The Unhinged Mornings of my Priapic Bandar

Arjun Razdan

To Monsieur Hironori Ikeda, gentleman, without whose help these words would not have been written…

On a bright morning, with the sun having lit the top of the Mussoorie mountains as a lock of gold on the neck of a blonde woman, with my Bandar having regressed to the top in a small vent from where he used to eye a 16-year-old kohl-eyed girl who is the crush and aspiration of all the middle aged men in the vicinity as she goes about her morning shower before her school duties, the ape yelling: ‘putain, elle est canon…’ every time he climbs on top of the wall there, an agility a challenge for all the Romeos in the vicinity, and I doubt (je m’en doute) that the Bandar did not have a swig of my Bordeaux from yesterday, for it appeared to be less than earlier, and the only other person who visited the vicinity was the bonne who swept the floor in the morning and changed poubelle bags, but that much I know from my experience, that pahadi girls only drink whisky and only 8 PM Gold, and only after 8 PM when you offer them Gold (that is to say, your love), I received an email from Garam Madhosh, the Executive Editor of the Arts Revue: The Ghanchakkar, based on the ridge of the hill near Mussoorie, with the following intimation:

Dear Raunak Churangoo (C.R.),

We have carefully read your work and we would be delighted to run it in our magazine. However, to make it more Indian, and sound more authentic, I suggest the following changes, on which you can work for a period of 48 hours from now onwards, because the schedule needs to go for print in two days from now, and get back to us, as to whether you want to run it with the modifications.

We suggest, you add a good dose of FCB, without which any document does not sound real. We are not talking about Barcelona FC, for since the days of Messi, Suarez and Neymar the équipe is not worth being talked about anymore, anyway, but FCB means Fruits, Caste and Bandar, the magical formula to render a work Indian. I see you have none of the three, though wine can perhaps be categorised as fruit juice. I want you to add more sensory detail in the beginning, preferably with a social critique, if you can insert a commentary on the caste of the beggar who is lying wide astride on a wet, wintry night and establish a hierarchy between him and the man who is considering giving him alms, nothing like it.

You can also enter a feminist critique as to the relation between the femme who is commenting on the beggar lying there helpless, and the unknown observer. We have observed that you have referred to the financial status of the woman as privileged, this does not bode well with our readers. If you can insert a couple of sexist profanities such as ‘connasse’ and ‘vieille salope’ nothing like it, even though we do not encourage vulgarity.

For fruits, you can choose between bananas, and jackfruits, and guavas, and pineapples, typical tropical fruits native to India, but be careful other writers already have an advantage over you in the queue, for example, Livid Hawaldar has already chosen Mangoes, and Hiran Kasai, very famously wrote about Guavas, so you would have to choose something else.

We look forward to hearing from you, and hosting you on your platform.

Warm regards,
Garam Madhosh

This writer was an author of book on cannabis, and I have doubts in my mind that the fuming effects have remained. When I saw the letter, I was very upset. They had totally misinterpreted my récit, The Misanthrope. This one was published by a magazine called Synchronized Chaos, a couple of months before Trump came to power the second time. Incidentally, they asked for a Word file which I had to convert online from the pdf, with the result that there were gaps left in paragraphs, which I did not notice, and I am sure the readers would think of it as stylistic innovation, when I was just too lazy to go through the draft. How many typos in history have passed for génie? Anyway, I was upset for the mistake that they had walked into the trap of thinking there was one man, and not two. The writerly ‘I’ is often misunderstood. The ‘I’ can often shift, and the writer is not obliged to tell the reader if he is talking about the same person, it is for the reader to discern from the context and momentum.

In this récit, The Misanthrope, the first part is all philosophical speculation. We move on to the second stanza, and my first challenge as a writer was to avoid too neat a break, for that way the œuvre is split into two, and authorial unity is compromised. I had to very neatly avoid a separation, at the same time mark a point between the ‘I’ in the beginning (the philosophical speculator, I would not go so far as to call him a philosophe) and the other ‘I’ (the womaniser, the drinker, the speculator as to the effects of drinking upon the cusp of a chocolatier’s shop). In my mind, the two ‘I’s are not the same. The reader is imagining the same I, taken by the momentum, foxed by my momentum. As I said, my task was to avoid too neatly drawing out a separation between the two ‘I’s at the same time leaving room for doubt. There were no mention of something as profound as that in the email I received from Mr. Garam Madhosh, the author of a book on cannabis, and definitely a little toasted up there in the brain.

I was very upset, also to do with the fact that the Editor had asked to change anything at all. I knew from my experience that the good Editors, did not ask to change anything, they either changed quietly without you realising it or discussed it before they ventured forth to suggest a changement. Imagine the Editor telling Picasso: ‘Hein bhai, all this is fine, but this green, add a darker shade…and somewhere down the line throw a sparrow in the middle’. I was furious, and immediately wanted to dash off an email as to the imbecility of the Editors up there in the Mussoorie mountains, but was restrained by something Picasso had said in his long discussion with Hemingway. Hemingway had mentioned in one of his essays, when he asked Picasso as to how he dealt with so many imbecilic people wanting to take selfies with him or disturbing him in his meditation. He said the task was simple. When so many rich heiresses ask me out for dinners, or art collectors ask me to join them on their boat, all I do is refuse giving a practical excuse. I do not say: ‘I would not think of it’, I say: ‘I would have loved it but something has held me up…’. This is the oldest lesson of tact. When you ask a French girl, ‘tu veux faire l’amour avec moi ce soir?’. She does not say ‘tête de con’, ha ha, ‘have you seen your face in the miroir?’. She says: ‘I would have loved to, but something has held me up…’ adding ‘peut-être, une prochaine fois…’. This is the way. Hemingway learnt from Picasso. Picasso who had a lot to teach to Indian writers all the way from Dustin Pants to Ghassphoos Singh to P K Palayan, who would have done well to heed to his advice, that is if they were ever solicited by rich heiresses and art collectors.

I wrote an email:

Dear Garam Madhosh,

Thank you for your email, and your valuable suggestions. I have gone through all of it, but on account of eaten a rotten omelette by the Mussoorie stall on the way to Dehradun, I happened to be ensconced in my washroom on a semi-permanent basis and I spend 22 hours out of 24 in that cellule there.

In this state, I would have loved to contribute to your journal but what my exhilarations of the mind would be driven by the extensions of the vestibule, I cannot guess, and hence I spare you the pain of having to read all my drivel up there on the page.

I look forward to being a regular contributor in the future.

Regards,
Raunak Churangoo (C.R.)

I had swivelled my way out this time, which told me I should have been this diplomatic when JackAss Banda sent me an email, and asked me a query as to what my message was, and who was the future readership of my upcoming novel? Kashmiri writer Current Mahjoor had passed me the details of JackAss Banda and asked me to get in touch with Khayapiya Gasudevan, an owner of the establishment, and reputed to be overweight, for her maladie had caused the epithet to be stringed together with the name of her literary agency. Legend has it that at the office of the agency at Greater Kailash I, there was a young donkey who suffered from adipophilia, that is to say he had amabilité only for overweight ladies, and the first day the Madame came in to inaugurate the office he had such a big erection that his penis got ensconced in the grill of the nearby Hanuman Mandir, rattling the frame, and setting such a clamour that all the people thought aartis have rebegun. The priapic donkey had such hots for Mme Khayapiya Gasudevan, that the agency came to be called JackAss Banda, and Current Mahjoor told me this himself when I met him over a coupéd rosé in a lawn in Chandigarh.

Current Mahjoor’s parents had been peasants in the village of Nowpora in district Budgam, Kashmir. One day, during the afternoon, as Mahjoor’s famous poem aazaediye (freedom) was being recited on the television, the maudits power-cuts intervened and Mahjoor’s famous couplet:

…saanyan garan manz tsachye aazediye

he reunderstood as:

…tchyanaen zananan manz traeyiv aazediye

As a result of that, he thought it to be an imperative, to make love to his wife, who was in the pen for chickens taking out chicken shit, and laying fresh hay, for the poules to sit on and present them with golden shapely eggs tomorrow morning. The Madame was in the pen when the Mahjoor Sr. came in Fresh from Mahjoor’s directive and pinned her against the walls and raped her. He murdered her against the wooden walls. He arnaqued her on a bed of hay. He fleeced her with droplets of sweat dripping from her forehead. He frauded her in a douce, gentle fraud that is the dream of every woman. He filoutered the morning dew from her lips. He contrabanded a swoon in which she fell limp into his hands. He pilfered her breath, racing from the excited pulsions of her heart. He counterfeited the excited passion of a chaste matron, and gave her spice in the blood that made her hair ends stand in their follicles. He extorted sighs from her, he ransomed her little hips for grip. He smuggled love into her ears, and trafficked passion from a leg to leg. He 420ed her so much that she could not breathe any more. He kidnapped her senses, he bludgeoned all the wits out of her. He bandited the first breath of her last move. He extorted the last breath of the first move. He stole all her hopes, and all her desires, and all her dreams and all her hopes as to an afternoon spent by herself in the warm pen, warmed as she was in his embrace. He explosed an improvised device in her stomach, and grenaded her being with a raging fire. When he finished, Mme Mahjoor had two ring-shaped marks on the wrists from the strength of his grip, and redness had all flooded her face. Panting, she asked him: ‘How did your little Taobat become a Chenab today?’ pointing to his crotch.

Next day, all the ladies of village Nowpora, Budgam petitioned the AEE, PDD (Electric Division), Engineering Road Complex, Budgam, Kashmir 191111 asking him to reschedule all the power-cuts in the afternoon.

It is from this interlude that Current Mahjoor was born, nine months later at District Hospital, Shariyatabad, Watra wani, Budgam, Kashmir 191111. When he woke up, to the world from baby’s large eyes, he already knew he wanted to be a writer, from such illustrious birth hatched in the chicken-pen. I met him over a coupéd rosé in Chandigarh, and Current Mahjoor passed me the contact details of Khayapiya Gasudevan, who was his literary agent, and who wrote two weeks later to me asking what my message was, and who was the future readership of my upcoming novel? Before this, Current Mahjoor had already published a well-received novel represented by her, called Lice Our Parasite (2024). In this novel, the writer paints two Kashmiri lice hatched somewhere in the middle of the pate but who migrate to different areas of the cranium taking on different aspects, and how their ideological worlds collide and human aspirations shine forth in muslin prose ciphered on a vast canvas. On the right brain was Abdul Gani Lone who was influenced by ideas of Osama ben Laden and this Salafist louse only drank Halal (حلال) blood, and even called the Maulvi to perform circumcision on his baby-louse called Lone Jr., for which nano-ustaras had to be imported from Taiwan, because nothing was locally available. The Maulvi performed the circumcision ceremony chanting: Ô Chismillah raw Challahu Rakbar (C.R…C.R.) in the audience of all the fidèles in the commune. In the left side of the brain, was a Marxist-Leninist Safakadal Pandit called Hare Krishna Kak, who was initially influenced by ideas of Marx and Pandit Nehru, but later veered more towards Savarkar’s fellows, and took on Khaki shorts for which an order was relayed to M/s Yves-Saint Laurent, 123 Avenue des Champs Élysées, Paris 75008. The two lice ultimately congregated in the middle of a taal of a sindoored-lady’s pate at a sacred spot called Hair Parbat, and ultimately there was controversy as to whether the 14-century mosque standing there, was not preceded by a temple.

This was the synopsis of the famous book by Current Mahjoor, represented by Khayapiya Gasudevan. But, when I wrote to her, I received no response for two weeks, following that, that immediate question: What is the message of your novel, and who is your target audience? ‘Hein, Indians….are you going to teach me literature? He, who has drunk at the source at Rabelais’ fountain and at Plato’s tavern, but please start, if you wish by covering yourself…how can such poor a body produce a great mind? I had a plumber in France, who used to come to my apartment in Paris, but when he wrote to me saying he would have to excuse himself that Wednesday, because the Parking charges were too much at my central location, I framed his reply because there was not a single faute d’orthographe? Do you have a plumber in India who could write like that? I went for laundry in one of Dehradun’s outskirts and the gentleman had to borrow my pen, because he could not read. Farzdan says one must always s’en tirer des hauts et des bas. Shares teach you if you plateau long enough at a high-enough level, sooner or later you will rise, but how can the maudit stock rise if you have already broken his back with the donkey’s load?’

Reminded me of what two Kashmiri peasants had said when Mahatma Gandhi visited the Weaver Girls’ Cooperative in Kashmir, 1^st of August 1947. ‘Khushamadeed nazarreen, aaj ki iss ijtimae mein aap ka khairmakdam hai….’. ‘Ta gueule…espèce de walking PTV…’ the peasant launched a tirade at the roving pressman who was blocking his view. Two Gujjar peasants, with their red beards and their green glassy eyes were trying to catch a glimpse of Gandhi as he delivered his famous message. ‘Yaemis haz chass haz na taer haz lagan…’ one asked the other. The other replied: ‘Yi haz aus se haz Mos quu gaumut haz’ (he had just visited the mosque to the question as to the gentleman did not feel cold?’) The Pressman intervened: ‘Toi haz cha haz angreez haz tagan? Yi chuna haz Mos quu gaumut, yi haz aa aus haz…Moscow gaumut’ (In fact, this gentleman did not visit Mos quu…but he had been to Moscow, referring to Mosque), and the gujjars understood that the Gandhi must have undergone acclimatisation training in the USSR before visiting Kashmir.

‘Hein, Indians, you want me to become like that? Explore the world with eyes blindfolded? If you are asked, like the Kashmiri peasant: ‘Ghulam Nabi, why are you so dirty and do not take a bath’ ? ‘Jenab, because it is too cold…’ ‘Ghulam Nabi, why are your children starving and have nothing to eat? ‘Jenab because it is too cold’ Ghulam Nabi, why does your wife sleep around so much…’ ‘Naturally, Jenab, because it is too cold…’ Is it because Plato is a white man and Bhāsa is a Brahman that you would not listen to him? It is many centuries ago, that Plato said the Middle Path, and Mme Lalla de Puranadishthana said said khyaane khyen karan kun na waatak, na khyen gasakh ahankaer. Are you going to reinvent the wheel?’ I dashed off an email to Khayapiya Gasudevan, very angry as to the undermining of my artistic talent and limiting my œuvre to debilitating circumstances:

Sub: The Gusts of Alien Wind

Dear Khayapiya Gasudevan,

Thank you for your message. In response to your questions, I have to say that the readership of this upcoming novel is all those who can read, for the blind cannot read, unless a Braille edition is taken out by your esteemed prospective publishers.

As to the message of the novel, it is this: ‘Page no. 1, Page no.2, Page no.3, Page no. 4, Page no.5, Page no.6, Page no.7, Page no.8, Page no.9, Page no.10, Page no.11, Page no.12, Page no.13, Page no.14, Page no.15, Page no.16, Page no.17, Page no.18, Page no.19, Page no.20, Page no.21, Page no.22, Page no.23, Page no.24, Page no.25, Page no.26, Page no.27, Page no.28, Page no.29, Page no.30, Page no.31, Page no.32, Page no.33, Page no.34, Page no.35, Page no.36, Page no.37, Page no.38, Page no.39, Page no.40, Page no.41, Page no.42, Page no.43, Page no.44, Page no.45, Page no.46, Page no.47, Page no.48, Page no.49, Page no.50, Page no.51, Page no.52, Page no.53, Page no.54, Page no.55, Page no.56, Page no.57, Page no.58, Page no.59, Page no.60, Page no.61, Page no.62, Page no.63, Page no.64, Page no.65, Page no.66, Page no.67, Page no.68, Page no.69, Page no.70, Page no.71, Page no.72, Page no.73, Page no.74, Page no.75, Page no.76, Page no.77, Page no.78, Page no.79, Page no.80, Page no.81, Page no.82, Page no.83, Page no.84, Page no.85, Page no.86, Page no.87, Page no.88, Page no.89, Page no.90, Page no.91, Page no.92, Page no.93, Page no.94, Page no.95, Page no.96, Page no.97, Page no.98, Page no.99, Page no.100, Page no.101, Page no.102, Page no.103, Page no.104, Page no.105, Page no.106, Page no.107, Page no.108, Page no.109, Page no.110, Page no.111, Page no.112, Page no.113, Page no.114, Page no.115, Page no.116, Page no.117, Page no.118, Page no.119, Page no.120, Page no.121, Page no.122, Page no.123, Page no.124, Page no.125, Page no.126, Page no.127, Page no.128, Page no.129, Page no.130, Page no.131, Page no.132, Page no.133, Page no.134, Page no.135, Page no.136.’

If you need anything else, I should be at your disposal.

Regards,
Raunak Churangoo (C.R.)

I do not know what got in to me, to write such a reply. Of course, I never heard from the lady, and Current Mahjoor called to enquire what had happened as to the links he had passed me. I was so angry I thought to wear off the effects by a high trek in the Mussoorie mountains, on a bright Friday, right near the Deodar trees where Garam Madhosh remains in his office torching the office building in smoke, and close to where Dustin Pants has his famous bungalow Ivy Cottage. I walked close to two hours and got hungry, and it was time for lunch and I searched for the first restaurant where meat was available in this goddamn country where animals are abundant by the roadside, but meat is rare. Following the speech of Gandhi upon a winter’s (nay, summer’s) afternoon in the Srinagar plateau, there was a lot of patriotic fervour and children were asked to write to Gandhi ji conveying their wishes. One of them was 7-year old Ahmed Changazai, from Little Tots Sr. Secondary School, near Town Hall, Bijbehara, Anantnag, Kashmir 192124, who wrote to the Monsieur on the back of the post card for which stamp was provided by the school administration, following which the postcard travelled to the head post office at The Bund, Sher-i-Kashmir Park, Residency Road, Srinagar, Kashmir 190001 following which to the erstwhile princely state J&K’s winter capital, Jaahilu, following which it reached a Sardar ji’s desk at General Post Office, Gol Dak Khana Building, near Gurudwara Bangla Sahib, New Delhi 110001. Upon the back was scribbled in a curvy writing:                                                         

               Gai tumhari maata hai
Koshur usko khaata hai

                               — Chinese Rhyme (C.R.)

I walked into a Karyana store to douse my thirst, before an indulgent dinner (nay, lunch) and in the eyes of the Messieurs there I saw all the reflections of Prem Nath and Pran and Amrish Puri and Gulshan Grover and Danny Dengzongpa and Shakti Kapoor and Bob Christo and Sadashiv Amrapurkar, packed into one, for as I had realised soda (sparkling water) was used as a mixer for drinks by Indians, and whenever I walked into a shop innocently for soda they thought I was going to mix my drinks surreptitiously there. Why not drink, if not openly? And why not make love, if not in the ass? Never mind. I moved on with my bottle with which I hoped to digest the gas-laden Indian food and I searched for a Tibetan restaurant called Doma’s Inn, which I had heard about, and where I had heard Beef was available. I took the side of the road because Indians drove like overgrown enfants and Rabelais or not, I did not want to be a squished fly by the side of the road. I climbed an ancient staircase next to a metal grille, and the dog there did not like my intervention. ‘Désolé, Monsieur, je ne parle pas chienois,’ I told him, trying to reassure him as he barked behind me and I opened my soda bottle while the Mussoorie clock-tower in red brick struck two: ‘Good afternoon….Musssurie’ a parrot-voice chirped. I opened my bottle and the water was splayed everywhere in an immense bout of premature ejaculation. I moved on and next door was the red façade of the Tibetan restaurant called Doma’s Inn serenaded by Tibetan prayer-flags. I sat at a table at the middle of the restaurant, and asked for Buff, or what the Indians called Buffalo. It was the best meal I had had in a long time. Following that, I had a Tibetan butter tea which reminded me of sheer chai, my tears fell in longing for my homeland.

Two days later, I opened the cultural supplement of a National daily and on the first page was the following news item:

Literary Jewel Dustin Pants Succumbs to his Injuries

Author of a 69 books, and Padma Bhushan awardee, writer Dustin Pants succumbed to his injuries sustained on Friday, the 13^th of December, at the Indraprasth hospital in Dehradun. Mr. Pants had been recovering from a fall he sustained on Friday afternoon while stepping out of the house for his regular promenade. The wet weather conditions are blamed for the slippery floor, as well as deposition of moss over the ancient staircase erected since the British times. Police have also pointed out to the possibility of an episode of urinary incontinence on part of his loyal dog Chaindhari Singh ‘Ripper’ (C.R.) which might have contributed to the moisture on the floor. The Mayor of the city Monsieur Sunil Uniyal ‘Gama’ paid glorious tribute to the son of the soil and the famous bard whose works transcend cultural boundaries….

I immediately shut the newspaper, because I was hungry for a paratha and I knew my bonne would pack me aloo parathas in these greasy newspapers, after having used them as mouchoir, to plaindre about her daughter-in-law who did not take part in the clothes-pressing business. I had another dilemma to handle. A Pakistani magazine had written to me asking whether the title of my story should be An Eyes called Green or The Green Eyes. The Green Eyes sounded like a title from the novel of Graham Greene, or Winterset Dawn, or O. Penury, all good writers, but then as they say, all good writers are writers you have not read. I had nothing to do with them. In my mind, there was no competition. An Eyes called Green even if grammatically-incorrect conveyed the confusion in the mind of the man who had lusted after a girl the age of his daughter. It had the emphasis on the second part that I wanted. The Green Eyes, was not bad, just like the middle portion from the mug-shot of the Éditrice called Bubjaan Heavy which I received in my mailbox at the bottom of the email. When I looked down at it, at the top-down photograph that was taken from a strategic angle, I could see an imposing Zabarwan range close to her chest just as the mountains in the JKTDC calendar. My LadiShah gave an immediate stir. I had noticed, thanks to Current Mahjoor who had this innocuous habit of all day long having current running through his earlobes, ever since the day of his birth, on his Facebook and Instagram pages, I saw that all my posts always received 11 likes for some reason. The number 11 was tied to me, just as 5 to 7 in France is a number for illicit liaisons, and 2915 in Kashmir is a very famous dog who turned after his master. When I clicked on the likes on his Facebook page, I realised I had the good habit of only being liked by beautiful women. It is a habit I did not mind. Upon discovering the affection of the fairer sex to my literary endeavours, which flattered me a lot, I launched an intellectual gesture and a profound cross-section as to the depths of Human psyche which all great writers had reproduced from the time of Plato and Homer and Spinoza and Rabelais, to Racine and Voltaire to Camus and Gide. Of course, I masturbate. I always go for my fans, as Ovid used to say. As it is this unnecessary digression in the tract I have presented to you at the foothills of the Shivalik mountains was imposed by a need to strategically insert two or three boring passages in my artes from time to time, which I do because I have the mindset of wanting to make a couple of fair damsels fall asleep. It is my fantasy they are holding my book, while reading the passages, in their bed without the soutien-gorge (bra) and from time-to-time I deliberately induce a couple of boring passages (toujours, toujours il faut en glisser, sous sa jupe, sans la plisser, Farzdan whispers in my ears) in order to induce sleep so that I should lie on her chest in bed all night long, enjoying her daenaiye posh. If only, then there is an earthquake (not to care about poor children in Samoa who are crushed under 10-magnitude richter shakings) so that my book can glisse doucement down her white and thin navel (oh, the love for white navels) and I can lie closer to the part which is my bonheur. If only, then there is a slight bookmark jutting out of the book and its bout can touch her petite fleur, l’origine du monde and to wake up next morning in the idealised subreptice of all the lovers in the world: with the pubes conjoined together.

A cold morning imprinted on the Himalayan mountains. When I woke up, and drew the curtains I saw my Bandar attached to the high-tension wires in a very strange pose, with both his arms raised in a V-sign, just as Gandhi would have raised in front of Kashmiri peasants at the Weaver Girls’ Collective in Srinagar, Kashmir. Word had gone out that the young girl who was the fleuron and awe of all the monkeys in the region was going to school without her panties, and all of them wanted to scramble up to a nearby banana under her skirt pretending to draw the peel and in between surreptitiously casting a glance up her cuisses, to her Koh-i-noor. The Bandar still had one hand on his private part when he attempted a sortie over the high-tension wires, and got electrocuted. Told me he should not have learned something from the three acolytes of India’s famous saint who chose to constrain their senses in an unnatural way. No Taliban, No Silence, No Edvard Munch’s Scream (1893). Middle Path, my cher Bandar, the Middle Path.