Kaju

I had a friend once. His name was Baibhav Das. He was batshit crazy. By any definition of the phrase. Do you remember those air guns with the little yellow bullets that were unhealthily in vogue some ten years ago? You could find one of those in everybody’s house. Dads, uncles, their kids, all boasted of their shiny new toys that could fire. And what a world of pain it caused when it hit someone. I dared an unbeliever to feel a shot and survive once. I am not a sadist, so I decided to shoot at his well-padded buttocks. It turned blue. He cried. I lost 10 bucks. But it was worth it. Baibhav Das had one of those guns. And of all the little toys any fourteen year old could be allowed to play with, none is as lethal as this particular air gun. Baibhav Das did not hesitate to put it to his neck, point-blank, and pull the trigger, smiling all the while. The smile with the edges of his lips upturned all the way to his eye sockets and eyebrows slanted in confusion as if trying to figure out what exactly his big black eyes as seen through his big black glasses, found so funny. It was inexplicable. But that was the point.

Baibhav’s dad owned a schoolbus. He owned a whole flotilla of them. He used them to get kids to every fashionable school in the city. It’s funny, I was on a bus once with bloody murder in my eyes and hands that yearned to grab my racquet and bludgeon the next person to kingdom come. I was angry at a 50 year old woman who thought she could coach kids at tennis. Baibhav Das stood on the pavement urging me to come back, that it was not that serious. That I was too fucking hot-headed to entertain the iota of a possibility that I might be wrong. I was not. The bus revved up and droned and rolled like a 70 year old patient with tuberculosis, hacking and wheezing and halting. It left what I wanted to leave, a dust laden back window of a scene melting away into the sun-stroked street of oblivion.

Baibhav Das was a remarkable player and he knew it. People often ask me whom I support, Federer or Nadal. While I’ve always been an ardent fan of the flawless finesse of a god in the arena, one whose backhanded ripostes produce the image of invincibility, I am always quick to point out that he’ll never meet an opponent as worthy as Nadal. Baibhav Das had the same style. Whenever threatened, he would slice and dice and produce a whole array of shots on court that the opponent had probably never had to receive. He could flummox his way to many a shiny trophy and did. But he had one major flaw - he was an asshole. And he knew it. He came from a broken family, that one. His parents lived separate lives in separate houses in separate parts of the city. With separate servants to do their housework and separate lives to get back to and probably even separate grocers to deliver their greens. Baibhav Das did well for himself. He grew up, coped with his studies, got a degree and I see him quite often still playing on the orange clay of our club, his own separate game, so different from the rest. We nod our respective acknowledgements of each other’s presence and walk on.

Baibhav Das and I were born on the same day, two years apart. We were like two lions whelped on the same day, but he the older and mightier of the two, you might say. But his pet name was Kaju. Tuku trumps Kaju any day. His best friend was Shrey. Shrey’s father collapsed on court, reeling from a heart attack and never got up. Shrey was dark, well-mannered, objective to a tedious degree, and had a perpetual cold that brought the snot pouring out of his nose. I was never very fond of him. I once told him a funny story about a boy who shat his pants and he shrugged and said ‘It’s just digested food’. He went to Xaviers’. He went to IIM-A. Shrey had no dad.

There is a snake farm in Badur, which is about a 3 hour drive from the city, which boasts a collection of non-existent snakes and five pitiful crocodiles that laze about all day. But the place has water-monitors. I’ve always found water monitors fascinating. They’re wriggly and snake-like but can scurry on their fours when they want to. I’ve found myself wondering, ‘If I could speak Parseltongue…would they understand what I said?’. It’s not like I haven’t tried.
-‘Please Mr. Water-Monitor, won’t you come out and play?’
It slid its tongue out and back in several hundred times and then turned around and dragged itself lazily away in search of water. As if to say ‘Why don’t you go find yourself a gun and a pretty yellow bullet to shoot yourself with?’

It’s funny how many idle bullets you find along the way. It’s funny how a part of you finds it irresistible to shoot one at yourself and smile once in a while. It’s funny. But I don’t get it. Baibhav Das sure would. He kept turtles, you know. A pair of tiny turtles in a bucket named Bobo and Booblai, who died on his birthday.