Why Did That @#$%*& Chicken Cross The Road!

Lakhimpur, Assam. 1996.

“What d’you want for your birthday?” asked Bruce as they cycled home from school.
 “A girlfriend,” replied Amit promptly.
 Bruce turned to Siddharth and said, “Buy him one, will you?”
 “We could if we contribute fifty bucks each,” said Siddharth. “For half an hour. Actually, two minutes should be enough.”
 “Piss off,” said Amit.
 The cycle that Amit was riding, a Rockshox, was a birthday gift from his parents, given to him a couple of weeks before his actual date of manufacture because his previous bike was in such a state that Bruce had named it ‘Jaan Ki Baazi’.
 Jaan Ki Baazi was a hand-me-down ladies’ cycle from Amit’s elder sister, who used to take good care of it, but it had fallen into neglect in Amit’s hands. For one, its handlebar had become so very loose that it would, without reasonable notice, suddenly rotate 180 degrees in its socket and throw the rider off balance. The left brake cable was long gone and the right one was working at 10% efficiency, as a result of which the bicycle’s main skill was overshooting all targeted parking spots. It was a bull and Amit was the only matador capable of riding it. Any thief trying to steal Jaan Ki Baazi would likely find himself chewing tar and gravel without a few front teeth before he had stopped looking over his shoulder. If, that is, the seat hadn’t already fallen off and the seat rod underneath hadn’t dug him a fresh orifice.
 “And don’t feed us mutton, please,” said Bruce as they crossed the railway track at Nakari. “Chicken. Number one choice is of course pork, but your folks would probably throw you out of the house.”
 Amit was about to say something when a chicken crossed the road. Till this day, whenever anyone makes any why-did-the-chicken-cross-the-road jokes, Bruce and Amit immediately have a flashback of that particular chicken crossing that particular road.
 Amit’s Rockshox was one of the first bicycles to come with shock absorbers. Before this, he had been riding Jaan Ki Baazi, which, being a ladies’ cycle, was minus the top front tube so that skirt-wearing girls could mount and dismount easily. Amit had gotten used to dismounting the same way. Now, muscle memory is usually a wonderful thing. With practice, your legs ultimately execute that hook kick without conscious thought and your fingers automatically find the right notes on the guitar. But in this particular case, Amit’s leg muscles were used to getting off from the front instead of the back like one would normally do on a gents’ bike.
 Chickens are an exceptionally silly species. The expression ‘running around like a headless chicken’ is rather mystifying because a headed chicken runs around just as stupidly as a headless chicken. They run across the road for no good reason when there are millions of vehicles zipping by, when the sensible thing to do would be to just stay put and wait for the signal to turn red. And they run in a straight line in front of a car in the same direction when they could just as easily take a few quick steps sideways, get off the road and out of harm’s way, and then start roundly abusing the driver with the choicest of words like any normal citizen, preferably once he’s out of earshot.
 It was one of these mental chickens that had suddenly decided to make a quick dash for it, oblivious to or in spite of the fact that dozens of cycles were on the road. The chicken had almost made it when Amit’s front wheel swiftly rolled into view.
 With a yell, Amit hit his brakes hard, and, as was his wont, tried to stop the bike and get off from the front. Now if you’re a lady on a lady’s cycle and you dismount from the front, it’s all right. If you’re a boy on a lady’s cycle and you dismount from the front, that’s still okay. But if you’re a boy on a gent’s cycle and you try to dismount from the front, there lies a pretty solid tubular obstacle of steel that comes in between your legs…
 What’s the correct sound effect for the situation? Plonk? Thunk? Pschhhh? Krunch? Boink-boink? Never mind.
 Amit’s mouth sprang wide open in a silent scream of anguish. This was followed by a few shouts and yelps of extreme distress. Getting hit there with even a pillow is an unpleasant enough experience; a steel pipe is exponentially worse. The weird thing is, when one gets bopped in the nut sack, the pain isn’t felt there itself but a few inches higher, where the ovaries would have been. Maybe it’s Mother Nature’s own little inside joke.
 Almost all guys find sadistic pleasure in their fellow males getting socked in the family jewels, and Bruce and Siddharth were no exceptions. They sympathised with Amit, but for the moment, laughter was their primary reaction.
 “Blasted #@$*& chicken,” said Amit when he had recovered enough to speak. “I hope his feathers are plucked one by one and he’s roasted alive over a slow fire.” And his friends laughed even more. “Shut up, assholes!”

 A few days later, Siddharth gave Amit a nicely wrapped box as a birthday gift. Amit unwrapped it and found another box inside. He opened that too and found yet another box. “This is very lame and unfunny and done to death,” he said.
 The third box contained the actual gift.
 Two ping pong balls and a banana. And a note.
 Amit didn’t find it funny at all. Bruce found it worthy of a few laughs. Siddharth himself was hysterical.
 The note said, “Spare parts for the dry times.”

The Grasshopper’s Run – A Magnificient Debut Novel!

Most great works of detailed writing come from the author having lived the life he writes about. Joseph Heller was a bombardier. John Grisham was a lawyer. Mark Boal, who wrote the script of The Hurt Locker and the article upon which In The Valley of Elah was based, was an embedded journalist with US bomb squads in Iraq. So it comes as a huge surprise that Siddhartha Sarma, whose formative years as far as I know have mostly revolved around school and college and university campuses, should make a stunning debut with a novel set in the hills and jungles of undivided Assam in World War II.
Siddhartha Sarma has the stereotypical appearance of a nerd. He’s on the slimmer side, isn’t very vertical and sports extremely thick glasses, and the last time I met him, he still had Archie Andrews freckles. So it comes as a big surprise that Gojen Rajkhowa, his debut novel’s hero, is an Annie Oakley with a rifle and an Asterix when it comes to hunting.

My favourite books and movies are those which can tell me in fascinating detail about an entirely new world. It might be literally a new world, like Pandora in Avatar, or it could be the world of a computer sales office, like in Rocket Singh. The level of detailing in The Grasshopper’s Run is such that I found myself wondering whether nerdy geeky Siddhartha actually had a secret hobby of rifle shooting and collecting. Where did he practice? Behind the bus stop near his house?
Here’s one of my favourite passages:
‘ “When you aim, forget everything else. Just aim like you have always done before, get the position correct, do all the things you know. Then, you go inside yourself. Find a small place there that tells you: aim and fire, just don’t miss. That small place does not tell you that this is a human being, so let us get and wave to him and he will wave back and smile and not shoot. If you can find it, stay inside that place and fire.”’
Great stuff. Whether the product of a rich imagination or of painstaking research, Sid deserves resounding pats and thumps on the back.
The story begins with the massacre of an Ao Naga village by a subhuman Japanese Colonel. Uti, grandson of the Ao chief and more than a brother to Gojen Rajkhowa, is among those killed. What follows is a racy, dramatic story of a hunt which I finished reading in just two sessions, and the interruption was only because I had tickets for Ishqiya. The scope of the book is sprawling, not just touching upon but explaining in dramatic depth the geography of the Naga hills, the battle tactics of the Japanese and the British, the Naga customs, practices and psychology, etc etc. When it comes to thrillers, I find Frederick Forsyth unequalled in terms of detail and plot complexity. While the plot of The Grasshopper’s Run is more on the simple side, I would say the wealth of detail is truly world class.
This is one of those books which you start reading and immediately think, “This would make a great movie.” Hopefully, more and more Hollywood studios will start suing more and more copycat Indian producers. Then wonderful source material like this book will start receiving its true value.
I’m personally very happy for Sid as a friend and professionally almost jealous that he’s made such a smashing debut. I would have been insanely jealous if I were writing in the same genre, but thankfully he’s not in competition there – at least, The Grasshopper’s Run isn’t much of a school/college comedy.
Recently in Landmark, I browsed through some of the new books by young Indian writers and I was left aghast. In Wodehousian terms, I practically tottered. Their back page blurbs themselves were so terrible and amateurish that I was left saying “Ye haalat ho gayi hai?” There was one particular book I bought last year which had a long line of quotes of praise on its back cover. It turned out to be so absolutely crappy that I couldn’t bear pushing myself to trudge through more than about 40 pages. Asinine sentence construction and obvious grammatical mistakes decorated a juvenile plot which I can’t even remember now. The Grasshopper’s Run is in the stratosphere compared to this flotsam and jetsam.
Siddhartha is definitely going places. With his background in investigative journalism, he probably already has all the right material to work on a novel which can expose what news media can’t. I’m eagerly looking forward to whatever he writes next.

You can order the book from http://www.flipkart.com/grasshopper-39-run-siddhartha-sarma/8184772882-aw23fd2k4c
It costs just 183 bucks and it did get delivered to my doorstep in 3 days as promised.

(Landmark and Odyssey are likely to stock the book. For Dilliwalas, the best bet is Eureka The Children’s Bookstore in Alaknanda)

When Nature Calls For Percussion

Lakhimpur, Assam. 1998.

The first time Bruce met Sonam was during one of his holiday trips to Lakhimpur, when he used to stay with Amit. The day Bruce arrived was Id-Ul-Fitr, so they had breakfast at Salim’s place, lunch at Arif’s, puchka (= golgappe = pani-puri) from a vendor at Malpani Chariali’s most life-threatening footpath, and dinner at Sheikh Shah’s. Amit’s mother had looked very worried in the morning about sending her son for three meals to three Muslim families. Amit assured her that he would never do anything that would make her upset. Then he went and did exactly that.
 “So, bamun,” said Bruce as they cycled back home wearily, “when’s your purifying pilgrimage to the Ganga?”
 “I’m too tired. Let the Ganga come here.”
 Amit felt a few tiny bubbles pop in his stomach. Probably the puchka pani doing battle with Sheikh Shah’s shammi kababs. The puchkas had been too pungent for him, and he had forced himself to have the last few, barely even chewing them before swallowing.
 “I thought I would die laughing when you so innocently told your mother this morning not to worry,” said Bruce.
 “Monkey number 2. Hear no evil.”
 Amit felt a few pieces of meat shifting around restlessly in his stomach. Probably Salim’s beef competing with Arif’s mutton for leg room.
 “You’ve sinned today, bamun. Shame on you. You should be excommunicated.”
 “I don’t care as long as there’s pork around.”
 Amit felt a few major upheavals in his stomach this time. Definitely not just chemical reactions between incompatible foods. The puchka was probably trying to assert its supremacy by trying to expel the other more wholesome foods.
 “There seems to be a major riot starting in my stomach,” said Amit as he alighted from his bicycle.
 “Serves you right, jackass. I told you, you were eating too many.”
 “It’s Id, man. Eating time.”
 “So – are you going to have to to visit Dr Kumud Pa Khanna?”
 “Probably…oh…I just remembered something.” Amit’s heart sank.
 “What?”
 “Ma said something about installing a new commode today.”
 “Really?”
 “The old one was pretty much beginning to crack up – I personally think it looks in worse shape after your arrival –  so they were supposed to take it out and fix a new one today. I hope it’s ready.”
 Amit’s mother was watching Kyunki Saas Mein Kabhi Badboo Thi on TV.
 “Ma, has the new commode come?”
 “No.”
 “Oh.”
 “It was brought by the sanitary store guys – it couldn’t come by itself.”
 “Oh God! Cracking bad jokes at your age. Has it been fixed?”
 “Not completely. They’ll come tomorrow morning and finish it.”
 “Not completely?!?”
 “Have a look yourself.”
 Amit ran to take a look. The concrete foundation of the commode had been dug out. The new commode was delicately balanced on just a few bricks in the centre. It wasn’t even cemented yet. Being an Indian-style commode, there was no way to even step on it without it toppling over, let alone doing anything else.
 Amit’s stomach gave a few almost-audible gurgles. They were probably the dying gasps of the pulao, vanquished by the all-powerful puchka.
 “What’re you going to do now?” asked Bruce.
 “I guess I’ll have to hold it till tomorrow,” said Amit, not very confidently.
 “Would you like to sleep with Huggies?”
 “Shaddup.”
 They went back to Amit’s mother. He asked her, “Ma, what if someone needs to go tonight?”
 “You do?”
 “I may have to.”
 “You? I’m surprised.” Amit had a habit of never unloading himself in unknown commodes. He couldn’t remember whether some childhood experience had traumatised him, but he somehow couldn’t bring himself to dispose of his waste anywhere other than home.
 “Ma, please.”
 “I’ve talked with Aunty Adi. You can go to their place.”
 “Who’s Aunty Adi?” asked Bruce.
 “Our next door neighbour,” replied Amit. “Never mind. I think I’ll just have to control till morning.”
 As if on cue, Amit’s stomach lodged an immediate protest with some really loud bubbling. He grimaced. Bruce started chuckling.
 “What’re you so happy about, dunderhead?”
 “Heh heh. This is fun. I’ll be watching you all night…and listening.”

 There are some things which are beyond will power. You can will yourself to quit smoking, you can will yourself to lay off the sweets, you can will yourself to wake up and go for a morning jog, but you cannot will your anatomy’s trapdoors locked shut when you have stuffed yourself to the back teeth with three varieties of animal flesh – which is all right on its own – and then topped it all with the incendiary material that the Malpani Chariali footpath puchkas were.
 Amit tried to forget about his internal atmospheric pressure by playing songs on the guitar, but quite the opposite happened – the pressure made him forget the correct chords. He had a habit of never getting the lyrics right anyway. Every time he hit a wrong note, Bruce would see the look on his face and laugh, and start talking about Huggies or finding a good secluded spot in a nearby jungle.
 Half an hour later, Amit gave up. He was practically sweating from the efforts at self control.
 “Okay, I give up. Let’s go to Aunty Adi’s place.”
 Bruce spent a minute guffawing first.
 “Asshole! Stop laughing. I’m in a state of emergency here.”
 “Sure you are, dude. Let’s go.”
 Bruce pressed his self-slow-motion button and very slowly got up from his bed. He put on a shirt excruciatingly slowly and pretended to look for his specs, also at a painfully slow pace, and grinning all the while.
 “Bruce! Asshole! What the hell are you doing! Hurry up!” said Amit, whose internal organs were in anything but slow motion.
 “Someone’s…pressed…my…slow…motion…button,” said Bruce at half his normal pace, and double his normal bass, mimicking the resultant sound when a cassette tape gets stuck.
 “Here’s the fast forward button then,” said Amit and kicked Bruce on the backside.
 “Ow!” exclaimed Bruce, laughing. “Okay, let’s go.”
 For his friend’s sake, Bruce hastened his tempo as they walked across to Aunty Adi’s place. Amit rang the doorbell.
 Aunty Adi opened the door and said, “Hello Amit. How are you?”
 “Fine, Aunty. This is my friend Bruce. You know our commode is being changed…”
 “Oh yesyesyesyesyes. Your mother told me. So do you want to – or your friend?”
 “Him,” said Bruce. “The greedy guts. I told him not to eat so much, but he kept on eating as if he’d been fasting in the Himalayas for a year.”
 “Oh, that’s ok,” said Aunty Adi. “Young boys should eat. Comeincomeincomein.”
 And there it was for the first time that Bruce saw Sonam – the girl he was to fall in love with later. She was sitting in front of the TV in the drawing room, watching American Beauty, which happened to be one of Bruce’s favourite films. She laughed out aloud at the ‘This is just a couch!’ scene. Bruce was impressed. Few girls laughed uninhibitedly when strangers were around.
 It wasn’t love at first sight, though. Sonam had barely glanced at them before turning her attention to the movie again.
 “This is my niece, Sonam, from Dirang.”
 Sonam smiled and uttered a polite Hi. The boys hi-ed back. She was tall, slim, considerably fair and had short hair. Her face could have been better, but the rosy cheeks more than made up for it. She was wearing a navy blue sleeveless top and huge striped pajamas. Bruce didn’t form any remarkable impression of her and  Amit was busy worrying about the impression something else was threatening to form on his pajamas.
 “You just wait here a minute,” said Aunty Adi. “I’ll arrange for some water for you.”
 “That’s okay, Aunty,” said Amit. “We’re not thirsty.”
 “Not to drink, my dear.”
 “Oh.”
 Aunty Adi went in and Bruce whispered to Amit, “Don’t tell me there’s no running water in their Pa Khanna.”
 “I don’t know, dude. I’ve never been there. What for?”
 “To drown out the sounds in case things get noisy,” whispered Bruce.
 “Oh God! That’s right. What should I do?”
 Bruce snickered and suggested, “Just do it quietly.”
 “Asshole, that’s like telling someone to dream only pleasant dreams!”
 “In that case, you’re going to make a unique first impression on this girl. Oh, this is priceless. I wish I had a camera. I’d make a docu-drama on your situation.”
 Aunty Adi returned. “Okay, Amit. You can go now. Down this corridor, to your left. I’ll just go and have a few words with your mother. Bruce, you stay here and watch TV with Sonam.”
 “Thanks, Aunty,” said Amit and set off.
  As Aunty Adi left, Bruce sat down in the sofa next to Sonam’s. All her attention was focussed on the movie, so he sat silently and watched.
 At the battle frontlines, Amit’s worst fears came true. There was no running water! If there had been, he could at least have turned the tap on and created some camoflauging noise. Now he was sunk. All he could do was try to conduct business as soundlessly as possible. But how do you do that?
 About half a minute later, Bruce and Sonam heard the first popping sounds. I wish I knew how to describe this part a little euphemistically, but that’s the way it went down. Amit was trying hard to control the sound effects, but like he himself had said, it was like trying to control the quality of your dreams.
 The sounds started getting a little louder and more varied. Bruce saw Sonam cast a quick glance in the direction of the noise. A hint of a smile seemed to be forming at the corners of her mouth.
 Thank God, thought Bruce. She’s got a sense of humour. At least she’s not appearing disgusted.
 After a particularly loud crackle, Sonam finally looked at Bruce and grinned. He smiled back and said, “I think we should turn up the volume a bit.”
 “You’re right,” she chuckled, and did so.
 Bruce the drummer thought that his ears detected, amidst the traces of the racket that floated towards them, snares, double bass rolls, lots of tom-tom rolls, a few reverse cymbals and a couple of crash cymbals.
 In the battlefield trenches on the other hand, Amit was reproducing the sound effects of a battle where a B-35 fighter jet, a couple of M-16s, a few AK-56s, some grenades and a couple of British WWII Bren guns were all being used with silencers attached. This was the comparison Amit would have drawn, being a fanatical reader of Commando and Battle Picture Library comics, were it not that he was busy abusing the puchkawala with all his mental might. If I ever get out of here alive, he thought, I’ll make that puchkawala eat all his own bloody puchkas at one go, then I’ll shut him up inside a cardboard cell with no running water and no gas masks. When he begs for food, I’ll send his family a ransom note demanding 2000 puchkas. Then I’ll feed those puchkas to him again…
 Unfortunately for Amit, things got worse. The Assam State Electricity Board, ASEB, is also termed After Sunset Electricity Breakdown. Eager to live up to its nickname, it decided on a power cut. All the lights went out.
 “Oh no!” groaned Sonam and Bruce together.
 Amit, at the same instant, not only said oh and no, but also inserted God’s name in between. The TV had been drowning out some of his explosions, but now there was complete silence and total darkness. In the darkness, Aunty Adi’s niece would have nothing to look at. That would leave her ears as her primary sense organ, and he well knew what they would hear. Amit tried hard to procrastinate matters till the lights came back on, but he knew it was a futile endeavour, as the electricity would almost surely take at least one hour to return.
 Bruce was unsure of what the right track of conversation would be with a girl you’ve just been introduced to and are now stuck with in total darkness. Sonam spoke first.
 “What’s your name?” she asked casually.
 “Bruce. Hazowary. What’s your surname?”
 “Lamu.”
 “Born in…’81?”
 “Good guess.”
 “That’s great. Me too.”
 In the meantime, Amit had been trying to hold things back till the atmosphere was more conducive, but he might as well have tried to cork a volcano. Things gave way with a loud array of muffled explosions.
 Bruce tried hard not to laugh. But then Sonam burst out first, giving Bruce license to join in. He immediately started liking her. Probably one in a hundred girls would have been bindaas enough to laugh in a situation like this. The other 99 would have either maintained an awkward silence or tried to escape.
 “I’m so sorry,” said Bruce in between chuckles. “He had too many puchkas.”
 “That’s ok,” said Sonam. “Something similar’s happened to me before as well.”
 “Really?”
 “Yeah. A friend’s birthday party. There too the lights had gone out.”
 “Now that’s some coincidence,” said Bruce and laughed. He really liked this girl. Probably just one in a thousand would have ever admitted to such an embarassing story, let alone in a first conversation.
 As Bruce and Sonam got to know each other, Amit cursed and abused the puchkawala and the electricity board for grinding his izzat into the mittee.
 Sonam was doing her higher secondary science studies in Bomdila. She loved books and movies the same as Bruce, he was pleased to note. Her father was a contractor and her mother was in the state government. She planned to come to Guwahati the next year to do her Bachelor’s degree from Cotton College.
 “That’s great,” said Bruce. “If I’m still there next year we’ll be batchmates.”
 “Yeah.”
 After a beat, Bruce said, “Amit’s fallen silent. I think his ordeal’s over.”
 “Yeah. I think I should get a candle.”
 In the meantime, Amit finished his rituals in the darkness and crawled out, not literally, but spiritually. He could hardly think of bringing himself face to face with Sonam after all the sound effects he had produced. Oh God! Whatever would she say to Aunty Adi!
 Amit opened the door at the same instant that Sonam stepped out of the kitchen with a candle, which she was holding at waist level, causing bad horror film shadows to form on her face. The sudden sight of a girl ghost with a candle was too much for Amit’s already-numbed brain. “Oh Ma!” he exclaimed.
 “Sorry, sorry,” said Sonam, laughing. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” Bruce was laughing in the drawing room.
 “Oh, it’s you,” said Amit, clutching his heart.
 “Did some more come out from the shock, Amit?” asked Bruce.
 “Shaddup, nincompoop.”
 Sonam placed the candle on a table and sat down again. Amit slid into a sofa with a huge sigh of relief.
 “All out?” said Bruce.
 “Shaddup.”
 “I’ll get you some water,” said Sonam.
 “Yes, please, thank you.”
 Amit drank the water Sonam brought, then thanked her and rose to leave.
 “Let us know when you come to Guwahati,” said Bruce.
 “Yeah,” said Sonam, although not as enthusiastically as Bruce would have liked.
 “G’night, then.”
 “Good night.”
 As they plodded towards Amit’s door, he said, “I’m never entering Aunty Adi’s place again while that girl’s still there. God! Did she say something about me?”
 “That you were the most disgusting creature she’d ever set eyes upon.”
 “You’re lying…aren’t you? God no, she might have actually said that…did she really?”
 “No.”
 “Thank God.”
 “She said she wished she had a tape recorder at hand.”
 “Asshole. Now you’re definitely lying.”
 “She didn’t say anything. She just turned up the volume. And when the lights went out, we both laughed at your symphony of destruction.”
 “Hey Bhaggu Dada! My izzat’s gone!”
 “Into the septic tank.”
 “I’m never entering Aunty Adi’s place again while she’s still there.”

The Wrong House

Tezpur, Assam. 1995.

  “Hello Amit,” said Bruce in a sing song voice. “It’s 7 o’clock in the morning, and I’m sure you’ve forgotten to do Chatterjee’s homework.”
  “Nnnnaaaaaaahhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnn,” yelled Amit in the perfected and patented tone used by Hindi film heroines, accompanied by some bangle breaking,  on hearing that their husband’s dead. If you had known Mr Chatterjee, it’s highly unlikely that you would go cartwheeling on learning that you’ve forgotten his homework, because a wooden ruler would gleefully go whack! whack! on your hands without fail. And this in class IX, in an enlightened age when corporal punishment is generally frowned upon.
  “What am I gonna do?”
  “Don’t show up in school for a couple of years and hope that he forgets about it.”
  “Any more brilliant suggestions?”
  “How about telling him you were ill?”
  “Won’t do. That doesn’t count with him. I think I won’t go to school…why the hell didn’t you remind me earlier!”
  “I forgot.”
  “Does that mean you haven’t done it either?”
  “Yup.”
 “Hee har har! What’re you going to do now?”
 “I’ve cooked up a terrific story. I’ll tell him that while playing cricket yesterday, I made a heroic dive at extra cover and took a superlative catch that’ll go down in the history of local cricket, but in the process injured my thumb rather badly. And I’m going with a crepe bandage.”
  “Not a bad idea for somebody with negligible grey matter.”

  At school, Bruce’s crepe bandage and the absolute straight-facedness with which he told Chatterjee his martyr’s story won the admiration of the class.
 A few minutes later, midway through Chatterjee’s lecture, sports coach Mr Karuna Doley came into the classroom.
  “Boys,” he said, “Today we’ll be having the selections for our school cricket team. So be at the field after school.”
  Bruce was thrilled. For a long time he’d been wanting to be in the school team. The previous year, he’d been something like the sixteenth man.
  Guess what happened. Coach Karuna noticed his crepe bandage and said, “Bruce, what’s happened to your hand?”
  Bruce looked at Coach Karuna, and then looked at Chatterjee. Somebody had put superglue inside his throat.
  “Ulp…er…uh…nothing much, Sir, it’s just a…”
  Chatterjee butted in. “He got injured while taking a legendary catch yesterday. His thumb’s all but broken.”
  “Oh, that’s too bad, Bruce. You bowl decent leg spin.”
  “I…uh…” And the superglue stuck Bruce’s throat completely.

  Amit’s laughter could be heard on Mars when Bruce told him the story.
  “What an idiot! Har har har! Crepe bandage! Ho har har!”
  If this conversation weren’t being conducted over phone, Bruce would’ve probably attempted to cause Amit’s windpipe some temporary harm. Then he remembered something gratifying.
  “What’re you laughing so much about? You weren’t at the trials either. Boom go your chances of making the team this year. I’ll laugh now.”
  “Oh crap! The team! The team!”
  “Serves you right.” Then after a dramatic pause, Bruce added, “Be thankful that I’ve been thinking about this. I’ll tell you what we’ll do: we’ll go to Coach Karuna’s place, tell him why we weren’t around and ask him to check us out tomorrow. He’s a bit liberal, so he shouldn’t rat on us.”
  “Where does he live?”
  “Anand knows. I’ll call him up and find out. Come over immediately and we’ll go.”
 Bruce called up Anand and asked him where Coach Karuna lived.
 “Somewhere in Faaltu Police Line,” he said. “I think it’s house number 14. I pass that way very often.”
 “Are you sure about 14? Pranjal told me it was 40 or something.”
 “Pranjal is also the one who said that Colombo is in Chennai.”
 “You’ve got a point there.”
 
 So Amit came over and the two of them went bicycling to Faaltu Police Line. They soon came to house number 14. By the way, it deserves a mention here that 14 was not the correct number. Anand the overconfident jackass had got it wrong.
  Bruce knocked on the door and a maid opened it.
  He asked her “Is Sir in?” She said he’d be coming shortly, and asked them to wait.
  They sat down in the drawing room. The room was well done and tidy and blah blah blah. What was special were a lot of trophies, mostly for dancing and singing, in the name of Anushka Talukdar. Probably his daughter, thought Bruce, but then why a different surname? He was about to voice his doubts, when Amit spoke first.
  “Talented girl, eh?” he remarked.
  And then the talented girl walked in. She was quite tall, about 5’9″, and indeed very pretty.
  “Hi. You’ve come to meet father?” she said.
  “Yes,” said Bruce. “I’m Bruce. This is Amit.”
  “How do you do, Amit?”
  One look at Amit and you could see all the symptoms. Amit had some criteria for a girl to be classified as good looking. One of them was a minimum height of 5’6″. When a lady matching this and some other criteria walked across the horizon, he ended up forgetting everything including his planet of residence. Anushka was much above the danger level. As a result Amit had superglue in his throat and an I’m-a-dead-fish glazed look in his eye. He said:
 ”Fow dyou.”
  I’ll translate that. He was going to say Fine, then he thought of How d’you do, and he mixed them up and got it wrong altogether.
  “Which class are you in?” Bruce asked.
 ”Ten. You too?”
 ”Yes, we are. You seem to be into a lot of song and dance.”
 ”I am.”
 They made small talk, or rather, Bruce made small talk and Amit made very small talk for a while. Then Anushka went in to get them some refreshments, much against their false protestations. They were ready to eat anything anytime anywhere.
  Presently Anushka came in with some tea, chips and some extremely poisonous-looking til ke laddoos. Bruce didn’t like til back then. In later years, they were to discover that it goes amazingly well with pork.
  “I made these myself,” she said. “Have some. I’ll just go and check if father’s on his way.”
  She went in, and Bruce said, “Those laddoos look life-threatening to me.”
  “She’ll be offended if we don’t have any. She’s made them herself.”
  “If you care so much try one yourself. If you see a bright light and some ancestors let me know.”
  Amit gingerly put one in his mouth. The expression on his face was a demonstration that Anushka was not as hot in the cookery department as in the song and dance.
  “Urk! It’s cyanide.”
  “That settles it. I’m not gonna have any.”
  “But she’ll be offended.”
  “You bloody seniram! Put them in your pocket then.”
  “My T-shirt doesn’t have pockets. And they’ll stick out in my jeans. Put them in your trouser pockets.”
  Bruce gave Amit a look as black as possible, and then put about four of the poisonous things in his hip pocket.
  As they began sipping their tea, a funny looking man walked in. I don’t mean he looked funny, actually. I mean he looked at them funnily, as though they were newly discovered comets that might or might not collide with planet earth. He was slightly bald, had specs on and was dressed in kurta-and-pyjama. At that moment Anushka walked in and said to him, “Father, these boys want to meet you.”
  That was when the first ray of realization dawned.
  Amit was still under the spell, so he wasn’t thinking fast enough, but Bruce began to realise they’d indeed made a horrible mistake.
  “Er, no,” he said. “We’ve come to meet Coach Karuna.”
  “Who Karuna? What Karuna? When Karuna?”
  “Er-Coach Karuna Doley.”
  “What on earth are you talking about? How Baruna? Who’re you?”
  “Um-er-we’re students of Don Bosco.”
  You should’ve seen him explode at that instant. His eyes grew miles in diameter.
  “Don Bosco! You’re from Don Bosco!” he said in a tone which was equivalent to saying “Tihar Jail! You’re from Tihar Jail!”
  He continued. “I know why you’re here! I know you boys are the scum of the earth! The doom of this generation! It was one of you who took a photo of my daughter in the market! And now you’ve come right home to flirt with her! All under the pretext of meeting some Garuna! The nerve! The absolute nerve!”
  Then Bruce realised who this chap was. He was Kamaleswar Talukdar, famous as the foremost anti-Bosconian in town. Somehow, he happened to be in all the wrong places at the wrong times when fate or Bosconians decided to play tricks. Recently one of their classmates had accidentally jabbed an umbrella into his posterior, sending him jumping into a peanut vendor and upsetting half of the poor man’s stuff.
  Bruce and Amit were pretty close to sweating by then. Bruce tried some last ditch techniques. He said, “Uh, isn’t this house number 14?”
  “You don’t fool me with your asinine tricks! This is house number 14, but no Garuna-Shoruna lives here!”
 “Karuna?” Bruce said.
 “Whatever!” he yelled.
 “Oh, sorry. Our mistake,” Bruce said as apologetically as possible. “We’ll just go then.”
  And then, out of sheer force of habit, Bruce did the really dumb thing of reaching into his trouser pocket for his bicycle keys. Along with the keys emerged two black laddoos which bounced twice and then contentedly rolled over to Anushka’s dad’s feet. He took a deep breath as though he was just about to dive under water, and hissed “What is the meaning of this?”
  Amit’s chances of creating any favourable impression with Anushka went bust with the popping out of the laddoos. Even she was now staring at them rather coldly. Amit, the blithering idiot, had been silent all along while Bruce faced the storm. But now since it was a question of staying out of a tall, pretty girl’s black books, he decided to do some damage control. This is what he came up with:
  “Uh – er – we liked them so much we thought we’d take some home.”
 It didn’t work. Anushka’s expression didn’t change. She opened her mouth to say something, but her father exploded first.
  “Out! Out! Before I call the police!”
  Out they did go, with extremely bruised egos and reputations. They felt so sunk that they didn’t go to Coach Karuna’s place. Nor even to slaughter Anand.

Filmy Lung Cancer

Lakhimpur, Assam. 1996.

This story is of Bruce’s school days, when he had madly fallen in love with Emon and proposed to her. He’d actually fallen for her eyes and dimples more than anything else. They also had a kind of cameraderie based on verbal jousting and witty repartee. Apart from that, there was little in common between them. He loved books; she hated them, mostly because of the tremendous pressure from her parents to do well in academics, pressure which was amplified by having an elder sister who had a career with colours flying everywhere. He loved English movies, she couldn’t be bothered to try to understand the accents. He was a liberal agnostic, she was staunchly Hindu. He was mostly diplomatic, she was blunt to the point of being cruel at times. (Funny contradiction – ‘blunt’ to the ‘point’.)
 Bruce knew that the chances of her openly accepting him as her boyfriend were about the same as of Chatterjee Sir coming to school in pink shorts. So he tempered his proposal by not asking for a black or white answer. He asked her if she liked him even 10%, or 5%, or 1%. She thought about it, smiled, then said, “Half percent.”
 “That’s it? Half percent?” asked Bruce incredulously.
 “Yep,” she said.
 Bruce went away, mentally scratching his head.

 “What the blazes does she mean by half percent?” he asked Munmi later.
 “It means 100%, you dumbass. She just doesn’t want to admit it.”
 “And why not?”
 “Obviously because there’d be too many complications. Her mother, for one.”
 “Yeah. Mamma’s girl…but are you sure?”
 “Yes, I’m sure; she’s never said yes to any boy in all her life. You’re the first she’s admitted to liking at all.”
  Bruce mused. “I’m not very convinced, though. When she said half percent, could she actually have meant 50%?…No, no, no, she’s good at Maths, she wouldn’t have made a mistake like that.”
 “Oof! Stop analysing so much. She likes you. But her mother is holding the whip, so she’ll never admit to it.”
 “No harm in doing so, is there? It’s not like I’ll tell her mother.”
 Bruce came to the conclusion that desperate situations called for desperate measures. In his short life, he’d already had an overdose of Hindi films and romantic songs. Inspired by all that, he cooked up an elaborate scheme to extract a more substantial answer from the dimpled object of his affection.
 A terminal disease.
 Yep, that would be it. Some disease which would soon kill him off before he needed to buy his next batch of underwear. Something which wouldn’t necessitate bad horror film makeup. Tuberculosis? Nah – that’s curable now. AIDS? No way. She wouldn’t even touch him with a ten-foot pole. Questions on his character would also arise when it came to how he’d got it. Cirhossis? No; that would be stretching things too far. She already knew he didn’t drink.
 Lung cancer.
 Yes, that’s a good one. Lung cancer. Did 17-year olds get lung cancer? He wasn’t sure. But if he didn’t know, in spite of having read quite a lot of books on health and disease, then she, who hated reading anything, would definitely not know either. Besides, records are meant to be broken. But he’d need a good back story. How the hell had he contracted lung cancer? Okay, for the past 5 years preceding this, he’d been a chain smoker. He’d started by stealing his dad’s cigarettes, obviously. When his dad found out, he thrashed the life out of him, but later relented and they became smoking partners. Ah, what a great story! It was Bruce’s bad luck that his immune system wasn’t as hardy as his dad’s, so he was the one to develop lung cancer. And his dad had sunk into self-blame depression on realising what he had allowed his son to get into. Ah, yes! What a great story!
 Credulity? It was a tall tale, sure, so how was he going to get her to believe it. He needed proof. Dr Gogoi! Yes, of course. Dr Gogoi was a family friend. Bruce went to him and asked for a couple of blank prescriptions, saying he needed a medical certificate. Dr Gogoi gave them to him without asking too many questions. Bruce took them home and typed –

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

This is to certify that Bruce Hazowary is suffering from lung cancer in an advanced stage and is under my treatment.

                             Dr K Gogoi

  Smiling a pleased smile at himself, Bruce used his left hand and signed the certificate.
 This was good stuff, but he wanted to make it more dramatic. There had to be a scene of him coughing blood. That would really lend the finishing touches of versimilitude. How was he to work that out?
 Red ink would make decent enough blood, but how was he to cough it out? He remembered a tiny ad that used to catch his attention in the DC comics he used to read half a decade ago.The ad was titled ‘Hollywood blood capsules’, and had a black and white sketch of a glassy eyed face with blood dribbling out of the corners of the mouth. Capsules! Perfect!
 To add to the irony of it all, Bruce went to Sulekha Drug House, which was owned by an uncle of Emon’s, to buy the capsules. He chose Vitamin B. Back home, he pulled the two halves of a capsule apart and shook out the multi-coloured granules. He squeezed a few drops of red ink into one half with a dropper, then slid the other half over it. Success! The ink didn’t leak.
 They were in the middle of their half yearly exams at that time. The next day was the Science paper. Bruce figured he’d finish the paper as fast as he could, which would be around two and a half hours, pretend to have a coughing fit, take out his handkerchief, in which the capsules would be hidden, put the hanky to his mouth and pop the capsules in, and then run out and do the best overacting he could. Sounded foolproof enough. If this elaborate scheme didn’t convince Emon that he could at any moment take his ticket upstairs before her very eyes, then probably nothing short of his high-quality dead body would. And that was one role Bruce would not be able to enact with sufficient realism.
 And so Bruce put his plan into action. In the morning, before setting off to school, he filled two capsules with red ink and put them in his handkerchief.
 The test went like a breeze, except for the Biology part. Bruce would have loved to be a doctor, but he hated learning things by rote, and hated having to draw diagrams even more, which was not surprising, as his drawing abilities right from childhood had violently offended his teachers’ aesthetic sensibilities. Depending on which way you held the page, Bruce’s diagram of cell division could look like rusted dumbbells, or the headphones of a pilot whose plane had just crashed, or a bra put together by a lunatic fashion designer.
 Once the diagram was done, Bruce looked around; no one was taking any notice. With a heart beating faster than normal, he took out his hanky and opened it to extract the capsules.
 They had melted.
 The goddamn capsules had melted! They’d been reduced to a soggy blot on the hanky, as if someone’s nose had bled into it. Bruce felt like he had gone to battle and and found his bullets replaced with breadsticks from Indian Railways catering.
 He cursed silently. Then deciding to make the best of a bad situation, he put the hanky to his mouth and coughed, loud enough for everyone to hear, but not so loud that the teacher would raise her eyebrows and ask if something was wrong. He looked out of the corner of his eye to see if Emon had seen him coughing. He seemed to see her just cast him a glance, but he couldn’t be sure. He gave up the idea of going outside and coughing up blood.
 After the test was over, Emon came up to Bruce and asked, “You were coughing during the exam. Are you all right?”
 “Not really,” said Bruce, trying to hide the laddoos in his heart.
 “Why? Are you going to die soon?” she said with a smile.
 “Actually – yes.”
 “Oh really? Why is that? Lung cancer?”
 Bruce froze for an instant. His mind hurtled forward at 130 km/hr, rewinding and playing his life for the past two days and checking whether he had told anybody or done anything that might have reached Emon’s ears. Impossible! Dr Gogoi didn’t know her family, and wait, even if he did, no one had seen the lung cancer certificate. Emon had shot in the dark and hit bull’s eye –  that was all – giving Bruce a minor stroke in the process.
 “How do you know?” he said, trying to appear surprised.
 “What d’you mean, how do you know?”
 “That I have lung cancer.”
 “What rubbish!”
 Bruce didn’t say anything. He knew there were times when silence could be more eloquent than words. He just looked at Emon and grinned. She looked back at him, trying to figure out what exactly was behind that smile.
 “Are you serious?” she said with an incredulous smile.
 Again, Bruce didn’t use words. He cast his eye downward, then again looked up at her, and nodded.
 “What rubbish!” she said again. Bruce still wasn’t saying anything, so she said, “Are you serious?”
 Bruce wondered why he was having a feeling of déjà vu, then he realised that this was an exact rewind and play of the previous two lines she’d said. Fearing yet another repeat, Bruce said, “Yes, I’m serious.”
 “What rubbish!”
 “I do have lung cancer.”
 “What nonsense! How can a guy have lung cancer at this age?”
 “That’s exactly what the doctor said when he saw the reports,” said Bruce, mentally patting himself on the back for his quick thinking, and glad for the change in adjective. “See, the thing is, I smoked very heavily from class IV to VIII. I picked up the habit from my father.”
 “I’ve never seen your father smoke.”
 How could you, thought Bruce, when he can’t stand even mosquito coil smoke. But he said, “That’s because he never smokes when guests are around.”
 “But he lets you smoke in front of him.”
 “Actually, it was dhulai the first time that he caught me,” said Bruce, very pleased with himself for having prepared this story. “I’d gone up to the terrace to smoke, thinking he had slept. But he couldn’t sleep because he had to file his income tax returns the next day, so he too came up for a smoke, and caught me there. I’ll never forget the dhulai he gave me.”
 “Oh. Your father looks so quiet. Doesn’t seem the type for dhulai.”
 Of course not, thought Bruce, he’s never raised even laid a finger on me. Then he said, “You know how it is – the quiet ones – when they lose it, they really lose it.”
 “So what happened then?”
 “Well, the next day, he said he was sorry and said something about not practising what he preached blah blah. Anyway, from then on, we became smoking partners. I stopped only last year after being diagnosed.”
 There was a slight pause, then Emon said, “What rubbish! I still can’t believe this.” She held out her Science textbook and said, “Swear on Ma Saraswati.”
Bruce could have easily done so, but refrained out of respect for the goddess of learning. Instead he said, “I could do it if you want, but I don’t believe in all this oath-taking stuff.”
 “So when are you expected to die?” asked Emon. Her tone was still jovial, though, and not concerned. She probably still thought Bruce was leading her up the garden path.
 “The doctors have given me one more year. After that, it’s goodbye cruel world.”
 “Serves you right. Your own fault. Who told you to start smoking at such a young age?”
 Uh-oh. Not at all the tone he was looking for.
 “Look,” said Bruce, “all that can’t be changed now. The fact is that I’m dying and I’ll be gone within a year. So I really need to know.”
 “What?”
 “About your half percent.”
 “Oh – so this is all about that?”
 “Kind of. I’d like to die in peace. At least live the last year of my life happily, in the knowledge that you like me too.”
 “Oh please. You’ve been watching too many Hindi films.”
 Uh-oh. Definitely not the right tone. Bruce wondered whether to show her the lung cancer certificate then itself, but decided against it as being too convenient; it would only increase her doubts. He tried a different counter.
 “You think I’m lying?”
 “You’re not?”
 “No. I really have lung cancer.”
 “And I have TB,” she said with a smile and turned. “Bye.”
 Okay, thought Bruce, she’s a tough nut. Looks like I’ll have to deploy the heavy artillery. As he cycled back home, an alternative plan started cooking in his mind. Something very dramatic and showy; something that would jolt her out of her disbelief. She would have to see him cough blood. But how could that be arranged? The capsules melted too soon to try the same plan during the Maths exam the next day. How about in the morning at her home, before the exam? He could go to her place on the pretext of asking her sister for some last-minute solutions. Just before reaching her place, he could prepare the capsules. Yes! Right-o! That should work.
 Bruce set off early the next morning for Emon’s place. When he was one corner away, he halted. He took out his geometry box, in which were the empty capsules and a dropper containing red ink. He filled the capsules with ink and put them in his hanky, then cycled the last few metres to Emon’s house.
 It was she who opened the door. “You?” she said. “What’re you doing here so early?”
 “I needed to ask Sumanba a couple of factorisation questions. Is she home?”
 “She is. Come in. I’ll be in the bathroom.”
 Oh crap! No, thought Bruce. My primary audience will be in the bathroom during the climax of my performance. I gotta act fast.
 As soon as Suman appeared, Bruce greeted her and asked her to solve a factorisation problem whose solution he actually knew. In fact, there was no question in the textbook he couldn’t solve.
 Barely had Suman written three lines when Bruce started coughing lightly. He asked her to fetch him some water. As soon as she had gone in, Bruce scrambled and took out his hanky. Ah, the capsules were still solid enough. He popped them in his mouth and chewed. Yuck! The red ink tasted worse than blue ink! Oh well, you need to make a few sacrifices for love. Just as Suman reappeared with the glass of water, Bruce rushed out to the front yard and began coughing and spitting out ‘blood’. He decided against overacting, so he coughed with enough dignity so as to not arouse suspicion. The disgusted spitting was genuine, though – the ink tasted horrible.
 “Ma! Ma! Maina!” called Suman in shock. Emon and her mother both came out hurriedly.
 “Oh my god. What’s wrong, Bruce?” said a very concerned mother.
 Bruce wondered what to say, but was spared by the next question.
 “Have you gone to a doctor or not?”
 Bruce nodded. He was pleased with himself for his subtle acting. A very disconcerted Suman handed him the water. He shot a quick glance at Emon. None of the previous day’s incredulousness showed on her face. She looked positively worried now. Excellent! Bring out the Oscars!
 Bruce gargled and spat. God, the ink was ghastly!
 “Thanks. I think I’ll go home now.”
 “Take care, Bruce,” said Suman.
 “And show yourself to a good doctor. This looks serious,” said the mother.
 Bruce nodded and went to his bicycle. He mounted it wearily and rode off. As soon as he had rounded the corner, he punched the air and exclaimed, “Yes! Yes! Yes! Success! Success! Success!” Oh the look on their faces! Not even a shred of a suspicion that he might have been preparing for an acting career. Well done, Bruce. I’m proud of you, he told himself.
 Once back home, Bruce brushed his teeth again to rid himself of the vile taste of the ink. In a very happy frame of mind, he had his breakfast and left for school.
 When he entered the classroom, Emon was already there. She was still smiling, but this time the look in her eyes was different. She seemed stunned. There was no time to talk, though.
 Bruce was so relaxed that the solutions seemed to jump out at him. By the end, there was just one answer on stocks and shares he wasn’t really sure about, but the rest were correct.
 When it was over, he walked up to Emon as she headed for the bicycle shed.
 “Do you believe me now?” he asked.
 “Who told you to start smoking in class IV itself?” she said, still smiling. Bruce loved her dimples.
 “Let me show you something,” he said. He took out Dr Gogoi’s forged certificate from his bag and showed it to her.
She read it, then smiled! Then she handed it back without a word. Confound it! She could at least say something!
 “So, tell me, do you also have any feelings for me?”
 Emon shook her head without looking at him. She unlocked her bicycle.
 “Aw, come on, at least let me die in peace. I’ve got less than a year.”
 “Go to a good doctor,” she said, then cycled away, still flashing her dimples.
 Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn! Superflop! Megaflop! Bruce cursed. All that scheming and acting for nothing! How the blazes could she be so stone hearted! Her manner suggested that she at least believed the lung cancer story now. But such utter lack of sympathy! What was she made of? Volcanic rock?
 Back home, the first album he played was Jon Bon Jovi’s Destination Anywhere. By coincidence, the lyrics that came on in a minute were
 Cold hard heart
 Cold cruel heart
 What’s it gonna take
 To break your cold hard heart

After lunch, Bruce went to Amit’s place.

 “You lousy clodhopper! Why didn’t you tell me?” said Amit.
 “’Cause you’re a bit of a blabbermouth. I wanted top level secrecy.”
 “Oh. Thanks for the vote of confidence,” said a wounded Amit.
 “Never mind. It’s all flopped now. She can go to hell for all I care. I mean – what kind of girl keeps on smiling all the time even when the guy who loves her is dying of lung cancer.”
 “My point exactly. I don’t know what you and all those other idiots fighting over her see in her.”
 “She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve seen.”
 “Dude, you came from a boys’ school just last year.”
 “So?”
 “So I’m saying you’ve seen how many – maybe two and a half girls in your life – before coming here. And the first non-ugly girl you see looks like an angel to you.”
 “Okay, fine, never mind. I’ll move on now. Can’t have a relationship with such a cold hearted girl.”
 The phone rang. Amit picked it up.
 “Hello…yes, Uncle, it’s me…yes, he is…okay…who?…when?.. Okay, Uncle …yeah, sure…Okay, Uncle. Right now.”
 Amit put the phone down in slow motion. “That was your dad,” he said slowly.
 “I figured that. What’d he say?”
 Amit smiled devilishly and said, “Dude, I think you’d better leave town.”
 “Why? What’s happened?” said Bruce, suddenly feeling nervous.
 “Emon and her mother have come to your place!”
 “What!”
 “Emon and her mother have come – “
 “I got it! I said ‘What!’, not ‘What?’”
 “What?”
 “Never mind!”
 Bruce’s temperature had shot up to at least 105 Fahrenheit. “Oh God!” he said, “Oh crap! I’m screwed. Come with me, will you?”
 “Of course I’ll come,” said Amit in a very gratified tone. “You’ve left me out of all the action so far. There’s no way I’m going to miss the climax.”
 They rushed out of the house to their bicycles.
 “Oh God! Everyone at home’s gonna know now. What am I gonna tell them?” said Bruce.
 “Y’know what,” said Amit with a deliberate 32-teeth display, “Now I’m actually really glad that you left me out of the need-to-know category. When your parents ask me whether I had any hand in this plot, I can truthfully swear on any holy book – including our moral science textbook – that I had absolutely nothing to do with it, and it was all a one-man show by their worthy son.”
  “Oh God, Amit, what am I gonna do?” said Bruce, pedalling hard.
 “Find new parents?”
 “Please! What am I gonna do?”
 “I guess the only recourse available is to say that it was just a prank. A summer vacation joke. And since it seemed to have no effect on her, you didn’t bother to come clean.”
 “D’you think they’ll buy it?”
 “No.”
 “Then how the blazes can I explain?”
  “I can’t think of anything better. You’ve cooked up a conspiracy so elaborate the CIA would be proud of you. Didn’t you think of this eventuality?”
 “I never thought they’d actually show up at my house.”
 “Tsk tsk tsk. Most people don’t plan to fail, but they fail to plan.”
 “Shut up!”
 “Of course I will. I won’t say a word. I’ll just sit back and enjoy. Serves you right. Traitor.”
 When they reached their destination, Amit was trying hard to not show his 32-intact, and Bruce was trying even harder not to let his bouncing heart escape through his mouth.
 Bruce gingerly stepped into the drawing room. His dad was sitting with a very puzzled expression on his face. Not angry, thankfully – just puzzled. His mother didn’t seem to be home. Emon’s mother looked weary, and Emon herself was – crying! She had a hanky in her hands and her eyes were red!
 “Oh, Bruce, there you are,” said Emon’s mother. “How are you feeling today?”
 “Eh – ok,” said Bruce, wondering why his feet were feeling the  aftershocks of an earthquake. Amit was enjoying the moment.
 “I was just telling your father to take good care of you,” said Emon’s mother.
 “Er, heh heh.”
 Bruce looked at his father, who was looking from one to the other with a look of utter incomprehension on his face. Apparently, they hadn’t yet told him the full story.
 “Were you unwell in school, Bruce?” asked his dad.
 “No, no, Dad, not really.”
 “Not in school,” said Emon’s mother. “At our place…it’s okay, Mr Hazowary. Sometimes we parents make mistakes too.”
  Bruce’s dad had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.
 “My husband used to have the same bad habit,” she said. “Fortunately, I nagged and nagged him and he quit after the elder girl was born.”
 “Oh,” said Bruce’s father in a tone which was a very bad attempt at feigning comprehension. He looked blankly at Emon’s mother, then looked at Bruce again. Amit thought he would pass out from the strain of controlling his laughter.
 “Er, Aunty, have you had tea?” asked Bruce, eager to change the subject.
 “Good idea. I’ll make some,” said his dad, eager to change his personal location and escape from a conversation in which he was feeling like an alien abductee.
 “Both she and her sister cried all evening yesterday,” said Emon’s mother. “They fell asleep without having dinner. They were saying it would have been better if you hadn’t come into their lives at all.”
 Emon broke into sobs again. Bruce’s face was worth looking at for the what-a-mess-I’m-in expression. Amit’s face was worth looking at for the various contortions that resulted from needing all his bodily might to not erupt into laughter.
 “Emon, come inside,” said Bruce. “I’ll show you everything.”
 Emon wiped her tears and followed Bruce and Amit inside. They passed Bruce’s father on the way.
 “What’s going on, son?” he asked.
 “Dad, I’ll explain everything later. It was just a joke.”
 Bruce’s dad shrugged and repaired into the kitchen, and our heroes to Bruce’s room. Amit finally gave vent to the visual side of his pent-up laughter. He suppressed the audio side with a pillow to his face and laughed the hardest he had in perhaps three years. He had just calmed down a bit when Emon asked Bruce why Amit was laughing, and that triggered off another silenced explosion. Bruce was definitely not feeling like laughing.
 “Look,” he said to Emon as he opened his drawer, “it was just a prank. I don’t have lung cancer.”
 He proceeded to show her the whole setup – the forged certificate, the capsules and the vile-tasting red ink. By the time he had finished, she was smiling, thankfully.
 “And just what did you do all this for?” she asked finally. Her non-stop smile suggested that in spite of it all, she thought it rather cute that Bruce had taken such pains for her.
 “You know why.”
 “No I don’t. Why?”
 Bruce drew an imaginary ½ % on a wall.
 “For the half percent?” said Emon.
 Bruce nodded. “Yes. I wanted a proper answer.”
 “You are such an idiot.”
 “Yes I am. Can I have my answer?”
 “Your answer? You should get a tight slap, not an answer.”
 Unseen by Bruce, Amit had snuck up behind him and picked up the ink-filled capsule Bruce had used to demonstrate. He squished it over Bruce’s head, saying, “And this is from my side for your treachery.”
 “Hey!” Bruce ran into the bathroom to wash the ink off his hair.
 They had tea without referring to the just-concluded episode. Bruce’s father was grateful to talk about things he understood. As they left, Emon’s mother said to Bruce, “And Bruce, don’t go around too much. Take care.”
 Once they were out of earshot, Amit finally laughed out aloud.
 “What was that all about?” asked Bruce’s father.
 “Well, nothing really, Dad. Just a joke I’d played. It worked too well. They thought I was seriously ill.”
 “Oh.”
 Bruce wondered why his dad didn’t carry out further interrogation, but was thankful he didn’t. Amit’s laughter took a long time to die down.

 During the last three days of the exams, Emon seemed to look at Bruce in a different way. She didn’t talk to him the first day, but even then she couldn’t help smiling. The last two days, they resumed their usual banter, much to Bruce’s relief.
 He didn’t dare, however, to go to her place for three weeks. Ultimately, the pain of separation – the summer vacation – became too much for him to bear. He summoned up all his guts and finally went one afternoon.
 Emon was having her afternoon nap. Her mother went in to wake her up, then came back and asked Bruce, “How are you now? Which doctors have you gone to?”
 “Doctors?”
 “Yes. To show all that blood coughing.”
 Bruce started getting that aftershocks feeling in his legs again. “Hasn’t – hasn’t Emon told you yet?” he asked, but he already knew the damning answer.
 “What?”
 “That it was all a joke?”
 “What joke?”
 “That – that I don’t have any disease. It was just a prank.”
 “What!” Her eyebrows narrowed. “What about all that blood?”
 “That was – eh – er – red ink.”
 “Red – red ink! You should – you should be tied to a tree and flogged! Red ink!”
 “Er, heh-heh. Sorry, Aunty. It was just a joke,” said Bruce feebly.
 “Your father should have thrashed you nicely. Didn’t he?”
 “No…but he was very angry.” Oh, the magic of half truths!
 “He would be! If you were my son, I don’t know what I’d’ve done to you.”
 “Er, Aunty, I just remembered – I’m supposed to call Amit. May I use your phone?”
 “It’s dead” was the curt reply.
 “Oh…er, hasn’t Emon woken up yet?”
 “Maybe.”
 The line between heroism and foolhardiness is very thin, and Bruce sensed he was treading it at that moment. He decided that given the cicumstances, the best course of action would be to beat a hasty retreat and live to fight another day.
“Could you call her once before I go?”
 “I’ll tell her to call you.”
 “Er, uh, right. Goodbye, then.”
 Bruce made an inglorious exit, without meeting his lady love.
 
 After school reopened, Bruce and Emon became even closer, although she never so much as hinted at any offical acceptance of a girlfriend-boyfriend relationship.
 One day during a lunch break they finally brought up the ghost of the lung cancer incident.
 “You never got the slap you deserved,” said Emon.
 “Okay. Give it to me now,” said Bruce jocularly, proferring his left cheek.
 “Really?”
 “Sure.”
 THWACK-O! Now I’m sure this wasn’t the exact sound effect, so you’ll have to imagine it yourself. I can only aid you by saying that Bruce was caught by surprise; he hadn’t really expected her to slap him at such short notice, and if at all, then so hard that it probably echoed in the toilets of St Joseph’s Convent as well. Furthermore, he’d proferred his left cheek, but she’d used her left hand. If you’re smart enough you’ll figure out that the slap landed on his right cheek, and it was so sudden and so forceful that Bruce found himself seeing the rear wall of the classroom in the exact place where the blackboard had been just a second ago. In fact, for an instant Bruce was sure his head had spun 540 (=360+180) degrees.
 “I didn’t realise you were this angry,” he said, rubbing his cheek.
 Emon smiled and said, “You made us cry one whole evening.”
 “All right, all right, I’m sorry.”

 Intense experiences are supposed to bring people together. Lung cancer, even though fake, brought Emon and Bruce closer and they became good pals, but he didn’t apply again to be her boyfriend for a very long time, and she never gave any indication of accepting him as one, although he became the boy she was closest to. At her next birthday party, he was the only guy amidst 14 girls. The only things missing were a flute and some Krishna-gopi songs.