farewell, dom

death has a funny way of reiterating things we have long taken for granted. a way of dredging up old memories, odd bits, early kisses, and, every once in a while, a desire to shut the door and give oneself up to regret. i had one of those moments early one june morning. dominic francis moraes, only child of frank and beryl moraes, had died.

my agent tells me that i have a name
an audience waits, he says, for what i say
-- john nobody ('john nobody', 1965)

i never met dom moraes, which is something i blame myself for entirely. i first ran into him -- and 'ran into' i did, bumping into him head first while coming up a flight of stairs at full tilt -- in 1993. i was 17, a slightly undernourished first-year student of english literature at st. xavier's college. he was 56, a legendary poet whose work happened to be part of my syllabus. what could i have said to him? what sort of conversation could we possibly have had?

poets have always had a way of intimidating the young.

a decade passed. and then, on july 19, 2003, moraes turned 65. i remember a journalist asking him, at the time, about why he happened to be a poet with more prose to his name. 'much of my prose was written for money,' he replied, in a soft voice. 'you can't earn money by writing poetry.' i remember smiling, thinking about how nice it would be to meet him, finally, after a decade of studying literature, and have a long chat.

i could have asked him about his father, perhaps, who was first the literary editor of the times of india, then its chief editor. but that would be too personal. or his grandmother, the first indian woman doctor. the topics were limitless, really, for anyone who happened to pick up either of his two volumes of autobiography. they contain admissions about his early years such as: 'the flat was always full of unshaven and furtive young nationalists who had either just emerged from prison or were hiding from the police...' compared to the quiet, middle-class home i grew up in, that alone had me more than a little open-mouthed.

poets can intimidate adults just as easily.

so, those conversations never did happen. i went for the more boring option of reading about his life instead. of the time, for instance, he met the british modernist poets auden and spender: 'i went to hear them read, and could not believe it: there they actually were, physically present: auden with a lined, expressive face, grave and heavy: spender tall and stooped, with a white cloud of hair and large, intent blue eyes. i had thought of them as very young men, and was surprised: then a new idea of the poet came to me, the poet dedicated, apart, carrying his work on through a lifetime, wrapped in a vatic cloak.'

the english poets grew to know him well. when dom was 15, auden decided he liked the boy's poems. spender had them published. the 19 year old went on to win the hawthornden prize in 1958 for a beginning, his first book of poems. he was the first non-english person, and also the youngest, to win. more volumes of poetry followed, and 23 books of prose, and a bit of scripting, then directing television documentaries.

his last major work -- one of my favourites -- was the long strider, an account of the life of thomas coryate, a british eccentric who walked all the way from britain to india. it was an apt topic to work on, considering the sense of homelessness implicit in coryate's life. i grew to think of moraes as a homeless eccentric in his own way, thinking of how he would sometimes tell colleagues of mine about 'home' being an abstraction as well as a concrete place, with neither coalescing around a single location.

in this cold, tidy country.
i am filling a small shelf.
-- letter to my mother (a beginning, 1958)

where there's a poet, there's an angst-ridden critic. and dom moraes must have met quite a few over 65 years. there were some who said that he always promised, but rarely delivered. one even called him a 'slave to the regular iambic line.' i have absolutely no idea of how he would react to something like that. i rather like the idea of him reaching for comments like those, burning little, black holes into them with a cigarette, and sipping cognac, calmly, with his feet up.

it's all a bit of a fairy tale, really. about a precocious, talented little boy and his brilliant father. a home full of hysteria, with a beautiful mother who was slowly losing her mind. a tale about the coming of age of a poet. about writing while escaping bombs in war-torn algeria. about meetings with cannibals in the jungles of indonesia. being seduced by a woman called henrietta, then marrying leela naidu, once listed among the ten most beautiful women in the world. dom moraes lived through this long and winding tale, rarely speaking about it, divulging nothing. it's almost as if genuine access to the essence of the man lay in his writing alone.

'we start out as white slime and end up ashes'
-- derelictions, (typed with one finger, 2003)

little more than 10 months have passed since moraes died of a heart attack, in his sleep, far from the dreaming spires of oxford, at home in the chaotic suburb of bandra. yes, i never met him. no, i can't say i don't know him at all. no one who spends time with his work can claim not to. nissim ezekiel. ramanujan. kamala markandaya. narayan. dom moraes. where have all our voices gone?

i am told he once wrote: 'a little tired, but in the end, not unhappy to have lived.' i hope that's true. i really ought to have met him. in another time, perhaps. goodbye, mr. moraes.

cops, shorts, a moonlit night

first off, a few facts. this could be embarrassing. not for you, but for the people involved -- me, some of my closest friends, and the cops who came to our rescue. secondly, the names have been changed, not to protect identities, but merely to save myself from a beating. after all, even close friends have varying levels of tolerance. and third, contrary to popular belief, skinny-dipping is not an activity restricted to the big, bad west alone.

i hope, with all my heart, my mother doesn't find this page. she's net-savvy, which can sometimes be a disadvantage.

this happened years ago. when we were young. when life comprised flings at college, wild partying, reckless driving, and a great many games of truth or dare. when none of our group of five would think twice about defying parents and heading off into another night of unreserved dancing. when the word ‘inhibition’ had absolutely no place in our vocabulary or demeanour.

of all those many nights, however, the one i think about most is the one i choose to talk about now.

it was june, i think. one of those cool, clear nights soon after exams, when the world seemed like a good place to hang out in. we had just finished partying somewhere at aksa beach, dragging ourselves out and struggling to keep our eyes on the road.

it was around 2am, and signs of humanity were few and far between. half-asleep in tarun's maruti omni, deep purple doing highway star on the audio system, it was a perfect end to one heck of a tiring day. or so we thought, until karan came up with the idea. "why go home? i wanna go for a swim."

screeching to a stop, as we contemplated the idea. the van swung promptly around, moving towards a desolate stretch of beach between aksa and arengal, known colloquially as dana pani or blue ballerina, after two restaurants built in the vicinity. it was around 3am. there were no lights, just a full moon above and the limitless sea glistening below. we parked, jumped off the six-foot-high embankment, and touched sand. minutes later, we were in the water, yelling at the top of our voices, our clothes spread messily somewhere on a number of rocks.

and then, we saw them. headlights. at 3.15am, it could be no one but the police. thinking of all our many gods at once, we prayed they would drive on. but our gods let us down.

the van stopped, right next to our own. then there were torch lights flashing in all directions. we were caught in a matter of minutes, with our pants down. literally.

all except anish, that is, who couldn't find his underwear. a tragedy, yes, but true. cross my heart. the four of us were hauled up, dripping, shivering. it wasn't the cold.

there were five of them, all carrying powerful torches that they now used to examine us thoroughly. we stood with our backs to the sea, fully clothed by now, but wet and uncomfortable.
"where's the woman," one of them asked.
"what woman?" i returned.
"the one you guys were with on the beach."
i thought he was joking, till he yelled. "where is she?"

we all began speaking at once, then. "no woman, saheb," "we are college students, saheb," "from decent family, saheb," "only our friend is there, saheb...."

at this point in time, we heard swearing. all eyes turned. the torches found anish, wet, clad only in his white jockeys. it was a moment he will never forget. nor, for that matter, will we.

so this was our 'woman' then. the cops looked at each other, smiled, then laughed out loud, and gave us five minutes to get out as quickly as possible. the guys jumped into the van, tarun raring to drive off as if his life depended on it. but i stayed back.

in the rush, i had left my shorts on the beach, and stood trembling in my jeans trying to locate them in the inky blackness below.

they all groaned. "not now!" "how could you?" "are you nuts?" "can't you buy new shorts?" "here, use mine..." i heard them all out, grimacing with disgust at the last suggestion.

engrossed in our petty argument, we didn't hear a thing until headlights shone, again. the cops were back. why were we still there? "my shorts, saheb," i told the head constable. "they're down there somewhere." shaking his head, he then did what i never thought a policeman would, ever. bringing out his torch, he started flashing the rocks in slow sweeps. "look hard," he said, in marathi. "is that it?" minutes later, it was found... a small white patch on slabs of black rock.

they left, for the second time that night, leaving us to our resources and me to my shorts.

fifteen minutes later, we were back on the path leading away from aksa on to marve road. a familiar blue van lay parked on the other side, while we drove past quickly. three of the cops standing outside gave us an unmistakable wave. we waved back. for a minute or two, none of us spoke. then, we shrieked.

we learned a number of lessons that night; ones we continue to believe in. cops can be human, too. and when they're not hunting down lunatics, they can have a sense of humour.

long live the king

his name was sutradhar. v k sutradhar. everyone just called him sutra, though. no one knew what the 'v k' stood for. when i did find out, years later, that it was 'vishramabhookar kaluvartane', i realised i wouldn't exactly publicise it either.

what made sutra special, however, was not his name. sutra was special because he made elvis presley come alive for us.

we first met, in the early nineties, under the quiet stone arches of st. xavier's college. i was tall and lanky, with shoulder-length hair; he was short and round, and sported sideburns. he said he came from a tiny village in south india. and we liked each other almost at once.

by day, sutra would attend his lectures, quietly, unobtrusively. by night, however, in dhobi talao's sun light bar – a particularly poignant name, if you thought about it -- sutra would down three large pegs of old monk with water, and wait for his knees to start twitching.

it happened with unfailing regularity, week after week. newcomers would stare. regulars would nod passively, in the manner of old-timers who find little to elicit surprise. as smoke rings would rise around us, chairs would shift, we would form a small, tight circle, and wait for sutra's transformation into the king of rock 'n' roll.

alcohol, we had all come to realise, had an unusual effect on sutra. it prodded, pushed and released something deep within him -- his unquestioning, overwhelming love of elvis aaron presley. how he had heard him in his village down south was a mystery, but that is how it was. within minutes, legs shaking madly under the tiny wooden tables, he would hold his small glass tumbler like a microphone, and drawl…"well, it's one for the money, two for the show..."

his upper lip would curl menacingly, fuzzy moustache in tow. his eyes would glaze over, then sparkle. or maybe they didn't sparkle at all but, three pegs down ourselves, we assumed they did. in that little bar, behind rough, uncomfortable tables, v k sutradhar would rise and fall, doing it all from blue suede shoes to love me tender. around us, men arrived and left, drank slowly or quickly, nodded appreciatively or glared and squabbled. sutra sang on.

in time, there grew to be something ritualised about those weekly performances. they were never discussed in times of sobriety. sutra continued to attend lectures, studied for his bachelors' in political science, and went home quietly five times a week. we knew nothing about his family, where he lived, what he did on non-elvis nights. where did he get his music? why did he like elvis as much as he did? what made him worship that man alone? there were no answers. we assumed he lived alone, in a one-room apartment given over to worshipping the king. we pictured him lying awake at night, surrounded by posters of elvis dancing, elvis smiling, elvis handing out silk scarves in vegas. he knew the lyrics to 426 songs by heart, he once told us, and we accepted this information sagely. but about what sutra was really like, we knew nothing at all.

if elvis were alive, he would have turned 70 on january 8. as january 9 unfurled, jailhouse rock was named the 999th number one in uk pop history -- 47 years after it was first released. not at all bad for a man who left the building 28 years ago.

as for sutra, he walked off, bachelor's degree in hand, into the sunset. that was ten years ago. none of the people who formed his little audience know where he is today. we like to think he's still singing though, in some small bar in a corner of india, recreating the magic of the king for a new batch of open-mouthed converts.

no, elvis isn't dead. he's probably somewhere in tamil nadu.