The Happy Prince

I can't speak for the kids today, but children of my generation were exposed to a myriad of stupid, inconsiderate questions. When young – who do you love more, your father or your mother – usually asked right in front of your parents. Seriously, what’s your fucking business? You do not care beyond the cheap thrill of making a child squirm.

A little older, it became the self-righteous – what rank do you hold in class?
“First from the last,” I often replied without blinking, my shadow giving them the middle finger. Sometimes I would ask back – with the sweetest of smiles – what rank they held in school or college. They usually changed the subject or lied. Once, I witnessed how an ageing Oriya IAS officer was competing with a fellow Oriya ex–uncle-in-law (a retiring professor) about always being the topper. When the latter said he was first in everything except handwriting and drawing, the officer solemnly declared he was always first in those subjects too… Two old coots arguing who was better in drawing in kindergarten! Both epitomes of the Indian middle-class success story.

A little older still, the question shifted to what is your aim in life. I suppose saying “losing my virginity” was not an acceptable reply. Saying “I do not have a clue” usually brought on a long motivational lecture, often from someone who, at best, was a primary school teacher or a minor bureaucrat. So I said “scientist” in school, then “journalist.” Sometimes I was simply rude – just to shut them up.

Even early on, I could already sense the insecure bravado, the showing-off, the loud name-dropping among our well-off or highly placed family acquaintances. I knew for certain that being ambitious, rich and powerful was not in my cards. The same applied to the so-called security of a government job or the corporate life bullshit. As for doing business – I still cannot sell a potato to my employees or my mother.

The foundation of this line of thought was laid by Elia Kazan’s novel, The Arrangement, which, to my father's chagrin, I read at fourteen. Honestly, it was the naked blond in the office chair on the cover which made me pick it up. Nonetheless, the message was clear -  Success is just a house of cards. 

The protagonist, a self-made man, lives the rich, successful life because his wife expected it from him. But becomes truly free only the day he goes AWOL. He flies his plane around a skyscraper, gets grounded and becomes infatuated with his young assistant who doodles phalluses in her notebook out of boredom during meetings. Meanwhile, he discovers his wife is sleeping with her therapist, his daughter with practically everyone else, and his son is also some kind of fuck-up (don't remember what type).

If The Arrangement made me question things, Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea nailed it – life is one relentless struggle, and it is always stacked against you. So let us not wear masks or pretend it is grand. My long-suffering class teacher in high school used to shout and plead, “Ravi, this life is a rat race!” I would reply, “But Ma’am, I am not a rat!”

While she alluded to competitiveness, I always saw rats as synonymous to hustlers. Never was one, never shall be, and no matter how much they sex-up the term these days. For me, the only good Hustler is the one that comes printed.

No wonder they ban books. My favourite example: Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince and Other Stories – once banned for being “distressing and morbid.” Well, that book made even Old Man and the Sea feel like a holiday in the Caribbean.

No, I do not do class reunions either.