Rajan Kapoor's Ejaculation 6: Ranjan Bhattacharya: A Visit to Past.

Ranjan Bhattacharya is dead. He died by lung cancer in 1987. The following is a remembrance I wrote weeping after his death for the Company newsletter, though not as uncensored as this version, where both us then worked. I didn’t want to write a hypocritical obituary; it should be as it was. Today as I go through it I am awestruck by, in the words of Steve Jobs, the connection of dots looking back.

WE MEET

Five years ago (1982) I had been to the Company A’s interview at The Great Eastern Hotel, Calcutta. I had been shortlisted as a Officer Trainee, through a national level Entrance Test (very similar to CAT) conducted by IIM Calcutta on behalf of the Company A. Here was a leading company of India, with an American Multinational past and still enduring culture, a blue-chip Company as a career prospect for a graduating Chemical Engineer like me.

All the prospective Officer Trainees had come nervous and ready for a cut-throat 30 minutes Group Discussion (GD) followed by a Interview. The panel came in and explained the ground rules of the GD. The topic given was: Presidential System Vs Prime Ministerial System of Governance in India. I silently swore at the staid topic and decided to play a smart game! I would grab the delivery of opening the discussion, keep rambling for a couple of minutes and then let others handle the baby. I was sure none of us would come up with a fruitful discussion on this boring topic. So I planned to spend the remaining time nodding and smiling energetically (pretending to be thoroughly involved and understanding) and then pick up the lead in the last few minutes and sum up with a flourish all the points which others would come out with!

The discussion started aggressively. The lead from me was followed by a raucous medley before Number 5 - a plump, fair guy, with an unruly mop of hair, having as many pimples on his handsome face as I had on my ugly one. In impeccable English he began methodically listing the points in favour of the Presidential System.

Immediately I sensed ‘danger’. My confidence (which tends to be in excess) took a jolt. In a few minutes this articulate speaker was stage-managing the whole show. I decided to play safe and avoided a direct confrontation with Number 5 – to stay in the run for selection, Others tried to match him. Number 5 demolished them with his speech, content and a most disarmingly charming smile!

In the last few minutes I was desperately seeking to sum up the discussion to show  “Leadership Qualities” to the Selectors watching us. I somehow grabbed the lead, murmured something about time running out and the need to sum up – and then I realized I did not know what to sum up!  Panic engulfed me. My God I am caught in my over-smartness. And then I played a dirty trick in desperation. With a flourish of a dramatic act I said: “… though I favour the present system of Government, I request Number 5 to sum up today’s discussion for us. Thank You!”.  Number 5 blinked for a while, realized I was passing the buck to him; He recovered and flashing the same disarmingly charming smile went on to make a superb summary of our discussion. That was my First Meeting with Ranjan Bhattacharya. A smart Chemical Engineer from the Jadavpur University.

WE MEET AGAIN, RANJAN

Some months later I was surprised to get a joining letter from Company A! In the days, when jobs (mostly IT) in the 3rd year like today's engineering colleges was not a norm and we all had to mostly job hunt on our own. I packed and got ready for the City of Gold. Initially we were put up at the St Xavier's College Hostel, Bombay where the Xavier Institute of Management was to coordinate our 2-month residential Company Induction Programme. As we stumbled into one another in the balcony of the conference room, the first thing I got to hear was some curious juxtaposition of English, Hindi and Bengali gaalis for the dirty trick I had played on him during the GD time! Then we became friends. I asked him what or who the heck was a “ croak” or something like that he had kept talking in the GD that day. Ranjan showed a grimace of a superior intellect-possessed Entity, then went on to correct me with a condescending smile- “ arrey Baba, not a croak…. Howard Roark!”. I still had no idea what he was talking about but the embarrassment of admitting my ignorance, even though I thought I was a “well-read” person, I changed the topic.

Ranjan, I liked your sense of humour more wacky even by my standards. You would out-match my feeble attempts at witticisms. You had a full-throat laughter that went on non-stop for at least 2 minutes and sounded something between a thundering cloud and a screeching automobile. But it was infectious!  I was awed by your well-read intelligence. You finally explained about Howard Roark in Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead, which I had to read 5 times before I understood it and it went to become a gospel for me. What You found in me, God only knows; but we soon became inseparable friends.

(Author's Note: It is remarkable how many instances of The Fountainhead  have repeated in my life till today  as I look back albeit in a more real-life versions. Do we start copying our gospels or is it a beyond-our-understanding happenings?)

 
We would go to restaurants, and while others sipped bottles of beer on getting the first salary, we gulped glasses of ‘lassi’ competing to finish the largest number of ‘Lassis’.

We were a “Unity in Extremity”. You spent the time impressing the visiting faculty at the Xavier’s classes, I spent the time impressing (or trying to) the girls in the class. When I fell head over heels in infatuation for a girl, I thought I was great; You called me a fool. You were right. Where she went I have no idea!

Suffering your “I told you so”s after that, I took my revenge  by winning the 2^nd prize in Public Speaking in the finals at the Taj Hotel, Bombay ballroom where You lost. In the evening we went to the Leopold Café and drank beer for the first time the whole night, and then walked drunk on the deserted streets of Bombay till dawn, when it dawned on us that we had not informed the Xavier’s Hostel of our night-out and we will have to pay a severe penalty for the same.

Skinny Dipping!

The Induction over, we were happy to know that we were getting the company accommodation in the Officer’s colony, in a 8-room Chummery, two in each room. Walking daily to the Officer’s club which was a bachelor’s den mostly, we would ogle at the Aunties and their daughters and whisper about our fantasies! Every evening after work we would go to the Chembur Station Area and ogle at many more girls and drink our mandatory Lassis. Naturally, to attract women we had to make a ‘body’ to attract them. So we joined the local Talwalkar’s Gym. I joined first. You left first.

We would dream of making a Writer-Cartoonist team which would generate comics better than Goscinny- Uderzo’s Asterix comics. My great idea was about a hero  HanuMAN - the Original Superman! It never materialised because we could never decide which one of us was a better writer or a cartoonist. (and today people have cartoon series on Bal Ganesha, Bal Hanuman, etc!!) We decided to break our ‘virginity’ of drinking hard drinks in the coming Officer’s Party. We lost it totally that night and spent the next day trying to prove each other more drunk than self. Till the next Officer’s party when it would start again.

Cheers. Typically I am 'down' and Ranjan, formally dressed even for a party, busy eating!

Even for the following 8-month around-the-departments training we were together in the same sub group. During the day we would try to out-smart each other in influencing the department manager who among us was the more intelligent one; the evenings we would rip apart the concerned manager in the most irreverent terms. In 1983 after the training we got posted in different departments. You in Operations and I in Technical Services. Typically, we wanted each other’s department!

WE QUARREL

Then something unbelievable happened. We fought. We stopped talking. We did not talk for weeks. Abused each other behind each other’s back. It looked we would never talk again. And then one evening as I alighted from a car lift back home I saw You waiting near the gate. I pretended not to have seen you and was surprised as I crossed you that You called out my name. I turned and then seeing your face I knew something major was up. You asked me to help You.  When I heard the problem I was shocked and also pained that You of all people would have done it. But it was not time to talk about morality. You were scared of the symptoms and feared the worst. We quietly slinked out of the colony and caught a cab to the nearest Government hospital. I chose a government hospital for anonymity versus if we went to a private doctor. As I sat near you I grimaced and trying to not let you know I had shifted away from your touch. Who knows if it was infectious. 

In the cab You confessed that during your visit to Kolkata on holidays You had gone out to drink with your friends and got badly drunk and landed up in a ‘coloured’ area. On waking up You realized what You had ended up doing. And now you were afraid if you were infected. I was flabbergasted. Ranjan not You. Man not only we are virgins, we with all the pretences were supposed to remain so….. well at least not lose it with such a person! You looked so crestfallen and made me swear that I will not tell anybody. I said I won’t but shifted a few more inches away from you as discreetly as I could.

In a queer way having listened to you, Ranjan, I felt proud it was I you thought of to take help from even when we were not talking. I took it as a endorsement of my trustworthiness.

I didn’t know which dept. to take you to. So using my bookish GK I sneak to a matronly looking nurse sitting nearby and whisper – “Ma’am where is the STD dept.?”. That bitch screams and say “… Kya bolto…. STD dept. pahije?”. Hundreds of heads in a crowded government hospital  turned towards ME and then jumped back!!!! Ranjan had already melted into the crowd. And I felt like a idiot standing there as sniggers abounded around me making fun of me and commenting on the wayward youth. WTF!!  In horror I leaned further towards the matron trying to gesticulate to her to tone down. It only spurred her to continue in loud shrieks giving me the directions and then as I tried to bolt she came out with the lightning…..” Kya kiya hai tumne, eh?”. I must have run my fastest 100 metres of my life from her to try and melt into the crowd and then finding in horror the crowd running faster away from me.

Finally the STD department is reached. Another bulldog-looking matron is sitting there. Wiser, I go and whisper to her that, “ I have come for my FRIEND’s problem; please take care of us by not speaking loud”. Her logic was impeccable. “ Kay ko Sharmane ka…. Sab yahi bolte hai!  Aur tum yeh STD department mein aaya hain toh sab ko waise hi maloom ho gaya!!! Just bolo kya hain?”.  I turned back with a murderous look to find Ranjan hiding behind a pillar and asked him curtly to come over and tell her. A doctor was due so we were asked to wait. The doctor came accompanied by a dozen of medical students, young men and women, and went into the chamber. We both looked at each other with white faces and were on the verge of getting up and running, when the bulldog matron called Ranjan in.

After a long interval Ranjan came out looking totally devastated. I was gearing up for the worst. He caught my arm and we both sprinted out of the hospital. In the midst of the run I realized  he was holding me!!!!! Vision of having the worst sufferings of my friend’s indiscretions flooded my brain. But was it too late anyway? As we stood under the shade of some thick trees outside, He told me there was nothing to fear. It was a minor temporary thing and it would be all ok soon. Gosh. Then I asked him why was he looking so crestfallen coming out of the doctor’s room. He hesitated and wanted to change the topic. On my persistence that I’m there to help him and I should know all….Ranjan confessed. He would have been happy after the check-up if it had not been done in front of all the dozen interns, with his pants down, and having to wait till a long academic lecture to students ended on his affliction!

The good news and the now hilarious once-in-a-life experience coupled with the pride I felt that he came to me for critical help was exhilarating. I thought we will never fight again. We did a few months later. May be it was because of some doubts about secrecy or may be our great friendship was too much in glare. Ever since from 1984 we have never talked to each other (though we did make some feeble indirect attempts). AND NOW FROM 1987 onwards WE CAN NEVER TALK.

Over the next 3 years from 1984, You went on picking  new friends with your varied activities and zest for life. I went on picking up new enemies with my active tongue and rigid mind.  I talked about trekking, You went to trek. I talked about adventure sports. You went mountaineering and skiing. I dreamed about becoming a glamour photographer. You actually clicked!  I became a laughing stock with my Bullet motor bike accidents. You beat me in it by having the largest number of scooter falls in the shortest period of time.

Yes Ranjan. Whether we talked or not, it was always a game of One-upmanship between us. You one-upped me on the first day we met in the GD; You one-upped me in all types of adventures; Ranjan you were one-up even in our bloody names! (and to rub it in Bengal they always wrote my name a Ranjan!)

And now You are ONE-UP by leaving this god-forsaken world.

With You no more around, Friendship will never be the same word to me again. I envied You when I saw the photographs clicked by you. I envied you when I read and published your diary extracts & sketches on trekking in the Officers’ Colony Magazine. And I envy You right now sitting UP there, with a smug look, in Heaven while I fret and frown through life in this wilderness of world.

You have WON, my friend; as usual as you have won. Heads You win, the Tale is of my loss.

Au Revoir!
 © Rajan Kapoor 2012

Rajan Kapoor's Ejaculation 5: My Greatest Love and Live-in Companion: LIZZIE!

Lizzie is not there when I need her the most in my worst time. Its 5 years since YOU went to the Heavens. 

I remember the day you came home. Though I cant remember the date. February 1999?
I had a year back,1998, returned to Calcutta. Every night I would return home to a empty home tired but happy teaching. The Day's hustle bustle at the Institute, the incessant interaction with students:

• explaining the concepts

• listening to their problems ( I had no choice... the problems ranging from Permutations to their Love-life to their non-understanding parents...)

•  relishing their adulations, flirtations & crushes (I am not boasting.... just a fact of my life. As a male teacher it is a not bad thing for his ego to get a bonus: flirtations & crushes from young women, but after  having seen more than 45 Summers in one's life, one also knows to TRY not to take them seriously.....)

And then the return home: ...... the TV always open, the mind always fatigued and the mandatory glass always  filled .......



I have always had man's best friends bow-bowing around most of my life before engineering studies when I had to leave home for the first time. They were the best friends for a person whose uncaring father had left home in school days, whose hated mother had been rebelled against by age 17, and whose religion had been dispensed with before adulthood.

1974

Pinky, a brown terrier, was the first best-friend coming in my life in middle school days and has been the most intelligent one of them all without any training. Once She stood at guard for 15 hours at the house door, left mistakenly open by us on departure,  and didn't allow anyone to come close till we returned. And she was just 1 year old. She could sense my father's car returning and start barking excitedly when we had not even remotely heard or seen the car. She was loving, caring and part of all games and masti my sisters and I did at home or out. She was very jealous of the injured pigeon I adopted to take care and would have killed her for getting my attention. For years she was mine best friend and even though she hated my suffocating hugs she condescended to have them. And then my family decided to move to Bombay.

I had to stay back with my aunt's family as I was in class 9 and would have my ICSE next year. I was the first batch of India of the new 10 + 2 + 4 education format. My Aunt's family had never kept pets so Pinky was sent to another Uncle's home to stay with his dogs. I went to Bombay after ICSE for class 11 and Pinky went to the heavens at my uncles. R.I.P.



For class 12 I returned to Calcutta knowing that we will not be a complete family any more and as a gift got a white Pomerian best-friend, from my uncle, whom I named  Django!  He was the most trained friend of mine. In the age of no internet, just by reading some books in the British Council library I taught him a lot of tricks. The cutest one which brought the maximum applause was the one where he would roll over and play 'dead' on the command. After a year or so I had to leave to do my Bachelors in Engineering and in those 4 years our interactions became lesser and then became zero when I graduated and went off to Bombay to work. Never got to meet Django again. R.I.P.

Django doing a stand-up show while I doing a "Judwa" effect with my TLR camera before the world had access to computers and Photoshop! (1977)

 After another 4 years of work I decided to again, in moments of personal downtime, turn to man's best friend. In the Bombay home of a unemployed textile worker, whose old wife had been ill-advised to start a dog breeding business to earn some money, were about 10 ill-cared Doberman pups looking very uncared and not in best of the health. As I approached the creche most of them stood up and wagged their tails hoping I will choose one of them, if not all, to take home. But one black pup sat unmoved and sick in the corner not even trying to come closer. It seemed resigned to the fact that one of his more fitter siblings was going to get a father. I TOOK HIM. He was Mad Max who turned out to be active and healthy with the vet's help. 6 months later I resigned from my secure good job for personal reasons with no idea what I will do next. I left / sold a lot of personal things, including my new Maruti car, but took Mad Max with me back to Calcutta. I stayed again with my Aunt.

The 'Debonair' Centre-Spread!

And here Mad Max soon grew,in a couple of months, to be a strong and BIG best friend whom I, a footballer & a sportsman, had much difficulty in escorting on a leash when we went for a walk. But he was the least trained one as I was busy looking for a living and had just started working in a interesting new job. One day I come home to see a mother's magic in action. Mad Max had not been home-broken properly. That eve my cousin said look what Aunt has done!! A little later Mad Max gets up, walks down to the bathroom, nudges the door open and does the necessary inside. I am both amused and surprised how this training happened. The matriarch of the house had done what she does so well with any small child's potty training. She caught him by the ear when he tried to be indisciplined in my absence, gave him some earfuls and took him to the bathroom. As simple as that!! Mad Max knew where to go henceforth when I was not around to take him for a walk.

1988

And then a problem happened. My aunt had not stopped me from bringing a dog along, that too a Doberman. But now a new baby was born in the family and the family feared Mad Max's presence. With a heavy heart I decided to give away Mad Max.   A animal-lover bengali bachelor who lived nearby all alone with snakes, dogs, cats, birds.... became his next father. And I never ever went after that to look into the eyes of Mad Max, the sad pup whom I had picked when he thought no one would.

10 years or so after that I was alone without the best friends' company while evolving as a teacher, among many more things, back in Bombay. A lot of topsy-turvy things happened in life, I making the mistake of mixing my personal problems with professional commitments, some totally hatke job opportunities, some miracles, and mostly troubled by the so-called educated & professional middle class. The most dangerous class .


Back to the new Kolkata, 1998    .....The day's business & adulation, the night's return home:  the TV always open, the mind always fatigued and the mandatory glass always filled .......


Based on my desertion of Mad Max I didn't want SIZE to become a issue for a Single parent! I decided to go for  a laptop version of a best friend. A daschund pup. A doctor's ad for such pups made me take off from that day's classes and taxi it from North Kolkata to far off Behala. After surviving a maze  of cacophonic traffic, I reach a old traditional Bengali house , in a narrow, convoluted lane , which is actually a 'bungalow'. As I open the outer garden gate and walk in, there comes barking a thin but active black pup. It is so small that I take care not to step on it as it happily sniffs my trousers and happily wags its tail. The host takes me over to the creche - 5 happily sleeping obese male pups are tucked in oblivious of the visitor with only this slim and active pup around my shoes.

I had come clear in my mind that I wanted a male child and not a female one who may end up with  others' buns in her oven!  Not that the idea of multi pups in my home was a unwanted image, just that as a single person it would have been a disaster for me to take care of them when I could hardly take care of myself. I am one of those Single persons who can't cook. My last 33 years or so the food has been purchased all the 3 times of a day.

The host on realizing that I wanted a male pup started highlighting the advantages of the only female pup (the one near my shoes wagging her tail and barking happily). I realized his game. Males will be sold easily and with a premium! He desperately highlighted lots of reasons for a female pup, but I willingly got conned by the real reason of all of them. While the bulky males were all lying stoned in the warm mattresses, she was the only one up and very active.  I took her home and named her Lizzie (after Shekhar Kapoor's then in news Movie 'Elizabeth'.  It was winter times, Feb 1999?, as I took my daughter home in a cab. She sat snuggled in my lap and wagged her tail every time I coochie-cooed to her. She took all of my life ever since. In the early years she had to be fed 4-5 times in the day. I would cab it back home between the classes to do so and then rush back in time for the next class and even get to scream at the late-coming students!. She very early realized there was no one else at home and her father would be out 'hunting' most of the day. She never complained and like me became a independent child -- when in India humans cling to their parents even after 'adulthood', under the pretext of family values , when the truth is they are spoiled kids most of them.

 

Wish I had done her 'Kanyadan'- (2000)

I would go to Bombay, now Mumbai, once a year or so in off-season time. I would take the train always not only because it was cheaper than air travel but also because I loved those 2 nights travel sitting near the window seeing the different regions of India as the train hurtled by. The sounds, the smells, the ambience. But to take Lizzie by the train was a torture for her. Ever since She came into my life, I always travelled by air . I would tell her many times,  "....  who says a dog's life is bad. You have travelled your entire life by Air , unlike me...". Lizzie would appreciate and lick me a couple of times extra as a Thank-You!!

Lizzie is the most endearing, loving and loyal live-in companion of my life . The only one who stayed with me her entire life. She was with me in my best times; she was with me in my worser times; she was with me when my lovers came home to 'make love' to me. Her demeanour would be a disdainful one towards them knowing very well they wont be there in my life too long; that most of them were to use me for their needs than fulfill mine. And that after the 'bitches' were gone home She would get the best hugs & kisses!!!

She also was there when the 'Chosen One' came home to live-in with us. The Chosen One could not be in Kolkata all times but Lizzie loved it when it happened, feeling very happy in the get-togethers, over almost 5 years. First time Lizzie chose somebody else's lap to snuggle in and snooze on. Then Lizzie's intuition told her that not only the 5-year fairy tale won't last but that soon AFTER  a Black Witch will attack this home of her father in December 2009 onwards.

Lizzie, a true daughter, a true life-long companion and a true well-wisher LEFT this world in July 2007 refusing to watch the future. The Chosen One moved ahead in 2008; the Black Witch entered in December 2009.


I LOVE YOU LIZZIE.  My Best Friend, My permanent Live-in Companion, My Daughter. Thanks for the fatherhood You gave me to experience. Even though I was a bad father. I am sorry I let you down even after the sacrifice of your life you made in 2007 to try and protect me from the coming Doomsday 2011-12!!!!!

Lizzie is not there when I need her the most in my worst time. Its 5 years since SHE went to the Dog Heaven.

© Rajan Kapoor 2012