Chapter I
On a certain day, some half-century before the present glorious age, a son was born to an impecunious couple in one of the lesser known slums of Bombay. He was the couple’s fourteenth child, and so far, the only one who had lived long enough for his parents to get a good look at him.
“What should we call him?” asked the mother, who, having not been blessed with a name herself, was fairly inexperienced in the department of naming.
“GK,” said the father, who had several names: one for every different kind of crime he perpetrated. Nine months ago on this day, he had been Rocky the Rapist.
“GK,” said the mother thoughtfully. “That’s a nice name.”
“Yes, I’m sure it is,” said the father unconcernedly. “Anyway, I have to leave you now. I have… uh… business elsewhere.”
“More women, you mean?”
“Yes,” said the father with a cough.
“Goodbye.”
The father nodded and left the little shack, taking with him every last penny the mother had to her name, as Sunny the Thief.
The mother, meanwhile, placed GK on the stove and went to sleep, the thought that newborn babies were capable of turning on the burner never striking her.
GK was burned to a crisp by the time his mother awoke the next morning. It was a gruesome sight that does not need any further description here.
The mother sighed and said, “Stupid kid.”
She gave the baby a bath, and decided to take it to the local doctor when she noticed that it wasn’t moving.
“H’m…” said the doctor thoughtfully, regarding the infant with his practiced eye. “Try giving him this.”
He handed the mother a bottle of some liquid medicine that had expired sometime in the early 1800s.
“Thank you, doctor,” said the mother graciously, returning to her shack with the bottle held reverently in her hand.
“Oh, I forgot to bring GK back,” she said when she turned to give her son the medicine and discovered that he wasn’t where he should have been.
Once GK was successfully retrieved, the mother opened the bottle of medicine, and the moment this act was performed the entire room was filled with the aroma of wine that has been allowed to age undisturbed since the time of the dinosaurs.
Seized by a sudden, inexplicable desire for the sweet-smelling liquid to grace her lips, and to taste fossilized insects that floated in it, the mother, as if in a trance, poured all the contents of the bottle down her screaming gullet, and died within the moment, her body falling disgracefully on the stove that was still burning, and catching fire instantly.
A young, black GK was left to fend for himself in a cruel world that had no room for burned kids.
Chapter II
GK grew quickly and learned just as quickly. He had potty-trained himself by the time he was three, learned to cook himself food (primarily rats) by the time he was four (having endured years of eating the squirming rodents live), begun earning money the way his noble father did by the time he was five, and saved up enough to enroll at the local school by the time he was six.
It was the first day of first grade. He cooked himself an undernourished rat on the same stove that had burned him and his mother years ago, and packed a used notebook and a cheap pencil inside a cloth bag.
“I’m going to school now, mother,” said GK softly to the burned, decaying corpse that sat in a chair by the only window in the shack. “I’ll see you in the evening.”
The school happened to be just another dingy old shack in the same slum. But it was special: there were two small rooms instead of one.
GK joined the rest of the slum’s children in front of the building, which towered over everything else in the slum, the chimney being a good eight feet above ground. He, like the others present, was waiting to be addressed by the Principal, the reputed and highly educated Mr. Nair, the only person in the history of the slum to have actually made it halfway through preschool before dropping out.
Mr. Nair finally emerged from the shack in his nightclothes, which amounted to virtunally nothing, and regarded the young faces before him appraisingly. Once satisfied that the minds before him were indeed vacuous enough to benefit from the old school, he said, “Welcome to School.”
It transpired, from the way students were ushering their parents forward to talk to Mr. Nair, that as a rule students were required to be accompanied by their parents on the first day of school.
Not wanting to be left out, GK rushed home.
“Mother,” he said, panting. “The people at school want to see you.”
Without waiting for a reply, which was singularly rude of him, GK dashed out of the shack, borrowed his neighbor’s wheelbarrow without his permission, and wheeled the decaying corpse along as quickly as he could.
The people at school, for some reason, did not take to the appearance of GK’s mother. Indeed, several of them screamed and fainted. There was violence and confusion everywhere.
At the end of the ordeal, GK and Mr. Nair were the only ones left standing amidst the sea of bloody corpses.
“GK, I have to tell you something grave,” said Mr. Nair in sepulchral tones. “You are hereby expelled.”
The words seemed to sting. Glancing down, GK realized it was a scorpion.
“Oh dear,” he said, sighing deeply.
Chapter III
GK pursued his education undeterred, exploiting his innate ability to steal – a trait he had got from his blessed father – to amass textbooks of every conceivable kind. He studied practically everything, but what really held his fancy was English.
Language had always fascinated him deeply: ever since he had realized that such a thing existed. He had taught himself the alphabet by surreptitiously spying on a class in the city during one of his visits to the old place, and ever since then… No; first he learned a few basic words. And then he proceeded to study the dictionary in painstaking detail, committing every word to memory, but making the mistake of not reading its definition, which as we shall see later, would prove to be the cause of many of GK’s woes. Right now, every book was open to GK. Except for one, which for some reason had a great lock on it, but GK didn’t give it too much thought.
One fine day, while he was exploring one of the finer aspects of Grammar, a black boy, about his age, maybe a little younger, entered the shack without invitation, sat down next to GK and began to solve differential equations.
“Who are you?” asked GK when he noticed the boy.
“I am RK,” said the boy, grinning toothily. “I like math.”
“Oh,” said GK, still staring at the boy askance.
“I noticed that you were also black, so I came to say Hi,” the boy went on genially.
GK shook his head sadly.
“Alas,” he said, pointing at his hide. “This is not meant to be black. I got burned when I was younger.”
RK’s mouth curled in an understanding smile.
“We could use bleach,” he suggested brightly. “I also study science, you know, so I know how to make bleach. Do you know what bleach is?”
GK did. After all, he studied everything. He wondered why the idea of bleaching himself had never occurred to him.
Within a few hours, GK and RK had successfully concocted a barrelful of bleach.
“I’ll go in first,” said GK, diving into the barrel and resurfacing a few moments later.
“This is a miracle!” he said in unconcealed astonishment as he glanced down at his skin, which had turned as white as an albino’s.
And then the acidic effects of bleach began to kick in.
“Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch…!” said GK in a single breath, hopping over to the nearest well and plunging himself into it. When he came back out, he was several shades darker.
He cursed.
“That was the manhole.” A slum’s manhole isn’t the cleanest place.
RK, meanwhile, acting on impulse, and in a desperate attempt to free his skin of its unsightly blackness, jumped, and went soaring through the air in a move calculated to take him straight into the depths of the barrel of bleach. He landed painfully two feet short of the target. He tried once again, revising the trigonometric equations he had conceived for the task, and this time managed to land in the barrel. He emerged a couple of minutes later, shaken but not stirred, and glanced excitedly down at his skin. He groaned in consternation when he found that that his skin was as black as ever. No difference at all. Unless you counted the fact that the bleach itself had turned black.
GK doubled over in laughter. He laughed so hard that he fell into the manhole again. He got out and continued laughing.
RK frowned.
“Hyperbola!” he yelled in indignation. “Don’t laugh!”
GK stopped laughing, but only because he had stumbled upon a startling discovery: the bleach did not seem to hurt RK.
“You are not hutt!” said GK incredulously. “Why are you not hutt?”
“I am not hurt,” said RK with a grin. “I am not hurt!”
“You are a thick-skinned buffalo,” said GK.
RK mathematically condemned GK by mentally differentiating him to zero before stomping off angrily.
Their blossoming friendship ended there.
Chapter IV
When GK turned 13, he prudently decided to expand his educational horizons by going to a high school in the city. He put on his best clothes (a dirty loincloth that had a very revealing hole where there shouldn’t have been a hole), gathered all his textbooks in a wicker basket, kissed his mother on her decaying cheek, and set off for the city.
Everywhere he went, people laughed. Twice his loincloth was pulled off by a mischievous waif. (The second time it wasn’t returned.) But GK, fortified by an overpowering desire to become educated, didn’t waste his thoughts on such trivialities.
When GK reached his dream school, which would have been named at this point had there been a name on the board that stood in front of the school gates, he was reprimanded at length by the security guard for indecent exposure, who, after simmering down a little, handed him a twenty-rupee note and told him to buy himself some clothes.
GK wasted no time in buying himself a set of third-hand clothes, and he returned to the school as quickly as he could.
“Look!” he said happily to the security guard. “Clothes!”
The security guard nodded approvingly.
“Good,” he said. “Now put them on.”
GK did as he was told, and then proceeded through the gates in the direction of the gargantuan school building.
He was early, he observed, seeing as he was the only student for miles.
Just as he was about to enter the building in casual strides, a man walked out of the shadows. He was short, thin, and noticeably hunchbacked. He had high cheekbones and deep-set eyes. A fierce looking mustache rendered his upper lip as well as the greater part of his face invisible.
“New student,” GK mumbled.
The man nodded.
“You’re late,” he said. “Class began an hour ago.”
GK apologized.
“What is your name, boy?” asked the man.
“GK.”
The man’s face lit up – literally. The oil lamp hanging from the doorway fell on his head.
After the fire had been doused, the man spoke again.
“I am FK, the English teacher. You missed English class this morning, so you will come to my office after your other classes are over.”
GK beamed.
“Oh yes, sir!” he said. “Yes, definitely!”
“Good. You have math now. Go to your class.”
GK hastened to do so.
His entrance into the classroom coincided with the teacher’s throwing a banana peel into the trashcan next to the door. The banana fell sizably short of the target. GK stepped on it. He slipped. Then he collided with the teacher, and the two of them went hurtling toward the opposite end of the room, where a window stood agape, ready for them. They flew out the window and fell into a pit of mud. The pigs, curious as to who these strange intruders were, began covering them with more mud and snorting gleefully.
When the members of staff finally arrived on the scene, it was declared that the math teacher was dead.
The students who were standing at the window and watching the whole thing take place whopped and cheered.
GK was their hero.
Chapter V
After all the expedient ceremonies connected with the hero’s welcome GK received were over, GK sat down in a chair in a corner of the classroom.
Just when the students were beginning to enjoy the free period, a tall skinny guy, manifestly a teacher, walked in.
“I am Rajesh,” he said. “Your new math teacher. I graduated from Seaside University last year with a PhD in physics.”
The class was silent.
“Now,” said Rajesh, an ominous expression on his disproportionately large face. “Take your notebook. Integration I will start.”
One student in particular, who had heard of the thing called “integration”, knew that it was not something that was ordinarily taught to eighth graders, and objected.
“Sir,” he said with a frown. “We are in eighth grade.”
Rajesh was indignant.
“Stand up!” he shouted, his boomingly loud voice making the windows rattle. “What is your name?”
“Llamapriyan.”
“Meet me with your parents tomorrow.”
“Sir,” said Llamapriyan, “my parents are dead.”
“Bring your grandparents tomorrow.”
“They killed my parents.”
“But are they alive?” asked Rajesh. “That’s the real question.”
“Yes,” answered Llamapriyan with some misgiving.
“Bring them tomorrow,” said Rajesh. “Now you take your bag and get out of the class.”
Llamapriyan could not defy a direct order from this odious man, who looked as though he had several murders to his name himself.
As soon as he left the classroom, a cell phone started ringing somewhere.
“You!” Rajesh bellowed, pointing at GK.
“Me?” asked GK incredulously.
“Texting your girlfriend in class? Misusing the cell phone?” Rajesh shouted.
GK thought the charges were invidious, and he wanted to say this, but Rajesh started yelling again.
“Get out of the class! Bring your parents tomorrow.”
GK sighed. If he had to, he had to. He wanted to say that brining his mother to school wasn’t safe, because, judging from past experiences, she had a tendency to inspire a sort of uncontrollable desire to get violent in whoever laid eyes on her.
He didn’t get the chance to do so, however, since Rajesh said, “Get out!” with more force than ever.
Chapter VI
On his way back from school, GK passed a pet store. He stopped and took a good look at the place. The sight of the caged birds and animals rent his heart. He swore to God (a rock or a coconut depending on the occasion and his mood) to emancipate the poor creatures.
He marched into the store with an air of purpose and as much dignity as his underwhelming physique would afford him, demanding to speak with the storeowner.
“That would be me,” said the man at the desk without much interest, choosing instead to meditate on the subtle intricacies of the nonexistent tapestry on the wall opposite instead of attending to his customer. It wasn’t that he lacked a proper sense of the proprieties: it was just that he was indolent.
“Oh,” said GK. He hadn’t foreseen this. He had expected to be greeted by a meek-looking attendant who would lead him to the storeowner, and had prepared his lines accordingly. Nevertheless, feigning equanimity, he said with great pompousness, “Good sir, I want to question your treatment of these poor”—the shopkeeper became momentarily interested in the way he said the word—“animals. It is deplorable, damnable, and…” GK shuffled self-consciously as he tried to come up with an imposing word to finish the chain. “Bad,” he said after much reflection.
The storeowner frowned.
“Boy,” he said. “You speak English.” It was a casual observation, and his tone remotely hinted at incredulity.
“Yes,” said GK, puffing up his chest proudly. “But you digress. You will release all these poor”—again the storeowner looked at him curiously—“animals, you… canni-ball!”
At the sound of the magic word, or so it transpired, a parrot which had hitherto not spoken, spoke.
“Polly want a ball!” it said, flapping its wings around wildly inside its cage, which was placed on a stand next to the storeowner’s desk.
GK looked positively astonished at this display of talent.
“Oh,” said the storeowner, looking abashed. “This is my gay parrot, Yashasvi Venkat.”
GK was profoundly interested now.
“Hello,” he said gregariously to the parrot. “I am GK. What is your name?”
The parrot squawked in irritation.
“Polly want a cock!” it said.
“You can have him if you like,” said the storeowner, who seemed to have slid several inches down in his chair. “I’m tired of this perverted bird.”
A series of nebulous thoughts flitted through GK’s tortuous head as he tried, and failed, and tried again to comprehend what the storeowner was saying to him. He was actually going to be the owner of a gay parrot! he realized in the end.
GK spent a couple more moments in silent reflection.
“Gay” meant “happy”, so that would make Venkat, as GK so sagaciously inferred, an imperturbably happy bird. Everyone liked happy pets. And on top of that, Polly seemed to be an early riser, since it was fond of roosters (cocks). As they say, the early bird catches the elephant… or something like that. It was by far the most wonderful thing GK had ever heard.
“I’ll take him!” he said, almost drooling.
“Parrots usually cost five hundred rupees at this store,” said the storeowner, now perceptibly a lot more cheerful. “But I’ll give you Venkat for free.”
Normally people would have raised the eyebrow of suspicion in response to such a specious gesture of magnanimity and go along the train of thought that suggested that either the shopkeeper was genuinely a nice guy, or the parrot was an unbearably unpleasant companion to have at one’s side.
GK, however, didn’t conceive either of these notions, so absorbed he was in the parrot he had newly acquired.
“Come, Venkat,” said GK happily as the store owner hurriedly handed him the cage and heaved an ill-concealed sigh of relief.
Just as he was walking out of the store, however, he was struck by a sudden realization.
“Mr. FK wanted me to attend an extra class with him today!”
Chapter VII
“You’re two hours late,” said FK with a disapproving click of the tongue as GK entered his office. It didn’t escape his notice that the boy had been insolent enough to bring in a caged parrot.
A caged parrot!
What few people knew was that FK was secretly an animal rights activist who deplored cruelty to animals in every sense of the term. His past escapades included an ambitious but rather badly thought-out attempt to release every one of the fourteen tigers from the city zoo, with the result being that the fourteenth tiger, which just so happened to be a man-eater, took FK’s left arm with it.
But GK didn’t know all this, and when it struck him that his English teacher was one limb short, he speculated in silence. Failing to arrive at any sort of conclusion, he said, “What happened to your left arm?”
“Don’t prevaricate!” snapped FK. “And if you really want to know, I sacrificed it for a noble cause.
GK’s respect for the man grew.
“But that is neither here nor there,” said FK, rummaging through the contents of the drawers on his desk for something. He pulled out a great dusty book from one of the drawers. “Here it is: English Grammar for Dummies. Now we begin.”
GK couldn’t contain his excitement.
“Stop making those gurgling noises,” said FK reprovingly. “Remember, you are here by virtue of presence of mind.”
GK could hear the phrase repeat itself in his head over and over again. There was something about it which he just couldn’t place: an indescribable, mystical something. It was music to his ears. GK had seen the light! He could even hear church bells ringing in the distance, as if the Heavens were celebrating this joyous moment.
Then FK’s stern voice rang out.
“GK, wake up,” it said.
GK blinked. He realized he was staring into a flashlight. FK must have used it when he thought GK had passed out. The church bells, however, were still ringing. Meaning the entire thing wasn’t just GK’s imagination.
“The old Lutheran Church behind the school,” said FK disdainfully. “My disgraceful brother QK works there. He never fails to get under my skin with those confounded bells. Anyway, let us focus on the task at hand: Parts of Speech. GK, can you tell me what it means?”
GK thought awhile.
“Words?” he said.
FK sighed and shook his head.
“We shall have to start at the beginning,” said FK. “The alphabet. A for apple; B for ball –”
He was rudely interrupted by Yashasvi Venkat.
“Ball!” he said, flapping his wings in excitement. “Polly want ball!”
FK frowned deeply, giving GK the impression that he was considering roasting the parrot.
“GK,” said FK after a while. “Your parrot is gay.”
GK nodded happily, impressed that his teacher was so quick on the uptake.
“And so am I!”
FK raised an eyebrow.
“I am so gay to be in this class!” said GK, becoming more effusive.
“Class dismissed,” announced FK just then.
GK was back on the streets with a gay parrot to look after, not a penny in his pocket, not a pocket to put his pennies in if he had any, nowhere to go, and a whole lifetime before him.
What on earth was he to do?
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