Crushes, Chintadripet, and Cinnamon
And it begins
Dear reader,
The Chintadripet MRTS station has cavernous roofs, semi-darkened pathways, and no human beings. It is a massive structure, and in the city, it is like one of those places that remained invisible in plain sight. No one came there, except me, or at least it seemed like that almost a decade ago. It was close to my workplace, and I was always looking for different public transport options. Growing up in Mumbai does that to you; almost all of my friends didn’t know to drive, or learned only as an adult.
One day, as I trudged through the station, I saw a piece of paper swirling in the air. I stopped awhile, looking at it, and I was intrigued. What if someone sent me messages this way, I thought? Secret messages that would seem like rubbish to everyone else, but were meant for me, special missives from a parallel universe. I think my breath caught – it was the beginning of a story. A fantasy set in Chennai where Chintadripet station is a major landmark. I walked, and kept building it in my head.
Some months later, I picked up ‘Looking for Jake and other stories’ by China Mieville, and lo, there was a story with that premise – what seems like rubbish is actually messages. That there are no new ideas set in like sundown. I was also happy because here was an author who made me marvel at his mind. A new crush.
China Mieville said in an interview that he challenged himself to come up with the most fantastic creatures. A moth that ate dreams. A colony of beings who made communal art with their bodily fluids. It was as if ‘what if’, the question that spurs most fantasy was too flaccid – he seemed to tease, why not?
I devoured his books. I was someone who had never read any fantasy, but his version of fantasy appelaed to me – it was set in a city, it was political, and it felt like immersing yourself into a thick dark amniotic fluid – you always awaited the birth of a familiar.
A few months into the lockdown, I started to read Embassytown. The story uses concepts from linguistics and the plot points seemed to be research questions. Mmm, was the feel – let us sink fangs into this gourmet delight. Except, it wasn’t quite so; I could not figure out what happened. It was as if someone had forgotten the salt. My mind kept telling me clever, oh how clever. But by now, clever wasn’t enough.
I thought about it awhile, and realized that clever wasn’t enough. Intellectual arousal does only so much – you need the wooing and the sly glances, you need the slide of fingertips on warmed skin, you cannot do sums while orgasming (though some cultures advise you to do so). Where is the dil? Where is the understanding of what it is to be human? In being clever, there was something elemental that seemed to be missing.
It was the same feeling I had after watching Super Deluxe. Oh, so clever. You can see the mind at work, devilish, delightful. And yet, it left me cold. The women in Super Deluxe fit into a one-line description. Samantha – she who has slept around. Beyond that, I am unsure of who she is, what are her motivations, and why she (seemingly) buys wholeheartedly into the guilt of cheating. Jyothi – she who has waited around. Beyond that, I am unsure of who she is, what her motivations are, and why she (seemingly) docile and dutifully accepts both Manickam’s absence and Shilpa’s presence. Lila – she was a porn-star. Beyond that, I am unsure of who she is, what are her motivations, and why she (seemingly) seems sure of her choices.
It was as if this clever, clever teenage boy’s mind cooked up some what-if questions – what if you found your mom was a porn star? What if your illicit lover died during an orgasm? What if your long-lost father returns home as a transwoman. These are tantalising premises, but they need characters to fill them out, and somewhere what I saw were narrative devices rather than characters.
Imagine this – Lila is shooting a porn movie with her co-star, who like the boy I sat once with in an exam farts when he is nervous. While making love with her boyfriend, Vembu suddenly has this urge to paint something and pulls out. Erm. A brush. Jyothi pulls out some old sweets from the fridge, scrapes the top off and offers it to those wag-tongue women duo. A little bit of attention to these women, their minds, their motivations would have added more muscle.
I have had my fair share of crushes on clever teenage boys, but now, it just feels like drinking paan-flavoured mojito – a giggly memory with the reassurance that it is over, and you have grown up, and you don’t need alcohol to feel high.
Ps: Why cinnamon? For while thinking of crushes, I thought of a certain doctor who lives in Colombo, whose clinic smells of cinnamon and white (yes, colours have scents too), and whose gentle presence soothed an excruciating shoulder ache. He figured out what the problem was, and he calmed both the inflamed muscle and my mind.
Notes:
I don’t have links in the text because it is easy to get distracted. And I don’t want you running away to another page. Here they are:
Looking for Jake and other stories, China Mieville - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10755520-looking-for-jake-and-other-stories
Embassytown, China Mieville - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9265453-embassytown
Women, Fire, Dangerous Things, George Lakoff - https://www.goodreads.com/book/photo/53336.Women_Fire_and_Dangerous_Things
Super Deluxe - https://www.netflix.com/title/81128584