Em and the Big Hoom

by Jerry Pinto

‘Yes. Dates. Clever of you to remember. Is there a fruit anywhere in the world like the date? I mean, have you ever met a disappointing date? I’ve met apples that do not crunch and I’ve met pears that are too hard. I’ve met grapes that are sour . . .’

I have discovered since that such effortlessness is not easy to achieve and its weightlessness is in direct proportion to the effort put in.

It doesn’t matter if you make a mistake. The only things we regret are the things we did not do.’

Depression seemed to suggest a state that could be dealt with by ordinary means, by a comedy on the television or an extravagance at a nice shop. It suggested a dip in level ground where you might stumble, but from which you might scramble, a little embarrassed that it should have caught you unawares—a little red-faced from the exertion—but otherwise unharmed.

Those who suffer from mental illness and those who suffer from the mental illness of someone they love grow accustomed to such invasions of their privacy.

This is the standard equipment of the neo-atheist: eager to allow other people to believe, unwilling to proselytise to his own world

How could one demand perfect submission from those who are imperfect? How could one create desire and then expect everyone to pull the plug on it? And if God were capricious, then God was imperfect. If God were imperfect, God was not God.

Love is never enough. Madness is enough. It is complete, sufficient unto itself.

‘Fight your genes’. Focus. Be diligent. Concentrate. Do.

It was obvious that no one thought much about fathers and fatherhood. Maternity was central.

they wanted to be doctors or engineers. There were no other professions in the world, no other professions to which one might aspire. There was only the building of bridges and the repairing of bodies.

At that point I realized what it meant to be a man in India. It meant knowing what one could do and what one could only get done. It meant being able to hold on to two patterns simultaneously. One was methodical, hierarchical, regulated and the outcomes depended on fate, chance, kings and desperate men. The other was intuitive, illicit and guaranteed. The trick was to know when to shift between the patterns, to peel the file off a table and give it to a peon, to speak easily of one’s cousin the minister or the archbishop.

‘If anyone ever does you a favour, you cannot forget it. You must always credit them, especially in public, especially to those they love and those who love them. You must pay your debts, even those that you can never fully repay. Anything less makes you less.’

Victories evanesce quickly enough. Failure hangs around you like a cloak and everyone is kind and pretends not to see it.

She was into pica, the desire to eat extraordinary stuff,

when you can, not when you want to.’

If love does not climb, it falls. If, like the flame, it does not burn upward to the sun, it burns downward to destroy.

It occurred to me then that the mad in India are not the mentally ill, they are, simply, mad. They have no other identity.

The Big Hoom came out and hugged me briefly. I could not remember this happening often. But she did not die often and things did not fall apart often. The centre did not stop holding often. Did it take death?

began to cry again but I managed not to sob. You can cry in public as long as you do not sob. Tears are transparent. If you’re walking fast, if the sun’s too strong, no one notices. Sobs intrude. They push their way into people’s consciousness. They feel duty-bound to ask what has happened. I

Outside his storefront, the undertaker had a sign: ‘We can take your dead body, anywhere, anytime, anyplace.’ Visually, this was represented by an aeroplane with a coffin dangling from it. Later, the undertaker would become something of a minor celebrity for his signboards. ‘When you drop dead, drop in,’ one would say. The next one said, ‘Mr Smoker, you’re the next one to come coffin in.’ This was followed by ‘We’re the last to let you down.’ And then would come the strange ‘Grave problems resurrected here.’