there was this guy we called the Mink and he smelled funny. We didn’t know if he was or wasn’t in our circle. The one that met in the corner table under the stairs, where our parents couldn’t see us smoking. He once told us a joke about parents who called their son Pinku and daughter Pinky and then something lewd about their Maths teacher. The point is that he is a little ferret. A sniffer, a poker a peeper and a mind sweeper. He is ceaseless, endless, boundless, breathless and nonetheless. Opportunist is what the more eloquent ones called him, the dirty guys under the stairs called him a digger.
The Mink don’t care. He don’t care if he don’t fit. He doesn’t and that’s just it.
Sodden hair lopping around lopsidedly as he flops flopously by my sidey side. On my shiny side is the great bear. Starlight, star bright, the greatest bear you’ll see tonight. Hunched over his one by two cup of soggy tea garnished with the flaky flakes of ash and dandruff. The bear dislikes the Mink with a quiet envy that no one speaks about. Once a guy thought it would be funny if he told the bear a dirty joke about a sloth. The bear spat on his face and ripped out the pages of the slam book he was carrying. Natty’s entry was in the book. Gorgeous Natty who never even looked at us. But wrote entries in purple ink on the sloth joke teller’s slam book pages. They went around in college eventually. No point telling you how that ended.
The bear don’t scare. The bear don’t scare if he can’t get it. He don’t want it and that’s just it.
Kacchi was the median. The mean average in millimeters of rainfall. The nothing man. If you can’t eat eggs, you don’t break them and screw the damn omelette. Safe in every way. Show no pores and no water will flow through them, no muck will choke them. So he stayed closed and breathed through my gills. Everyone’s closest friend, nobody’s enemy. The flamingo on one leg. Ready to sleep and fly at the same time.
I was just there. Being everyone and no one at the same time. But that is a different story.
So like the Mink hurried in and got a Lights. The old Cowboy lights. We raised our already puckered brows. Mink was bouncing tonight. He finally had some money. That meant some innocent soul just got more miserable. Victim of the Mink’s racket. So Mink had a catch. I leaned closer to the twitching face waiting to exhale. The dirty dog with the innocent eyes. The child with wrinkles.
“So there was this thing in the Readers Digest which was like all about calories being burnt and all”. He looked up and smiled to himself. A health article, a magazine we can’t afford, he had our complete attention.
“So there is all this shit you do in daily life, and all the while you are burning calories. Imagine walking, cycling, climbing stairs, jumping out of buses, all calorie burning activity. Now you know how Mrs.Mehta is…”. We groaned. Even the bear gave a flicker of emotion. We knew how she was. Husband in the gulf. Daughter out of hand. Young boys going crazy thinking about her loneliness. She never cooked, got depressed eating alone. Her daughter was hauled up in school for her nose ring. Sobbing Mrs.Mehta at PTA meetings. Laughing Mrs.Mehta at the Annual Day show when the Principal tripped on the microphone wire. The Mink had reached new lows if he had pulled a fast one on her.
“So she’s all crazy about her fitness, my mom tells me Mrs.Mehta walks thirteen rounds of the society everyday”. It was hard to imagine the Mink listening intently to his mother.
“The witch’s number” said Kacchi, with his face in the smoke. I kicked his shin, the Three Investigators was going to the young man’s nimble head.
“When I read about that stuff in the magazine, I decided it was time to enrich her life with the wonders of simple exercise. I meet her one morning picking up the newspaper outside her door and say - Hey Mrs.Mehta you wake up this early?”. I knew he waited for a good ten minutes with his eye to the keyhole lying in wait for her.
“Why you are a early bird yourself! says she. So I take the plunge and tell her about early morning swimming lessons and pranayaam”.
Kacchi choked on his tea.
“Soon she is all in awe of me, clearly wishing for a similar energetic start to her dull days” the Mink continued. He always justified his cheapness by treating it as his benevolence towards a fellow human being.
“Then I nudge that wish of hers and talk about the article in the magazine. She listens and then shrugs her shoulders in resignation. What good has walking done to me, she says. I make my move. I tell her that there are simple exercise devices available today that are thrice as effective as walking. She falls for it. I say I’ll see what I can do, there is a guy in school whose father makes some, I can get one from him etc.etc. So its settled. For just seven hundred bucks, I promise to home deliver a sexy-dixy exercise machine by that evening, but I would need an advance. She shucked back through the door and returned with seven crisp notes pressed against her heaving bosom”. He fished out his five thousand pocketed wallet and sniffed old MK Gandhi with reverence.
We made horrified faces. He only grinned.
“You son-of-a-bitch. You bloody thief” the bear rose and the table heaved. Kacchi giggled. One puffy arm shnuck out and grabbed Mink’s greasy collar.
“I got her the machine you crazy oaf”. We blinked. Small time pettiness was alright, we all thought he had gone to far this time. But to fulfill a mad promise seemed almost, well, out of place for the slime.
“Of course I had to you dolts. I live across her flat. You think she’ll forget the money and let me run away with it?”. He had us now.
“So I go to Balu’s dungeon”. The store room of our corrupt PT teacher was notorious for having stowed away balls and brickbats of all kinds of sports, all issued for the students, all hoarded by the cunning cur. “You know the thing all those fools who run on sports day stand to receive their medals on?” Of course I did. Every Sports Day while the fools basked in their glory, I watched from the shade of the banyan tree, sulking in those skimpy white shorts and vest, streamers round my wrist, scrappy remnants of the hideous mass PT display. In bed at night, the chief guest shook my hand and the excited PA announcer screamed “First place, 100 meters dash, Sudeep Pathak”, the ground shook with applause and collapsed into the wisps of my cold dreams.
“No”. It was a statement. Kacchi was staring open mouthed. “You sold her the victory stand as stairs!”
The Mink was momentarily riled at his thunder being stolen, but recovered admirably “Well, climbing stairs, the Readers Digest said, burnt 160 calories compared to the 60 calories burnt while walking for the same amount of time, that’s almost three times as much”.
“Less than three”, said the bear, having sat down dumbfounded.
“So I go to Balu’s dungeon, old Sakha, the peon had the key and for a few mints he helped me heave it into the tempo. The tempo guy was a relative of my cycle repair man and I persuaded him to do the trip for forty bucks and some Real Orange juice from my fridge. Then its magic, I had wrapped it in some glossy newspaper from the Sunday supplements so it looked real chicky when I drove to Mrs.Mehta’s parking. She was beaming. I let her tear the bits of paper in her cat like frenzy and then purred the instructions in her ear”
“She didn’t realize what it was?”, I asked incredulously.
“Mrs.M never attends Sports Day. My mother says she’s scared of the sun getting her all dark. I had come up with a detailed workout explanation. You see, the numbers on the victory stand - 1,2 and 3 were all rolled into the routine so that her mind would be too preoccupied in counting her steps rather than try to figure out what the damn thing was”.
We turned to the sloppy muck our tea had turned into. The Mink had won. His plan had worked, He was richer by Six Hundred and Fifty-Nine rupees. “You’re a smart devil Mink”, I conceeded. Kacchi and the bear looked at me gratefully. Thankful that it was I and not them who had to be the one to congratulate the horrible insect.
“Thanks Man. Tea’s on me today”. Like some damn Hollywood hero. Rascal philanthropist, celebrating with cold, brown muck.
We left quietly into the steady drizzle, leaving no tip as usual. Mink wasn’t going to be soooo generous. Kacchi revved up his sisters’ Scooty and left with the Bear bring the suspension down to the pavement height.
“You know you can have your Phantom comic back, I borrowed it for checking out Diana bits anyway”. The Mink was certainly in a good mood. I didn’t smile. My emptiness grew as I walked with him to his house. The Ghost Who Walks. Mr.Walker. The Phantom. Ha ha.
“Want some juice?”, I refused instantly, I wondered how much the tempo driver must have relished it. Real Orange. Realer than the real mosambi juice he drank.
As I walked down the steps, I passed Mrs.Mehta’s door. The screen door was latched. The lights of her dining room shone on her motionless form in her balcony. She was standing straight, arms raised, eyes staring above at the bright stars and the black night. She was standing on the number 1on the victory stand. As I had done in my dreams after every Sports Day. Her face was radiant, cheeks flush with tiredness. But her eyes sparkled. She moved her arms in a horizontal semicircle, accepting the applause of every part of the stadium. What event had she won? I don’t think that mattered. She had won tonight, the moonlight was the herald of her triumph.
I ran back up the stairs to the Mink’s house. He opened it with a look of slight apprehension, perhaps expecting an unimpressed customer of a remarkable new exercise machine. He visibly relaxed when he saw me.
“What’s up?” said the miserable squeak.
“I just wanted to thank you for returning my comic and let you know that you’re a really nice guy”, I said.
He beamed. “Hey, no sweat man. Want some juice?”. I refused for a second time.
As I strode home feeling much less empty and with a special spring in my step I looked back at Mrs.Mehta’s dim shadow. Husband in Gulf. Daughter out of hand.
I saw the Mink wave at me from the balcony diagonally opposite to hers. I waved back. You will never be a part of our circle you squeaky bastard, I told him under my breath. He continued waving, I walked into the night.
