Fiction: A real-estate developer’s journal about his tiresome run-ins with middlemen and politicians

6/7: Have set my mind on either doing our neighbourhood Durga Puja in a huge way – every politician worth his name has one that is informally named after him; it is a necessary accoutrement to advertise one’s arrival and growth, and also to generate revenues to improve the standard of communal living in our locality.

Accordingly, held a brainstorming session with Chuno, Puti, Jagai, and Madhai to explore ideas and gather feedback. The first order of discussion was whether we should take over the small and lacklustre local puja run by a bunch of fuddy-duddies with no idea of how to make it enjoyable, having stuck to the age-old tradition of collecting subscriptions as low as 50 rupees from the local residents – or to set up my own. I was inclined towards the latter option as I could do what I liked without any carping and cavilling from the Old Brigade, but I was persuaded instead to go for the takeover route – the “50-year-old” tagline that we could tack on to everything would burnish our profile more than any new-fangled puja.

That having been decided, the next logical thing was to put our heads together to figure out how to take over the local puja. We had two options – one was to take the slow and sure route, and the other was to mount an immediate raid. I plumped for the latter. We would go to the grandfathers’ club that now ran the show and put it straight to them that we wanted to do the puja in a much bigger and better way, for which they should step aside. We then got down to consider what we needed to do to raise the profile of the puja and make it stand out among a thousand others in the city.

Puti suggested, rather intelligently for one so seemingly unendowed with grey matter, that we should plan for an inauguration by either the Great Leader or, failing him, a sports or film celebrity to draw the crowds and become the front page of media coverage. Next, we discussed how we would keep the locality hooked to four days of festivity and decided on an event every night that would pull them to the pandal like a magnet. We would get a singer, preferably one who could sing in multiple genres, for nobody likes to hear anyone boring kind for hours. On another evening we would stage a play, preferably a light, airy and comic one in keeping with the puja spirit, which would keep all kinds of people – actors, producers, prop suppliers, dressers – invested in the puja. On another evening, we would have a free Bijoya feast that would be the seal on all the bonding that was bound to happen. Smaller events like sit-and-draw competitions for local children would be used as fillers.

Then, we turned to the most important topic central to the success or failure of any Durga Puja—the decor of the pandal and the theme. We resolved to eschew the run-of-the-mill themes that had been tried and tested a million times and that no longer hold people’s attention. After some intense discussion, we selected an Egyptian pyramid theme – the pandal would be a conical triangle, the entrance would be like the passageways used to enter real-life pyramids, and the idols of the goddesses and gods would appear mummified, lying prostrate rather than positioned vertically.

Which brought the discussion around to the priests, mantras, and other details of worship, all of which I did not think were worth wasting our time on. I delegated the task to Chuno and Puti, as befits their lowly status in the scheme of things, asked Jagai and Madhai to set up a meeting with whichever dimwits were running the local puja at the moment, and told all assembled to think long and hard about how we would raise the funds for the puja extravaganza, which we would discuss at a subsequent gathering. The time having advanced to a propitious hour and matters having reached actionable outcomes, we adjourned for the day and repaired to a modest Signature celebration in honour of the gods!

8/7: Matters with Sweety have unaccountably hit a rough patch. I thought it only fair to expect that she too would be swept up in the happiness of my wave of good fortune, but curiously, interactions with her these days mainly take the form of moody silences, indifferent conversations, and having failed to elicit any satisfactory explanation about Sweety’s downcast state and odd demeanour, I approached Sona and Mona in the hope that they would be of some help. True to form, they giggled uncontrollably at first, but when pressed, they hinted at what I had suspected – Sweety’s parents do not really approve of me, my profession and my ways. They went on to slyly hint at my alleged obsession with my Signature.

I decided to mount a charm offensive to resolve this imbroglio and asked Sweety to set up a date when I would visit her parents. She demurred at first, indicating that the time was not ripe, but when I persisted, she finally gave way in some exasperation, complete with the caveat that I should not hope for a friendly reception. I turned up at the appointed hour, and as I started proceedings by asking about the health of her parents, matters took an unexpected turn. Her father replied at length about his various maladies, the medicines – including homoeopathic ones – that he was taking as well as his personal assessments of the efficacy of different forms of treatment and the intentions of doctors and pharma companies to boot. I could hardly get in a word edgewise and realised that my only hope lay in slipping into some sort of conversation about a medical topic. I could not talk about any of my own afflictions – not that I had any – for that would only reinforce his baseless suspicions about the extent of my drinking. So, after much deliberation, while I continued to nod and agree away to whatever Old Man was nattering about, I came up with the brilliant idea of discussing the cost of healthcare these days. As soon as I had so much as uttered the first syllables on the prohibitive cost of medicines, doctors, and what-have-you, Old Man’s face lit up, as it were, by a thousand lamps. He unleashed a tirade that lasted a full 15 minutes listing, inter alia, the fraudulent prices that pharmacists were charging him as evidenced by different prices he paid for the same drugs at different places, the complete lack of talent and in particular diagnostic ability of today’s doctors compared with the titans of yore – one of whom had taken less than five seconds to explain why a patient was perspiring so profusely on only one side; a missing lung – as well as various topics that were only tangentially medical.

I realised that I had hit the jackpot. A mere pleasantry with which to start the conversation had reaped such rich dividends that it completely obviated the need for me to talk. I also realised that I only had to pander to Old Man’s hypochondria and love of his own voice to win a path to his heart and, in the fullness of time, to his daughter’s hand in marriage. From that point, I sat back with an almost beatific smile on my face, which turned appropriately sombre with the twists and turns of the medical ups and downs of Old Man’s story, nodding vigorously as he complained about the cardsharps that were running, as he put it, the medical racket, and chipping in with sympathetic comments whenever the occasion demanded.

Excerpted with permission from The Ascent: An Occasional Diary, Sarojoesh Mukherjee, Virasat Art Publications.