Short Story

For a few queer smiles

Dear Amber, Vishal, Maanuj,

It has been such a while since we've talked. You know, it's almost blurred in my memories - instances of our togetherness. St. Martin's was a blast. But a few years have passed. I've changed. I'm not the same as I was in school. It's not the college which has changed me. That would be a cliché. It's different. But more about me later. I am writing this letter and such a feeling it gives me. It's like poetry. Bad poetry which only the poet can like.

You know what struck me lately. In school, everything was so strange. Just boys and boys and all of us. Uniforms were such a thing, don't you think? I could never bring myself to like those khakis. The winters were more delightful - greys and whites. Like formal clowns we were. Mr. Eyze was such a droll. He was so camp. It made me laugh to the bones. We all used to joke about him. Such cruel chimpanzees were we. But you know what, my perspective has changed. I can't laugh at him anymore. So what if he was as sophisticated as the Queen of England? He had panache and we deemed it rank effeminacy. I must sound strange to all of you. But we were stranger in the school. Believe me. Time after school is actually making us saner. St. Martin's held all of us like prisoners. OK. I will shut up. It was good back in those days. Like the blue water. Of an aquarium. And we were the fishes.

I remember walking in the passages. Silent as a lamb. The classes were going on. Only the teachers could be heard when I passed by the doors. Ma'am Chatterjee, Mrs. Tobb, Mr. Pollins, all of them teaching like wild ducks. And the students quacking. Then the break bell would ring. Boys would run out. Their lips used to quiver with the 15-minute excitement. Rahul and Saharsh would always stand in the corner of Mr. Cavaille's courtyard. And exchange food from their tiffin-boxes like housewives. Once I saw Saharsh removing a speckle of sandwich sauce from Rahul's lower lip. It was pure housewifery. I can't even begin to define. But you would recall. And do you remember Vikram, Ankit, Megh and the gang. Boisterous energy they had. And always playing cricket during the break. Or beating juniors. Such men were in making at St. Martin's. The world would be proud! Boys whose teeth were bigger than their tongues.

And who can forget this inanity? The butterfly decorations on those wretched sports days. They killed me. What were we thinking? Bring flags of several colors and there we have the Olympics for ourselves. Our school had some airs. And we did too. And then the theme races would begin. The teachers with their wild creativity. Such hell. Mr. James Cub and his eyes. He would stare at me when I ran. He could have pushed me into a well with those eyes, I tell you. But I begin to re-member snippets and you would think that I'm trying hard to say something. Which went beyond school. But it is difficult to express, Amber, you do see the problem, don't you? Complete expression was always whizzed away from us. And we would stutter in the staffrooms. Stammer in the offices. Silent in the passages. Yet I wanted to create a noise. And pinch people. Abhinav once told me to correct my gait. I could never figure out what was wrong. I could have clawed his nails out and burst his eyes. But St. Martin's never let us express, did it? Maanuj, it didn't let you sing. Vishal, I know that Abhinav was cruel to you too. But happiness should reign. We are out of it. One should recall only the happiest of memories. But what's doggy is that they all connect. They fuck each other like lusty lovers, these memories. And bear kids.

I was going to rush with this letter. Complete it in a few lines. And post it to you people. And now I think - what's in saying two words and leaving the sentence incomplete. Writing a half-hearted letter would not do, princes. I cannot inject juice into pithy passages. I need room. A room of my own? All three of you would be able to picture the green-room after all these years. Such times were passed in that shell. Boys would change their costumes. Boys would become girls, stage by stage, cream by cream, and look genuine. Ready for the stage where they would speak and the audience would laugh. Where they would cry and the audience would laugh. Where they would forget and the audience would laugh. But do you know what was unbearable? When in the transition stage between a boy and a girl, Saharsh would stand helpless in the green-room. When his bra was off but the lipstick still stayed on his lips. His bangles still mildly jangling with each other. And Karan hit him violently in the crotch. Very hard, I believe. Saharsh could have cried, howled loudly for his dignity. But he was just a boy. And bigger boys can play with younger boys. That's the rule. The modus operandi of the play at St. Martin's. So we all acted. And quite a successful performance!

Amber, you will begin working soon, with your father I believe? I wish you all the luck for it. It will be exciting to gaze at folders and to order secretaries. And they will bring you endless cups of coffee. We are trained to order people around. We were prefects at St. Martin's. And that meant so much, even if it sounded perfectly hollow to alien ears. Even our parents never understood that we were very important persons in uniform. It was a clear division at school. Either you were a prefect, or little poor darling you were not. And if you were not, God help you from the cruel savages that young boys-to-be-men can be. They can make you run till sweat pores get exhausted and pour out salt. And then they would flex their incipient muscles and slap the litter-boys left, right and centre. And class 6th to 10th was all litter. 11th was filth. 12th was gutter. The prefects being filth and gutter, they chose to pollute the litter. This is the way it worked. Pran once held me in his hands. He pressed me hard. I was reeling under pain. His hair had fallen over his eyes and he could barely see his prey. I was struggling in his grasp. I could have died that day. And then Megh called Pran away for looking at something insignificant. He wasn't even a prefect and he held me so. What could I have done? Strength doesn't see badges. And his hair was a pure brand of straw silk. He could have strangled me with those. Maanuj, you won't believe, I could have willfully died if caught in that silken trap. But friends, do I become incoherent? Such are boys, you know. They do queer things to other boys. Vishal, do not laugh in case you are laughing right now. Try and understand.

And this is the hardest of it all. To make all three of you understand. We were different Amber, Vishal, Maanuj, we were different from all of them. Not different in some unnatural way but in what we liked and loved. Other boys were vulgar. We had some sense of, what can I say, of a respect for teachers. No, that's not it. We hated many of them too. And quite justifiably. It is difficult to find a single phrase to define us. We had crushes, didn't we? So we were like normal boys. They - growing up, and off and on, on and off, having crushes on maids and madams. But that's not it. That's not bloody, fucking it. It's maddening I can't tell you what you were and what I was. My vocabulary seems to have shriveled. Let's just talk about other things. Maanuj, how's your girlfriend doing? Good? When is she having her guts removed?

But let me lighten the letter with a few feather-weight words. Which matter, but not completely. They are like formalities. Any correspondence is incomplete without them. For to reach the castle, you have to fight the knights. That's an English proverb. Or thereabouts. They use it a lot in boring novels. But it is aptly telling. See, threesome, it is quite simple. Only this world has made it a little difficult for me to express it. I have broken those barriers. I am liberated but not liberated enough to free all of you. Three is a big number. I wish you could be brave enough to face yourselves in your bathroom mirrors. That's the most difficult test. Public toilet mirrors are the easiest. One is dressed in one's best. Just the fly sees the urinal, gets unzipped and zipped back again. There are people around. But it is out in the open. So something binds. Bedroom mirrors are more difficult to deal with. You are more real in front of them. But the worst is if you are reflected in the bathroom. That's where you'll be naked and real desire will play. And fake performances will be impossible. Your image would be a cruel director. And what's best is that masturbation makes clear all the pungent reality. But am I writing PhDs on mirrors or for that matter on scatology? I ramble and you must be disgusted.

I wonder if this letter reaches someone who does not know us, what would she think? She would say - the writer is struggling to manufacture sense and to transmit it to these three friends of his, who are such dumb pigs, they seem not to understand. She would rub her knuckles and breathe against her finger gaps and think. He must have thought so much to write this letter and yet what a pity that he is failing. So Vishal, I tell you, I have to, have to, tell you the truth. To tell you - the truth. To tell you. To tell. Tell. So you know it, right? Do I need to tell? Gosh. I am to be punished. I am the one who's tottering. Listen, let this be. You remember Mr. Hay? The one with the ruddy chin. I heard he died last month. It was a murder. And guess who told me. You will split your cranium figuring this one out. Mrs. - I am the lady so you better be a gentleman. Yes. Yes. It was her. She was in the city for a few days. I bumped into her and a few memories bumped into me. She still carries her sagging breasts with such élan as if they were diamonds to boast about. It's pure insanity, this woman. She told me about Mr. Hay getting murdered as if the second coming was at hand. And the world about to smash. But I'd bet it was all for the good. Mr. Hay no more. After what he did to me. I'd never step into the gymnasium after that. Even my toes would shiver. He was a dinosaur and dinosaurs ought to have died ages ago. This one stayed for long. But don't bother. One Mr. Hay less from St. Martin's would not make a difference. The place is rich.

Amber, I am reading Milan Kundera these days. 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being'. It starts so curiously. The writer speaks in your face in such an unexpected manner that one balks. And then he goes on with these Czech characters of his. Who are tied only by themselves. They are so much freer than us, Amber, you have to read it to believe it. Their lives seem to be determined only by their erratic wills. And we would think that we were just like that in school. But that's where we go wrong. I do not call bunking periods - freedom. Just like holidays they are. Once they begin you know they are going to end. That's it. And I saw you and Vishal talking to Shahid's group as if complete liberty had been won. School corridors were not Bastille. They were just temporary escapes from the pew-ish classroom benches. And such kids we were to think big of it. Shahid would strut like a cock when missing the Chemistry lectures. I would just stare at him and think. What foolishness! What foolishness! And then he would look at me and all my thoughts changed. Not evaporated, just changed into something quite other than disgust. But at least I thought, like Kundera's people. Maanuj, you just danced to their tune even if you wanted to stand still. And stood alone when you wanted to dance. It was all inverted at St. Martin's. An institution of inversions, that's what it was. And of perversions. Ugly manmade perversions. Clap your hands on my head if I am wrong.

It's courageous if you are still reading Maanuj. You don't like injunctions at all. And yet, here am I blabbering some ink-words which sound like value-judgments. Thank God I didn't send you all an e-mail. You would have just deleted it having gone half way through. Or worst still, archived it to be never read again. That's what I dread the most. Words which are not read. Because if they are not read, they rot. And rotting words create such a foul stench, you would think you are in a roadside urinal. Smelling jaundiced urine. But I get dirty and you think he's being untidy about things. He should write more pleasantly. Like about the prize-days we had at St. Martin's, if we are to remember our school at all. Now that's a good memory, all of you will say. It was such a pompous and a colorful affair. And splendid choir music and chief-guests repeated over years were delightful none the less. The principal's annual report was unbearably long but if our names figured in it once, it made up for all the ennui. And if it came twice, life was happier than it could be in paradise. I remember the third prize-day I attended. It was late in the evening, about 6 pm. But the hall seemed to be wonderfully lit as if by the sun of dawn. The prize-winners had such smiles stuck on their faces, as if Mars had just been conquered. And they were the new kings awaiting their consorts. That's what St. Martin's was like on prize-days. A little unreal. A little Martian, if you like. Orange and beaming. I could have sworn I was truly happy then, just when Mrs. Chatterjee called me "supremely intelligent". I would have had an orgasm. Just the feeling of being appreciated is enough for a class tenth boy to soar beyond like sky-ships. Over and above the clouds. Into a happy nothingness. But she told me to do something. To fetch something. From 11-B, yes that was the classroom, 11-B, in the third corridor to the left from the main hall. I was supposed to fetch her purse. Ah, what an irresponsible woman, I thought. Forgetting her purse as if it were a film ticket. And our school was so big it drove me mad. It must have been half a kilometer to that wretched 11-B from the main hall. I ran like a deer. No one was around. Everyone's attending the prize day. The St. Martin's prize day. It's about to begin. So breathe deeply and perhaps chomp on an aspirin. The celebrations were to start. And what am I doing - running to get Ma'am Chatterjee's purse. Running faster by the second. Almost missing each alternative breath. There it is, that cursed 11-B. The cursed, cursed 11-B. I struggle with the huge door. Cling hard against it and with a final push, open it with a thunder. I must have given out a shrill shriek of delight, with the sheer achievement of having reached. Having reached 11-B for the purse of Mrs. Chatterjee. But I was hushed. Rahul was inside, with Saharsh. Their trousers were lying in grey lumps near their feet. And they had erections. Long, wiry, class-10th erections. But proud. I stared full at both of them. They were startled. But not housewives any longer, exchanging tiffin-boxes. Saharsh whispered some words to Rahul and I could not hear. Some muffled words which was the magic-code. Which kept them together. I was defeated or rather my commonplace gaze was defeated. I looked elsewhere. Anywhere but at them. And there was Mrs. Chatterjee's purse. Waiting to be picked. So that's what I did. I brought back the purse of Mrs. Chatterjee and gave it to her. She was relieved. She thanked me. And why I did that I do not know but I thanked her. Such stupidity to say a thank you for a thank you. She did not understand. Neither could I. Both of us did not have the magic-code. Amber, Vishal, Maanuj, even you don't have that magic-code. We are all without it. We languish in its lack. In this dull world without magic. But despair is uncalled for. We should smile. St. Martin's has taught us to conjure a smile at the drop of a hat. And happy memories should bring a smile on our faces. That's what this letter wants. It is meant for this. Queer Smiles.

And I must tell you, the weather here is better than ever. It's like strawberries on Sundays. You will bear with me another time.

Goodbye till we meet next or I write

Your Friend

Aakash

P.S. Manas sent me link to the St. Martin's web group. I have emailed it to all three of you. The album section is huge, and rather stirring. All of you should try and have a look.

Akhil Katyal is currently pursuing Masters in English Literature at St. Stephens College, University of Delhi. His articles, short stories and poems have been published in local newspapers, college magazines and journals and in Quirk - the National Law School Literary Magazine in Bangalore.

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