the time available. It must be the Indian genes that make you drink as if to
quench your hunger instead of nursing a drink.
Billy Joel could have sung “Makin
love to his tonic and gin”, but we were usually violating! This was never the
time to sip, savor, swirl in your mouth, slip into bliss kind of a thing. It
was always a competition between how quickly you could drink and how fast the
waiter could serve your table.
Two hours and an obscene amount
of alcohol later, Anna could not hold his bladder any longer. The toilet at the
back lived up to the levels of sanitation you could expect from such a joint. Once
drunk, your sensibilities could be heightened. You could not demean yourself by
relieving yourself in such a filthy squalor. Anna stood up and went left. There
was a poetic equivalent of the first class passengers turning left while
economy mortals turned right on an airplane. Not for Anna the ill-lit, reeking
of stench, filthy assembly of pissoirs. He was looking forward to the cacophony
of Bombay traffic horns, the bustle of the never-ending movement of humans, and the
caressing breeze of the zephyr coming off the Gateway Of India on his sweat-drenched back as he would unload his bladder, which was ready to burst. His crab-like movements, influenced by nearly 600 ml of alcohol, took him to a wall
with iron railings, just off the footpath across the road. He unzipped his fly
and heaved a sigh of relief as a steady stream hit the wall and slid down to
the pavement. He needed to widen his legs to avoid the stream soiling his
slippers. He may have been drunk, but his senses were still sharp. All was
well. Well, almost…..
Murali was the first one to raise the alarm when Anna had not returned, even after allocating additional time in
perambulation to reach his First Class piss pot! Chotu was a rare specimen!
Nothing made him nervous. His first reaction was “he will come”. That was his
only reaction. I was easily excited and this trigger from Murali was enough to
push my state from a slightly worried to an absolute paranoia. We both stepped
out, just in time to see a police constable escorting (actually pushing him
ahead with a firm grip on his neck) Anna away from Café Royal!
This time they turned right!
Chotu reacted to our description
as if every person who left a café for an open-air piss jaunt usually ended up
with a police escort.
Chotu was always practical. An
excited duo like us would have deserted our table still laden with unfinished
drinks (and free on-the-house peanuts)
and bolted in the general direction of where we last saw Anna. Chotu’s
mind could evaluate all combinations and arrive at possible conclusions like Bobby Fisher fashioning his checkmate after Karpov moved his pawn to Q4.
As the two of us waited
nervously, imagining Anna being tied and hung upside down, with lathi-wielding
burly policemen hitting the soles of his feet (no specific reason – just the
image that came to our fertile imagination), Chotu kept his calm. He finished the rest of what was on the table, including the last unfinished drink of Anna.
If we had not acted in time, he would have finished ours too.
With a certainty that bordered on
the supernatural, he led us to the Colaba Police Station which was about half a
km away. How the gears and the cogs whirled inside his cranium and spat out the
right answer is beyond the understanding of lesser mortals.
There we saw an indignant Anna
slouched on a wooden bench, with his trademark smirk of disapproval, surveying
the surroundings with complete disdain. He physically distanced himself from
the other undesirables who occupied the same bench alongside him. Pimps, pickpockets, peddlers and drug addicts.
The sub-inspector, P.Patankar,
was seated on his throne, the seat did not deserve the name throne but can only
be described thus the way he occupied it, with his legs stretched out, half his
ass hanging outside the edge of the seat, further descent arrested by his belly
encountering the desk, seriously exploring his nostril with his right thumb
inserted deep inside while his index finger held on to the area of interest
from without.
Only Chotu could have the courage
to interrupt such a deep meditative exercise and he did
“Saheb, To amcha manus ahe! Tyala
jau de”
Mr. Patankar was not happy that
he was interrupted from his nasal excavation and that too without any decorum.
He looked over at the bench that Chotu’s arm
indicated and quickly made out Anna as the topic of interest from among the
various suspects. He had not become a sub-inspector for nothing!
“Do you know what he did? IPC 115
is the charge against him. Not only did the royal highness pee on the compound
wall of the Maha Nagar Palika, he asked the constable to wait till he
finished.”
Anna made a face that said, “How
can one stop mid-pee?”
To see Chotu working a hot-headed
stubborn and insulted sub-inspector into a meek understanding smiling comrade
is to watch a work of art. The exchange of money was unnoticeable even though
the transaction happened in plain sight.
After the highlight of IPC 115,
the rest of the evening did not have many surprises. The pitcher of beer at
Café Mondegar, while marveling at Mario’s murals and listening to “The End” by
Doors on their jukebox was the next ritual that was maintained. Here the restroom met with the approval of Anna and there was no subsequent threat of yet
another visit to the Colaba Police Station.
We made our way to Bade Miyan for
our last stop for the usual diet of juicy kebabs and
Monday,
13th April, 1987
chicken legs. The last local to home was eventless too.
Murali and I went to bed at 2.30 in the morning hours.
We were woken up by our neighbor
at 4 in the morning
“Your roommate Ganesh called. He
wants you to come to the VT railway police station. He wants you to bring some
money to pay for the penalty”
We looked at each other to make
sure that it was not a collective illusion. Our neighbor had no more
information. Ganesh was on the afternoon shift on Sunday and must have returned
home by 1 in the morning. We were too drunk to realize his absence when we
returned.
What is it with the police and us? We
wondered.
First Anna and now Ganesh.
For the second time in less than
12 hours, we made our way back to VT station. Ganesh was in a lock-up. Real
deal. No pathetic benches for him. In fits of anger and frustration, he
narrated how he ended up in the VT station lock-up instead of in his bed.
The afternoon shift was
exhausting. The Sunday shifts were maintenance shifts. We called them graveyard
shifts. Every possible machine that could break, broke. And then some. A
hydraulic hose came off its fitting and he was drenched in oil. By the time he
scrubbed himself clean, he knew he was running late to catch the 23:34 train.
Miss that and the next one would not be around for another 40 minutes. He
entered the station as the train left and he jumped into the first compartment
that he could get into and was surprised to find it almost empty. He did not
mind it and rested for the first time in the preceding nine hours. His rest did
not last long as two constables rounded him up in the next station and took him
all the way to VT railway station and then to the lovely cell that he was
presently standing in narrating to us.
His crime: He was in a ladies-only compartment!
Zeus must have been in a foul
mood that night. What are the odds, else, of law enforcement agencies targeting
two of our small group of friends, booking for acts that we had seen a countless
number of times before?
The constable on duty, fresh from
a night’s sleep, waiting for his reliever to come, told us
“He will be taken to the court at
11.00, where the judge will let him go with a fine. You pay the fine and take
him”
There was nothing else to do but
wait.
At 11.00 Ganesh was taken to
court and we waited along with other people who came to bail out their friends.
11.00 became 12.00 and 12.00
became 12.45 and we were getting restless. At this rate, none of us would make
it back to work in time for the afternoon shift.
As the judge concluded his 7th
case that morning, and when the bailiff called the 8th one as
“People of Maharashtra vs Prashant Bhosle” instead of the anticipated “People
of Maharashtra vs Ganesh Krishnasamy” we exhaled a resigned sigh and started
thinking about lunch.
Ganesh felt the cumulative amount
of injustices against him had crossed a threshold and decided to act. Indian
cinema has taught us what to do in similar situations, we have seen countless
protagonists represent themselves in courts of law, where a considerate judge
often listened and steered the wayward path of straying injustice towards the
correct path of righteousness and restored the balance in the world.
Before the said Prashant Bhosle
could take the stand, Ganesh Jumped the queue, occupied the witness stand,
raised his right hand, as if calling out his childhood chum across the sands of
Chowpatty beach, and hollered
“Your Honor! The charge against
me is unfair. Mine was an act of omission, not one intentionally committed. The
enervation was the sole cause of my ingress into the incorrect compartment and
not out of any malicious or puerile intent. I am willing to…”
He could not complete it because the judge banged his gavel and told the constable to take him away on
“contempt of court”
The judge’s decision came because
of many reasons. He was running late for his lunch. He never liked Hindi Cinema.
He did not know the meaning of the words “enervation”, “ingress”, “malicious”, or “puerile”.
The words that he did not understand would have been more significant if he had
allowed Ganesh to continue. Ganesh was (and still is) our resident Shakespeare with
an awesome vocabulary.
One moment we were all looking at
a quick lunch and back to work. The next, we were left wondering what in the
hell just happened while Ganesh was escorted back to his cell.
His turn eventually came at 3 in
the afternoon. We skipped our lunch not knowing if we had enough cash to bail
him out. We were talking about multiple charges now.
A tired trio walked back to the VT
station, relieved ourselves in the designated restrooms, and boarded a compartment
that was not “ladies only”, not “First class”.
A vendor came along displaying an
unbreakable, flexible plastic comb which broke into two when he demonstrated
its flexibility leaving him red-faced.
A second vendor came with sliced
mangoes, a third with plastic pouches for passports, ID cards, and season
tickets; the stream of vendors on a Bombay local is endless but all we wanted
was just an ordinary day with no more adventures.
