18 Feb 2025 / Shooting the Breeze

Not Quite Major Domo But Close

I was having an extended conversation with a funeral expert, a post funeral expert actually, one who creates the sarcophagus over a grave. I was explaining the parameters of design for Vincent’s grave {see My Friend Vincent}. The deadly, deathly expert is in eager orbit around me now despite my remonstrations to leave me alone. I have tactically surrendered. The chap wants me to help him upscale his business and I have relented. Post burials, we shall offer the Full Monty. Everything from design, to epitaph, to fine-art execution, to negotiating the lease, to maintenance, to recitals, to commemorative event. We are also considering mediumship and séance services. All cut-to-size of course, for each bespoke client. The tagline I have suggested for this up-scaled business is: ‘When You Drop Dead, Drop In’. We shall be rather fastidious about our service: will not accept obnoxious people or those who have been nasty to animals or those we generally do not like. I don’t want money for enterprise and he cannot afford me. The trade-off is that he will “be available for any support I may require including running errands, hanging around with me in the field etc.” An odd equation you’ll think. I don’t think so. Let me explain: I have always wanted, but have never been able to afford assistants or personal secretaries. I have always wanted something of the sort, but pragmatism delivers a hard slap. Not one to give-away aspiration, I have devised ways of arriving at a state of being which comprises a beholden satellite. The only caveat is the Goldilocks Effect ---- neither to close nor too far and an equilibrium led disdain. The individual must be on-call, must be loyal to the requisite degree, must have practical and impractical value. Let me tell you how I began cultivating such specimens from a fairly early age.

 

I think I was fairly charming in my very early years and could induce fellow children with my toys. In the 1960s India, mechanized toys were a privilege. I had a few and thought nothing of sharing these with children in the neighborhood. They hailed me as rainmaker and flocked. I enjoyed their fickle loyalty. Early on, I learnt about human madness for possessions and cohorts. The overrule of having. I was happier being. And watching them within themselves. Later, I improvised and bridged the chasm by cultivating and nurturing side-kicks through a combination primed and equated through allurement, demonstration of superior intellect, projected affluence, material aggrandizement to the degree affordable, a breadth of demonstrated knowledge and finger firmly pointed at the moon. It is an altogether different, if most unfortunate, matter that whilst a wise man points at the moon, a fool looks at the finger. I must confess that in some exceedingly simple cases of acquiring, cultivating and deploying these retainers, I nourished them by indulgence (culinary treats, attire) sustained by value (advice) and carried along by habit of association. I do not have a significant one at present, but among the earliest such wingmen was a simpleton in the 1970s  called Munna. The only progeny of a diligent couple, proprietors of what loosely would be called a neighborhood ironing service. The colloquial Hindi, Presswallah, Munna was going around with a sweeper called Vimla. As an early supporter of matters of the heart, free love and such like, I was confidant-cum-advisor, including trips to very pedestrian weekly markets to buy pink (all shades from baby-pink to shocking pink) footwear {He was a foot fairy I think}. My value lay in lending him the odd rupee, my mother’s shampoo bottle, composing pidgin poetry for him to recite to lady-love. He reciprocated by warning me about my parents movements so that I could dash home and pretend to study, playing pranks on people and being a mobile warehouse for contraband --- water-filled ballons for Holi, junk eats from hawkers and information about gawkers who considered themselves unreciprocated Romeos ---- Munna was their love-letter courier. He became modestly prosperous to afford autorickshaw rides with Vimla and her favourite ice cream, graduating to cream cone from ice-candy on stick.  I was the informer-blackmailer and fancied myself as an easily convinced and very co-operative justice of the truth and reconciliation commission for illicit lovers high on hormones, hitched to public parks, aiding pollination in bushes. 

  

Another was S Kumar during the mid 1980s. Born premature, he was a diminutive but fiery Tamilian, exceptionally dark with an 18 inch waist which stayed consistent for all the years I knew him, an overgrown, heavily oiled ringlet of hair on his forehead (using my mother’s stolen hair curler), loud coloured clothes which jarred against his dark skin, and a green moped with yellow wheels. S Kumar was a genius with electronics and his contraptions, always in demand, could emit anything from air-raid sirens, to whistles, to bird sounds to laughter from south Indian movie tracks. All were suitably used. Seeing his potential, I cultivated him as wingman and groomed him on style. S Kumar was courier, confidant, dosa and sambhar cook, movie ticket procurer, masseuse and ludo master who punted cash. I was his cover and I had his back. In many a battle of brittle bones, I saved him from hammerings. He and I had chemistry and we were a team. We drifted as he moved house. Last heard, he had moved to Assam, married a cross-eyed widow and had become a pathetically grotesque outdoor caterer specializing in horribly ugly banquets.

 

Wingmen came with risks as well. In college I had a certain Mr. Mather (Mathur actually, with a terribly falsetto British accent). Incredibly short, short-sighted, rotound, he was a 19th century time-warp who sat on the front bench, took notes assiduously (I received weekly photocopies), was the custodian of pornographic material and occasional packs of grass, was my proxy for attendance (his singular strategic gift of ventriloquism) and his sponsorship of omelettes (literal) matched by my omelette du fromage (figurative). All this in exchange of protection from a student in residence whose mission was Mr. M‘s deliciously perfectly round bun of a bottom, slightly protruding with gentle suggestive and entirely involuntary jiggle as he hurried to class. The pervert was preoccupied with an obsession of buggering Mr. M. He offered compensation, promise of fun, oil massages, the pleasures of being a catamite and then, open threat of rape. M was a pasty pastry sort of chap, very studious, very well mannered and very sweet. He begged sanctuary and was admitted into the fold as sexual refugee escaping from buggery. The perpetrator was quelled and I suffered a broken rib. Among later day characters, R. Mahajan, an accountant I patronized. I liked the man, he was loyal, grounded, sincere and honest. His Achille’s Heel lay in the fact that he was a well-meaning fool. I indulged him in-between my several outbursts at his blunderings. I banished him, perforce, after he caused a series of significant financial disasters, each bigger in scale and impact than the once preceding it. Another one who I groomed was a Tamilian Brahmin (TamBram) who was to be my secretary in a very tony company I worked for. Actually, he was a force-fit I think. The man had flown from an embassy, fired a precision missile at the top-boss and I, most unsuitable of all, was told to “absorb the excellent Mr. NV”. For the love of God, I never knew how to “absorb” a full man. Worse, I had no inclination to. So, he became my secretary. I liked the man – David Niven moustache, fastidiously clean, well informed, an authority on curd rice and Carnatic music, gift of the gab and unrivalled ability to ingratiate himself with people. All sorts of people. The range was impressive and it was formidable. I fired him as secretary, wrangled a move northwards for him as manager, schooled him on the nuance of my craft and the essential necessity of being able to wing one’s way home. Never mind functional knowledge. That was craft, not so difficult to learn. The TamBram was excellent in his ability to keep people at bay, work the system, do the mundane and remain a good under-study. He was exceedingly grateful because besides material elevations I had helped wean him away from and then completely excise a terribly clingy lady who had him by the balls. I took him along to my next job – bigger brand, better prospects, wider fields of play and greater latitude for me to indulge in gentlemanly pursuits reasonably removed the bother of earning a living. Those were days of enlightened self-interest. I knew his rather slippery record with the opposite sex and laid down a ground rule – no women could work in my department, he had to hire only men who were bachelors and pliable to a dignified degree of servitude. I must admit here that I fancied myself as Professor Higgins. He zeroed in on a gangly dimwit beanpole who we both used, never abused, as man Friday. I still remember his excellent coffees brewed especially for me in complete violation of the rules, in the pantry. They could bring a dead man back to life, such was the jolt. Mr. NV, meanwhile, was excellent in ensuring that my afternoon siesta on the office couch was undisturbed. I have no idea how ---- I never asked, he never told. Everything hummed along nicely. In nicer weather, leaving the beanpole in temporary charge of work (as a door-stopper) we’d zip across to Jaipur in search of my dream run ---- a patch of land. There, we cultivated a local who fancied himself a singer (we encouraged him enough to last a lifetime) and bought the land. NV was impressed upon by me to buy too and we were now in a pact beyond a job. Things came to a head with the turn of fortunes. A global crisis forced my hand. We lost our jobs. He landed in SE Asia, married and became a house-husband. The partnership had run its course as all things must.

 

And then there was Francis d’ Costa (Mendoca actually, but I changed it to d’ Costa after convincing him that the latter had more character) Francis was henchman to a decadent debauch who owned a three acre bungalow in central New Delhi and it sat right across the street from my office. I had seduced Francis to let me park my car on the grounds. The seduction was achieved by hand-me-down clothes, pastries and rum. In return Francis would do a d’ Costa car-wash with Sunsilk shampoo stolen from the bathroom of his mistress who he hated. I finally helped solemnize his marriage at age 55 with a vegetable seller aged 60. There’s a photo somewhere of us three (the couple receiving my blessings).

 

Times went past…I moved away…There have been a few others since: Sanjoy C. who I took under my wing as he sallied forth to execute one mission or another. Gautam, whose job was easy – be a hanger-on in lieu of my patronage. Gagan A. who served as scout, side-kick, fixer, tea-arranger and newsman in exchange for an occasional cigar. I am now left with Maq the handy-man and Gajju the gardener. They too shall pass…and I shall finally be bereft of the benefit of batmen. Never called so, but treated thus. One must never underestimate their significance. Rare to come by, exceedingly useful to cultivate, a wingman is grist from Providence itself. You must deserve one though. And for that, the milk of human kindness alone is not enough.