‘The Masks Before The Pandemic’: Manu Bhattathari’s short story peels off layers of inscrutability

We spent the better part of a decade stealing glances but never making each other’s acquaintance. The lake has a three-kilometer walkway around it. The man I’m telling you about always went clockwise and I, anti-clockwise, so that each morning at about seven-thirty we passed each other.

Most often our eyes would meet briefly, and then for some reason both of us would hurry away, sharing a kind of intimacy that time hands down, but separated yet by the lack of an introduction. With each passing day such an introduction seemed more awkward and impossible.

Call me daft or call me dandy, but I judge people by what they wear. Solitary walks can be monotonous, so the judging became a hobby. Twenty-somethings with fitness bands and expensive shoes I judged to be young IT employees, still exploring the possibilities with a salary. This walk or jog was a passing fancy; in a month those shoes would start to gather dust.

People in their thirties, dressed in decent but optimally priced sportswear, with their smartphones set at time-distance-calorie counts: newly diagnosed with sugar, pressure or cholesterol, they were there because they cared about themselves. They had everything going for them, and couldn’t lose it all to a health setback. Those in figure-hugging clothes probably came to show off those figures. Those too fat to even move quickly had finally arrived at their moments of truth, with doctors handing out death sentences and finally jabbing some fear into them.

Different from them all was our man. He wasn’t just comfortable with the way he carried himself, he was proud. Proud in his executive shirt, neatly ironed formal pants and mirror-like black leather shoes. In that atmosphere of sweat and sun and dust he looked like he was making for the air-conditioned conference room.

His immaculate strides made the most tireless runner look dogged and panting.

I don’t recall the very first time I set eyes upon him, but I suppose it was the very first time I passed him by. You couldn’t miss this man, and he didn’t look like he was used to being missed. He must have been in his early fifties then, and I noticed he dyed his hair only partly, mostly at the top of his head, leaving bits of a thick, accurately cut moustache and sides of his head just above the ears a trifle peppery, so he would look wise, not old.

Perhaps he judged people by their dress too. He must have glanced at this very young man in his mid-forties, every morning trying to get those tiers at his sides tucked in and pull that tummy back into his jeans like before. He must have seen the sweat on the front of my T-shirt and been disgusted inwardly, thinking: “The guy sweats the way a pig bleeds.”

No, he wasn’t the type to use the word “guy”. More like chap, or fellow. Or, if he had stayed sometime in queen’s own land, which he looked like he had, then “mate”. But to be fair, though I think all this now, not in those ten years did I ever see any scorn in the man’s eyes. Nor did a single muscle in his face quiver in disgust at all the droplets of sweat flying in that place or at children who raised dust as they ran about.

Only once or twice when some totally uncouth walker made rheumy sounds before spitting voluminously into the shrubs did I see him look up rather startled, like he was reminding himself to invest more in the chasm that separated him from ordinary folk.

Were there no other regular walkers I exchanged glances with? Sure, but somehow none of them had this curious combination of connection and disconnection for such a long period of time. He probably began meeting my eye only after he caught me looking at him. But once our eyes began to meet, they did, for that split second, almost every day.

On some days he passed with his head down, deep in thought, and I wondered if he was having trouble at work. Or maybe some shares he had bought were running into losses. Or a friend had annoyed him. On certain days I maintained a scowl on my face, as though to inform him of the bickering with my wife the evening before. “Women!” my face was telling him, “boy, do they know how to sulk.”

At times he would disappear for a week, and when he was back I would try to understand from his face whether he had been travelling or had fallen sick.

These musings and guesswork would last, you understand, only for two minutes after we passed each other. The rest of the day, our different worlds wouldn’t allow us to think of each other. And yet it was two minutes almost every day, for ten years – that reasonless familiarity. It is difficult to explain why on any of those countless mornings we hadn’t simply broken into smiles and told each other our names and shaken each other’s hands.

I suppose middle-age is when an insult is rather more mortifying than death itself. In youth your flitting mind and busy schedule make life a storm, rendering you somewhat less susceptible to delicate feelings that can become baggage. In old age you cease to care or your senses are too feeble to notice. It is in middle-age that a lowering of dignity hurts so, and the prospect of it is terrifying.

Death is still too far for immediate concern. Humiliation, on the other hand, could be approaching at the very next bend in the path – a smile that isn’t returned, a nod that goes unacknowledged, or a proposal of friendship that is spurned. And then something within you falls off a cliff, irretrievably, inconsolably, oh my god! That’s my two-bit theory for why we allowed our familiarity to grow numb, like a leg gone to sleep by prolonged immobility in an awkward position.

Then, one day, an invisible malady made us all wear masks. In the early months of the pandemic the walkers and joggers did not even visit the lakeside, perhaps preferring to exercise at home. Even I, despite being diabetic, decided to be doubly safe by staying home for some additional months. Then, finally, after a gap of nine months that I took up my walk again – this morning.

With chronic yearning I set my eyes upon the silvery lake, feeling the very air buoy me up. And here was our man: the mask miserably failed to hide the distinctiveness of the starched, full-sleeved shirt, the spotless black pants and the bold, accurate strides. I’d know him from a mile away, and suddenly I realised I was now in the older half of middle-age, while he was probably at the younger end of old age.

His eyes asked me where I had been, and mine told him the wife and I feared I would be the first to catch corona and die, and so I had taken my time resuming my walks.

But the surprise was that after we had passed each other, I had only walked a few steps when I heard firm footsteps behind me. Hesitantly, cautiously, I glanced over my shoulder. There he was, turned around and hurrying in my direction. It still did not mean he was coming up to me, so, being a careful person, I continued to walk on, albeit significantly slower. He caught up with me, puffing a little.

“Hi,” he said through his mask, and his voice was surprisingly thin. I realised that the thickness of his moustache and the hair on his ears had made me assume he would have a gruff voice. “I didn’t see you for many months after the lockdown? I...we used to see each other here..”

“Oh yes, yes,” I said, feeling an explicably sweet emotion wash over me. “I’m a little diabetic. Borderline, actually, but the wife fears I’ll catch this virus. So I stayed home a little longer.”

“I’m Madhavan,” he said, moving his mask aside with the motion with which you extend an identification card towards a ticket checker. He offered me his free hand. I told him my name and we shook hands, after which he slid his mask back on and unselfconsciously pulled a sanitiser out of his pocket.

He cleansed his hands of any potential harm from our handshake, and then squeezed some of the stuff into my hands as well. “It’s nice to meet you,” he said, “at last.” Each of us guessed the other was smiling behind their mask.

“Yes,” said I, checking a vague, impulsive frankness. “We should have become friends long ago. But you know how it is.”

We walked together, and he told me that he ran a “successful” printing press in Koramangala. Hardly the slick, multistoried glass façade office complex I had visualised for him, but it seemed the press was part a chain that he owned. Well-heeled, Malayali, cultured, with a high opinion of himself, I surmised.

Back home he had a wife (whom he referred to as his “terrible half”), and a teenaged daughter. He asked me what I did, and I told him I was a writer. This he trivialised by asking if one could really earn a living by “just writing”, with the addendum that I was not to mind, he was merely asking because he too had this nephew who was “bitten by the writing bug” and planned to do nothing else all life.

“You know, I never got an MBA or one of those fancy degrees that teach you to manage people,” he told me, unchallenged confidence brimming over in his voice. “Yet I manage almost a hundred employees each day.” I was beginning to feel the days we passed each other were better. I hate braggarts. But then he asked me if I knew how he did it – managing people, all kinds of people.

“When I was young, we had this dog. Tony or Tommy, I can’t recall. He used to take my chappals and run, that was his game. Then one day I gave him a look.” Madhavan gave me the look he had given Tommy or Tony. He even slid his mask aside one more time so I could feel what the dog felt. His eyes narrowed, his brow furrowed, and his lips protruded stiffly under his moustache. “He never touched my chappals again.”

Just as I was searching for the moral of the story, he continued: “I discovered that frowns and grimaces are sharper than words. To the school bully I gave my sceptical, grow-up-big-boy look. When the teacher was angry, I softened her with my lonely-child look. This was my management education. Perfecting my expressions to get things done, you get me?”

“Really smart,” I said out of politeness. But as he spoke, his voice grew louder in my head and I realised I would come home running to write all this down.

“In teenage I found that others did it too. Great people, successful people, while lesser ones went to college to learn management. How did Elvis Presley become the king? Have you seen the look he throws? I worked on the Madhavan Look, you know? Ha ha ha. Helps me today with the look I give my wife when she’s angry. The irresistible little-boy look that never fails to make her smile.”

To my surprise the he once again took off his mask and supplied the irresistible little-boy look that melted his wife. We were sitting on a park bench now, laughing, but the sharply dressed Madhavan couldn’t be bothered when people stared at him as he illustrated his various looks. Out came the look he gave his daughter when she tried to teach him about the “generation gap”.

For employees who needed correction it was the Tommy-Tony look, only meaner, stricter, with the veins on his forehead bulging. I was almost falling off the park bench with laughter. For good employees he had a pleasant look that cut midway between a plea and a praise.

When he had parked his car wrong, there was one look for the traffic policeman. When he really needed a whiskey even after the last order, there was another look for the bartender. There were more – the grimace for the pesky neighbourhood kid, the adoring sweetener for the big tycoon who might give him a huge printing contract.

“They’re all masks,” he said suddenly. “Every one of them a mask, each for a different occasion.”

I was beginning to find him quite an interesting man. He went on, his mask still dangling from his hand: “But you notice, there’s no mask for this thing – this thing that you and I should have done years ago. There’s no look I had ready for walking up to a total stranger and becoming friends with him. You know, someone who doesn’t figure in my life in any way. Just walking up to him and saying hi. No mask for that at all.”

“I suppose I was wearing masks too,” I told him, wiping my eyes from all the laughter. “Different masks.”

“But none to introduce yourself to a random stranger who doesn’t matter to you,” he repeated. “And then this pandemic came. This mask hid all my other masks, my management masks. I didn’t mind walking up to you now, now that my face was hidden. See? Ha ha ha.”

Indeed, it was amazing how easy it had been, when we finally shook hands. Perhaps the corona should have come ten years earlier.

“Business is down, of course,” he sighed as we got up and began walking again. He pointed at his mask, which he had put back on. “What do you expect? My employees don’t fear me anymore. This piece of cloth protects them from my gritted teeth and bared gums and shuddering moustache.”

We burst out laughing again. Now, as I write this, I can tell you that I really look forward to my walk again tomorrow morning. Maybe if there isn’t much of a crowd we can take off our masks again. It’s quite safe to show Madhavan some of my own expressions, my own masks. Middle-age is a funny bird, yes, but it is nothing a pandemic can’t cure.

Manu Bhattathiri is the author of Savithri’s Special Room and Other Stories and The Town That Laughed. His new novel will be published in mid-2021.

This series of articles on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on publishing is curated by Kanishka Gupta.