P.I.L.

Upon those towering bachelors still luxuriating in the heaven-like comfort of unmarried life descend, day after day, pressures of every conceivable sort. From neighbours, relatives, family elders — from every direction comes the relentless insistence to marry. And the bachelor, seeing such collective concern for his future, begins to think with mild wonder: “Ah, so the number of my well-wishers is not small after all.”

The cautionary tales offered by those already domesticated newlyweds sound to him like the sour gossip of people denied happiness themselves — sharp and tempting, like half-ripe mangoes that sting the tongue yet still invite another bite.

During such times, countless visions of sweetness drift before the bachelor’s eyes like scenes from a moving picture — tender evenings, romantic whispers, fragrant companionship, the poetry of shared existence.

And finally, through that socially sanctified institution called marriage, the woman who had thus far existed as the devoted, gentle, ever-accommodating beloved is ceremonially granted — despite often being younger in age — the practical authority embodied in the final commandment of Animal Farm:

“All animals are equal…”

The husband, of course, harbours no complaint. Having once ruled his solitary kingdom like the unquestioned monarch of a private pond, he now proudly declares himself a modern, progressive man. In these enlightened times, men and women are equals; he dismisses old notions of submissive wives hiding beneath the bottle-gourd leaves as relics of another age.

Intoxicated by the first delirium of romance — perfumed with turmeric, wedding incense, and deodorant — the poor fellow reaches that absurdly exalted state where he feels capable of slapping the sky itself and plucking down stars for his bride.”

Time flows. Pomegranates ripen and fall. As promised, the stars remain stubbornly unpicked, and gentle reminders begin to arrive from the wife. “Gather roses while you may,” she coos. At first, small bribes- sarees, blouses hold back the flood. But soon, the dam breaks. The wife, who once uploaded recipes to Facebook cooking groups and collected hundreds of likes, suddenly forgets the ratio of salt to turmeric. The sound of high-pitched singing drifts from the attached kitchen, carried on the wind like a warning. “So-and-so’s husband promised her the moon,” she sighs, channeling the tragic heroines of yesteryear, “and now I hear he’s ordered the stars too.” The husband’s mind churns with unease. He posts photos from their Shillong trip, hoping to stem the tide, only to watch his neighbor upload pictures captioned “Feeling awesome with hundred others.” And then? Then comes the monsoon-sudden, relentless, deep into the night. How does one dam a flood when the sluice gates have been left open? Like a drowning man, the husband grows numb, listless, lost in thought.

Some husbands, radical in their beliefs, make a fatal blunder here. The consequences are predictable: With electronic media flashing red circles around them like a seasoned criminal, some end up eating prison food — while others fall into miseries even graver than that. The moderates among them squeeze their eyes shut and endure; the hot-headed ones end up like the great landlord Rakesh Pal-mortgaged to the hilt, paying interest on interest. Our protagonist, however, is no radical. He has no desire to stir the hornet’s nest with reckless words.

He has much to say. But who would willingly rub velvet bean on their own body? Too much resistance brings its own danger-the wife’s departure ceremony to her mother’s house becomes a real possibility. Remembering his guru’s words that patience is wealth, he adopts the philosopher’s mask like Socrates and closes his eyes and ears. Sleeping with the enemy— the ultimate truth of marriage-dawns upon him. The pressure builds. The limits of endurance are no longer unlimited.

That day, the husband was standing in a queue at the ATM. Though “queue” would hardly be the right word — the line twisted and bent like the serpentine curves of the old Dhola–Sadiya bridge. For nearly half an hour he had stood there under the pitiless sun, sweating and inching forward with the slow desperation of fingernails scraping earth, sustained only by the hope of finally reaching the cool breath of the air-conditioned chamber.

Just then, a man arrived. Like an impossibly busy doctor who had abandoned a patient midway through delivery, he strode straight to the front of the line and calmly inserted his card into the machine as though the waiting crowd were nothing but decorative scenery.

The public remained silent — spellbound like snakes before a charmer’s flute.

But the husband’s reservoir of patience finally overflowed. Unable to contain himself, he burst out:

— “Excuse me, were we standing here all this time merely cutting grass for horses? Don’t we have work and responsibilities at home too? From where exactly did you emerge like something erupting out of the underworld?”

In response, the newcomer cast upon him a cold stare whose meaning was unmistakable: One more word and you’ll be delivered straight to the doctor yourself.

As reinforcement to that gaze came another ominous gesture — at the man’s casual, “Dada… any problem?”, two more fellows stepped out of the waiting Fortuner nearby.

From the person beside him, the husband soon learned the fellow’s pedigree. The man, it seemed, was the minister’s foremost favourite — the pampered ladoo of the establishment. And if anything happened to such a precious sweetmeat, would the minister simply let the matter go?”

The pressure mounts. The limits of endurance are not unlimited.

With dreams of earning a promotion and taking his wife out to see the world, the husband had surrendered himself wholly to work — turning nights into days, embracing labour as though it were sacred worship. So consumed was he by duty that, had it been possible, he would have lifted the entire office onto his shoulders and carried it home.

Yet destiny chose otherwise. The promotion that was meant to crown his years of devotion was quietly bestowed upon that newly arrived young woman — adept less in work than in the subtle art of pleasing and evading.

Within him, the embankments of endurance quivered on the brink of collapse. A dark tide of grief thundered through the chambers of his heart. And still, before the merciless hunger of worldly survival, the husband could do nothing but fall silent — reduced to a speechless puppet stitched together by necessity.

The pressure builds. For how far can you stretch the rubber band?

But for how long? After all, the limits of endurance are not unlimited. A solution is needed desparately.

“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it”— at last, the universe conspires for him. He reconnects with “TB,” an old acquaintance from his wedding days. At this very moment, TB becomes his Alchemist, guiding him toward his Personal Legend.

And so the husband enters TB’s house. TB is no tantric guru dispensing magic mantras. TB (real name withheld) is a man of education and skill. After engineering, he added an MBA— that “all-poison degree,” as he calls it — and entered garhastha ashram. Before marriage, his knowledge had been incomplete, it seems. With half-baked wisdom, he tried to drive the vehicle of household life and crashed into small disasters. Finally, like Socrates, he adopted the mask of the silent fool. And this Socratic silence saved him. TB attained enlightenment, discovering his personal legend in the journey of marriage, he became a legend himself. When flowers bloom, fragrance follows. The scent of this discovery spread through the married men’s secret network like gossip among kitchen maids.

“Keeping anger bottled inside is no good, my friend,” TB says. “You must tell someone.”

‘Tell whom? And who would believe it? The very person I speak against would be the one to strike back. Everyone’s trapped in the same misery, dada.’

— ‘Then express it. Give your thoughts a way out. Turn them into words. Write a book. And if money stands in the way, then write on Facebook.’

— ‘Krishna! Are you asking me to be killed like Gauri Lankesh?’

Tibida merely murmured a low ‘hmm’ and fell silent for a while. His half-lowered eyes remained fixed upon the desperate struggle of a helpless moth fighting for its life against a wall-lizard poised to devour it.

Then his wife arrives, tea in hand.

“Here, drink this. Your throat must be parched from all that talking.”

After a brief interlude of tea and silence, Tibida finally broke his hush. Tearing through the muted clamour of the evening, there spilled from his voice an infallible incantation — that ultimate weapon for venting indignation.

— “P.I.L. Yes… that’s the only way. Someone says something to you and you cannot answer back? No matter — take shelter in a P.I.L. Want to make your boss’s life so miserable that even dogs would refuse to gnaw at his bones? P.I.L. Burning to curse a person’s fourteen generations? P.I.L. Feel like hurling abuse at a minister? P.I.L.

In short, P.I.L. is the universal antidote to all venom. The oppressed one’s hand of resistance, the voiceless one’s tongue, clothing for the naked, and the safest weapon through which the aggrieved may extinguish the fire of their resentment.

“What are you saying, TB da? Should I knock on court doors for these things? Do you know how many crores of cases lie pending without judgment?”

“Fool… who spoke of courts? Do you even know what P.I.L. means?”

“Why wouldn’t I? Everyone knows. P.I.L. means Public Interest Litigation — roughly, legal petitions for public welfare.”

— “You fool… P.I.L. means Poetic Independence License. Have you ever read poetry? Ever understood any of it?”

— “No, dada. Do you understand it?”

— “Neither do I, re. But that’s not the point. It’s not about whether you or I understand it — it’s about whether others do. And the less understandable a poem is, the greater its quality is considered to be.”

— “But how can something incomprehensible be considered good?”

— “That, precisely, is the essence of it. The mysterious something hidden within the incomprehensible — that is the real thing. That is the Om, the Void… or, if you like, the Bomb. That very ambiguity is your guarantee against landing in jail. Suppose someone files a defamation case against you — no problem at all. You simply twist and wriggle through that ‘something’ and say, ‘Oh, that isn’t what I meant at all.’”

— “Still didn’t get it, dada. Explain it with an example.”

— “Fine then, listen carefully. And don’t interrupt midway and ruin the flavour. You already have a reputation for sleeping through classes.”

Tibida cleared his throat and began in the solemn cadence of a preacher unveiling hidden scripture:

— “All this time you believed the line was: All animals are equal — didn’t you? But that isn’t the real truth. The real line is: All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. That, my boy, is the unwritten truth of the world.

The wife whom you proudly call your equal after marriage? She isn’t merely equal — she is more equal than you. The Constitution may grant equal rights to all, yet some people remain far more equal than the rest of us.

And when you wish to pour out your resentment against such people, poetry becomes your weapon. But how? Listen, I’ll give you a demonstration.”

He leaned forward theatrically.

— “Suppose you feel like cursing your boss. Say it directly, and your life is finished. So instead, use P.I.L. — cloak your insults inside poetry.”

Then, with great gravity, Tibida recited:

‘I fastened the ticking hours of the clock, imprisoned within the enchanted shadow of a beautiful woman, while some withering old man obstructed my upward ascent…’

— “Understood anything? No? Good. Let me explain. Indirectly, I’ve just abused your boss. ‘Fastened the ticking hours of the clock’ — that speaks of your toil. ‘Upward ascent’ refers to your long-awaited promotion. And the boss? I’ve called him a withering old man.

If you wish, you may replace the metaphor with anything else — smoke-coloured, ash-coloured, yellow-faced — add whatever shades you like from Shalimar paint’s color chart. No restrictions. That is P.I.L., understand? Absolute freedom. Through it, the poet journeys from earth to cosmos, from kitchen shopping lists to Ruby Gupta’s undergarments.

Want to confess love to someone? P.I.L. Want to whisper obscenities into a woman’s ears in respectable language? P.I.L. You speak your mind, yet no one can accuse you of vulgarity — instead they applaud you for creating literature.”

— “Now do you understand?”

— “Dada… then teach me how to insult that woman through poetry.”

Tibida glanced around, narrowed his eyes, and muttered:

— “Must I teach you everything?”

And at that moment, the husband finally seemed to understand why the world of literature overflowed with poets. With a strangely fulfilled heart, he returned home like a bird finding its evening nest, resolving that from this very day onward, he too would begin writing poetry. (With apologies to all poet friends)