The Enterprise

I saw Changu and Mangu sitting quietly in a dank corner by the school notice board one afternoon. Mangu was busy nibbling on his nails. Changu looked pale- greenish pale, as if he had just puked a bucketful down the stinking open man hole near the notice board. He had an uncharacteristic forlorn look about him, a look that spelled a big fuck up.

“Changu boss, is everything all right? You look as if someone just puked all over you”, I asked. “Did we get licked again?” I enquired, referring to that morning’s cricket match with Bilaspur ‘Lambs’.

“No sonny, we made a delicious goat curry out of them. It’s my goddamned destiny that has licked me”, he said with an unmistakable touch of dejection.

“Since when did you start believing in that bitch?” I asked, genuinely surprised.

“From the fucking moment these two nuts set themselves on that notice board” Changu made a reverse V sign with his fingers and pointed it towards his eyes.



The year still was ’93. We had waited with baited breaths for Changu’s class X board exam results. Some moron at the Haryana School Board headquarters had decided to play the Russian roulette with the students that year. The results’ dates had been announced twice already and unceremoniously dumped, in one case just two hours before the deadline. Students had stopped eating food; some had stopped shitting altogether. Those who did were shitting bricks with anxiety. Many had taken to subsisting on their finger nails. The real jealous ones had gorged right through.



So this was it then. The results were finally out; but if the proverbial puke or crow’s dollop on Changu’s cat licked face was anything to go by, the wait had clearly not been worth it.



“Was it Maths?” I decided to dispense with the, it’s ok boy, shit happens, routine and come straight to the point. I (and he) had worked hard over the entire ‘92, preparing him for his class X Maths. But there are things in life that you are destined to get and things that are always, Oh so out of reach. Maths was for Changu what violence had been for Gandhi or humbleness for Muhammad Ali- a clear departure, a statistical impossibility.



It had to be Maths.



“Noooo- for fuck’s sake; and that’s the bloody racket”, Changu said angrily. His eyes turned red. Mangu, who was hungrily eyeing his toenails by now, was visibly taken aback by his brother’s sudden burst. It was clear that long before I barged in, they had already had their brotherly chat on the issue and were busy thinking of ways of breaking the news at home. I was startled nevertheless. Did I hear him right? Did he just say he had passed in Maths? Really? Holy fuck, in the back seat of the truck! Wow! That was Goood- Goood on me. All that hard work; un-fuckin-believable.



But wait, if he didn’t flunk Maths, then what was the bloody problem? Why did his jaw drop all the way down to the dirty floor? Why did it hang limply, looking like an advertisement for a new broom stick?



“Take a look at this shit”, Changu barked and thrust a small green colored card in my hands. The card was damp and stinky with his sweat. He had clearly left the pigs far behind in the sweating contest those past few hours.



“Mad cow, tell me how”, I barely managed. “How many more surprises would life spring at me?” I literally dragged myself out of tearing my own hair. Written in Changu’s dirty scrawls on the green slimy card were the following stats, and words:



Hindi: 23/100 (FUCK ME)

English: 18/100

Social Studies: 29/100

Science: 32/100

Maths: 67/100



“I wonder who were they humping while correcting the papers”, Changu mocked. “They weren’t straddling human females. That’s for sure. May be a She Donkey or a Pigess or a Pig’s ass?” he continued blabbering to no one in particular. For once, I was inclined to agree with him; I mean, what kind of sick bastard would flunk someone in Hindi?



“Fuccccccccccccccccccccckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk…………………..”, he bellowed out a long, deep wail. It was too much for the half a dozen crows who had gathered on a fat mango tree branch overhanging the notice board and the open man hole. They had been lustily eyeing something in the man hole- may be a dead lizard or some other slimy piece of shit. Changu’s primal cry made them cringe in horror and they flew away in disgust, cursing him with rabid, loud mouthed profanities.



Changu’s wail was more a wail of exasperation than that of helplessness or nakedness or vulnerability. In life, shit happens. Sometimes you pause a moment and tend to ask- why? What was it that pissed Them off? You wait a while- like a child with his ear pressed against the cold steel of a railway track, looking for the vibrations. And then, you get up and get on with it.



For what seemed like an hour, we kept staring at the cobbles in front of our feet. “Have you considered filing for rechecks?” I finally broke the silence.



“Fuck rechecks. I have flunked everything; everything except Maths that is”, he stated the obvious. “Honestly, I’ve had a gutful.”



With heavy hearts we dragged ourselves out the Fort High main gate. There was no way for me to have known this at the time but it was the last Changu would ever see of the insides of any institution of formal learning.



“So now what? Where do you go from here?” I asked softly.



“To Geeta Panwadi; and you are coming with me”, he looked ahead as if seeing something in the distance that I couldn’t.



“Fuck man, I needed it badly”, Changu blew out a dense blue plume of smoke from his nostrils. As always, Geeta had a raunchy Bollywood number blaring out in the afternoon heat,



“Chadh Gaya Upar Re, Atariya Pe Lutan Kabootar Re.. (A Pigeon in heat has climbed me…)”



“Have you ever noticed how nowadays everyone in Chhachhrauli seems to want to own one of these things?” Changu picked up Geeta’s portable audio cassette player and started fingering it. It was a compact device. A small row of five plastic push buttons adorned the front of the player. Directly below them was a small groove in which sat the audio cassette. The cassette was white in color and played the audio track of a movie titled Dalal. It was one of the world record forty nine new releases that Lord Mithun had registered that year. An audio signal cable emerged out of the player and went on to connect with two large sized amplifiers fitted on the two opposite sides of the shop. The acoustic booms of the amplifiers threw out jets of compressed air pockets in our direction.



Geeta had seen Changu pick the thing up. Like a wary bitch out to protect its litter from the prying eyes of the world, he started circling us, mindful of not snatching it out of his hands but wary all the same.



“Relax Geeta! You look as if someone just pried open your fly and squashed your balls”, Changu mocked him and put the device down. Geeta wasn’t one to suffer fools easily. But Changu was a different customer altogether. You don’t fuck around with the keepers of the Jacob’s ladder, now do you? A missing plank here, a cracked one there and you could be lost in the limitless space forever- hey guys, where the fuck did my stairway to heaven go? Can you show me the way please? Ganga motioned to say something but then thought the better of it. The bitch picked up its pup and walked away.



“Did you just see how these motherfuckers fawn over these things?” he looked at me with wry humor in his eyes. “They go all the way to Yamunanagar to buy them and then look after them as if they weren’t machines but their wives’ goddamn titties”, he whispered wickedly to me and broke out into a low pitched laughter.



“Chadh Gaya Upar Re, Atariya Pe Lutan…...”, the amplifiers kept blaring out the deeds of the incestuous pigeon in the afternoon sun.



“Humm..” I uttered, not sure of which way his nicotine loaded head was trying to push me.



“And what about the music?” he asked me.



“Well, it’s a riot. God knows where they get these crazy lyrical ideas these days…”, I said and it was true. Those were the years when the lyricists in Bollywood were at their creative best, thinking up diverse similes, adverbs and adjectives as means of delivering the message and not getting caught in the Indian movie Censor Board’s net.



“Precisely”, Changu exclaimed.



“Chadh Gaya Upar Re,….Gutar Gutar, Gutar Gutar….”



“Why, even AIDS has got bitten by this cassette player bug”, he continued referring to his father’s recent acquisition of a sophisticated music system (we all refered to his father lovingly as AIDS as his name was Advaitanand 'Ichha Daman' Shastri).



I had to agree wholeheartedly with him on that. For years the denizens of Chhachhrauli had woken up to the live broadcast of AIDS’ morning salutations to lord Shiva. High frequency amplifiers had faithfully jarred every inch of the village’s geography (and our brains) with the harshness of his baritone. Many buffaloes had stopped producing milk and many children had stopped drinking it. People had grown sick and schizophrenic but couldn’t complain out of sheer respect for him. Mercifully, about three months ago, a realization finally dawned on him. He left for Yamunanagar and brought back a large cassette player and a big horde of pirated devotional audios.



The move had worked wonders.



Where we had once gone to sleep fearful of what lay in wait for us the next morning, we now looked forward to the melodious hymns of Anuradha Paudwal and Anoop Jalota every morning to gently rub the sleep out of our eyes. Children started liking milk again (for the time being at least). Buffaloes went back to doing what they did best- giving milk and smashing animal fare records. People who for years had been kept away from the path of god felt a renewed tug at their heart; and unbelievably, the attendance at the evening aartis sky rocketed.



AIDS’ life underwent a change as well. Fear of the loss of his voice (needless fear for how can you lose something that you don’t have?) had kept him away from tobacco chewing for years. Thanks to the player, now he could go back to the dear hobby. No need to get up early either. He could get up just to put the player on and go back to sleep again, thick wads of cotton stuck in both his ears.



“What are you thinking son? Why not give them what they want- right here in Chhachhrauli?” Changu had a bright glint in his eyes.



“You mean, you mean set up a shop and start selling audio players?” I was surprised at the swiftness with which he had pulled himself out of that afternoon’s debacle. They way he looked then, he would have made a phoenix look like a common city crow.



“Yes my dear son, yes. That, and the goddamn music”, he said and added, “give the bastards what they want and take the money home”.



So that was it. A chapter in his life had barely closed but the next one was starting already.



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“What’s wrong with setting it up at the bus stand?” I was adamant.



“People go to the bus stand to catch a fucking bus, not to buy pirated music cassettes”, Changu had clearly had enough.



I hadn’t however, “yes, but they have to wait there for the bus to arrive. They won’t mind spending that time at our shop”.



“I want to do business, not charity. Those who want to pass their time can use the Haryana Roadways waiting room”, he had the final word on it.



“Ok, screw the bus stand. How about Fort High? Surely, that would be a great place to start the business”, I was excited.



“Half the students at Fort High are like my sons and daughters. How do you expect a father to ask his children for money?” he had a point there. “Besides, I myself have lost count of all those whom I owe some”, he said sheepishly.



“I guess that leaves us with just one place”, I said.



“It does; and believe me, that IS the place where we should open it”, he chimed. The place of course was Sir Chedi Lal Gali, the de facto Broadway of Chhachhrauli.



“The place has a critical mass, a certain culture, a particular vitality about it”, he continued even as I mentally pictured the numerous battalions of pigs and piglets that called the area their barracks. “Thanks to Pooran, people now associate that place with entertainment. They go there to get their minds doped for three hours- and they pay for it. What else can we ask for? Let’s give them what they want”, he ended the discussion.



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AIDS threw everything that he had (astrological charts, position of stars, numerology and Vaastu ) at the problem of determining the name for Changu’s new venture. Many hats were thrown in the ring viz, Sangeet Manjusha, Sargam, Taan, Sangeet Mandir, Swar Lehri, among other sleep inducers. Changu grew mad at his father’s daftness one day and tore his charts away. Having already shown the Fort High (and all other ‘temples’ of learning) his middle finger, he decided it was time to do the same to the rest of the humanity. This business was going to be his baby and he knew what name he would give it:



Sannata Sound Service

(Silence Sound Service)



Work on the project started in earnest. The open, muck infested plot adjoining the Meena Talkies was penciled in as the location. Within days, a five year lease term was signed with its owners. A cash reward of Rs. 50 was put on the head of every piglet that Ganga Ram (Chhachhrauli’s head janitor) could herd in.



It wasn’t an easy task. Ganga Ram would spend the whole day luring the pigs away with (drabs such as) freshly baked wheat breads and rice cakes. As Mary Antoinette of France of the, if the peasants don’t have bread, why don’t they eat cakes, fame (or infamy- depends on the way you want to look at it) found out, offering cakes (wheat bread and rice cakes) to people (pigs) clamoring for bread (shit) can put one’s neck in deep, deep trouble; so also Ganga realized his folly soon. The vapid stench of the shit loaded mountains kept bringing the pigs back and one day, Changu blew his top completely.



“What the fuck do you think you are doing feeding them rice cakes and bread puddings?” he fumed in anger, “Are you out of your goddamn mind?” “You have spent your whole life chasing them and still you know nothing about pig psychology”, he said. “These things feed on shit- the more the merrier. Get them a truck load of it and they would follow your ass to the edge of the universe. Do You Get Me?”



The instructions couldn’t have been clearer. Ganga summoned his battle hardened relatives from the adjoining villages. An assortment of assault weapons (booming drums, flash lights, bamboo sticks and long handled brooms among others) was assembled. A big Tata dumper truck was also summoned in from a bridge construction site in Yamunanagar. On a muggy mid-June night that came to be known as the Night of the Big Knives, Ganga and his men attacked the unsuspecting enemy. Screeching wails of pigs, big and small, pierced the night sky as one after the other, they were flung over the dumper’s high walls into its inviting belly full of muck, crap and every other conceivable waste collected from drains all across Chhachhrauli.



The dumper took off for a secret location under the cover of the night. Disjointed accounts of sudden explosions in pig populations kept creeping in for many months from places as close as Bilaspur, Panjeton and Dadupur and as far and away as Paunta Sahib, Maddipur and Salem Pur Kohi. To this day however, no one is sure of what became of the pigs on the Night of the Long Knives.



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One Friday afternoon early in July, Sannata Sound Service threw its doors open for business. Changu’s labor of love had shaped up beautifully. Created out of a railway coach purchased in an auction, a la railway station, the shop had the décor of a music station. Three rows of shelves in the rear of the shack displayed the shiny new boxes of a wide collection of cassette players. The front of the shack was full of audios from a galaxy of Hindi movies- new and old, most of them pirated. People had a choice- buy the cassette or get your favorite songs recorded- for a fee. The blank cassette of course had to be bought from SSS.



The opening ceremony was a memorable affair. A beautiful bright red pandal was set up on the open land (that had once been a mountain range of shit) adjoining the newly constructed music store. Thick red carpets covered the entire arena. A motley group of people drawn from various walks of life came for the opening ceremony.



Changu started his opening address:



Brothers (a long silence as if trying to decide what to speak next)….



Brothers and their sisters….



Thanks you for gracing the occasion with your presence (I wonder If you would have really bothered had there been no free lunch)….



Since times immemorial, music has played the role of food. It has been a perfect food for the ears; it has been a food for the masses and a food for the gods. But most of all, it has been a food for the soul. Its aroma has lightened the soul. Its taste has titillated the imagination and blah, blah, blah….



People squirmed at the repeated references to ‘food’. Many of them had skipped their breakfasts and looked forward to loading up on the free afternoon. Their planning had been immaculate. To their bad luck however, today was the improbable day Changu had chosen to hone his public speaking skills:



When I was a child, I would often not eat food. My mother would sing a song to me. She would sing Mukesh’s songs though to tell you the truth, I never liked his singing. As you can see, music, food and Mukesh … blah, blah, blah….



The aromas wafting out of the food corner compounded the agony further. Oh God! How long before the idiot will shut up?



How much can one eat? How much can one digest? And how long can you listen to Mukesh before going nuts? The great Indian musical tradition had feasted on blah, blah, blah…..



Seconds became minutes and minutes threatened to border on the hour. Changu seemed to be in a time warp, unable to move on, unable to stop. People grew restless- was there an end to that madness? They started scratching the ground with their toes (thank god for the carpets). Wafts of food started journeying out the frying pans. As a dog in sight of an inviting bone but unfortunately on a tight leash, they strained uncomfortably in their seats, wanting to break free.



A tiny middle aged man, sitting the closest to the serving table in the last row, was the first to snap. He walked over to the service table and picked up a plate- unchy, munchy, crunchy, I want my lunchy. Hail the pioneer. And, to hell with Changu and his bullshit.



People cut loose. They rushed to the service table, fearful that the tiny one might end up eating everything. Old men seemed to be in the greatest hurry- a lifetime of hunger honed reflexes goading them to get on with it. Hungry mothers followed closely behind, dragging their crying children to the table- they had multiple mouths to feed after all. A minor stampede ensued as an elderly man got stuck in his own dhoti and fell down while running towards the table. Changu soldiered on in the face of a runaway audience. AIDS could contain himself no longer. As the self invited chief guest of the afternoon, he got up quickly and cut the red ribbon.



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There is something to be said about human spirit. On an unending day with nary a drop or shadow in sight, a traveler in the desert may think a while what got him there in the first place. The traveler however must keeps walking for sitting down would be the end of hope. Hope makes a human human, and to be human is to be alive- to the possibilities of tomorrow.



Changu made piece with the reality of his Today; and got busy working on the possibilities of Tomorrow. Tomorrow would come when it would come. And when it would come, it would take care of itself.