An Ordinary Life

that had morphed into wrath and resentment, and so forth. In spite of being heavily intoxicated, their insecure egos remained intact; so several of them would not tell each other that they had gone for the same audition. However, they had also decided that they could stop their pretence for a while because today they finally had this open platform to collectively vent their frustrations. Somebody shared a joke. Somebody shared a story. One person called Sitaram Panchwani, whom we lovingly called Sittu Bhaiya, began singing. (Tragically, he passed away recently after a brave battle with blood cancer.) He was among the jolliest persons I have ever met. He was an excellent singer and dancer and an actor par excellence. But his ultimate trait was his great sense of humour, laced heavily with mischief, which showcased itself through a split personality of sorts. Like, for instance, he would participate in a chat, taking one person’s side and suddenly just like that, he would switch sides and take the other person’s side. When confronted that he had swapped sides, he would say, ‘Arrey! But I was on that bugger’s side all the while. His perspective is correct.’ And again, he would swap sides, creating enormous confusion and hilarity. Then he would randomly begin singing. In the backdrop, everyone was getting tipsier and tipsier, and the hours of the hot afternoon spread like paint until they grew into the hues of dusk.

Abhay Joshi, a good friend who also lives in Yari Road today, was quite a character among us. Another was a chap called Parminder—a talented writer who was once a professor in Patiala, Punjab, until he quit his relatively secure academic life to come to Mumbai and try his luck. Today he has disappeared, I wish I knew where to. Another character was Irshad Kamil, who is among India’s most famous lyricists today, having written lyrics for films like Rockstar, Chameli and Aashiqui 2. Altogether, there were slightly over thirty characters at Ghannu’s flat that day. We kept asking Abhay to shut the fuck up because Sittu Bhaiya was singing a lovely song and we’d rather listen to his melodious voice than to Abhay’s angst-ridden rant. But Abhay being completely intoxicated, had lost his senses. He simply would not stop. When we insisted that he do so, he lost his temper and went into a diarrhoea of abuses so awful that they are unmentionable. It was very unlike him. Neither did he ever get that angry nor did he ever speak like that again. We could barely recognize him. Just when we were trying to take it all in, he got up, turned, picked up the humongous pot of mutton and hurled it right across the room, throwing mutton everywhere and on everyone! As the utensil clattered against a wall, the hot curry dropped all over the pile of half-naked, drunk bodies which screamed all kinds of ma–behen gaalis in chorus. The poor little skeletal wretch of a guy who was sitting right near Joshi got the worst of it all. Boiling hot mutton was all over him. The people, the floor, the entire place now wore a writhing uniform of spicy, brown mutton curry. Everyone was stunned into silence. And it was in that pin-drop silence that Ghannu ultimately realized that his birthday was done for.

He stood next to the other star of the party, the TV. Sittu Bhaiya was next to it, lying in the middle of the pile of mutton on the floor. They could not dine, but gosh, did they whine! Mutton curry was in everybody’s eyes and they whined and whined and whined about it. Actors love to perform and struggling ones who are starving for a stage, even more so. The latter tend to perform with extreme exaggeration. The line between reality and antics sometimes gets blurred. At that time, a bit of their performance had truth, but more than half of it was drama. An actor in those harsh times also performs in the hope of availing of at least a few drops of sympathy from somewhere. Some were laughing, almost theatrically. Some were crying crocodile tears. Many were fighting. Nobody had any idea what the hell was going on. (Normally, we record videos but strangely none were taken that day. Maybe each one of us was too busy performing to be behind a camera.)

It was an ocean of chaos, not unlike a battlefield filled with confused soldiers. Somebody washed Sittu Bhaiya’s face with great difficulty. He came to his senses. Shortly after, he proceeded to leave and on his way, he winked at Ghannu. ‘Give me a Gold Flake at least, Ghannu!’ That was how our crowd was. Even as their eyes stung with traces of spicy mutton curry, they demanded smokes. The juxtaposition of Shakespearean comedy amidst rivers of personal tragedies was their existence.

Some more of the drunkards started to come to their senses and began scooping up titbits of the star dish; whatever they could salvage, they did. Miraculously, there were still leftovers in the pot. It then struck them that since they had come all this way at least they should eat whatever they could of the feast. They were still a little tipsy though. And somebody began to randomly abuse the chap who had cooked the mutton. They gobbled the food and giggled simultaneously. ‘You made this seventeen-layer mutton dish?’ someone asked, laughing in ridicule. The rest joined in the derision, not realizing in the flow of their collective sarcasm that they had gotten the number of layers wrong. ‘What is this! Seventeen layers? Or shit?’ One began, others followed. As if like a race in which you pass the baton on, the chain of mean criticism went on and on. Their mouths performed the oxymoronic double duty of spewing out scornful remarks about the very dish they were lapping up like hungry dogs. They licked their fingers and wiped their plates clean and even packed up whatever little