Narayanan and the wannabe writer

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The wannabe writer was scared of his father, no doubt about that. The man was saturnine and non-verbal and believed that life consisted of a series of duties, including transforming his useless sons into marriageable chartered accountants or engineers. Back then, those were the choices.

Please don't think Narayanan was a colourless man. He was cracking dad jokes half a century before they were a thing. His terrified sons, fearing yet another joke, always pretended irrepressible laughter right on cue. Unfortunately, this was guaranteed to provoke four or five more ghastly jokes, each worse than the one before.

He worked as an air-conditioning engineer for Voltas, a company famous for having air-conditioned the first-ever Rajdhani Express. Among Delhi's south Indian Iyers, all loyal company men, he was almost certainly known as Voltas Narayanan. His friends might have included a Wimco Venkatraman, a Philips Ramamurthy, a Cadbury Karunakaran and perhaps a Parle Padmanabhan.

One day, Voltas informed Narayanan they were relocating him to Bombay, as it was called then. Narayanan, the genius air-conditioning engineer, was slowly but surely inching up the corporate ladder. With a quiet smile, he announced the news to his family over dinner.

Everyone nodded. It was not like they had a choice.

The younger boy had no strong feelings either way but Narayanan's wife was excited to see yet another large Indian city. It was only the older boy, the wannabe writer, who didn't like the idea one bit. He had just finished school and fancied himself as a journalist or perhaps an author.

He had stumbled upon a tabloid newspaper called Dateline Delhi, published by a cooperative of journalism graduates. They paid nothing but were happy to publish him and seemed to like him a lot. This, he knew, was where he needed to be.

When the wannabe writer told his father that he'd rather stay in Delhi. Narayanan was reasonable: Get admission into the IIT or a commerce college, son, he said, and you can stay wherever you like. The boy tried St Stephen's College, then Hindu College and even Kirori Mal College, but without luck.

D-Day came, and everyone left for the railway station, their lives packed into hold-alls and tin trunks. I don't think they had invented planes back then. Just as the train whistle blew, the wannabe writer did something utterly cowardly. Saying he needed to pee, he stepped off the train. With a crooked grin, he waved goodbye to his family from the platform as they disappeared.

Narayanan's reaction, conveyed a few days later by his wife to the wannabe writer, was crisp: Your father says you may not expect any money from him. You're on your own.

The next six months were hell. The wannabe writer found a room on a terrace in Lodhi Colony. One wall consisted of wooden planks through which hot sand blew in during summer, and freezing winds in winter. The rent was a mere Rs 50 but he had to bathe on the open terrace in water coaxed from a hand pump, and go downstairs when he needed a serious toilet.

For dinner, it was Rs 50 every month to Mr Grover, who ran a restaurant in Lodhi Market. Add bus fare, cigarettes, lunch, sometimes beer, the occasional dosa.

You might ask, how did the wannabe writer pay for all this? At that time, Delhi had four art galleries that changed their artists every week, for a total of 16 a month. The evening papers paid Rs 50 per artist interview, which netted the wannabe writer over Rs 500 every month, way more than he needed.

By then, he'd been admitted at Shri Ram College to study Economics - gratefully accepted. The tuition fees were R75 every three months.

His mother wrote anxious letters asking if he was well, but from Narayanan, not a word.

But then Christmas came. Voltas sent Narayanan to Delhi for some work. He could hardly not meet his good-for-nothing strong-headed son, so one evening, the wannabe writer took his grim father to his terrace room. Narayanan saw the mattress on the floor, the Janata kerosene stove in the corner on which his useless son made himself puffed wheat in milk, followed by coffee.

Unbelievably, a tear rolled down Narayanan's cheek.

There are times when a father cannot help being a father. Narayanan had just received Rs 400, a Christmas bonus. Narayanan blew the entire sum buying his son a pressure cooker, utensils, warm clothes and a quilt for winter.

His boy, he knew, was now a man.

I will soon be 70 years old, roughly as old as my father was when he died. I am still writing.

And I know this now - the best kind of writer to be all your life is a wannabe writer.

Here, viewed from there. C Y Gopinath, in Bangkok, throws unique light and shadows on Mumbai, the city that raised him. You can reach him at cygopi@gmail.com
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