Serious Men

by Manu Joseph

That men, in reality, did not have friends in other men. That the fellowship of men, despite its joyous banter, old memories of exaggerated mischief and the altruism of sharing pornography, was actually a farcical fellowship. Because what a man really wanted was to be bigger than his friends.

Traditionally on the Worli Seaface, infatuation fondled and love cried. He was terrified of that love.

‘What is the saddest sight in the world? A couple weeping together. At their failed love, or at the ruins of their home demolished by the municipality, or at the funeral of their child. There is something about a man and a woman weeping together. Nothing is more heart-breaking.’

He preferred the intelligence of women, which was somehow subdued and efficient, to the brilliance of men, which often came across as a deformity.

‘The heavens speak very softly to the Earth, Madam,’ Ayyan

‘From the point of view of pure chemistry, it is more miraculous to make wine into water than water into wine. But he did not do that. Because

if he had gone to someone’s house and converted their wine into water, they would have crucified him much earlier. He knew, Jana. He knew making water into wine was a more popular thing to do. Searching for extraterrestrial signals is like that. It is more glamorous than searching for pulsars. Lay people love it. Journalists love it.

‘Hope,’ Acharya said, with bitter memories, ‘is a lapse in concentration.’

The end of an ox is beef, the end of a lie is grief.’

‘Everything that people do in this world is because they have nothing better to do,’

The success of an old man lies in not wishing for company.

His wife for forty-two years, and forever his email password, held the cup calmly in one hand as she watered a dying creeper with another. She

‘Just because there is a problem, it does not mean there is always a solution.’

He saw in her the unmistakable insanity of formidable women who longed to crumble.

He wanted to tell her that she should never be sad because to be sad was to be afraid. And to be afraid was to respect the world too much. The world was not a scary place, he always told her. It was full of ordinary people who did ordinary things, even though some of them went in cars and lived in very big homes and spoke in English.

Reservations for the low castes in colleges is a very unfair system. To compensate, let us offer the Brahmins the right to be treated as animals for 3,000 years and at the end of it let’s give them a 15 per cent reservation—Vallumpuri John

Don’t ask him to become an engineer or some rubbish like that. Keep your relatives miles away from him. Do you understand?’

‘I have been inside your mind,’ Acharya said.

It frightened him, the thought of living with a woman for a whole lifetime without telling her that he had once fooled her.

In the world that lay outside his home, there was no right or wrong. Every moment was a battle, and the cunning won. But his home was not something as trivial as the world. To fool Oja into believing that her son was a genius was a crime, a crime so grave that it did not have a punishment. But the game was also a magnificent lure. He loved it.

The tragedy of mediocrity is that even mediocre people shake their heads and mull over how “standards are falling”. So don’t mull. Just know when you’ve to get out of the way. Most of you will be sideshows, extras in the grand unfolding of truth. That’s all right. Once you accept that and let the best brains do their jobs, you will have done your service to science and mankind.’

So it is with all sudden lovers who believe that their torments will vanish in the morning, but inevitably it is already morning when such a convenient consolation comes

“Maybe we cannot understand physics at the quantum level without understanding other things which are not considered physics today.

The fate of every love story, he knew very well, is in the rot of togetherness, or in the misery of separation. Lovers often choose the first with the same illusory wisdom that makes people choose to die later than now.

‘But you’re still my email password.’

Ayyan felt like a character in an art film. Nothing happens for a while, and nothing happens again, and then it is over.

Adi, despite the misfortunes of poverty, would somehow have to find a way to get into an engineering college. And then ensure that he did not spend a single day of his life as an engineer. Because everyone would tell him then that the real money was in MBA.

‘During a Cosmic Ancestry seminar, I said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s my deepest belief that all life on Earth came from outer space, not just my wife.”’

‘It’s not only the sad who go mad, my child, it is also the happy.’

‘When I was your age I was so smart that if you wanted to kiss my arse you would’ve had to take an entrance exam.’