Doppelganger in Pune Part I

About 10 years ago a good old friend of mine encouraged me, "I will give you a penny for every word you write.. ". I was amused for the fact that if it had an iota of truth, I could become a millionaire without committing a crime. A few days back, we caught up again and he playfully mentioned he spends more money on my son than on me. .... It tickled my business acumen and I thought I should go back to writing. So, all the souls to suffer now .. need to know its not my fault but its Greed and Greed is Good :).

Genre: Fiction or Semi fiction (what do you think...?)
Rated: 2.5
Starred: A docile bong, A hot Tamil girl, Ajay - the oracle .. so on.. I am tired .. will put everything else in the 2nd part.
Controversy: The Censor board had this piece stopped for an year (I drafted this post last year). The bubble bath portion was supposed to be edited out. They claimed the blogger takes the whole issue of crimes against women so lightly.

He doesn't.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There was this clarion call by my Landord's son, Ajay, that the secretary of the society wanted to see me along with our neighbor. There was some dispute and that they were sort of not-so-much-in-love with what I had done. Ajay is the most street smart guy I have dealt with in the entire Marathaland till now. He advised me when they asked me where I was from, I needed to say Bihar and not Bengal. When I inquired about the reason, he explained the philosophy, "when there is a doubt in the crime committed, the doubt is dispelled when the perpetrator is a Bihari. But, when there is a crime for everyone to be seen, presenting yourself as a docile Bong will invite a few uninhibited slaps. On the other hand, if you are a Bihari, you may witness the opponents adopting a few Gandhian principles to tame the perpetrator."

A mini Panchayat resides in every apartment these days. A person with most time in his kitty becomes the head honcho and starts running his own small fiefdom. If ever you thought time can be used as a tradable penny to wrest power and governance then, this is how it is done. At the beginning of the proceedings the secretary threw the accusations and that was teasing the neighbor's 20 yr old daughter. There was a firm belief among all the Tamilians in my society that she is the most beautiful girl from the state after Hema Malini. Hence, a man without a wife (myself) must be at a fault of teasing her if it is claimed. How I wish I could explain the logical fallacy to the crowd.

While the secretary was calmly conducting the proceedings, my Tamilian neighbor was fluttering his wings like I had seen in one of those South Indian movies. Every time he would drive down a point, he would move his hands in sharp and swift actions. He would take his small silk towel from the shoulder, kill the mosquitoes in front of me and put it back to rest on his shoulder - almost like the sword in the hands of a crafty Knight. the sound of his hands tear through the still and harmless air echoed in my head. But the zip zip sound that I could hear was definitely his 8 year old son hiding behind his mom's enormous posterior. He must have believed a good background score is key to a climactic showdown.

While Anna was screaming down my throat, I could still hear myself whisper. "look at that girl, would she give me a bubble bath?" If thoughts were of criminal intent and mere thoughts justify persecution - I should have died a 1000 deaths by now. In this case though, there were 10 witnesses to my heinous act of teasing the girl. Each one of them eloquently presented their version. Revenge for any misdeed against any female seemed to be in  the air.

However, I was so delighted to see the animated drama unfurl before me that I don't recall what all concessions did I  accept to settle the dispute. It was only the next day, when I received a call from my landlord, that I realized I had to leave the place within next 10 days according to our discussions.

The urge to understand who was behind the motive to get me thrown out of the place had overtaken me.. Later, I checked the time when this apocalyptic event had happened. It was on a weekday at 6 in the evening. I was pretty sure I was in the office. I did tell Ajay about this - however, he said - "Uncle, I would have believed whatever you said if, I would not have witnessed that".

Teasing a girl requires effort and courage - now both these attributes are much in demand in the east. All Bongs may look similar but I did need to dig this further, there surely is something that I was missing..

(to be continued..).