Sorting Out Sid (9 page)
‘You fucking asshole!’ Mandira’s screech reverberated in his ears so loudly that he instinctively ducked, and then looked around to see if anyone else had heard.
Then again, maybe his day wouldn’t be turning around just yet.
S
id lay sprawled on his favourite beanbag, legs spread out wide, clutching a bottle of Kingfisher. The beer was ice cold
–
he could feel it through his shirt against his belly. He had four more bottles on the floor, within arm’s reach of him. He did not intend to get up from his beanbag, not even for a smoke. He knew the beer would warm up as the evening progressed and so he had set the air conditioner at 17 degrees. Of course, at 17 degrees he would want to pee more than usual. But he had emptied his bladder just before settling down and that would help take care of the urge for a while. Sometimes you just had to prepare yourself and hope for the best.
He took another sip of beer, savouring it as it ran down his throat, sloshing about a bit before settling down in his empty stomach. No dinner tonight. Dinner arguments had been the worst of late. But tonight Mandira was out for an office party and he was home alone with no need for the formality of dinner. Home alone! Just the way he liked it. He lovingly patted his beanbag, which he fondly called Brownie when no one else was around.
Mandira never seemed to understand why Sid valued his time alone so much. Being alone meant no pressure to perform or pretend, no need to be funny and entertain the crowd. He had never been able to explain it to her properly. He knew his natural tendency to perform was the reason she noticed him in college, choosing to go out with him even though she was a much-in-demand senior. But then, after their marriage, even when it was just the two of them, she seemed to expect that he would continue to be the official entertainer. She didn’t understand who this quiet person was
–
the one who just wanted to spend hours reading or listening to music or watching TV. She had been dismayed, and even considered it some kind of personal rejection.
‘Why is it that you have a hundred stories to tell other people, but you can’t even tell me about your day at work?’ had been her pet peeve.
He had attempted to tell her that this quiet side of him was also a part of who he was, especially when people weren’t around. But she continued to take it as a sign of his diminishing interest in her. For a while he tried hard to be attentive and amusing while she was around, but it had been a constant strain. It made him crankier than usual, eventually leading to the same thing he had been trying to avoid
–
squabbling.
He took another sip, this time glugging it down long and slow. Constant strain was perhaps marginally better than explosive attacks like the one that had happened today.
Mandira was hysterical when she had called him at the office. For some strange reason she had been going through his personal laptop at home when she discovered his private collection of porn
–
one that Sid had carefully built over the last few years. His collection was impressive and extensive, in
both volume and variety. The discovery enraged her although Sid didn’t quite understand why. A man had needs, and she sure as hell hadn’t been fulfilling them for a long time now. In fact, of late, she had even taken to sleeping in the guestroom
–
ostensibly, his reading light disturbed her. Sid, however, was certain that he heard her talking on the phone late into the night. So it was, apparently, only a means to avoid him. What was a guy to do? Porn was only a little, innocent voyeurism. It helped in getting him some sort of … well, release. She was the one who said he bottled things up too much and that wasn’t healthy. Talk about double standards, he thought moodily.
She had screamed at him on the phone for his perverted nature, how it now made a lot of sense that he no longer expressed any interest in any physical contact with her. And how sneaky it was of him to hide this sick side from her. It had all been a bit too much for him and he tried to argue with her, in a low whispered tone, mindful of the many people around in the office. ‘
Me
not expressing interest … And you’re calling me sneaky? What were you doing going through my personal stuff, anyway? It clearly shows that you don’t trust me.’
Mandira had stopped fuming and hyperventilating to give Sid a short bark of a laugh and said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me, Siddharth. Do you really think that’s the main issue at hand?’ Sid hesitated for a moment and she continued, ‘And anyway
–
you’ve shown you aren’t worthy of trust!’
Frustrated, Sid whispered that he couldn’t talk at the moment and suggested that they discuss it when he got home. Her voice changed abruptly, and became all cold. She informed him that she was leaving for an office party and would get back late. She added somewhat unnecessarily, in
his opinion, that he could entertain himself with his Cowgirl-in-High-Heeled-Boots fantasies. Before he could say another word in protest, she slammed the phone down.
‘Okay, fine, so we’ll talk at home then, honey, see you,’ Sid said in a loud and cheerful tone for the benefit of his colleagues who were pretending not to listen. Sid looked around discreetly
–
he had a lot of experience with reading ears, and he knew immediately all their attention had been focussed on him. He was also aware of his own ears giving him away as they flushed bright red despite his attempt to cover up by shuffling through papers and pursing his lips into a tuneless whistle. A thought sprung into his mind that he might soon get a cabin of his own now that he was slated to become a vice president. It would be useful on days like this.
‘Arrey … Khatam?’ Sid looked with surprise and confusion at his empty beer bottle. That was quick. He had intended to savour his first bottle, savour the feeling of an evening alone at home and the ability to do exactly what he wanted. Chalo, no matter, he still had a few bottles to go. He leaned over and stretched out to grab another bottle, singing out an impromptu and cheerful ditty.
‘Come here, my dear, you are so near…
Please have no fear, I love my beer…’
He ransacked his brain to come up with a last line that would do justice to the poet in him. But he could only manage a lame ‘And my name is … Sid’. He cackled at his own silliness. He had been going for the style of Urdu poets, like Ghalib. The last line of a couplet usually had the writer’s name inserted into it, as a sort of signature. It didn’t always work, he decided. Those Urdu poet guys weren’t practical, he concluded. No
wonder most of them were dead. Still, they had churned out some pretty riveting stuff. Sid liked Urdu couplets and felt the urge to recite one, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember a single one at the moment.
He used his handy-dandy Swiss pocket-knife-cum-bottle-opener-cum-keychain to pop the cap off the second beer bottle and took another long, cold swig. He let out a loud ‘aaaah…’ as he leaned back and closed his eyes. He tended to get vocal when he got high irrespective of whether he had an audience or not. He just felt the need to speak, and it was nice to be able to speak without being judged.
He felt a fart coming, but held it in. He wasn’t going to fart on his favourite beanbag. It wouldn’t be fair to her. He patted her lovingly. It felt natural to converse with her at the moment. ‘Eh, Brownie? What has it been, fifteen years? We’ve been through too much for me to fart on you, right?’ Fifteen years with Mandira too, but wouldn’t mind farting on
her
right now, he thought, and immediately regretted it. That was low, below the belt, you might say. He giggled.
He shifted around a bit, snuggling deeper into Brownie. She was undoubtedly his favourite piece of furniture. She was one of the first purchases Mandira and he had made together. Well, he had made the purchase; Mandira had protested vociferously that a dirty brown beanbag wouldn’t go with anything else that she had in mind for the house. Sid let Mandira have her way on most counts, but on this one, he had put his foot down and insisted that he was buying the beanbag; he needed one to relax on, and besides, he insisted, it wasn’t dirty brown, it was chocolatey, really. Finally, she yielded, though grudgingly, and they had carted Brownie home. However, he had since caught her many times giving Brownie glares that alternated
between merely disdainful to positively malevolent. Sid defiantly resisted all her attempts
–
and there had been quite a few over the years
–
to get rid of Brownie. During every furniture rearrangement, Mandira tried to convince Sid that Brownie was now too old and tatty in contrast to the rest of the furniture in the living room. To this, Sid would always say that Brownie was getting more and more comfortable with the passing years. In fact, Sid once claimed that when he died, he wanted to be buried with Brownie.
‘You’re not Christian, Sid
–
you will be cremated and not buried.’
‘Whatever. I want Brownie with me.’
Brownie was a silent witness to their relationship. Sid remembered Mandira sulking the very evening they brought Brownie home. After a prolonged argument they had finally made up, and of course, being the early days they had even indulged in some make-up sex on the living-room floor.
Sid sighed when he remembered the chemistry that Mandira and he shared at the beginning of their marriage. Life had been so different when they were in their twenties. Of course, they had had their problems even then because Mandira was the jealous, possessive sort. It had been cute at the beginning, but the cuteness faded as he was forced to cut off ties with almost all his female friends. Aditi was the only one who remained, and he knew Mandira still resented it. Over time, he tried to make more time for their marriage by cutting out other things from his life, all the things he had so enjoyed in his carefree, college days. His interest in photography, dramatics, sports was all gone, and with that went the friends he had made.
There still were things that he had shared with Mandira, though
–
travelling and art, for instance. Their first few years had been a whirlwind of activity, visiting places, shopping,
going out often, setting up their home together. Overall, it had been better then, when there was so much to do together.
‘You saw it, right, Brownie? We had it good back then? We had something?’ Sid asked earnestly. Brownie maintained a tactful silence, but Sid took it as a sign of agreement. He was already opening his third beer.
Yes, they had had something
–
stuff in common, really. The stuff they had bought together. The places they had visited. The plays they had seen. The investments they had made together. The…
The sudden realization made him almost sit straight up on Brownie. He struggled, but couldn’t quite manage it, so he leaned back again.
They had been fine as long as they were doing something together, but when they were just
being
together there were always problems. So, ‘Public Sid-and-Mandira’, ‘Party Sid-and-Mandira’, ‘Arty Sid-and-Mandira’, ‘Host-and-Hostess-Sid-and-Mandira’ and even ‘Family-Reunion-Sid-and-Mandira’ had all been fine. It was just Sid and Mandira that had problems. So many little things had remained unresolved, each year adding another layer of problems to the previous one, like dust piling up on a neglected rug in the attic. And then, a while back the constant arguments had given way to silence, apart from the occasional outbursts like the one that had happened earlier in the day.
The silence had never been comfortable. It had progressed from being an uneasy calm-before-the-storm silence to a resentful one to a
–
the present, worst of them all, in his opinion
–
hopeless silence.
‘Why aren’t
you
talking to me, Brownie?’ Sid slapped Brownie once and imagined that she cringed. He had finished the third bottle a little too fast, and his stomach felt all fiery. Maybe I should eat something, he thought. Maggi? That would involve getting up and making it. Pizza? That was a definite option but the phone wasn’t within reach. Oh wait, it was. Oh no, that was the remote for the music system. He decided to use that to switch on some music. No more of that bloody silence tonight.