35 and Sexless in Ahmedabad

35 AND SEXLESS

IN AHMEDABAD

ROBIN DAVID

To Sparky

CONTENTS

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

COPYRIGHT

ONE

For Kodak, it’s not just black and white

Photo giant to discontinue production of film paper

Updated 3:03 p.m. ET, 15 June 2005

ROCHESTER, NY: Eastman Kodak Co. said Wednesday it will discontinue production of black-and-white photographic paper by the end of the year and continue its transition to digital photography. Kodak spokesman David Lanzillo said the paper, used in traditional darkrooms, is produced at facilities in Rochester and Brazil. The company will continue to make black-and-white film and chemicals for processing. Demand for black-and-white paper is declining 25 per cent annually as the imaging industry transitions from film to digital, Lanzillo said. It is now betting its future in the digital terrain – from cameras, inkjet paper and online photofinishing to photo kiosks and minilabs, X-ray systems and commercial printers.

Anant’s blog the same day:

LOOKS LIKE it’s the beginning of the end for arty-farty photographers. Looks like even Kodak has seen the future and decided not to make black-and-white photographic paper any more. Don’t sulk, guys. Embrace the future. Embrace the world of Photoshop and digital cameras.

Until the dogs arrived, Anant’s worst nightmare was also his favourite dream. He would walk into a brightly lit large room bare-chested, with nothing but row after row of massive black curtains in silk hanging down from the ceiling, sweeping the floor. Anant would walk through the curtains in a slow, deliberate manner, allowing the silk to take his shape as it slowly lifted against the push of his body. The soft silk would brush against his chest and harden his nipples with desire. A warm cloud would form in his loins, giving him a stiff erection. The cloud would become bigger, filling up into his thighs and stomach as he walked into curtain after curtain. There was something in the brush of the silk that gave him goose bumps. He loved that feeling.

It was difficult to tell where this cloud-in-loins dream originated, but he suspected it had something to do with his childhood fascination of sucking his thumb after wrapping the pallu of Mother’s saree around it. He remembered only fragments from this aspect of his childhood. There was one memory of his demanding that Mother hand over the pallu immediately and she refusing, followed by his angry tantrum. There was another of him successfully wrapping the pallu around his thumb and watching a circus from the front row. If time had not distorted his memory, it was the Russian Circus in which women with almost nothing on twisted their bodies into unimaginable shapes. It had made Anant want to become an acrobat himself so that he could wrap his own body around the fleshy balls that the women turned themselves into. Mother had told him that he adored her silk sarees. The moment she wore one, Anant would insist on wrapping the pallu around the thumb and could spend hours sucking at it.

Occasionally, the cloud-in-loins dream would turn into something scary. He would try desperately to find an exit to the room with the hanging silk curtains, but there would be none. He would lose his way in the silk, which would produce an eerie flapping sound as he ran through it.

Anant had woken up in cold sweat in the middle of the night a few times after the nightmare, but he did not mind it. The warmth he felt in his loins during the dream was so alluring that he embraced the nightmare. The idea of a dream hiding a nightmare within it he found fascinating and was even considering an exhibition of photographs on the subject. ‘Crouching Dreams, Hidden Nightmares’ he had decided to call the exhibition.

But then the dogs arrived and, for the first time, Anant started to fear the things inside his head. Something was not right. For the first time he started to feel a kind of disequilibrium. It wasn’t dogs exactly. It was one three-legged stray, its right front leg amputated. The canine, a bitch, was chained to Anant’s ankle with a cheap silver link chain. She was small in size, had a uniform brown coat and large, imploring eyes. The bitch hobbled behind Anant, slowing his step, making it seem as if he had a limp. Anant was getting angry at having to drag her. He tugged at her collar again and again in the hope that she would hurry her step, but she seemed reluctant to be treated like a burden and insisted on sticking to her slow limping. The more he tugged at her, the slower her stride became. And then she sat down in the middle of the footpath. ‘Come on!’ Anant screamed at her and gave the chain an angry tug with his leg. But the dog did not move and instead tried to drag Anant – an animal at least five times larger – in the opposite direction. Anant ignored her and started walking, the dog sliding behind on her rump.

Anant was walking in the lane outside his flat in the Satellite area of Ahmedabad. On the left were bungalows in which he almost never saw people, just a tired old man in a dark blue and grey uniform standing guard. On the right were cars parked one after another. The sun bounced off the undulating bonnets like an out-of-control firefly, making him wince.

As he came out of the lane and on to the 100 Feet Road, he was certain a crowd would gather around and laugh at him for the state he was in. But what he saw made his heart sink. He was not the only one chained to a bitch. Everybody in the city had three-legged mongrels tied to their ankles dragging behind them angrily. There were dogs yelping everywhere as the people folded newspapers and hit dogs in the hope of making them walk faster, but there was only that much that the limping dogs could do. With their front legs missing, the dogs had a halting stride. As if they were jumping over a small hurdle with each step. Some of the people were carrying their dogs in their arms so they could run. There were people crying as their mongrels were not afraid of the folded newspapers and threatening to snap at their ankles. Pillars of rage and fear were erecting themselves all over the city as people tried to deal with their new state. There were cars screeching everywhere as men were caught in the middle of the road, trying to get their dogs to cross on to the other side, but the dogs had minds of their own, insisting on going to the opposite side. There were women sitting on roadside benches, sniffling and trying to unchain themselves, their dogs sitting quietly and looking at other dogs. Others were trying to convince the three-legged mongrels to keep pace by offering bits of biscuit for every step taken.

A city of angry hobblers. The dogs hobbling. The men hobbling. Anant and the bitch looked at each other in between the shouting and the yelping and the thuds of newspapers.

The next night he dreamt he was nailed to his mattress on the floor in the bedroom on his fifth-floor apartment. The bitch was tugging at his leg with increasing desperation. He wanted to get up but an invisible force pinned him down. The more he tried to push himself up with the help of his elbows, the more he seemed to sink deeper into the mattress. He was not even able to lift his head up to look at the bitch that was trying to break free of the chain with the desperation of an animal that had seen something frightening and wanted to run away. Anant started to panic. His heart started beating so hard, it could have made a hole in the mattress. He felt as if the beating had transformed into a massive stud that had pierced his heart and nailed him to the mattress.

When he woke up the next morning, Anant felt sick. His head was spinning, his throat was dry and felt like it had become fertile ground for a wild cactus garden. His body ached as if he had not slept in days.

The dream recurred for the third night straight. This time people walked up beside him on the street, shouting, ‘Someone is screwing with us; this can’t be happening!’ even as their dogs tried to free themselves of the chain with powerful yanking.

Anant decided it was time to do something about the dream. He had to find a psychiatrist or a psychoanalyst who could dissect his dreams and tell him if these were just random thoughts fusing together inside his head to create an abstract tale that had no meaning, or if the dreams represented some deeper, harsher reality.

There was, however, one problem. He did not know how and where to find a psychologist or a dream analyst. He could not ask his father, who, he feared, would take it as a moral victory. ‘This is what you get for abandoning your parents – nightmares,’ Father would most probably tell Mother in front of him in his cold way. He could not even ask his small group of friends and acquaintances, who would either show pity or assume that he was losing his head, and he had patience for neither.

So Anant sat down with his newly issued copy of Bluechip Yellow Pages in the hope of finding a human dreamcatcher. ‘Psychiatrist – See Doctor – Psychiatrists and Psychoanalysts … 301’ it said. ‘Psychologists … 407.’ Anant thumbed out page 301, still groggy, and dialled the first number he saw. ‘Dr M.N. Shah Clinic,’ the woman said in a deadpan voice.

‘Can I speak to the doctor please?’ Anant said.

‘Are you a patient?’ the woman asked.

‘Who else can it be?’ Anant was in a foul mood. He wanted answers, not questions.

‘A med rep,’ said the woman as if she could not tell the irritation in Anant’s voice.

‘Yes, I am a patient.’

‘Old case, new case?’

‘New.’

‘Name and age?’

‘Don’t you want to leave something for the doctor?’

‘I’m only doing my job, sir.’

‘Anant, thirty-five.’

‘Profession?’

‘Freelance photographer. Should I give you my kundali, marital status, annual income and paternal grandfather’s name too? Who have I called up, the doctor or the income tax department? Okay, so you see, I am still single. I shouldn’t be, but I am … And my father, Mansukhbhai, was a teacher. Just like my grandfather … Also a teacher … By that logic, I should also be a teacher, right? But …’

‘Please hold on,’ she said quickly as Anant took a small pause to catch his breath.

Dr Shah came on the line and said, ‘Yes, Mr Anant, how can I help you?’

‘I am having these nightmares recently, doctor. Can’t sleep. I was hoping to come and see you. Perhaps you can tell me something about these nightmares.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Analyse my dreams, tell me why I am getting them. I feel like I haven’t slept in a long time. My head is spinning with all kinds of weird things. I just wanted an appointment …’

‘Analyse your dreams, hmm. Where did you get my number from?’

‘Can I just get an appointment?’ Anant asked, irritated at having to answer yet another question that had nothing to do with his dreams. But the doctor did not say anything, waiting for his answer. ‘The Yellow Pages … I got your number from the Yellow Pages.’

‘Ah, see now I get it. You, my friend, have called up a proctologist, not a psychologist.’

‘I have called a what?’

‘Piles expert,’ said the man calmly. ‘I am an expert in stapling piles with the latest technology available to mankind. The last thing you want me to do is analyse your dreams,’ he added and started laughing. ‘I can only treat the nightmares that come out of people’s anal cavities.’

‘I am sorry. I …’

‘Not your fault. You see, the Yellow Pages have proctologists just before psychologists. You didn’t check carefully.’ There was a small pause and then he added, ‘I mean I can analyse your dreams, but please don’t take any decisions based on my analysis – you know … anal-ysis …’ It was obvious he was laughing.

An embarrassed Anant was about to put the phone down but Dr Shah was in a mood to talk. ‘Come to think of it, don’t you think dreams are like piles?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Yes, you can’t sit on them. You have to stand up and act.’

‘Thank you, doctor, for your enlightening insight, but I am not sure it can help me right now,’ Anant said and put the phone down quickly.

He looked at page 301 again. ‘Specialist in painless surgery for piles, fistula, fissures and endoscopy,’ Dr Shah’s ad read. Psychiatrists were in the next column.

Anant rubbed his eyes and washed his face with cold water to make sure he did not make a mistake this time. He was hoping to see the images floating in front of his eyes swirl down into the drain with the water – the cleavage of a news reader on TV, the lyrics of ‘Hey Jude’, Father’s cold face, the three-legged bitch – but nothing swam out. It was as if the images had dipped their feet in the water and were watching Anant struggle with them, like spectators. ‘Dr Arvind Jhrokhawala MD (PSYCH) – Consulting Psychiatrist,’ the ad read. He called up. Dr Jhrokhawala heard him out and then said, ‘Look, are you one of those people addicted to sleeping pills who make up stories because they want a prescription?’

Anant could not believe this was happening to him. ‘Did I say anything about sleeping pills?’

‘Because I get many like you and I am not that sort of doctor. You know what, I will give you the number of a de-addiction centre which is …’

Anant put the phone down. It felt as if this was an extension of the chained-bitch nightmare. As if the bitch had threatened the doctors not to give him any answers and ensured that

the absurdity continued even after he woke up. But then he decided it was one of those days when nothing was destined

to fall into place. He decided to give it one last try to bring

back some order inside his head. One last psychologist on

page 401.

‘Yes, let us talk about your nightmares,’ said Dr Angana Patel in an accent that gave the impression she had studied in the US. ‘Why don’t you see me Thursday at noon?’

‘Thursday? That is six days from now.’

‘Yes, is there a problem?’

‘Can’t we meet earlier? I mean this is an emergency.’

‘What is the emergency, Mr Anant?’ Dr Patel spoke in a cold monotone that had no peaks or troughs.

‘I told you I am afraid to close my eyes at night. I fear the nightmares and the form they will take if I sleep …’

‘Frankly, Mr Anant, half of Ahmedabad can’t sleep at night these days. In fact, you know I’d be a millionaire by now if all those who suffered nightmares had consulted psychologists and you would have had to take an appointment two months in advance. The fact is that they don’t. That makes you a lucky man. I can fit you in on Thursday.’

Anant could not tell whether it was Dr Patel’s cold tone or her reference to money that turned him off, but in the end he decided not to keep his appointment on Thursday.

It was time he analysed his own dreams.

TWO

It is important to note here that Ahmedabad was built on a myth that should give dogs nightmares. Apparently, Sultan Ahmed Shah, after whom the city has obviously been named, had seen hare chase away dogs along the barren banks of the Sabarmati and decided there was something special in the waters of this thinly flowing river that made the hare such nasty creatures. Such wicked waters deserved a capital city, he told himself, and shifted base from Patan to build Ahmedabad in 1411.

In his heart, Anant knew what the bitch dream stood for. It was not difficult to decipher it (or so he thought). He had been dragging unfinished business from his past for far too long, and now it had come to haunt him.

But before he analysed himself, he wanted to be certain he was not reading too much into something that was simple. He did not want to raise profound questions about himself until it was necessary. It was not fair to question one’s beliefs for what could be perfunctory dreams.

For instance, Anant, who had never owned a dog, had noticed that other people’s pet canines maintained a studied distance from him after wagging their tails at him initially. They were wary of him. Except, of course, the overly friendly kinds that humped the leg of anyone who dared to cross their path. Until now, he had not paid attention to this detail, assuming it was his lack of knowledge of how to pet dogs that made them maintain distance. But now he started to wonder if there was a connection between his indifference and the bitch of his dream.

Revenge of the dogs.

What if dogs had prepared a directory of all those who treated their kind indifferently and decided to haunt them with pesky three-legged bitches until they showed respect?

He decided to find out if he was the only