Waiting for Vishnu

 

Waiting for Vishnu

 

Vishnu was at the other end of the phone, Vishnu, my friend.

 

‘Hi, Madcap. What the hell are you doing here in Delhi,’ he blurted, addressing me in a tone that seemed more ironic than friendly. It was strange that he had not forgotten the nickname he coined for me long twenty-five years ago. Yes, it was that old—from our schooldays. That reminded me of the labour Vishnu used to put in and the intensity of malice he had shown then, just to make the nickname well circulated.

 

‘Nothing so important…just to meet a friend of mine,’ was my reply.

 

‘So, you’ve discarded me as your friend. Haven’t you?’ Vishnu now sounded a tad peevish. Probably he was expecting that I would give him a ring upon my arrival in the city.

 

Honestly, I didn’t like to contact him when I came to Delhi. It was partly because I had very little time to spare and mostly owing to my indecisiveness. I didn’t know what to do with his friendship at this stage. We had had no contact for long, and I had entirely forgotten him until a common friend gave me his phone number and address the other day. He must have shared my address with Vishnu too. That’s how the friendship was now on its path to revival.

 

‘Why don’t you make it convenient…let’s meet this evening. I’m staying at Greater Kailash. Can you come down to the barbecue there?’ Vishnu suggested. This time there was a noticeable improvement in his tone.

 

I had nothing particular to do that evening, so I agreed. Nonetheless, I couldn’t believe it was an invitation from Vishnu.  There was some real doubt: instead of calling me to his house, he called me to a barbecue. Why? ‘Was he really going to give me a treat?’ I wondered. As far as I could recall, he was a known miser in his college days; he used to boast about being a freeloader. He would go with us to the restaurants and eat but excuse himself a minute before it was the time for the presentation of the bill, saying he had an urgent phone call to make. Friends marked him repeating his antics way too much and then invented the GTPS protocol. Yes, it was ‘Going Together, Paying Separately’. Then, we saw Vishnu going with other groups to the restaurants. It was interesting how he could soon become a friend to new groups. Indeed, it was his knack that brought him snacks!

 

‘Okay then,’ I responded. ‘I’ll be there near the barbecue at half-past seven.’

 

‘Fine, I’m looking forward to it,’ Vishnu agreed and hung up the phone.

 

The common friend through whom I came to know the whereabouts of my old pal informed me that Vishnu was presently in a private company. But he could not give me any other details. So the maximum I could guess was Vishnu was a blue-collar worker.

 

I remembered my friend’s educational credentials. He was just a mediocre student with an arithmetic disability. But then, as a compensatory ability, he was endowed with exceptional shrewdness.

 

When it came to applying his tactics, even he did not spare me.

 

He used to be critical of me, my style of talking, my manner of walking, and my readiness to answer teachers’ questions in the class…. ‘Why do you raise your hands in the class? Why do you have to show all the time that you know the answer? Are you the only scholar around, and are we a bunch of fools?’ Vishnu would challenge. It was beyond my faculty to understand what he expected of me. I could not recall a single occasion when I might have harmed him.

 

He would depend on me for his homework, and sure as hell, he did. Did he ever do his sums all by himself, even for once? No, I don’t remember. Instead, he would copy word for word and dot for dot from my notebook. Even then, he was not happy with me. Probably he had no answer for the questions that used to nag him: ‘Why is Madcap such a simpleton? Aren’t my repeated abuses annoying this muddle-headed halfwit?’ In fact, he was dying to pick a quarrel with me, but I did not ever oblige him.

 

One day he hit upon the idea he was long searching for; in a way, he was ready to grant me my reward for helping him. 

 

He went to the mathematics teacher right away. ‘Teacher, I want you to listen to me, please. I have something very critical. Would you care to keep it secret?’ Vishnu had whispered in his teacher’s ear obsequiously.

 

‘Yes, Vishnu, tell me. I promise I won’t tell this anybody,’ the teacher had felt both curious and happy.

 

‘Sir, you know what Madcap is up to? He just copies from my notebook, always…hardly ever bothers to do a single sum, you must know.’

 

That was a sad day for me. The teacher had called for my notebook and compared it with Vishnu’s. But, alas, what did he find? He found out the similarity in the approach, steps, and the words chosen to explain the steps. What is more, there were matching errors in both the copies!

 

Then it was time for punishment. I had no chance to explain the matter. Even if I had that opportunity, I was unsure if I could have exposed Vishnu, for he had once made me agree under oath not to do that.

 

‘Wham!’ the teacher had kicked me on my belly. Now I relive how I had gone down on my knee with one hand pressing against my tummy to alleviate agony. I didn’t know how the teacher could get the scent of the similarities between my notebook and the notebook of Vishnu, but then I felt something fishy. Yes, I had felt so when Vishnu arrived there promptly, to give out his staccato of tut-tuts followed by his words of vapid commiseration.  

 

 Back home, Vishnu had behaved very generously. But then again, they were only condescending words. ‘You’re just a simpleton, Madcap; you’re ever so simple if I’m to say so. Had I been in your position, I would have slapped that bas**rd,’ that’s what he had said. Me a simpleton? I had nothing to disagree with, for I was a boy like that. ‘How can one change one’s nature?’ I had consoled myself with a rhetorical question.

 

Two decades had elapsed in the meantime. Hopefully, Vishnu would have forgotten his old malice…except for the nickname. He was now under no pressure to prove that he was a man of better substance. His parents were no more, and he had no pressure from them either. His wife didn’t know me, so her comparing me with her husband was out of the question.

 

Come evening. I was prepared to go to Greater Kailash to meet Vishnu. And I reached the spot five minutes before time.      

 

Kailash BBQ was a roadside eatery known for the delicious shish kebab. It was run by a smiling Singh who had the knack of remembering people. He recognised me almost instantly when he saw me, for I had been a regular visitor to his shop—at least once a year for several years. We exchanged smiles, and then I volunteered that I would be waiting there for my friend. ‘I’ll order something only when my friend arrives,’ I told the barbecue owner. Then I sat there on a bench quite expectantly.   

 

I could not have continued like that without thinking about Vishnu. There was some time for idle thought, and I began visualising the current shape of my pal’s physique. He would have put on some weight—that was the first thought to appear in my mind. I was not sure how such an idea occurred to me. Maybe I remembered his height and reckoned that a gluttonous chap as short as Vishnu would be prone to gain weight.

 

Oh yes, there was a height mismatch between Vishnu and me. We both were almost equal in our heights for a long time, but it was to change soon. The balance got disturbed when, in my high school, I surpassed Vishnu all of a sudden. In one year, I was cool ten inches taller than him. Vishnu became very unhappy, but that was all in his mind. He would always show his bold front outwardly: ‘See, tall people look awful and funny…like those clowns on silts in a circus. So, Madcap, never boast about your height; it won’t take you to the sky.’ I used to feel bad, not because my buddy discovered something funny in my growing so tall in such a brief span, but because I was clueless about how I generated his malice!

 

Recalling the glimpses of my association with Vishnu got so absorbing that I could not realise how an hour had elapsed. It was quarter past eight now. So, I started harbouring doubts: ‘If Vishnu lives so close, why is he not coming? Is he up to some silly prank?’

 

Pranks? Oh yes, I remembered one. Those days we were so small, just at the end of our primary classes. But Vishnu was already smart, inventing ingenious tricks to apply to me. Then one day, he got the opportunity he waited for to make a monumental fool of me.

 

That day seeing me taking permission from the class monitor to go to the toilet, Vishnu sneaked out. It was the monitor’s duty to mind the class—to see that only one child from the class went out. When he found two of us were away from our seats, he had complained before the sports teacher. The sports teacher, ever so unhappy for playing second fiddle to the faculty, was delighted to catch us for punishment.

 

Before we were paraded for confessing our blunder and receiving the punishment from the sports teacher, Vishnu had already peed on me. I was dripping wet and smelling awfully urinous.

 

Now Vishnu suddenly went into overdrive and activated his dupery. First, he told the teacher that he had gone out with proper permission, whereas I had bunked illegally. Then, to substantiate his information with further evidence of my wickedness, he complained that I had peed on him. Yes, Vishnu had the cheek to do that!

 

Strange! The sports teacher had no time to examine the obvious—it was none of his business to see what I was dripping. So he just spared Vishnu as the innocent one—a case of mistaken identity, as the police would say—and dragged me for his punishment.

 

Indeed, the sports teacher was imaginative—one of Vishnu’s ilk. He made me stand on a chair with three and a half legs to maintain my balance on it or else fall down. The condition was that each time I tumbled down, I would receive five canings. Thus, it continued for an hour. And at the end of the harrowing session, I had earned twenty-five canings and five solid falls. I was bleeding on my face and my back.

 

There was no point complaining to parents, for teachers were gods: they were the trinity of heaven: Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwar.

 

As was his wont, my friend Vishnu had come a little later with his commiseration; this time around, he chose to explain his behaviour. Without being called upon to do so, he had said, ‘Hey, I just played with you—a simple friend-to-friend prank, you know. Trust me: I didn’t ask the ba***rd sports teacher to punish you. So, it’s no fault of mine!’  

 

People say that one tends to forget the pain as time goes by, but it appeared I had not forgotten anything. It was a different matter that I was not cut out for taking revenge, for I used to think that it was unnecessary. Memories of many unforgettable events with agonies writ large on them were rushing towards me, even though I warned myself against recalling more. I didn’t want to spoil the meeting.

 

It was quarter past nine. I stood up to stretch myself and tried to yawn. Now I was feeling terribly hungry. But, it was unlikely that Vishnu would turn up. So, I asked BBQ fellow to take the order.

 

‘Possibly, my friend got stuck with somebody,’ I said, addressing nobody.

 

The smiling Singh from behind the counter had half an eye over people approaching his eatery. Probably he was doing so for my sake, to inform me in advance that my friend had arrived.

 

‘I reckon somebody was peering at you from a distance, somebody of below-average height, fat body and a bald head. Could he be, by any chance, your friend, sir?’ enquired the eatery owner.

 

I had no idea how Vishnu looked these days, so I did not respond. Instead, I quietly enjoyed my shish kebab hot with mint chutney.

 

Back home, I received a phone call from Vishnu. He was critical of me for not keeping the appointment. ‘If you don’t like to meet me, you could’ve said so…jolly well, you could’ve said that. Do you think I’m a fat fool to run after you?’

Bhubaneswar

28-01-2008