“So you are responsible for your son’s death as well as his mother’s. “
“What I did, I did to save their lives. “
Salman Rushdie’s The Golden House is a monumental kaleidoscope that begins with the anxiety about death and ends with the triumph of life. However, throughout the story, death stalks all, lurking in the shadows cast by the past, preparing to engulf the sinners and the innocent, the perpetrators and the consequences, its manifestations abrupt, agonising, tragic, tyrannous, and eventually, cataclysmal.
Nero Golden, the patriarch of a broken home, erases his past, takes over a new identity and moves to America to protect the fragments, and thus begins the story of his undoing. Straw by straw, the Golden House is shredded and unmade, till all that remains is a carcass and an inferno waiting to lunge and obliterate everything. Death comes to avenge the deeds of the past, and the mighty Nero, once death himself, is too frail to protect all that is treasure to him.
The story, which has been compared to the Great Gatsby, incorporates a rainbow of themes, wisely intertwined into a polychrome mesh, producing a commentary on the emerging American culture. It sweeps into its broad expanse the issues of money laundering, the nexus between business and crime, the problem with gender identity politics, the struggle with autism and so on; voiced through characters burning in the flames of envy, fear, guilt, greed, hurt and desolation.
But Rushdie’s magic is not just in the plot and the themes. The telling of the story has a melodious tune, a lyrical rhythm. Words are knit into spellbinding prose, and flow like an unbroken stream, sometimes ferocious, sometimes euphonious.
What’s difficult though, is what the author demands. Whoever picks a Rushdie should know what he has signed up for, or else, the copious references can be overwhelming. What I did was to not take these too seriously; rather, focus on the story. Of course, I missed the manna dew, but the molasses sufficed this mortal man.
“Biharis have this prep thing in their blood or what? “
After the betrayal of Chhattarpur, it was agreed that we’ll save the metro fare and resort to phone calls as the first stage of enquiry. Inspection shall follow only after the brokers swear on their mothers that the area was bachelor-friendly.
The Bear called the biggest broker of Preet Vihar and was charmed by his accent. It was a tailored accent- polished, rehearsed and perfected. To me, it felt like talking to a machine. But the machine satisfied him well, and he wanted to take the reigns of negotiations this time.
Meanwhile, Jade got a ticket back home because Cyan wanted us to go to our homes and experience the paradise. He had uploaded his thali quite a few times, which is why I had to resort to zomato, just out of jealousy. Home food is the best reason to go to home, but my mother is mostly sick and has gotten herself a cook. So it’s pointless for me to go back home.
Anyways, it was just me and the Bear, and we met at Preet Vihar in the middle of a torrent, a rare relief from the intense insolation. Fortunately, he had two umbrellas. The one which he offered me was a fancy one, with buttons and all, but he didn’t seem too pleased with that.
“The best umbrellas come over thousand rupees. I am saving to buy one. “
The other day he was talking about sleepwell mattresses. I couldn’t sleep well for the next two days after he told me they cost thirteen thousand rupees.
Anyways, we moved along the glistening and serene paths, bright and happy with the lush greens. Preet Vihar was refulgent and romantic. Dripping trees on the sides. Wide, wet, empty roads. Aesthetic pavements, large parks. Glass frames and yellow lighting. It looked posh. It looked peaceful. It looked perfect.
We found the broker just by the crossroads. His office had a carpet sized doormat. The interior was rich with glow, comfort, aroma and elegance.
“We talked over the phone. ” The Bear began.
He was a young man with a great jawline, and if I could get more frank with him, I’d have recommended him an MBA course. He sat straight, with a straight face, as if he meant business.
He slid a form towards us and asked us to read it carefully. It had a list of conditions, a dozen of them, boldened with formality. Reading those drained us of the joy we had so far accumulated.
Brokerage = one month rent
You cannot purchase/extend agreement directly with the owner
₹1000 as visiting charges
What’s with brokers and visiting charges!?
“Brokerage is 50%. Isn’t it the norm? ” The Bear tried.
He showed us a sheet stuck amid the exotic paintings. It said
NO NEGOTIATIONS.
Well, shit.
“And what’s this visiting charge? What if I don’t like the room? “
“Impossible. ” He said, “And the visiting charge is because my man is going to spend so much fuel carrying you around. “
Noticing the screaming disappointment on our face, he tried to make small talks.
“You’re UPSC aspirants? ”
We nodded.
“Where are you guys from? ” He asked. He was a Punjabi- a fair and urban one, without the beard and turban one.
“Bihar. ” We said.
“Biharis have this prep thing in their blood or what? ” He tried the cliched joke. The Bear replied,
“We are resource-compromised. Opportunities are meagre. You people have a business sense from an early age, which we lack. So competition is one way to climb the ladder. “
The same old memorised defence. We are not just resource comprised, we are also a diseased lot, averse to progress.
The broker broke the silence that followed the Bear’s GSI answer.
“We are very professional, sir. But for you, I’ll show you a few flats for free. Here. “He said as he took his phone out.
The flats looked great, which is why the Bear began contemplating the prospect. But Cyan had declared that library was non-negotiable, so we googled libraries, and to our dismay, nothing came up.
Shit.
We asked the broker. He swore there was a library just outside. But he couldn’t accompany us till we clear the air on ₹1000.
We told him we’ll find that on our own. The Bear didn’t want to let go of the spacious rooms and the large balcony, but I insisted that all stakeholders must be taken care of.
So we walked under our umbrellas in the search of libraries, and found one two metro stations away, at Laxmi nagar.
Tired, we bought ourselves some sugarcane juice, and cancelled Preet Vihar.
…each of them winced when they heard, “four male bachelors. “
Even though Cyan has been homesick since birth, after EPFO, he went completely crazy. He’d watch photos of his house, videos of his sister’s marriage and scream that he missed home. He also screamed at me for not missing home.
It’s not that I don’t miss home, but it takes 24 hours to reach there, and once I get there, my mother wants all 24 hours of my life as her own. Yeah she loves me and everything, but what she really needs is a grandson. And since she doesn’t have any, she’s got a teddy bear and treats it like a human. Plus, she’s got tons of health issues, which she believes can be treated only with ayurvedic tablets. I am never too happy at my home, because my mother’s worries and fears infect me.
Anyways, Cyan bought himself a ticket and left the other day. I dragged his mattress to my bed and put it over my mattress. It eased my back pain within two sleep sessions.
Meanwhile, the Bear insisted that we catch this Chattarpur deal early. He was salivating with excitement when he said,
“Imagine living in South Delhi! “
He likes posh things. The Night Manager is his favorite web series.
But he also likes cheap deals because he’s from a family of businessmen. So he has Rajma Chawal for a month, and then he hops to Le Méridien for a day and acts like Harvey Specter.
But he had his office, so it was Jade and me who had to make the round. He specifically trained Jade in the art of negotiation and asked me to remain shut up while he was talking to brokers. That because I can’t negotiate well, and my face is such that sellers take a sadist pleasure in rejecting my pleas.
So we began the voyage with the Engineer’s chai at Mukherjee nagar. Passed through a red hot pot and sprinkled with powdered cardamom and nuts, it melted in my mouth like some divine honey. They had removed the coaching hoardings from the buildings after the fire incident, and it felt like Mukherjee Nagar stood disrobed. But the nakedness was not disturbing, it was beautiful.
As we finished the chai, and as Jade was done giving me great deals on biriyani shops around, we went into mission mode. If you have travelled from GTB Nagar to Chhattarpur, you’d know what I am talking about. As the metro gates opened we shot ourselves to unreserved seats, and vowed to not leave that for ladies, kids or old people. We could compromise in case of a pregnant lady, but nothing before that.
Delhi Metro is sarkari as well, but unlike MCD parks, it does not feel monotonous. Maybe it’s the warm lighting and the cool ac.
I played chess while Jade read news on telegram as we inched towards Chattarpur. Once at the destination, we took an e-rickshaw which took us to Tivoli garden.
“But where is the garden?” I asked as I gave the fare to the driver. There was no garden as far as the eyes could see. He didn’t respond as he had paan masala in his mouth. He just made some gestures and left.
Chhatarpur didn’t strike me as a welcoming place. There was something about the roads. These were too wide- trucks and buses passed every once in a while and left red dust swirling in the air. Jade called the broker as we waited. He came on a bike and asked us to take seats. I regretted sitting in the middle because Jade is like a polar bear and the broker wouldn’t let him handle the bike. Till we reached the flat, for me it was a struggle for breath.
All the women in the area knew the broker and he flirted with every one of them. He had this shrewd smile – the broker smile- which made me doubt his creditworthiness. He took us to a large building, where each floor had multiple flats, most of them occupied by families.
“How many of you? “
“Four. ” Said Jade. “Four male bachelors. “
That kind of gave him a jolt.
“Alright. But you’ll have to pay ₹700 for water. “
“We’ll pay as per the meter. ” Argued Jade.
“That’s not how it happens around here. ” He returned.
While they were having this intellectual conversation, I was beginning to develop an aversion to the green coating on the inside, the shade reminding me of Ben 10. It was an overpowering green.
“Okay, we’ll call you. ” Finished Jade. I knew we were never calling him.
The next, we went to other brokers, and each of them winced when they heard, “Four male bachelors. “
“Do you party? ” One asked.
“No.”
“Do you bring women? I need to be sure. “
“What’s the problem? “
“Well, people bring women then murder them then police seals the room. Landlords are not happy. “
Okay, that was a unique problem. It was then it struck me. There had been a case few months ago.
We talked to some more brokers, and there was always some condition which would put us off. Somebody was charging electricity at ₹8 per unit. Somebody was charging ₹500 as visiting fee, doesn’t matter if you liked the place or not. So overall, Chattarpur had no red carpets for bachelors. And no food shop around.
We dragged our exhausted bodies to a bakery and purchased what looked like a donut. It wasn’t a donut, they’d simply dropped chocolate syrup over half of the bread that was shaped like a donut. This betrayal pulled the last straw for me.
We dumped the donut and stormed out of that place.
” There are more flats than people. If you raise a demand, they will build one from the scratch. “
If you let The Bear lose, he gets things done. In no time, the group was cram full of links. The only job left was to make a selection out of those. I hated that task because it brought to life the horror of CSAT permutations and combinations questions. Also, since we had not pampered our lazy asses for a while, and had not had a chance to lick the luscious laung lata of Gandhi Vihar again, we decided to spend a day after the dreaded EPFO exam (will discuss that ordeal in another post) at Jade’s house.
Gandhi Vihar is another of those areas where the waste and the best exist together. Occupants open their windows to a panorama of untamed wilderness with malnourished grasses, decaying matter oozing out of plastic bags, and stray animals hunting for food amidst the heap of poison and rot.
Despite the dreary disposal sites, this place is teeming with UPSC aspirants. The people who live here can proudly narrate to their kids the struggle it took to exist and educate oneself against the cruelty of culture. First, Gandhi Vihar has roads that look like they were conceived to serve as rainwater harvesting pools, while transportation was the secondary purpose. On drier days, these are studded with cattle dung and other forms of litter, as per Jade. The alleys are so narrow that one lazy cow can bring the traffic to a halt, but they do open into wider lanes, and you may clock a few parks here and there. By the look of the landscape, and the monotony they emanate, you can tell they are sarkari parks. All sarkari parks are the xerox copies of each other. Benches, grass, trees, pavements and squirrels- all look the same, and this uniformity, after six years and four pincodes in Delhi, makes me nauseous.
Then, the buildings are sandwiched tight, as if they share chromosomes. All 1RK flats. The stairs are steep and the landing is often littered. The rooms lack ventilation. If you need air, you must sacrifice privacy, for the door is the only way to let things in. The kitchen is darker and the bathroom is brighter, because the former is in a cave whereas the latter has a window.
Who designs these houses? Who approves them? Who rents them?
“Well, ” Jade said, sticking his back to the tiny cooler and wiping his neck, “It’s not that bad. There’s peace inside. And there’s a vibrant market outside. And the price is really low. “
He got me at low.
“How low? ” I enquired, dragging myself under the fan since he had taken over the cooler now.
“12k for 2RK.” He said. That was quite unbelievable. Our ears got erection.
“Yeah, and you’ll have dozens of them to make a selection from. “
I hated the word ‘selection’.
‘Plus, landlords don’t live here. So it’s open to all kinds of debauchery. “He smiled wider than what could be considered normal for a human jaw.
“The chap next door has orgies on weekends. “He said with conviction, as if he would produce evidence if we raised a brow. Well, with regard to orgies, I find it too crowded.
Anyways, the thought of Gandhi Vihar as a prospect began to get a concrete shape as the discussion progressed. One by one, all our concerns were addressed, and priorities were met.
” I need an auto at 11, night. “The Bear said. He gets home by seven, but he wanted to have a stake in this decision as well.
” You’ll get it till 3 am. Then that guy would sleep and other autowallahs would wake up. They will take you to Mars and beyond. “Said Jade. He would make a good broker.
“Libraries, so that I could make a selection out of ample options. ” demanded Cyan. I was now beginning to develop an allergy to the word selection. It made me red hot.
“There are more libraries than rooms. And chaishops open till 3 am. Then those guys sleep and other chaiwallahs wake up. “
“And what are your demands? ” They all looked at me. I felt the pressure to come up with a valid demand. Orgy, mobility, and books were already covered. What else would a man need? Food. But I couldn’t say food, because I have been pretending to be on a low carb diet these days. So fitness was the only option left.
“Yes, we have badminton courts around. They are vacant in the morning. Wake up and conquer. “Jade was now enjoying his broker avatar. He gave us a smug face as if we were too easy.
” But will the flats be available? “I risked, regretting my decision instantly.
” There are more flats than people. If you raise a demand, they will build one from the scratch. “
•••
In the evening, we strolled through the market and my views did change significantly. After I broke the diet code.
First, you get samosa chaat for twenty rupees which is a great deal. Then, for fifty rupees, they give you a plate of momos which has fourteen pieces. Any Delhiite would swear on his mother that even Amazon can’t sell momos this cheap here. Then, the pani puri shop by the child labourers (though they say they are 17+) in front of the police station serves the spiciest pani puris. And the laung lata– the sweet sweet laung lata! The precious, gorgeous, delicious laung lata! The smell of biryani and burger made me weak at the knees, however, my stomach was already a balloon, and Cyan had already cracked four jokes on my diet code, so I didn’t persist.
On our way back, I spotted a book shop which was running a flash sale of ₹100 per book. Like a kid in the Disneyland, I got myself three.
As Jade had promised, there were libraries and chai shops and food shops everywhere. There were general stores and xerox shops. It did seem like a complete package.
You just have to be a little less whiney about the waste. And waste isn’t such a bad thing. Our intestines are literally full of waste, we don’t throw them out.
At night, after rehearsing the bargaining methods, we walked to the biggest broker in the area and asked for 2 RKs at corners facing greenery.
“Wide double balconies” Jade added.
“No Landlord interference. ” Said the Bear. I didn’t know he was for orgies.
“No 2RK rooms in this area till April 2024. ” The broker said flatly, like a tape recorder, leaving us in disbelief.
We looked at the unending chains of sandwiched flats, hoping to clock an unoccupied property.
“Nothing? “Jade said, and pointed at a dark second floor flat, ” That one looks vacant. “
“It’s all booked. Coaching centers have opened up. Students are booking even under construction flats. “
“Empty plots? ” I asked. The broker signaled with his eyes at a distance, and as I followed him, I found a dump site, partially enveloped in gloom and partially glowing golden under street lamps. Dogs, and flies.
Crestfallen, we bought a coke, four plastic glasses and some ice. Jade poured quietly. As we sipped the drink, we strolled lazily on a quieter road that led to a township that was coming up. There was a lone skyscraper in the middle of nowhere.
“That’s the cheapest luxury accommodation you’d get in Delhi. It’s only a few miles away. ” Jade said.
“Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Jade. ” We spoke together and sipped the cola to fill our sad hearts.
House hunting in Delhi is a quantum task because it’s both easy and exhausting at the same time. If you have a constrained purse but myriad dreams, the effort is going to vaporize your all your blood into disappointment, unless you have good contacts and great fortune. If you have money, the landlords welcome you with the warmth of an orphanage nun.
“Yes, beta! You can do whatever you want. No interference! You can call your girlfriends, beta! Please call your girlfriends. “In a singsong voice, while pirouetting with a plate of fruit salad in their hand.
Ah! The parents we never had!
But if you are multidimensionally poor- no luck, no network, no newspaper worthy net worth- you are in for a toil.
The science of hunting a good flat, for a UPSC aspirant is this: you check the rate at three hubs- Karol Bagh, Mukherjee Nagar, Laxmi Nagar- and then you start inching towards the periphery with the hope that you steal a deal before you resign to the cardinal points – Noida, Dwarka, Gurgaon, and Faridabad.
In the two years of preparation, we have realised that the hubs are beyond our collective reach. If you double my income and halve the rent, I could probably afford a shared tomb sized cabin. So we now look at the margins of the hubs, at places where you find untreated waste disposal sites, because that’s where the metropolis drops its shit, and that’s how we know the rent will be cheap.
The first step is to look for a telegram group with names like “Flatmates”, “UPSC rooms” etc. So I scrolled through the Patel Nagar group. This is what I found.
1 RK for ₹16k
Need 1 RK: budget ₹15k
Body massage offers (exclusive for girls), travel expenses to be reimbursed.
Dejected, I told Cyan that the time to migrate had come. Another friend, the Bear, had been calling up to say that he was lonely and wanted some company. So we decided to take him in as well.
“Not another MAN, God! ” heaved Cyan, almost banging his head at the foot of this God he purchased at his last visit to this ancient holy site. Ideally he would want to shift to an oyo room with a rich girl who is the only child of a billionaire businessman. But then, ideally, I would want to be another child of the same businessman.
With the Bear in, we could relax a bit because in his desperation, he functioned like a multi tab search engine. He created a whatsApp group called “House Hunt” and began dropping magic brick links as if he was getting paid for it.
The notification toggle showed 9:30 am when I opened my eyes this morning. I looked around my room; it was a perfect mess. Stale clothes romanced with the fresh ones on the chair, newspapers lay strewn across the floor like they’d been fighting a tornado, the tea stain on the study table which I was supposed to clean yesterday had now become a dadaist painting. The books were stacked over one another in complete disregard to the principle that the fat and big ones form the base while the small and thin ones form the top. The thought that I could exist like a dipsomaniac without having ever touched a bottle of alcohol filled me with amazement.
Then I dragged myself to the toilet and dispassionately downloaded a week of content from the Hindu e-paper and added it to the To-Do folder, which by now has so long a list that I lose the will to live by the time I scroll down to the middle. The folder is the place where the present will sit and age till it becomes history.
Nevertheless, I hope I’d read those some day. The problem with daily newspaper is that on any given day, the important news items are so less that you feel like reading after collecting a good number. The number then becomes so huge that you decide it would be better if you rather watched YouTube summary at 2x and save time. Then you go to YouTube with this noble thought, but you find that some SDM is cheating on her husband, and that it’s the most urgent issue in the middle of international conflict and hunger. Before you realize the stupidity of this, the trailer of Jawan drops, and four seconds later, there are white people reacting to it with so much awe that you find their ignorance cute.
Anyways, my plan is to buy a classmate 6 subject fancy spiral notebook and collect current affairs. I have figured I work well when I write.
Today was the last day of my zomato orders because I have run out of money. So I might resort to OMAD.
Apart from that, Delhi is submerged because of two days of rain. A few people have been electrocuted because live wires dropped in the water they were wading through. So I was white with fear today evening while I waded through knee deep water for 30 meters. Well, I had to buy bread. Shit, why does it sound like 18th century France!?
In this country, human life’s too cheap. If you die, you become a news item at best, but you shall never make it to a To-Do folder unless you’re an Olive Ridley turtle or a Namdapha flying squirrel.
Sound travels the fastest in solid mediums. In ghettos, it travels even faster.
Every square kilometre of Delhi is sagging under close to sixty thousand mobile feet, which makes property prices go as high as one gold mine per square foot. You can take either that, or resign yourself to the befouled tenebrous asphyxiating ghettos, where oxygen comes wrapped in grime and decibels, and one doesn’t bother about the other till the other begins to rot.
These ghettos, sprawled like untamed outgrowths on the margins of aesthetic Victorian plantations, wait, like Venus Flytraps, for poor peripatetic flies. UPSC aspirants, the gullible but courageous lot, are taken in and slowly dissolved in their corrosive juices and rapacious enzymes.
Within this cramped city, if you live in a ghetto like I do, you’re always surrounded by sounds, so much so that you begin to recognize people- whose faces you’ve never seen and will never see- by the sounds they produce. It’s a gold mine for a writer who wants to observe how thuds, clings, whooshes, screams, brawls, babbles, giggles, alarm clocks and prime time tv debates collide and bang each other, and more often than not, interbreed to create seismic waves that travel through the walls and end up destabilizing your soul.
For someone who has a prelims coming up in two months, it’s a nightmare, an orchestra of ghouls, a maddening erratic inharmonic disruption which bothers me at cellular level. It makes my mitochondria shriek and collapse in rage.
Every morning, my atheistic eardrums are pounded with unwelcome devotional music, which people of all faiths play out on speakers, to a deafening scale, at the earliest hour possible. The only way it would make sense is if they depone that it assists their bowel movements, which is why I tolerated smokers in toilets in JNU.
The next sound I hear is the thunderous crack of my own bathroom door, which is swollen because of moisture and thus gets stuck on closing, making me lunge at it like a cannon ball every time I need to open it. The flush pot begins to fill and I plug in the earphones. Yes, I am one of those gen z kids who can’t shit without music. In fact, I have a toilet playlist that assists my bowel movements, but unlike my neighbors, I don’t play those on a speaker.
By the time I decide to study with the focus and patience of a heron, somebody gets a call, somebody wants to hear bhojpuri music and somebody just wants to drill things into the wall. Then, there’s always some deprived and abandoned baby that keeps crying. Some bloke has communal news debates to catch on, while some people keep replacing the furniture all the time. The guys replacing the furniture could well be cleaning up a crime scene for all I know.
This prodigal son gets a call from home and shouts as if reading proclamations at the public square. This Romeo calls his Juliet and serenades for an eternity, their conversations profoundly emetic and agonizingly gleeful. If people are not talking over phones, they call their friends home and commit all kinds of unparliamentary debauchery. Sometimes, these orgies go on till midnight and I am forced to bury my head under the pillow with my ears wrapped in a towel, and stuffed with earphones playing white noise at potentially dangerous volumes in order to sleep.
There are romantic talks between a couple, which melt into sex chats after 12. These chats begin with suggestive speeches, and turn into panegyrics on the woman’s physical attributes (which I can recount vividly by now), which are then met with remarks about the potential infidelity of the boy (he is not really someone I would trust either), and it’s all frolicsome till it finally flows into fellatio petitions (no success yet). On the other side of the spectrum are married couples, who bicker like furious wounded savannah beasts. There’s a rythm, though disturbing it is, in their fight. The other one always tries to return with the volume increased by one unit, and by the time they finish four sentences, dead bodies dig away from under the earth to the other side in sheer exasperation.
Here I would like to clarify that I am not a voyeur. It’s just that houses here are so closely glued to each other that after midnight, light sleepers like me have little hope of a tranquil slumber without external device or pills. Even with devices, there always is a Mozarty mosquito hovering around with its bardic spirits, driving me nuts with its skin-deep lyrics and disappearing into another dimension by the time I delayer myself.
I try to make the most with the little window I get. In that tiny frame of silence, where everybody finally seems to have come to an unspoken agreement, I blurt out insipid facts of economics and history at the top of my lungs, thus dropping my own modest shillings into this boundless piggy bank of pandemonium.
To be honest, nothing sounds more melodic than revenge.
To cut long history short, Camellia Sinensis, popularly known as tea, spread out from its Irrawaddy home, first in the urns of Buddhist monks, then in the ships of Dutch traders. Then, British tongues found it refreshing and moral, and like they always did, they made us grow tea for them in Assam plantations. Later, we, like we always do, made one thousand varieties out of it, and turned it into a cultural force.
Tea, affectionately called chai, is the universal beverage of India. It’s the closest to an omnipresent entity, so much so that if you’re stranded here but can’t smell tea around, it must mean you have ventured too far from civilization and will most probably never be found. From villages to metropolises, from kiosks to resorts, from colleges to parliament, chai is the only constant that fills every glass that can be filled, and every heart that can be filled. Chai is beyond space-time. It’s eternal.
Chai is much more than your regular drinks. It’s an elixir. It’s an emotion. It’s a companion that breaks ice, stimulates the conversation and prolongs it. It initiates dates; it ignites discourses. It makes marriages and it breaks regimes.
Chai is the currency of etiquette. The better Chai you brew, the more cultured you become in people’s eyes. It’s the yardstick against which your personality is measured. It’s something that makes you amicable or grotesque. If you can’t make good Chai, people don’t really give two dimes about your cv. But if you can turn them ecstatic with the Chai, they don’t bother about your cv.
Chai organises relationships into a hierarchy. A diluted chai expresses dislike, a sugarless chai shows bitterness. A diluted and sugarless chai starts a cold war. The number of cardamoms in the Chai keeps on increasing in proportion to the affection you hold for the person. If you love someone, you brew the Chai slow, with the care of a chef. If you are brewing it for your crush, you cook it with Kumar Sanu in the background, and top it with saffron. Quitting sugar in the Chai for your diabetic spouse is the most pious act in love. Precious promises of love are made over cups of Chai, wholesome futures are woven over cups of Chai.
Now, drinking Chai is a real skill. There’s a style involved there. You must not drink Chai like a reckless pirate. It demands colonial elegance and victorian aesthetics. There are lengthy tutorials dedicated to the right way of sipping Chai. If you don’t drink Chai like a lady or a gentleman, you lose friends.
So as the sun goes down, the zombies creep out of libraries and throng the Chai shops in UPSC hubs. If you’re a Chai seller here and not a millionaire, it always means you’re lying. A chaiseller is no ordinary person. They have employees and branches. They no longer sell just chai, they sell an experience, a relief, and a booster. In chai shops, you’ll find hundreds of aspirants, huddled up in groups, some smoking, some sipping tea and some engrossed in conversations. It’s a cacophony, nevertheless, it’s melodic. There’s a rhythm in the noise as there’s heart in the symposium.
Cyan and I have oftentimes tried to make an estimate of monthly earning of the Chai shops. The most modest estimate of net disposable income was so big that I almost enrolled for a certified tea brewing course on Udemy. But the Chai shop is never a monopoly. Over time, there emerges a new age Chai startup that threatens to dethrone the monarch. The process leads to innovations: from Kashmiri Chai to Nagori Chai. Some try to tap into the health consciousness market by selling green tea. No obese person sipping green tea in the open has ever been spotted by me though. I always find them in kachodi shops, while it’s always the slim ones who are taking this medicine.
I did try the green tea in JNU. It was an unforgettable experience. And in a totally negative way. It tormented my taste buds so much that I reconsidered viewing heart attack as deliverance rather than death.
At my home, we have an old packet of herbal Chai, which is next only to green tea on the scale of abhorrence. We often receive guests who talk like they’re preaching, and if I don’t like the preaching, I ask them if they’d like herbal Chai.
They usually find themselves under some divine compulsion to not only agree but enthusiastically ask for it.
I remember a relative who once took the time to visit me to check on my career plans and remind me that cracking UPSC is not everybody’s cup of chai.
“Would you like some herbal chai, uncle? ” I asked so sweetly that my larynx began to drip honey.
“Ha ha. This is why you couldn’t clear it. Housework is not for the man on a mission. ” He said, but as he found me nodding in agreement, he added, “But since you ask with such humbleness, how can I refuse? Just mind the sugar. “
I brewed the chai like a witch.
When I brought it to him, he pointed out that it’s bad manners to offer tea with the left hand. I apologized sincerely and chose my right hand for the job.
Well, he squirmed first, but I reminded him that it was herbal.
“They have to find the ingredients in dense Himalayan forests for which they have to study ancient texts for years. ” I explained to resurrect his confidence. After a while, he seemed to be convinced with my well researched and even better rehearsed explanations. Also, he didn’t really have an option to discredit the tea that’s made after reading ancient texts.
“It’s so good. I feel healthier. What’s the brand? ” He asked.
I gave him all the details. Never saw him again though.
So that’s about Chai. It has a range from herbal to saffron. You can choose one shade from the spectrum and land your point without speaking. Chai is a rich language. So the next time you brew it, let it speak and spread love.
Library sells a unique product: silence. But is it really that quiet here?
Well, things speak.
My post-dengue ideology has been to be a non-abusive spouse to my own body and listen to all its mercy petitions. So when my tailbone started giving SOS calls, I decided to join a library with good ergonomic chairs. I could have purchased a chair myself, but I had become stagnant and wanted to feel some peer pressure. My roommate, Cyan, had already enrolled in a library and had built his own pride within a month. My expectations were certainly lower, and so I focused more on infrastructural aspects than company.
Delhi is full of small and expensive UPSC hubs, which possess a distinct culture that revolves around the typical aspirant. A defining component of this Aspirant Culture is basement libraries, a galaxy of them, each promising a heavenly tranquil abode on their posters. They are decorated with photographs of toppers, intended to lure you into renting the ambiance. In UPSC hubs, everything that’s supposed to sell has toppers’ photographs stuck on them. Some even have recommendations in their own handwritings, expressing utmost gratitude to the seller for guiding the former aspirant into a topper. Closest to the fabled Midas touch, I tell you.
Anyways, to be honest, the libraries that are affordable look like dungeons. There are luxury libraries too, with fridge and chaise lounge and pool table, but they charge so much you’d rather quit UPSC than pay. But guess what, even those libraries are full. Certainly, the World Inequality Report is not entirely wrong.
I once made a mistake of expressing surprise on the face of an old lady who owned a library as she asked for a security deposit. She gave me a look that earls once reserved for peasants. “It’s what the rate is, child. ” She said as I tried to bargain, “we are never off demand. If not you, someone else. ” I could only nod with pursed lips in response.
After a cursory scan through dozens of affordable libraries, I managed to find one about a nautical mile away- with toppers’ photos, ergonomic chair, ac, wifi, and clean toilet. I picked up a corner seat, hoping to come out a topper on the other side. A month later, here are my observations.
The library, quite contrary to its intended purpose and large stickers of “PLEASE MAINTAIN SILENCE” is far from the tranquil sanyas. It’s a disturbing space: people keep moving in and out, or twisting and turning, or moving things if still, or moving their mouths chewing crunchy nuts, or tearing the paper, or making things fall by mistake. You would say these are forgivable offences, but I have a list of heinous ones too. They whisper. They chuckle. They brew coffee in their seats. They leave their phones unmuted. They carry with them the smoke they just made outside.
People in these libraries are diverse in character and disposition, but the two most disturbing categories are smokers and couples/best friends. Smokers lack the civility to take center fresh after they are done with their joints. They simply barge in, the cloud of smoke hovering around their skull and pervading innocent nostrils in the vicinity, thus turning lung cancer into a communicable disease. The guy on my left smokes three cigarettes a day, without which, as per his statement, he can’t focus and shit (literally).
The couples think they live in a bubble. Couples think like that all the time in all places, and it’s generally cute, except for in a library. They have to whisper to each other after every five minutes. Couples in making do this exercise even more vigorously, to up their chance. Free electrons – single people desperately looking for a partner- do this at God level, whispering to multiple partners throughout the day. The free electron in my room takes tea 5 times a day, with 3 different women. He is a first-attempter but guides them in their preparation. I had to shut him up quite a few times, but he has remained remarkably resilient.
There are others too: engineers (identifiable through anthropology optional notes), literarians (greco-roman classics and fancy bookmarks), artists (self designed charts pinned on the wall), minimalists (mostly empty table), nobles (fruits, dry fruits, dark chocolate). Some tables are organised as if put on for exhibition. Some walls have pins so accurately placed as if to emulate constellations. Some tables have more food than books, some tables are starved of both. Some maps are laminated, some worked on elaborately. Some walls have quotes, some have directives to oneself, some have daily performance report cards. Some pens lie around, some are bundled together in coffee mugs. Some coffee mugs are plain, while some have cute pink cat cartoons.
₹2.5 per inch squared.
There are individual islets lost in the archipelago of friends. The archipelago islands leave for tea breaks together while the islets follow their own timeline.
There’s much more, and I could give graphic details about everything from the soothing whirr of the exhaust to the distracting whoosh of the flush, but I guess you can do without the specifics.
As for the owner, he is polite and cooperative, till you pay on time. The caretaker doesn’t care about books, and spends most of the day on his seat watching Amazon Prime, something I cannot afford. Once or twice a day, he comes with the fire-extinguisher-sized room spray, and leaves us with VOCs wrapped in fragrance.
There are spare rooms for dining, but with yellow bulbs and a large table, they look like they are used as interrogation chambers during holidays. The water from the water cooler smells like it just cuddled with algae, but it bothers nobody. I guess people have adapted to pollution and pathogens.
As for studies, it was never productive for me because I couldn’t revise loudly. Nor could I move much, for I don’t like to offend people. So the library, in my opinion, suits people who are either freshers, or lack a silent corner in their room, or intend to build romantic ionic bonds. These sum up the push and pull factors, which, apart from toppers-studded posters, drive the library economy in the Aspirant Culture.
Powercuts in the ghettos of Delhi in a sweltering summer midnight rekindles the medieval memory when the monarch got nerds sewn up in animal hide and carried on a mule to Baghdad because they said earth was round.
And so here I am, sitting on my chair in my balcony, which stretches a few centimeters longer than the UPSC prelims answersheet, drenched in sweat and furious at this wisdom tooth which has been trying to emerge for about a year now. The darkness around me remains impenetrable. The strait-like strip of sky above stays stripped of stars.
I can hear voices though. Students discussing nation’s problems. Couples discussing their own problems. Kids cackling at lame jokes. Babies blabbering incomprehensible phrases, and their parents responding with wonder and encouragement. The clinging of utensils. The whooshing of flush. The cacophony at a distance. And even farther, the blaring honks of vehicles zooming on Delhi roads. At this point, someone plays loud music and all other sounds vanish, and I feel even more pissed. Because one, it’s a song about some guy promising some car to some lady, clearly mocking my multidimensional poverty; and two, when it’s pitch dark you need heterogeneous sounds just to remain sane. That seems like an assault on my fundamental rights, and I feel like invoking 32.
But I don’t want to pick a fight because I can’t see, and verbal cursing is something I am trying to avoid these days. Because once it gets on the tongue, it develops an organic relationship with you. You begin to think in terms of curses.
E.g., B#*&$ the system is collapsing.
For UPSC, you have to think differently.
E.g., There are persistent and systemic issues, but with the synergizing efforts of government, organizations and people, swift and substantial transformation can be achieved.
Okay, a half naked man just appeared on the opposite balcony with a torch, and we briefly looked at each other, our unclothed bodies emitting cavemen vibes. He had a slight paunch, but I resisted myself from recommending him a healthy diet. Once I had tried giving suggestions to a lady in JNU, to which she said she was body positive and that BMI indicators were Eurocentric.
Anyways, it has been a frustrating day because I slept for hardly 6 hours, spent the entire day struggling to gather myself up, couldn’t finish the essay because my brain stopped working, Crimson called and demanded I met her, the cook didn’t come in the evening, Crimson made me wait for over 30 minutes and then harangued me with the petty problems of her life. A junior called me up and asked for my prelims result. After all this, I ate a loaded burger, breaking my vow to stick to healthy options only. And now there is power cut! Could it be any worse?
Yes. My flatmate said he’d come next week. So that makes it one full month of me talking to myself, and the cook and Baba. Conversations with the cook involves she asking what to cook and me saying whatever’s in the basket, and usually there’s poverty in the basket.
Conversations with Baba….actually we have stopped talking. He sees my face and takes out a pouch of toned milk from the fridge. I scan the QR code and pay 25 rupees. Occasionally, when it’s too hot, he says B#&$@, it’s too hot, and I agree with him. Baba always smokes beedi these days, and I can’t ask him to not do it, so I don’t linger about much in his shop.
I have plenty of time and yet I can’t study efficiently. I sit on the chair while my mind sneaks out of the window and flies like a bee. By the time it gets back, I have to get up to drink water, go to the toilet, take a walk because my neck hurts. Everyday, I plan out the next day. The plan begins with me waking up at 6 am. Then some Black Swan event happens, and it’s 8 am when I open my eyes the next day. Sometimes it’s too hot and there is power outage. Sometimes it rains and the drops fall on the broken down AC with the thud of a hammer. Sometimes I just can’t sleep.
Everyday at 8:30 am, I also go for grocery shopping because there’s no fridge to store vegetables. And I need milk for protein. Everyday, I walk past those fast food joints and the confectionery, and oh the aroma!… it takes an effort to control my greedy self.
At this point, I am tied to 60 rupees a day budget, monthly expenses excluded. It’s stressful.
When I am on the table, I oscillate between subjects and themes. While reading history, I want to read geography all of a sudden and when it’s geography time, maps make my eyes bleed. I try writing essay, and I feel I am not prepared, and when I try to prepare for essay, I wonder what’s there to prepare in an essay. I can’t increase my writing speed because I can’t think fast, I can’t think fast because I can’t mug up, I can’t mug up because it’s painful to read the entire syllabus again, it’s painful because I have difficulty in retaining things, I have such difficulty because I can’t sleep on time, I can’t sleep on time because of such midnight power outages. B#*&$, the system is collapsing.
During the day, I took some pain to prepare a chart, another addition to a long dynasty of charts on my table, about things I must do this time. With every aspect of preparation covered in excruciating detail, the only thing now left is to act.
I need to tame myself. Study using stopwatches. Force my hands to write. Fix my arse to the chair. Memorize points. Draw diagrams. Do it like a ritual. Make it into a habit. Turn it into a necessity. I need to embrace the monotony of weekdays. I need to cuddle with editorials and caress my notes. Give myself daily targets. Promise myself a reward. Be unperturbed by outages. Be focused on the goal. Think of the future. The suit, the salary and the system. The far end where lies the elysium.
roastedmoongfalis 