4.

Gentleman's Cholesterol.

THE TRUE NATURE OF sorrow is boredom. Ousep Chacko is more sure than ever as he stands on his balcony, in the stillness of the humid Saturday evening. The good husbands too are out on their balconies, half naked, their white sacred threads running between their loose undeniable breasts. Their wives keep serving them biscuits and coffee, lemon juice and water, or they disappear after obeying orders and appear with newspapers, bank passbooks or other objects that still belong to men here. Some couples are having long, conspiratorial conversations as couples do. On the ground below, children are playing a hectic game that is making them delirious. Can people really tell the difference between normal children and abnormal children? That somehow reminds him of the type of people who can tell the difference between good poetry and bad poetry.

Thoma is among the happy kids who are now running like a fleeing mob. Even in Thoma's world, some days are good days. Girls in their late adolescence walk in packs from one wall to another, throwing sideways glances at the big boys sitting in line on the compound wall. In another time, on an evening like this, Unni would have been among the boys on the wall, sitting quietly and returning the looks of the girls.

Boys of Unni's age in the colony are of two kinds, without exception since the exception is dead. The dejected, who failed to clear the JEE but have managed to enter the best of the second-rung engineering colleges, and the irreparably damaged, who attend third-rate institutes, some of them in faraway, gloomy industrial towns. The irreparably damaged flock together. They walk without the spring of life, their spines have lost their pride, and there is no light in their eyes. They become alert when they hear words like 'idiot' or 'fool' or 'stupid'. Even when these descriptions are not about them, the words land painful blows in their hearts. The eight boys on the wall today are of the flock.

They are distracted by a girl walking down the road. Unni used to call her 'Typewriter' and that is what they call her here even now. Books pressed to her chest, oiled hair tied in a single fierce braid, she walks down this road every evening. She walks in great discomfort, as always, to the sounds of her silver anklets, with a distraught smile of excruciating shyness, her head bent, her baffled eyes gaping at the road, fully aware of the boys on the wall, boys on their balconies, boys behind windows, all the boys in the world. She loses authority over her tense legs often and veers to the side until she reaches the very edge of the road, sometimes a compound wall, when she gets mildly alarmed and veers to the other side, like the roller of a typewriter.

The boys on the wall, the men and women on the balconies, even the old who can see far, laugh as they see the girl go round the bend. She is a passing moment of joy. Like the Chackos, she makes people feel they are better.

After she vanishes, a numbing dullness returns to the world. The boys have nothing to laugh at, nothing to do. On occasion, their heads lift for a swift hopeful gaze at Mythili's balcony, where there is no one standing right now.

She used to stand on her balcony and call out for Unni. Some days, when she was in the mood, she would yell out his name several times in the different accents of the elders in the block. Unni would then walk across his father's bedroom with his tired arrogance, without fear or respect, and open the narrow door that leads to the balcony. He and the girl would then chat standing on their balconies, sometimes for over an hour. Unni usually said very little, she did most of the talking, chiefly complaining about her friends or teachers. Sometimes she whispered things about her mother to him and giggled. That was then, when she was allowed to talk to men.

Ousep decides he has had enough of the humid evening, he must now head somewhere affluent and have a quiet drink, maybe more. It is an inevitability that masquerades as a decision. That is the way of a drunkard. He grants himself the dignity of choice, as if there is another option. But then is there really any choice in the world? Could it be that every human action is merely an inevitability masquerading as a human decision, life granting dignity to its addicts through the delusion of choice?

He is about to leave the balcony when he spots something at the far end of Balaji Lane. He is unable to understand what is happening but everybody else appears to know what is going on. There is a stranger walking down the lane, a young man whose features are not clear. As he passes the other blocks, boys stop playing and stare, boys stand on the walls and stare. Girls appear on the balconies rolling their hair and look. Men and women point to the young man and talk among themselves, nodding their heads. A small swarm of boys, short and tall, is now following the young man. The news has just gone around Block A. The children run out to the lane, many climb the compound wall and stand on it to get a better look. The big boys, too, are standing on the wall. The entire length of the wall is now lined with boys of many heights standing and looking to their right. The balconies fill with people. The young man approaches in his swarm. He is unaffected by all the attention. And it is now clear what is in his hand a red basket filled with vegetables. Miraculously, the apparition enters Block A. Even more incredibly, it speaks to Thoma, who is visibly dazed as he clumsily climbs down from the wall.

Ousep now recognizes the young man. He was in Unni's class. Ousep met him once, three years ago, weeks before the boy became a celebrity. Balki had not just made it to IIT, he was ranked all-India second in the JEE, second among over a hundred thousand candidates. The meeting with him was very brief and largely useless, and Ousep decided that there was no point in meeting him again. But now it appears that Balki is coming home for some reason. Thoma, who has suddenly assumed the glow of importance, is leading the star. The swarm vanishes into the stairway tunnel. Is this the breakthrough Ousep has been waiting for?

He keeps the front door open and waits. That draws Mariamma's attention; she looks puzzled. She waits with him. When she sees the crowd of boys at her door, she begins to tremble. 'What happened, what happened to my boy? Is Thoma all right?' she sings. When she finds Thoma in the crowd, she puts her hand on her heart and pants. Thoma leads Balki into the house. The swarm does not come in but it does not want to leave. A boy asks, nervously, 'Balki, do you believe in God?'

'Yes,' Balki says in his surprising baritone.

'What a coincidence. Even I believe in God.'

'OK, all of you,' Balki says. 'Thanks. Now I need to speak to Unni's parents alone. Bye.'

And they leave reluctantly, including Thoma. Balki shuts the door and faces Ousep and Mariamma.

Ousep tries to understand what has come home. Balki is tall, his shoulders broad, and everything in the house has shrunk in his presence. He has a large head, and a long, full neck, which is far more uncommon than people imagine. His movements are brisk and devoid of cultured caution, and his unfocused eyes gape without respect as if the Chackos have borrowed money from him. And he is chewing gum.

Mariamma holds the boy's hand and tells him something about the passage of time. Then, for Ousep's benefit, she mumbles a confused but flattering biography. He was always a genius, apparently. She says she has known Balki from the time he was a little boy.

'We have met,' Ousep says. 'Briefly, a long time ago.'

'Three years ago,' the boy says.

Mariamma touches the boy's cheeks with the tips of her fingers. 'Nobody visits us any more, Balki,' she says. 'All his friends have stopped coming. One by one, they stopped. Then one day, guess who turns up.'

'Who?' the boy asks.

They look at each other, confused. 'You, of course,' she says.

'I see. I don't easily understand this style of speech.'

She feels his face again. Balki is not embarrassed, he even bends a little to make it easier for her to cup his face in her hands. 'I don't mind being touched now,' he says. 'When I was little, I did not like being touched, I would scream if anybody touched me. Unni used to put his arm around me. I used to hate it but I grew to accept that it is a sign of friendship.' He hands her the vegetable basket. 'Look what I've got for you. The vegetables are for you. I brought them from my house. My mother said, "Take some vegetables for Unni's mother." I told her, "I must take fruits." But she said, "Don't be modern, Bala. Take vegetables. It will make her happy."'

'She's right,' Mariamma says.

'My mother asked me to bring the basket back.'

'Will you eat here, Balki? I can make a quick snack for you.'

'I cannot eat in a house where meat is cooked,' he says in his precise, inoffensive way.

'Oh, we don't cook any meat here,' she says, throwing a bitter chuckle at Ousep. 'Meat,' she says, and shakes with genuine laughter.

'We don't harm meat, son, by bringing it here,' Ousep says.

Balki looks at them in incomprehension. 'I don't have much time,' he says, 'I have to leave as soon as I've spoken to Unni's father.'

'Is it something important?' she says. 'Tell me, Balki, do you know something about Unni?'

Balki's eyes have been darting to the framed black-and-white photograph of Unni on the wall. They stay on the portrait now.

'He looks so young,' he says. 'When was this taken?'

'Just a few months before he died,' she says. 'It was a passport-size photograph. We blew it up as much as we could. That's why he looks a bit pale in it. My boy was not pale at all, you know that.'

'He is so young, which obviously he was when he died. But in my mind he is a man, like me. In my mind, he is ageing with me. But in that photograph he is just a boy.'

He goes up to the framed photograph for a closer look at Unni, who stares back with a knowing smile, as if he knew this moment would come. Balki, unexpectedly, joins his palms and shuts his eyes. A deep silence grows. Ousep uses the opportunity to point to his wife's blouse, which is torn at the armpits. He tells her with a violent motion of his hand that she must disappear inside. But she stands there defiantly, even begins to imitate his actions. Ousep considers flinging his slippers at her. Balki opens his eyes after nearly a minute.

'I think of Unni every day,' he says.

'What is it that you want to say to us, Balki?' Mariamma asks.

'I have to talk to Unni's father. I have to speak to him in private.'

Ousep leads him to his room, and shuts the door on Mariamma's face. He shows the boy to a chair across from his desk, which is by the open windows that frame the tops of a sea of coconut trees and the terraces of blue and pink and white homes, and the distant yellow spire of Fatima Church. He lights up two cigarettes and tries to look relaxed, even flaps his thighs. The boy is probably amused to see a man smoke two cigarettes at once but he does not say anything.

Ousep wonders what the boy wants. Nobody comes home with a story to tell unless he has a motive. Sometimes, the motive is the story. Ousep points to the church spire. 'Unni is buried in the grounds of that church.'

'I know,' Balki says, 'I've visited his grave twice.'

'Were you at the funeral?'

'I didn't know for a week that he was gone. Most of his classmates didn't know.'

'We buried him a day after he died.'

'I hear you are meeting them again, his classmates, you are talking to them.'

'Yes.'

'They are stupid,' Balki says, as if it is an unremarkable fact. 'Most of them, they are very dumb. Did you find them dumb?'

'They are like anybody else.'

'Exactly. People are generally dumb. They are small petty animals, who want to do their small petty animal things. Unni was smart. I liked him.'

'You were friends?'

'I don't know,' Balki says.

'What does that mean?'

'I don't know, that's what it means.'

'After his death, I came to meet you in your house,' Ousep says. 'I remember you were very surprised when you saw me at the door. You were probably unhappy to see me.'

'I was surprised, not unhappy. I was a bit confused, I could not understand why you were asking me questions about Unni. I didn't know then that Unni's death was not an accident. I heard it from you first, and you revealed it to me towards the end of our conversation when you felt I was not saying anything useful. I remember your words. I will always remember those words. "Unni jumped. He knew what he was doing." I could not believe it. It didn't make any sense. After our meeting I went to meet some boys from the class and they told me exactly what you had said. Two days ago I met someone at the bus stop. He told me that you are meeting Unni's friends again, you are ...'

'I am embarrassed to interrupt you, Balki, but it is important that I say this. Unni's mother is the curious type. As you can see, if you look under that door, she is standing right behind it. With her ear stuck to it. I am not saying this in a metaphorical way, Balki. She really is standing there with her ear stuck to the door. You have a loud booming voice, and both of us want to be discreet. I don't have a radio or a two-in-one that works. So we may have to speak softly.'

'I understand.'

'Softer than that.'

'Is this better?'

'Why do you want to speak to me and not her?'

'I want to speak to you and not to her. That's all there is to it.'

'What has Unni told you about his mother?'

'Nothing much really. But I got the feeling that he was very fond of her.'

'He was very fond of her, which is not unusual.'

'I want to know,' Balki says, licking his lips, 'what you have found out about Unni.'

'Nothing at all, to be honest.'

'Nothing?'

'Does it surprise you?'

'I expected it. But why have you started investigating his death now? After three years, why now?'

'My health is bad, I may not last very long. I thought I must solve the only riddle that matters to me before I begin to sink.'

'People say you've discovered something.'

'I've heard that too.'

Balki stares at Ousep with a hint of mistrust. 'Is your health bad in a specific way? Do you have a terminal disease?'

'It's never that simple. There are things a drunkard knows about his body. Most of Malayalam literature was about that until women started writing.'

Ousep tries to achieve a wounded smile, anticipating the discomfort of compassion in Balki, but the boy is all business. 'You don't have much time, then,' he says. 'Do you have a hunch about Unni at least? Are you following a particular line of investigation?'

'Balki, why are you here?'

'I am here to help you.'

'Then help me.'

Balki looks with great concentration at the surface of the desk. He takes his time to form the words. 'Unni had ideas, powerful ideas. He believed something is going on all around us. Have you heard about that? He told the whole class this, he said something is happening and if we looked carefully we would be able to see it. He believed that something very ancient has survived and that it lives among us. Has anybody told you this?'

'What was it that he thought was going on?'

'I don't know.'

'Could it be that he had got obsessed with an idea the great awakening, everything-is-an-illusion, rubbish like that? It happens to some adolescents. They usually come back to their senses.'

'I don't think he was talking about those things,' Balki says.

'Why not?'

'Somehow I feel that a person who thinks he has discovered the absolute truth will not be someone I know.'

'Why couldn't Unni just say what was bothering him?'

'I don't know. I think he could not explain it. I think he only suspected that something was going on, he was not sure. Then one day he saw something, and somehow that meant he had to die. It is possible that the reason why he died is linked to what he knew, what he discovered. Does that make sense to you?'

'No.'

'It doesn't make much sense to me, either.'

'Balki, we don't have to sit here and try to figure out why Unni chose to die. That would be mere speculation. What we must do is talk about him, talk about him without a motive.'

Balki nods; he toys with the marble paperweight on the desk. He looks around the room, at the bed behind him, and at the bookshelf in a corner, probably searching for a spine he recognizes. He even looks at the ceiling fan, for some reason. When he finally speaks, he remembers Unni in a neat, chronological way.

Unni and Balki entered St Ignatius Boys' High School the same year, when they were six. Balki's first memories of Unni are of a boy who was not exceptional in any way. Unni was a moderately gifted student who was not considered bright until many years later. Balki, on the other hand, was always a clever freak, and for that reason he did not have friends. Even the teachers hated him. But he had Unni, who put an arm around his shoulder, who took him by his hand to include him in the games that the boys played. When Unni was eight, he gave Balki a memorable reason why they were friends. He said that Balki reminded him of his mother. Two days later Unni would explain, without being asked, 'My mother, too, is very smart, but a bit nutty.'

When he was around ten, something happened to Unni. Ousep has not heard this before. He is not sure whether the boy's mother knows about this. At least twice in the classroom he held his head and doubled up in pain. On both occasions he got back on his feet in seconds. And on both occasions he told his teachers that he had felt his brain move, as if it was changing shape within his skull. Balki is not surprised that no one from their class has told Ousep this. 'It happened a long time ago and people have very ordinary powers of retention. People usually remember what happened to them, and not the world around them.'

Around this time, there was another development. Unni began to spend a lot of time by himself in a corner of the playground. He would sit in a hypnotic trance as if he was watching something captivating before his eyes, and he would not hear people right next to him calling out his name. He would stir back to life only when shaken, and he would behave as if nothing had happened. He claimed to have no recollection of what he was thinking about or what he saw in his mind.