Let’s face it, people may watch a random film without relating to anyone in it, but not TV serials. Hence, the ever-suffering strong woman with a heart of gold in soaps, tailor-made for a predominantly female audience.
For me, since school, it was Mr. Spock. Tall, fit, logical, cool vampire ears, a deadly shoulder grab, and zero interest in women, basically everything I wasn’t, except the last part. Most girls around me seemed to think I was just as alien anyway. With "The Next Generation", Spock became Picard, still logical, aloof, single, but more human. His interest in women? Strictly intellectual equals. My loyalty shifted accordingly.
Fast-forward a decade. I was at my parents’ place when an early morning call woke me. An acquaintance, an aspiring politician from a neighbouring state, with a request. Not the kind anyone wants to hear first thing in the morning, and one most would refuse right away.
By then I had already hit rock bottom in Goa, the second or third time in life. So I became a regular visitor to my hometown again, not to borrow money from my parents, but to peddle fibreglass boats made by a “boutique” manufacturer in Goa. A man I once considered a good friend. To his credit, he worked with his hands, cared about quality, spoke elite boarding school English and wore a permanent lost-boy look that women love, all of which made his stories of betrayal sound believable. But parties, beautiful people, and Instagramming women were his weakness. First he worshipped and then impregnated, three different mothers, and the last I heard he had ended up playing housekeeper to a female TV celebrity. It did not take long before I joined his list of people who had supposedly betrayed him.
Bridges burnt, but my commitment to boats remained.
It was during one such visit that I met the aspiring politician from Meghalaya, freshly defeated in the MLA elections. His request was grim and simple. The nephew of one of his main supporters, a village headman, had been murdered in Guwahati. His people needed help identifying and retrieving the body from the morgue. I didn’t hesitate to say yes, washed, grabbed a bite, and headed for the Guwahati Medical College Hospital morgue, making calls along the way.
If hell had an entrance, this place would qualify. Tucked behind the hospital, facing the sewage “non-treatment” plant, the place was an open war zone between stench and sanity. Untreated sewage, hospital waste, stagnant filth from across the road fighting for olfactory supremacy with the foul cocktail pooling on the ground from the morgue, refrigeration run-off, corpse juices, and formaldehyde. And if your nose somehow adapted, you still had to deal with the staff, reeking of boozy breath and unwashed bodies, eyes bloodshot, shuffling around like ghouls between meals.
I arrived early, parked at the gate, stood leaning against the car, lit a cigarette, and dragged slowly. A man dressed in black, with dark shades, with a black SUV, calm and expressionless, tends to unsettle people. When the investigating cop arrived, I called him aside with the casual authority of a senior from another department. Offered him a cigarette. Asked about his village and hearing it is less than 20 km from my ancestral one, promptly elevated him into a relative. I told him politicians from Meghalaya were involved, so best “we” finish off this sordid affair at the earliest, and asked him to ensure things went smoothly. He complied.
The villagers arrived, identified the body, wept, and took it away. The cop blocked the usual attempt by the morgue ghouls to pressure them into the costly, supposedly mandatory formaldehyde injection for the already decaying corpse. “Sir won’t be happy,” he said, indicating in my direction.
More police showed up. Among them, the prettiest young lady officer I had ever seen, almost certainly on her first visit to hell’s gate. Within seconds, she was overwhelmed, eyes watering, fighting nausea. I called her aside and told her to stand still and breathe, to let the senses adjust. Forcing it would only make it worse.
I already heard envious tongues wag, “Even in a morgue, he can't resist gabbing with a cutie.” I asked her, “And what fate brings you here?” Through a face towel pressed to her nose for the smell and to soak up tears, she replied in a timid, distinctly feminine voice, “It’s indeed my bad fate, sir. It’s called duty.”
That brief moment, her lovely face and feminine energy, even if draped in a cop’s uniform, almost made my visit worthwhile. I did not want to burden myself further, wondering how long her youthful fragility would last. Everyone hearing about my experience gave the same verdict, she must have rejected a superior’s advances to be assigned morgue duty.
It was during this episode that Delhi called. Someone was interested in my work with industrial fuels, especially fuel emulsions, and wanted consultancy. A field I had already abandoned. I had learned the hard way the difference between building a technology under your own authority and trying to sell and implement it in someone else’s setup. Two different worlds. Plus, I was a lousy salesman.
A few months later, I landed in Delhi to work for a duo trying to enter the clean industrial fuels space, something I had spent years perfecting. The offer was too good to be true, as such offers always are. One was a serial conman on his 16th or 17th venture. The other, principled and honest, was a self-appointed management guru who devoured business books and ran coaching sessions which I dubbed his Mutual Appreciation Club.
They over-promised and under-delivered. I stayed because I had no options. Instead of being the innovator or QC lead I was supposed to become, I found myself working in a fanless, toiletless shed in Mundka, West Delhi’s bleakest industrial corner, in peak summer, processing tons of shadily acquired black bituminous HFO. Earlier, some Russians sold them poorly functioning equipment for ₹50 lakh, or over five times their actual worth, in all probability with the connivance of the conman. So I had to design, built, and assembled a complete new processing unit, thereby becoming both the mechanic and the electrician. Occasionally getting drenched in fountains of warm HFO from leaking pipes, yet my visiting card first said "R & D Head" and later "CEO".
The guru loved emotional “catharsis” in weekly meetings. One day he asked everyone to name a favourite film and explain why. I went first. "The Bridges of Madison County", because to me, it is the most honest portrayal of brief adultery and enduring love. No one else seemed impressed by the film storyline or my enthusiasm.
My marriage had already ended with a mail-in divorce. At about the same time, thanks to Facebook, an old flame resurfaced. Married. Two kids. A sad-sack corporate drone of a husband. For me, she had always been “the one who got away.” I resumed our friendship and ignored all the red flags. Nobody’s perfect, I told myself.
Nothing happened. I do not break homes, however broken. She didn't signal anything either - the textbook Sati Savitri.
That bridge burned later. At her request, I spent nights helping her rewrite her PhD dissertation. She never bothered to inform me when she got her degree. When I asked, she just said, “Busy with kids’ exams, tuitions." Further trivialising my concern by adding, "Besides, what's the big deal? Everyone gets it in Gauhati University." Soon after, she cut off contact and began a very public affair with someone who, of all people, was a close friend’s neighbour.
I thus was subjected to a running commentary about her escapades, with her carefully cultivated image of a not-a-stitch-out-of-place lady flushing down the drain.
Burnt bridges, this time with dirty water.
Thereafter, I started saying my favourite film is "District 9". Aliens are safer than relationships.
Nonetheless, I often binged "House M.D." Yes, we both limp and like fast bikes and not known for politeness. Though I am no doctor, or genius, and definitely not a sociopath.
So I tell myself it is because of the compassionate and very pretty Dr. Allison Cameron character.
But dammit, I still love "Bridges".
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