Serious Men

Author: Joseph, Manu

• AYYAN MANI’S THICK black hair was combed sideways and parted by a careless broken line, like the borders the British used to draw between two hostile neighbours.

• Solitary young women in good shoes walked hastily, as if they were fleeing from the fate of looking like their mothers.

• ‘If you stare long enough at serious people they will begin to appear comical.’

• Beautiful women depressed him. They were like Mercedes, BlackBerry phones and sea-view homes.

• She was aware that she was being watched, not just by a strange brisk man but also by the unending hordes of miserable people all around who spread dengue and scratched her car.

• Pale boys with defeat in their eyes walked in horizontal gangs; they giggled at the aerobics of unattainable women.

• In the miserly lifts and stuffed trains, he often heard the relief of afternoon farts, saw scales on strange faces and the veins in their still eyes.

• And the secret moustaches of women. And the terrible green freshness when they had been newly removed with a thread.

• Among these lovers were married people, some of them even married to each other.

• The secret rage in their downcast eyes also reminded him of a truth which was dearer to him than anything else. That

• The secret rage in their downcast eyes also reminded him of a truth which was dearer to him than anything else. That men, in reality, did not have friends in other men. That the fellowship of men, despite its joyous banter, old memories of exaggerated mischief and the altruism of sharing pornography, was actually a farcical fellowship. Because what a man really wanted was to be bigger than his friends.

• his father died of tuberculosis and his mother soon followed out of habit.

• she used to sing to herself in the mornings. But eventually the chawl seeped into her.

• At one end of the room, by the only window that was reinforced by a rusted iron grille, was a rudimentary kitchen that ran into a tiny stained-glass bathroom where one would fit, and two would be in a relationship.

• Oja shut the door and latched it firmly as though that would protect her from other intrusions that were lurking outside.

• The decay of a man, he told himself, is first conveyed to him by his wife.

• But, he knew, the freedom of a bachelor is the freedom of a stray dog.

• In the evenings, they ran happily towards the gates, the way earthquake survivors in this country might run towards the BBC correspondent.

• Some days, Ayyan invented quotes that insulted Indian culture, that exclusive history of the Brahmins.

• Facing him across the width of the room was a seasoned black leather sofa, now vacant but with the irreparable depressions of long waits.

• Traditionally on the Worli Seaface, infatuation fondled and love cried. He was terrified of that love.

• There is something about a man and a woman weeping together.

• There is something about a man and a woman weeping together. Nothing is more heart-breaking.’

• He was formulating a simple explanation in his mind, when he began to sense a distant smell that he thought was coming from another time, like an old memory. It was familiar, but he could not place it. Then it struck him that it was the odour of youth and it was somewhere very close. Youth. Pathetic, desperate, broke, its glory overrated.

• He preferred the intelligence of women, which was somehow subdued and efficient, to the brilliance of men, which often came across as a deformity. He rubbed his hands and

• He preferred the intelligence of women, which was somehow subdued and efficient, to the brilliance of men, which often came across as a deformity.

• In the institute, they looked down upon money. But they respected funds.

• Man is not searching for aliens. Man is searching for man. It’s called loneliness. Not science

• ‘From the point of view of pure chemistry, it is more miraculous to make wine into water than water into wine. But he did not do that. Because if he had gone to someone’s house and converted their wine into water, they would have crucified him much earlier.

• ‘Hope,’ Acharya said, with bitter memories, ‘is a lapse in concentration

• That smile, Acharya knew, was the summary of all men who stay out of fierce enchanting battles because they want to build their place in the world through the deceptions of good public relations.

• ‘I don’t care what the Brahmins did. Their gods are now mine,’ Oja said. Her voice faltered. ‘I am a Hindu. We are all Hindus. Why do we pretend?’

• ‘Historically,’ Nambodri said aloud, ‘the only just punishment for a Bengali male has been a Bengali female.’ A round of laughter went through the room. ‘We forgot to mention it before, gentlemen, she is our first female faculty,’ Nambodri declared. One man clapped. The solitary applause was about to die prematurely, but the others joined in to reinforce the compliment. The applause faded into a long comfortable silence. And that was how the evening would unfold, with festive commotion giving way to silences, and silences broken by profound questions about the universe, and questions

• ‘Historically,’ Nambodri said aloud, ‘the only just punishment for a Bengali male has been a Bengali female.’

• Ayyan was certain that there was no such thing called truth. There was only the pursuit of truth and it was a pursuit that would always go on. It was a form of employment

• ‘Everything that people do in this world is because they have nothing better to do,’ he told Oja Mani once.

• ‘Astrology is not a science, you know.’ ‘That’s why it’s not in dispute,’ Nambodri said.

• The Brahmins would say graciously, ‘Past mistakes must be corrected; opportunities must be created,’ and then they would say, ‘But merit cannot be compromised.’

• ‘Why are you orbiting?’ Nambodri asked. Ayyan understood the insult. It was in the league of other incomprehensible subtleties of the institute. Usually, a lesser body like the Moon orbited a more important object like the Earth.

• His wife for forty-two years, and forever his email password, held the cup calmly in one hand as she watered a dying creeper with another

• It was a marriage that was ordained not by the frivolity of love, or even its naïve expectation, but by the more reliable bond of equal handicap.

• His grandfather, in the aroma of ayurvedic oils that somehow made him appear wise, told the youth of the household every day that the secret of longevity lay in ensuring efficient digestion of food. ‘Always’, he used to say, ‘listen to your arse.’

• Lavanya found it hard to believe that a man who was once rumoured to win the physics Nobel did not know how to disable the alarm in a silly timepiece bought in the streets of Bangkok

• Then he heard the voice. First as a whisper call, like the disturbing voice of conscience in old films that seeks the attention of the hero who searches everywhere for the source of the sound until he finds the speaker in a full-length mirror.

• First as a whisper call, like the disturbing voice of conscience in old films that seeks the attention of the hero who searches everywhere for the source of the sound until he finds the speaker in a full-length mirror.

• He was the sort of man who would say to his son, ‘I am a friend, not a father,’ and then give the boy a condom when he turned eighteen.

• Majestic men went in cars, in the isolation of the back seat, studying laptops on their way to work where they would think of ways to fool people into buying cola, or a type of insurance, or a condom that had dots on it.

• It was so easy to be the big people. All you had to do was to be born in the homes where they were born.

• There was a caste system even on the roads. The cars, their faces frowning in a superior way through the bonnet grilles, were the Brahmins. They were higher than the motorcycles who were higher than the pedestrians. The cycles were lowest of the low.

• After riding like a moron all over the place, observe the face of an Indian when he crashes. He is stunned.

• How they would have loved to give a rupee, but they had read investigative stories that appeared at least once every year in English newspapers on the cruel begging syndicates that were rumoured to exploit children. By withholding one rupee they were hitting hard at the syndicates, apparently. So much philosophy for a one-rupee transaction.

• He wanted to tell her that she should never be sad because to be sad was to be afraid. And to be afraid was to respect the world too much.

• When morning came, he heard the no-talent pigeons first and then the crows whom he liked because they were clever and mean.

• But he had that terrifying quality called stature, something that his colleagues, of their own accord, had granted him.

• ‘Not all of us are meant to believe, Arvind. Some of us can only wonder and, on good days, hope.

• In the institute, a hypothesis was a good idea, but a theory was a good idea that deserved funds.

• Ayyan began to walk briskly now because that always abolished his sorrows and fears.

• By the laws of probability most of you are mediocre. Accept it.

• She was wooing a fat old man. She must be ovulating.

• It struck him, how complete, how final, an umbrella actually was. As a technology, it would not evolve any further.

• Like every ray of light with a wavelength of 700 nanometres is always red, everyone who is in love is young.

• but a bag to him was a symbol of nomadic freedom, an imperfection that said the journey was not important, the destination inconsequential. A suitcase, on the other hand, was a sign of grand departures and self-important arrivals.

• ‘You can tell me. A man can tell a naked woman anything.’

• ‘Why do you think there is life?’ she asked, somewhat sheepishly. A naked woman sitting beside a naked man and asking, ‘What is the meaning of life?’ It was like a terrible moment from a porn film that aspired to be art.

• The fate of every love story, he knew very well, is in the rot of togetherness, or in the misery of separation

• The fate of every love story, he knew very well, is in the rot of togetherness, or in the misery of separation. Lovers often choose the first with the same illusory wisdom that makes people choose to die later than now.

• That morning, the phone was ringing relentlessly, and Lavanya knew why. It was the desperation of a bitch.

• He looked at the clock to mark the time. If she arrived in less than three minutes it would mean that at some point on the stairways or down the corridors she had been running. It was always entertaining, the misery of lovers.

• Character, Ayyan Mani observed in the anteroom, is actually blood pressure.

• He had an amiable way of speaking, and he spoke very fast as if he were reading out the risk factors in a mutual fund commercial.

• ‘Of all human deformities,’ he said softly, ‘genius is the most useful.’

• After about an hour, both the mathematicians amicably agreed on the third paper plate that bad news travelled faster than

• After about an hour, both the mathematicians amicably agreed on the third paper plate that bad news travelled faster than good news. That, Ayyan already knew.

• They went without invitation because it was a tradition here that an appointment need not be sought to congratulate a scientist.

• Between the news of the stockmarket upsurge and Islamic terror and a man stabbing his lover twenty-two times, The Times hurriedly summarized an epic scientific labour. Rather as an epitaph tells the story of a whole life in the hyphen between two dates.

• Rather as an epitaph tells the story of a whole life in the hyphen between two dates.

• This, Ayyan accepted, was life. It was, in a way, a fortunate life. It would go on and on like this.

• Engineering, Adi would realize, is every mother’s advice to her son, a father’s irrevocable decision, a boy’s first foreboding of life. A certainty, like death, that was long decided in the cradle. Sooner or later, he would have to call it his ambition. And to attain it, he would compete with thousands and thousands of boys like him in the only human activity for which Indians had a special talent.

• And then ensure that he did not spend a single day of his life as an engineer. Because everyone would tell him then that the real money was in MBA.

• Even though the man was swaying in a personal gale that only a mixture of rum and egg-roast could unleash, there was something deep and strong about his voice.

• ‘If you could buy it, you wouldn’t be scared,’

• In them there was an unmistakable excitement that masqueraded as shock, just like the entertainment of death fills funeral guests with grimness. Acharya began to understand the mysterious composure of men who are led to the gallows.

• where large oblong tables conveyed the intention of equality to all chairs, at least before they were occupied by incurable egos, this one was designed for the unambiguous purpose of lecturing.

• It was the right of simple people to survive in their little nooks and do their little things.

• He felt an intense bitterness that only a husband can feel for his wife.

• Because every man grants others the power to shame him, and Arvind Acharya decided to withdraw that privilege from the world.

• ‘It’s not only the sad who go mad, my child, it is also the happy.’

• A man cannot be exactly the way he wants to be and also dream of keeping his wife.

• ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘When I don’t know what to do, I boil the milk.’