Mr. Mehta’s Existential Swing

Percy Bharucha

It felt alien, the cool marble under the bare skin of his feet. He had never taken off his chappals (slippers, flip-flops) before. Bare feet needed carpeting, at the least the anonymous grey of moldy offices. Amongst the imagined grey was the ebullient white of a smile; it shone out from a distance.

It was a shade less white than the marble flooring and a tad more than the drapes.

This house was soon to be retired. The ebullient white led to a strong wiry hand that clasped his own in a sinewy display of enthusiasm. At slightly under six feet Mr. Mehta was immaculately camouflaged in a white kurta, its buttons as silvery as his hair. Behind him was the ubiquitous academic book cabinet, much like his own father’s. It was easy to guess what Mr. Mehta did, his inquisitive gaze peeking out from his heavily rimmed glasses, pupils strained from reading too many essays in the weak light of a desk lamp. There seemed to be a small red line below each of his irises, much like the ones in his examination sheets, or had he just imagined that.

 

There were exactly forty steps that led from his door, to the narrow lane lined with Neem trees, onto the main road with the stray dogs, lined with a white picket fence, to another pot-holed narrow lane, to a metal door that required all of his strength and finally onto Mr. Mehta’s well-manicured lawn. Those forty steps were the longest solo trip he had ever been allowed. At the 25^th step he had already heard his mother shouting, “Mr. Mehta, has he reached?” Apparently forty steps in a non-descript lane, housed little boy kidnappers at every turn. His tiny sweaty palms gripped the only thing of value anyone could recover from him. An orange book, with a drawing of a man with an extremely large forehead playing the bongos.

 

He had woken up that morning to the musty smell of dust, displaced from its usual place. Blurry eyes had opened themselves to his mother waving a rectangular object in front of him, as focus was restored he could make out the dark orange of a book he had never seen before. His vacations had just begun; the books in his schoolbag had yet to turn cold and there was his mother awakening him with one more.

 

There was something said about, an early bird and a worm. Teeth were brushed, reluctant buttons were being pushed into their boutonnieres, one was missed, redone; his eyelids were half-drawn shop shutters, yet to open for the day. The quiet simmer of his morning ritual was rudely jolted out of momentum by the announcement of his mother’s grand plan. Decisive in its tone, it was agreed, no wait strike that, decreed that every morning he would go over to his neighbor’s house to read from a book of her choice. With the opening music of the morning weather report as his battle cry, he formed his line of defense – he was to go at a time she chose, he was to go to a place she chose, talk with a person she chose and read a book she chose. Surely she would allow him choice in at least one of these parameters; even the communists were allowed to choose the color of their bed sheets. Unfortunately it rained.

 

Exactly fifteen minutes later he found himself in Mr. Mehta’s house, with an alien book and a look of absolute bewilderment as to what had transpired until that very moment. After the perfunctory glass of water, Mr. Mehta led him through the house onto a narrow staircase that led upstairs. This white was everywhere, stark, clinical, cold, it was almost as if, someone had exploded white paint cans throughout the house, without bothering to cover the furniture. He almost stumbled on the top step; it seemed to rise in defiance, angry that someone was allowed into these sacred rooms on their very first visit. A first date analogy could have been used here, but the author practices refrain.

 

Books are funny creatures, it’s easy to forget a book, but impossible to have forgotten it, they leave behind an imprint of their own. The edge of pages like canvases on a soot-filled wall. Faded, destroyed, yet remembered by the virgin white of their clear lines. Like scars of old lovers, covered up, camouflaged yet subsisting beneath the skin. So too was this book, it left an indelible orange frame mark that age could not fade away. The orange that glinted golden in the pure sunlight that was filtering through Mr. Mehta’s balcony. It was almost as if the swing had been carved out of molten gold, forms emanating out of pure fluidity. Little peacocks ran along its chains, long enough to ascend to the very heavens themselves. The red of the cushions dangled several inches above the ground in intricate patterns, in flying tassels and crimson threads that seemed lofty enough to levitate by themselves. The swing seemed almost ethereal, a portal that hovered between our worlds and those that lay beyond our fears.

 

And yet it lay there, ever so still, yet swinging ever so slowly and silently, capable of great repose and motion all at once. There was a feeling of enormity that arose within him, Mr. Mehta’s strong arms lifting him up before he could register his mute protests. As he ran his fingers along the frame, it was hard to fathom where the integrity of the structure lay; it seemed so supple and was yet strong to touch. Abstractions that had neither dreams nor visions, devoid of goals and purpose, they simply were, unjustified in their existence, programmed to survive. Just like old people on crowded trains, nobody saw them getting on or leaving, they were just there.

 

“What do we have here?” Mr. Mehta cried out, “What shall we begin with?” I see your mother has chosen well. “Mr. Feynman’s autobiography, it is” Until now he assumed it was ‘Fenny-man’ and had no idea who this gentleman was apart from the fact that he had an unusually large head and loved playing the bongos. Physics was quite an alien concept, relayed by his grandmother as the “thing” that explained how things work, which was quite fascinating actually; he had always wondered how his mother managed to wake up early enough to bother him, perhaps Mr. Fenny-man could explain. He was at a point in time where stars were still stars and shone for no reason, there was a big yellow disk in the sky and if you stared at it for too long, you could see colors, but flowers could stare and a lot of them looked at it constantly. Where streams flowed but taps had to be turned off, where if you scraped a knee, mother’s kiss was all you needed, or if you couldn’t find her, you spit on it, tied your sister’s handkerchief around it and wore it proudly like a battle scar. The training wheels had yet to come off his bicycle and whenever he rode it, the world tilted to the left and sometimes to the right, it refused to be straight, no matter how hard he tried, someone just kept flipping it about. Where God apparently had answers to everything and more importantly had the time to answer everything, where he took the trouble to find out if you had washed behind your ears, or if you were the one throwing stones at stray dogs in the lane outside his home. It was a time where questions were frowned upon, because their answers were so evident, an innocence that circumvented the need for logic and debate, that nestled itself in the cozy bosom of tradition and authority. It was a simpler time and age but not because he was ignorant but because he was told with such conviction, what seemingly was the truth. This book was about to change that. It would complicate, overwhelm and leave a young boy without the calm comfort of knowing what he ought to know, desert him in the questioning abyss that would be the ambiguity of his life. It would take from him, his staff and compass and would leave him without so much as a solitary match to illuminate the wilderness. To live with not knowing was a trait he had yet to develop or come to terms with.

 

A small smatter of adjusting his glasses, aligning the bridge with the pinch marks on his nose and Mr. Mehta was off. “Certainly the reminiscences here give a true picture of much of his character—his almost compulsive need to solve puzzles.” A pair of larger than life eyes stared at him through the slight reflection of the glass that separated his own from Mr. Mehta’s, it’s a good thing that glass was there, he didn’t know Mr. Mehta that well, the idea of sharing did not appeal to him. He would not want others to know he only pretended to pray before meals or wash behind his ears or floss. Most of the times he wished he didn’t have to brush his teeth, especially after ice cream or chocolate, he wanted the gooey warmth of the taste to linger forever, the idea of Mr. Mehta gleaming this information, through those eyes, boring into his skull travelling down his nerves, into his mouth to detect stray particles of chocolate made him shudder. “Do you know what compulsive means?” he didn’t even know what “reminiscences” meant and that sounded a lot harder. “Compulsive need to solve pujjles” he chuckled. He still didn’t explain and he never asked but just hearing it made him feel good, there was something tingly about the way Mr. Mehta had said, “pujjles” and he had underlined that phrase with a small pencil. That grey line added a whole new layer of meaning, he had never seen someone underline a sentence in a book before, it must surely be important. That grey line was to stand for so much more in his future, it would be the space between what he thought he loved and what others thought he was good at, but for now it stayed a thin line, like his father’s moustache, just a shade lighter, below a line in some book, that caused him much consternation. Mr. Mehta went further, “His provocative mischievousness, his indignant impatience with pretension and hypocrisy, and his talent for one-upping anybody who tries to one-up him!” That was where Mr. Mehta gave up, there were too many words and he loved reading too much for having to stop at every second word. Explaining it to a boy whose only frame of reference for hypocrisy was “mother looks angry.” How was he to explain to a child why people faked being someone else, innocence that could not come to terms with the idea of ‘fake’ itself. There were no fake dogs, or birds or trees, you could not mistake them for something else, then how could humans be someone else that made no sense. Did they put on a mask? Did they change their clothes? Did hypocritical mean the clowns he had seen in the circus? or was it like characters in his schoolbooks? They surely weren’t real, he had never seen them. Mr. Mehta as this point realized it was futile to continue and removed his spectacles, the bridge slightly sticking to the skin on his nose. Spectacles that certainly did not like being taken off, they liked their perch, balanced ever so precariously on the tip of his nose, just like stars loved darkness, he thought.

 

The conversation had gone cold. In a vain attempt to revive it Mr. Mehta asked, “why don’t you tell me how school is going?” “Do you like learning?” and that was all the impetus he needed. School was good, a response measured in its honesty. Yes he loved English, reading it, the stories and poems, no he did not like math, it seemed pedantic and he did not know that word back then, but if he had he would have used it. He didn’t care what 14 times 14 was, that was why you had calculators; the whole point of math eluded him. He found safety in this rebellion, it was as if that rejection affirmed his identity, it added a unique dimension to his character. It was also a matter of laziness, math was something he couldn’t conquer inherently, the rest he could get away with, math stubbornly refused him, like a temptress that placed herself beyond his reach, math humiliated him, it made him feel inadequate, it required of him an effort he wasn’t prepared to give and for something that seemed hollow and lifeless. It was a chore, a mindless task born out of authority, like polishing his father’s shoes or carrying his mother’s groceries, he would pretend to be elsewhere while his body worked according to a pre-fed set of instructions. He left math to his arms and knees while his mind happily took him on to more enchanting lands. His thumb ran over the joints in his finger, counting while he would dream about fencing and being a musketeer. Tap dancing like he had seen Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire do in movies.

By the time his thumb would reach his index finger, he would have already forgotten the count and would have to start all over again while Audrey Hepburn would wait. It was sacrilege to make her wait, simply so that he could inform the world something it already knew, 14 times 14. He never got the idea of why things had to be remembered and especially the wrong things, he never needed to remember what Manorama had said, or what Juliet said, the words did that all by themselves, he never had to remember a good story, it had a way of imprinting itself on his memory. His fingers would turn moist from dew, when he would hear Wordsworth speak about daffodils. But math simply made them ache. Things worth knowing wouldn’t require the effort of memory. Most of his after school hours were spent convincing his mother about this very fine point. It was perhaps his first tryst with rebellion and questioning things. He wouldn’t, not that he couldn’t, but the very fact that he couldn’t or almost couldn’t was the reason he wouldn’t. Inability liked to hide behind the hubris of not wanting to, it seemed easier that way, and nobody could ever discover that he couldn’t. Being undisciplined was better than being dumb.

 

His rant had taken over the better part of an hour now, Mr. Mehta had not said a word, but he could see that those eyes stared at him a little less now. Mr. Mehta was silent for almost ten minutes staring at him, his unblinking eyes like little tubes that would suck out of him the information he needed. “Mangla” he shouted, breaking the trance, “Mangla” again dissipating the thick heavy layers of silent fog that had fallen around them. “Mangla” one more time like the bugle that heralds the beginning of war, resilient, loud and triumphant. Mr. Mehta’s wife was a much martyred woman, the constant barrage of “Mangla’s” had taken a heavy toll on her hearing and her back. He could see a thick, heavy belt around the upper middle portion of her torso, encircling it like boa, tightening holding up her spine while simultaneously crushing it. “Mangla” this time a more enunciated version almost soothing in tone “this boy needs food, he must not go back hungry” turning to him, he inquired, “tanesu game che beta?” (What would you like to have, son) the switch to colloquial language almost caught him off guard for a moment, it felt more intimate like a conquering general whispering to a vanquished ruler in private. It seemed Mr. Mehta had discovered him, within that little bit of self-disclosure he had inadvertently allowed himself. But it felt appropriate the lyrical quality was almost a welcome relief from the structural, formal-ness of English. What had begun as a teacher-pupil interaction had transcended the mere imparting of knowledge. Knowledge that had just become more personal than it was ever meant to. Just as Manglaben had appeared, she slowly retreated into the darkness of her own shadow, back into the fringes of the house from whence she had emerged, word-less.

Milk and cookies had arrived and Mr. Mehta pulled his legs up on the swing after setting it in gentle motion and for a young boy, it was quite the trapeze act. Balancing himself, his little mug of chocolate milk and being able to reach for the cookies yet not falling off, he was quite the adept tight ropewalker. Mr. Mehta meanwhile seemed oblivious to the perpetual motion of the swing and there was scarce a drop spilt, as he poured the tea from his steaming cup onto his saucer and proceeded to sip from the saucer as if he were on a mountain, still. Within this perpetual ever-increasing speed of the swing, he noticed a strange thing beginning to take place. The peacocks on the chains were beginning to spread their wings and almost seemed to take flight, frantic motion bringing them to life, each gust of wing added more animation, more life to their frail golden frames.

 

At the full tilt of the swing he saw ten golden peacocks floating around him, blurred ever so slightly by the speed of their own motion but they were there nevertheless, gliding around him, with open eyes and wings. “Beta what would you like to be when you grow up?” Mr. Mehta’s crashing voice came above the creak of the hinges and the hum of the air zipping by. He had never thought of that before, it was if someone had brought to his attention a spider that was growing within him physically that he had never noticed until one of its long legs happened to pop out of his nostril. Weren’t kids supposed to be protected from these sort of life searching questions? He had always thought they were you were only supposed to ask them the petty stuff, if they were potty trained? Or they knew what their mother looked life from afar or how they planned to get through their grade. But silence would scarce suffice, nor serve him well, so he answered, with all the reluctance he could muster he wanted to be a scientist, an inventor of things perhaps.

 

 

Mr. Mehta had chuckled one of his long slow laughs and by the time he had finished the swing had almost come to a halt. A prophetic way to signal the beginning of the end. “But beta how can you be a scientist? You don’t even like math? And look at the way your eyes light up when you’re telling a story, you love English, then how can you be a scientist” till then the world had always existed for him as a whole. The idea of a binary division, of mutually exclusive polarities that existed, was an alien concept to him. “Beta either you can be a scientist and do math or you can be a story teller and love English, but you cannot be both.” By now the swing had become entirely still unlike his insides, they had begun to tilt and churn and propel themselves entirely off their axis. But he never questioned it, the conviction with which he had been told this, it made him accept it like one of the immutable laws of nature a man could be either but never both. The chasm between language and numbers was dug in front of him and for years he would find himself lost in the valley between them. “But I like making things” he had said, “I like knowing how they work” he had replied. “Beta look at the time you must be going home” his answers swept away under the rug of conventional wisdom, you just couldn’t beat it. He didn’t remember the climb down the stairs or the portico of Mr. Mehta’s house. Nor did he remember the forty steps home, all he had thought of, was he couldn’t be a scientist anymore, because he couldn’t do math and he loved stories too much.

At home he had slammed the door shut to his room, his mother had not yet returned home from work, he had tried to shut his eyes, to escape the world collapsing around him, to shut it out from falling onto him.

 

In the days that came he often dreamt of a small golden peacock that had come to life and flown away, in that moment of flight it had been everything it had willed itself to become, this dream would often persist, till someone inevitably shook him awake.

 

End.