The Johns

                      

           The essay that he had memorized was “A white cow”, and ,much to his dismay, the essay before him in English test was “ A black cow.” How could he think up of something which could go in paragraphs below “ A black cow.” His English teacher said only one out of three, he had ticked, would come, and every one of them, who had attended his special classes, felt being betrayed by that “question-setter.” All that his father wanted him was to be just like the photographed-village boy, who ranked 3^rd in the state’s high school exam; everyone recognized that photographed-village boy; dragged from one leikai( locality) to another to be garlanded by those village leaders who would even skip a meal to get hold of the microphone at every event in the village.

            When the photographed-village boy returned home after several years in a big Indian city hugging a laptop computer, which he kept on saying lappy, while the empty case swinging about his hip. He was in the village only for a little while, and, according to the village folks, he couldn’t adjust himself to the remote village life. He never returned. The same followed for another photographed-village girl who left the village as   Chanu Thongbam and came to visit her proud parents after years with her sun-glassed “hubby” as “Rani Chan Yadav. After she had left the village, where she couldn’t survive “without wi-fi and roti” with her sunglassed “hubby”, his cousin’s wife insisted he should try one “rich Yadav.”

             Then one day he happened to come across a piece in some American newspaper about certain Asian ladies’ preference for Caucasian men, and below the piece there was an interesting comment: This will never happen in Japan or Korea. They consider themselves as equals of Caucasian people, and they really are. Haven’t you heard of Sony, LG going all over the world employing people and proving they indeed are superior?” He read that piece and the comment while his Eminem and BollyKhan wannabe “dudes” were playing online games in the same Internet Café.

            He was exposed to facts and figures, and they all came to him from his mentors and ranked-people. They all said the deposited facts and figures would one day be poured out somewhere in front of some important figures; he carried that in his mind. So in school, Sir Thomas Mormon just entered, wrote out the stuff and ran his cane below the lines with hasty words; he expected them to “jot down fast” so that Mr. Mormon could look at his notebook, not lappy, to get ready for more lines. He was always in a bad mood when they couldn’t match his expected-writing speed, and he could be mean when asked about certain things. What made Mr. Mormon exceptional were his photographs with “white folks” in three-piece-suits; people said they had come with a chunk of “Texan oil money and faith.”

            None was as boring as Mr. JKSingh, whose name no one could forget since they all knew Jammu &Kashmir very well. Mr. JKSingh denounced things he didn’t understand as “hackwork”, but he was a devout fan of some Pundit PK Roy, an imminent scholar who claimed that the Hindu epic character Rama was born in their Kangleipak, and Pundit’s wife, JKDevi, who, according to many, was an influential figure in Indian literature. Even though Mr.JKSingh was a dull teacher they all preferred those distinguished literary figures because he constantly bragged about them as though they were his pompous parents. One could never know. One winter evening, when his relatives started talking about blurred history of the Bir and Maharajas, the meanings of words like Pundit, bir and maharaj were revealed to him by an old, creaky man. maichou, athoubah and eeningthou respectively. By that evening by the fire it dawned upon him that the dull teacher who preferred to be called “guru” instead of “oja” had been teaching abundant of Sanskrit but a little about the actual language. The old, creaky man appeared convinced of what he had said, but others wrote him off as another shrinking old-fogey.

            There were no photograph sessions for him, but there were “farewell parties” which they called it “duck parties.” The “duck parties” were his going away party, and with all the deposited facts and figures he was bused-out from the dusty valley on the three-foot-wide highway, and then railed-out through the scorching heat of India. His destination was the crammed settlement veiled over by converged dust, and an uneven path cutting through, where he had to walk besides cattle that sometimes stopped to look at themselves in the side-mirrors of parked middle-class cars. It would be wrong for him to say that the centuries-old city was on the same par as his; they had American fast-food chains dotting across, and they all spoke real Hinglish. Those who had been bused-out and railed-out from the same place were also a lot like: they spoke many languages, but none spoke a language fluently; they had a language called Meihinglish. That language was really cool.

            He had set out to gather more and more facts and figures and later on, perhaps, a place where he could “pour out” the deposit. After five years of formal education he was only qualified for a call-centre job. In the beginning it was another “cool job” with him “dealing with UK-clients” over the phone. There was the process of polishing his accent and “hitting the floor” and finally, when confirmed, getting picked up right in front of the one-room-house for night shift. After a year there were so much to grumble about and the monotony also compounded the confusion. There seemed to be no exit door; the notion of returning home would be to lose “me face” in front of the “folks.” While wrestling with the entangled tumult Uncle Shekhwat Singah( he never liked to be called khura because of his wealth and exposure) rang up one late night asking him to return home: he had been uniting his relatives with the polls around the corner. He promised him a life: a guarded bolero car and connections to fix jobs and leverage to make those nasty people kowtow.

            Things for him had changed: his uncle was in the cabinet; could be seen with ear-piercing siren cruising with his escorts on dirt roads; though he studied sociology he had installed him in the state’s recently-centralized hospital as a pharmacist, and in few years a degreed-lady with North Indian dowry had come. He and few of his were doing all right, but the place was disappearing in mud. But he and his people had cars to ford. Sometimes when his car stuck in a pit he would curse the concerned department; when someone from his extended family was whacked and shot by nasty people he would do growl; the worse curse would be when he was in some European city belittled by everything. Still, he was a man who would lean on his uncle to be someone; a hard-working man campaigning for his uncle with cash in hands for votes; a man who wouldn’t hesitate to accept heavy briefcases from rich Marwaris; also a man who wouldn’t mind roping in those extortionists for uncle’s sake.

He didn’t ask in the classrooms nor did he question the customs and traditions let alone asking his own conducts. Whether direct or hypothetical a question is a question, it helps both the questioner and the answerer to reflect on certain things. He didn’t realize that he was just like any other brick, but a brick upon which capricious sun had shone for a while. Perhaps he should be bold enough to ask himself and then those around him. Contempt could be the result, but not self-contempt; and convinced contempt is productive.