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The boy thought too much, he was full of ideas. And he told her everything. He was not like the other boys, he did not treat his mother as an idiot who made food. He loved talking to her.
Every day, Thoma tries to improve his mind, but he does not possess the Power of Concentration, he is a Wool-gatherer. He stares at the open textbook for hours and is distracted by the pain of the parallelogram, which is slanted for ever. His nails scratch the page to straighten its tired limbs. It affects him, the great arrogance of the Equilateral Triangle, the failed aspiration of the octagon to be a circle, the eternal suffocation of the denominator that has to bear the weight of the unjust numerator, the loneliness of Pluto. And the smallness of Mercury, always a mere dot next to a yellow
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One day he told me that the most powerful booze in the world is found in Kerala. He said it is called Jesus Christ.’ ‘It’s true,’ Ousep says. ‘Why is it called Jesus Christ?’ ‘If you drink it you will rise only on the third day.’
‘But an idea that overrates human character is bound to fail. Look around, Ousep, in every way of the world, only ideas that do not overestimate human nature succeed.’
‘Don’t hate me, son. There are people in this world who set out to make an omelette but end up with scrambled eggs. I am just one of them.’
The whole day, Thoma wanders down the lanes of Kodambakkam with a Sense of Well-being and with sympathy for everybody he sees on the road because Mythili does not know them. He chooses only the short lanes because he fears that if he walks down a long street, Mythili will appear at the other end and he will forget how to walk, and she will know that he is just an ass.
‘Because to fool a person, it appears, you have to first fool yourself. That is at the heart of all human influences. That is why the elder sister can make the younger sister hear the voices, and you cannot do that. A delusion is many times more powerful than a lie. The distinction between a delusion and a lie is the very difference between a successful saint and a fraud.
