The Man who kept Winning

1. Moron & Me

There are a million and one ways to show that you loved your daughter more than yourself and Mama knew just one.

It was a rusted evening in the fall of '03; Lys came into my room, packed his bags and left.

I'd made the wrong choice. I'd married the wrong man. I'd slept a year and a half with a womanizer. Lys Moron regrets like if he's being living with a freak.
Have it your way ...Anisha is a better ... for you...
The last thing in the world, to believe all this won't happen with your life and it does.

I really didn't want to be an attorney. I'd a nicer career in mind...
I kept loosing at many corners. But he didn't...Sridhar wouldn't lose...ever...

Sridhar Nair. My good Good Friend. My not so Good Classmate. My neighbor from Trivandrum - the place where I come from. About 9,000 miles from Brooklyn - which is Here.

She looked out through the windows; saw Felda, her neighbor on her lawn smiling and pointing to the dry dandelions on the flower vase by her windows, asking why Neha hadn't cared to change them. I envy your life, dear Felda. It’s like everybody’s having a nice life and I’m not.

She just smiled back, looked down to her notepad and back at the vase.
She took the brown flowers smelled it once and pressed them in her left hand.

Her writer's cramp wouldn't let go easily. She scribbled something in a hurry and put the notepad into the drawer. The phone rang and she got up to get it.

'I can't believe that I'd be losing the case. The odds the law-suit would get nullified were like… like one against infinity, perhaps - and even then...
I can't believe ...’ she whispered in disgust, ‘this f’kin’ life can't be better’.

Neha was writing when Lys came; she could see Anisha standing on the driveway.

Anisha is a Black-American. I’m an Indian-American. She wasn’t beautiful by typical Indian Standards.


2. The Life and Times of S


I’m not suicidal. I’m Neha. I’m lanky.

His school-boyish look from the 80’s. The way he could cry for a trifle a reason.
May be, it was in her 7th grade that she saw him for the first time.
He’d just joined the school where she was studying.

Sridhar’s family had left Kolkata, and came to Trivandrum. His father was a Legal Advisor with the Muthoots Group. His sister and I were college-mates at the Government Law College there.

At school, he was nicknamed D Gr8 One. I called him - Pasu. He'd be bumbling with his Kolkata accent for Malayalam. Everybody liked Sridhar, though technically he was an Idiot Savant.

On what would've been Alaka's 3rd b'day (she died a year before), S(ridhar) came out into this world, and like anybody else would he cried, something he'd continue to do for the rest of his life, for no obvious reason, unexpectedly and loudly aloud. To where he forgot what he cried for.

3. Voices in my Head


The day when I asked mom about where dad was, I was starved.
I didn’t care to ask her again. I didn’t want to know.

There is always this quirky voice in your head going blah blah. Keeps on insisting something it knows I'd ignore. As if it's right every time. Now this is less sweet.

The wall of dried mosses, the rows of plantain growth, and the fields fawning with yellow paddy ... Trivandrum meant more – Sandy with her million dollar smiles; and a house she doesn't want to remember living in. And something of mama she hates.
Mama, why did you have to kill her?

Long back but not that long.
I was seventeen. She was nineteen.
I was in love. Sandy was a loner.

But she has always something to say, atleast to me even now. She slips into sleep and won't know whether she's dreaming. She has narcolepsy. It must be real hard for her. She says she keeps dreaming she had a twin named Alaka.

That day, the evening was a feverish yellow. He was sad and I felt sorry for him. Mithaa had left the morning. To somewhere, he thought he’d never see her again. I was looking into S’s eyes and he wasn’t.

Sridhar was singing -
'She comes in colors ev'rywhere;
She combs her hair/She's like a rainbow/Coming, colors in the air'


'You're gonna write music for ma movie'
Sridhar hadn't time for Neha.

Neha is Sandy's sis. Not the classic prank gal. She wants to be a filmmaker when she grows up.

4. Brooklyn Moorings


Brooklyn.
Neha Lysbeth is now an attorney with a firm in New York.
The Lysbeth for Lys. The Wrong Man she slept with and later married.

Lys the Freak.

Lys the Womanizer.

Her Hus, the Lys. They weren’t separate Beings.

Something so large had changed in her, since she left Trivandrum.
That Something lay rooted back in Trivandrum, at a Wrong Place, in a Wrong Heart.
But it’s early enough for another to happen …
She offers support to the victims of Munchausen's syndrome by proxy. She helped the government shutdown some pro-Munchausen's websites.

Smita, my mama is always angry; she keeps that look on her face always.
I remember mama to be always like that.


5. The black Bindi and Nose-ring


Sridhar didn't know why, but he kept winning.
Perhaps, he was the luckiest man on the planet.
Yeah, without the cry-thing. That was sort of a tic with him.

He'd sit with Mithaa, and could go on talking. She found him rather droll, and liked him a little more than her Dad, who told jokes he thought were so amusing that she always had to pretend she was laughing, but actually not. She realized that Sridhar had been a bit cranky before they'd met, and to her it really didn't matter and sometimes she even liked that.

It was once while at Neha's house that he found her more beautiful than ever and kissed her behind the pipal tree where she was sitting
‘We were playing Hide-and-Seek and I was following S.
... 'Sad, I should've seen that happen'.

Mithaa moved to Singapore, he cried.
He won the spelling bee, he cried.
He'd never lose. Not that he chose not to lose, but he never loses. At least with Mithaa he'd never been that infatuated enough to lose her. He only liked her a little more than Neha. Neha wasn't Mithaa.

I cleared up my Mailbox for the week-end. Sandy was writing almost like every two days. She’s desperate. And I can feel that here in my heart.

Sandy's e-mail.

Dearest Neha, I don't know what's come over with me. I can't focus on my teaching job. I can't do anything. My world hasn't been the same since you left. Plz come, if you'll. I think I terribly need to see you,
Sandy.

Lys wasn't the perfect husband. Or the perfect nut either.

'...can't think of a reason why we're still together'
'...'Anisha has the time for me that you haven't -,'
'We're like total strangers'

A bombshell.
Unexpectedly and loudly aloud.

Lys left Neha for his high school sweet heart, Natanisha, and drifted to LA.
'Your sense of humor and your smile doesn't bother me anymore, like
they used to. And look on the bright side - you can finish your damn writing any time'

The silence afterwards was awkward. She was looking at him and he wasn’t looking at her. He kept shaking his head, in little fits, like a toddler being force-fed spinach.
All she said to Lys left was, “You won’t find trouble getting laid, you – y-you moron!”

'... our relationship has strained', that was what Lys said last, unconcerned, like it didn’t make a difference even if he didn’t say that.
Neha pulled back the curtains and saw Natanisha kissing Lys as they walked the driveway.

That day, the evening was a feverish yellow. I was looking into S’s eyes and he wasn’t.

‘You used to love me, didn’t you?’
I was looking into his eyes that weren’t looking into mine, but on two cats pawing at each other at the far end of the Park.

Sridhar wasn't the perfect man. Or the perfect nut either.
Still in his mid-20's, the TIME magazine would dub him 'The Idiot Savant who kept Winning'.
His album, 'Gettin' on without N' has been Grammy nominated in 7 categories. His famous line from one of its songs, 'honey, rice paper money', had become a catchphrase.
Sitting there, at the Grammy’s, a row behind Bruce Springsteen and Led Zeppelin he hung his head, thinking about something else.

Smita cried,' I want people to believe me... Is that wrong?’
The Wrong Heart.
Now at a correctional facility, the Wrong Place doing time for overdosing her 2yr old daughter with time-release caffeine capsules, and killing her in the process.
I'm sorry Alaka. I love you.

Blank. This is sort of like a blur in Neha's head.
She's scribbling onto the paper napkin, at the restaurant sipping a shot of expresso.
The black bindi on her forehead smudged in sweat and the nose-ring was grimy.
Outside, downtown Westville -
Evening already and some brunettes were making a lot of hue, with
somebody who looked like Lys on the sidewalk. The voice in her head ear
wormed her to keep looking. She couldn't. She thought he was perverted.
I am glad I broke up with you. I can't be happier. I hate you.


She turned to the TV upon the wall.
'Oh, ev'rywhere/She comes in colors/She like a rainbow/Coming, colors in the rain'
On the TV, Pasu crying like a toddler into the mike, 7 Grammies in his hand.
It’d gone all quiet. Within her. But more quiet within the restaurant.
“Purr-rr, jolly-f’kin’ damness, who’s the new freak?”, somebody from behind her blurted.
She belched.
Unexpectedly and loudly aloud.
Everybody in the restaurant turned their heads to look at her.

Suddenly she was suffocating in the restaurant, and she got out, and walked.
Once she'd liked the loneliness, but now it was killing her.
'I think I loved you, enough to be somebody else's'. Pasu.

Blank.
Seashore after a high tide.
She threw the crushed napkin away, during her walk back.

It was Sandy who found out. Alaka's corpse was still in the storeroom mama never wanted us to open, locked in a big trunk.

‘Yep, I filed a lawsuit against my mom - and won. For child abuse amounting to murder. Of my sis.’

Dried black, what remained of skin stretched on loose skeleton.
I’m sorry Alaka.

Born Oct 13,
Alaka.
Sandy's secret twin. And my sis.
Died, somewhere in June '77.

..................................................................

For Sandy,
Who inspires.