The Silliest Autobiography in the World

By P.G. Bhaskar

Bhaskar's was an ordinary life and he was perfectly happy with it. Then, one day, he decided to write a book. And for that he had to meet a publisher. From then on, his life changed. Publishers are of course, enigmatic creatures, notorious for conducting midnight sacrifices with small-time authors, but even in his wildest dreams, Bhaskar did not expect such a journey.It ended well though, and the result is The Silliest Autobiography in the World. No book ever had a truer name.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Feb 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9789351777199

P.G. Bhaskar

You wouldn't think so just looking at him, but Bhaskar is one of the great thinkers and philosophers of modern times. He started pondering over things shortly after his birth and has been at it ever since. His thoughts are deep and varied - the popularity of Donald Trump, the frequent disappearance of his handkerchiefs (Bhaskar's, not Trump's), the life and times of Pluto the planet and how to hypnotize a publisher into signing a lucrative contract. He has not come to any definite conclusion on these subjects, or indeed, on any subject. Nevertheless, he continues to contemplate. It is his fervent hope that someday in the future, if he sticks with it, he might - given a bit of luck - almost come close to a reasonable answer to some of these weighty issues. But will his frail shoulders bear the burden of such profound thought?In between bouts of masterful meditation, Bhaskar tries to make a living in Dubai as a private banker. He has written several books and warns his readers that he is not done yet.

Book preview

Publishing Attempt 1

It wasn’t easy getting this book published. Not just because there are too many writers in today’s world of too few readers. It’s also because publishers have become rigid and terribly fussy in their approach. They are paranoid about what will sell. And who can blame them? It’s just the way the world operates these days – nervous, edgy and increasingly risk-averse.

I met my first potential publishers over breakfast two years ago. I happened to be on a fruit diet that week and stuck to watermelon, while my guests – there were two of them – tucked into eggs, sausages, hash browns and doughnuts. When I told them I wanted to write my autobiography, they laughed loudly. ‘What’s funny?’ I asked them, a little peeved. ‘You are,’ they chorused and continued to chortle, giving other each a high five.

‘Autobiographies are supposed to be written by celebrities,’ one of them told me. ‘Leaders, revolutionaries, game changers. You are not Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.’ Again, they laughed merrily, for reasons I could not fathom. They seemed to be in a good mood.

I bristled. ‘There’s no harm in experimenting,’ I told them, stiffly.

‘The new-age revolutionary!’ said one to the other, smirking horribly and waving a deprecating hand in my direction. ‘Perhaps he thinks he can change the world. Who knows, he might turn out to be India’s twenty-first-century Gandhi!’ He dug his companion in the ribs with his elbow to show that this was comedy.

I stared at the man curiously. One does not normally associate humour with publishers. (Naturally. They can’t help being dour when they turn down so many manuscripts a day). His partner, meanwhile, displaying incredible wit, replied, ‘Well, then maybe he can name his autobiography My experiments with fruit.’

They guffawed uncontrollably, both of them, holding their sides and gasping for breath. Shortly after that, taking the high road, they left, still looking back at me from time to time and emitting hacking, mirthful sounds, leaving me in a state of febrile stupor.

For a while, I just sat there, fermenting inwardly. Then, I walked homeward, immersed in thought. The trick, I told myself, was to start and just get into the loop. No revolution could ever be brought about without revolving. My lips were set in a firm, determined line. I changed into my pajamas, placed my laptop on the broad armrest of the sofa and started typing.

1963

In the aftermath of the Chinese aggression on India, there were several reasons attributed to it by our countrymen. Some felt the Chinese were getting back at India for hosting the revered Dalai Lama following China’s invasion of Tibet. A few wondered if the Chinese had misconstrued Jawaharlal Nehru’s slogan of ‘Hindi Chini bhai bhai’ as ‘Hindi Chini bye-bye’, concluding that the Indian PM was signifying an end to Indo-Chinese friendship. Others were convinced that the Chinese had taken umbrage to north Indians referring to them as ‘Cheen ke log’ believing that the Indians were being abominably rude and calling them ‘chinky log’ or ‘chinky people’.

A few months later – more specifically, on 26 April 1963 – a series of Chinese-sounding cries rang out in the city of Peking, as Beijing was then known. Thrashing his hands and kicking his legs, a brand new baby boy was born in a country already bursting at the seams with close to a billion people. The crying, thrashing and kicking were a portent of things to come. In fact, the baby continued to cry, thrash and kick for the next several decades earning name and fame for it. He grew up to become China’s martial arts hero and film star. The name was Li. Jet Li.

Across the border, a couple of thousand kilometres away, in the coastal city of Madras, India, another baby boy was born, also crying, thrashing and kicking. But unlike Li, this baby stopped thrashing and kicking shortly thereafter. He did not go on to make a career of it. He realized early on in life that he would never be much of an athlete. With this baby, India’s population touched the momentous half-billion mark. Or thereabouts, give or take a few millions. This baby was me. As I entered this world, birds flew gaily in the sky, the sea breeze blew musically and wave after wave joyously caressed the Marina coast as if in celebration. They usually did those days in Madras. Relatives fluttered around excitedly and noted the time of my birth. A nurse smacked me on my bottom though I had been perfectly well behaved. I cried. Everyone else laughed.

Two epoch-making moments in two giant Asian countries. Two magnificent babies. One would go on to become national wushu champion multiple times, an international actor and director with a significant fan following across the world. The other … well, the other will write this book.

But what does bloody Jet Li have to do with my autobiography? Nothing, really. I just thought I’d mention it since he was born on the same day. Very few really famous people have been born on 26 April anyway. And I’m not just talking of 1963. Shakespeare and Sachin Tendulkar missed the landmark by just a couple of days or so. Most other important people missed it by several weeks, even months. So, basically, it was just Jet Li and me. The first screamed and kicked his way to fame. And the other mostly sat silently and stared into space.

Shortly after my birth, I checked out my family. My dad turned out to be a serious-looking chartered accountant dude, arguably the first human being to get hit on the face by a bouncer while playing cricket. Six years before my birth, he had lost two front teeth because of this. (The bouncer, I mean, not my birth.) My mum was a pleasant, soft-spoken, sensitive, saree-clad homemaker. Mum and dad had been married a good nine years or so before I put in my appearance. Two ready-made sisters were already at home. They were much older and bigger than I was. They wore their well-oiled hair in plaits and wore long skirts with blouses that were usually slightly crumpled.

It was a Tamil Brahmin family that I had stepped into. They lived in Mylapore, Madras (where else?), and were sturdy middle-class folk (what else?). So, that’s how my story started with this family of – now – five. Mum, dad and the three of us.

Two plus three makes it five

And this is how humanity does thrive

One meets another one

And has a bit of fun

And along comes a baby, kickin’ n alive.

Traditionally, the Tam-Bram community has had a unique system of naming their eldest (or only) sons. To them, it seems a simple enough thing. But it has always left the rest of the world completely confounded. It works like this, sort of.

A newborn boy is ‘given’ the name of his paternal grandfather. That name is usually preceded by a letter or two. If there is just one letter, it would stand either for his father’s name or his ‘native village’.

All reasonably clear so far? Right. To give an example, K.N. Narayanan might stand for ‘Kadayam Narasimhan Narayanan’. This would refer to Narayanan, the son of Narasimhan and the son of the soil of Kadayam village in Tamil Nadu. And if Narayanan happens to be the eldest (or only) son, you could bet on his grandfather’s name also being Narayanan.

Now, let’s play a little mind game. If Narayanan gets married and has a son, what will he be named? Take your time. Think! It’s not all that difficult. Yes, he would be named Kadayam Narayanan Narasimhan. And if custom were to be followed, his grandson would, in turn, also be named Kadayam Narasimhan Narayanan, and so on. The only way to get out of this rut would be to have multiple sons. That would bring in some variety and introduce much-needed spark and spice. Narasimhan’s second son, might possibly be named Kadayam Narasimhan Nagarajan. No, this is not the same as the first son’s, it’s completely different! A somewhat similar pattern prevails for eldest daughters, though it is a little less rigid.

In our (paternal) family line, the ‘eldest son’ was actually born to my dad’s younger brother. He was bestowed the name of my grandfather, Suryanarayanan. (Yes, it is one word and no, there is no spelling mistake.) I, on the other hand was – thankfully – given a shorter name – Bhaskar – which carries the same meaning, the sun god. They put my name down as P.G. Bhaskar: the P to proudly carry forward the name of my father’s village Pattamadai and the G, my father’s name, Ganapathiraman. This ensured that, many years later, when computers would eventually take over, my full name would not fit into any row of any website, anywhere in the world.

Frankly, I don’t remember too much from my first year. Judging by the few photographs lying around, I was ‘black and white’, fair-complexioned and had a big, round head of curly hair. My eyes were bordered with thick black kohl and I had plump cheeks on which someone had made a smudgy black mark, apparently to keep evil eyes at bay. I was mostly in the nude, save for a black thread worn around the waist, also for pretty much the same reason. Any evil eye that came my way those days must have been very wary. I was an incredibly cute baby. You don’t have to take my word for it. My mother felt the same way.

I was born under the care of gynaecologist E. V. Kalyani in a nursing home named after herself. She was sort of the grand dame of the times at the baby game. Imagine Madras, India, 1963, and this lady was already an accomplished specialist doctor with her own nursing home and everything. I seem to recall being quite awestruck about this, at that time.

Home was just down the road, left and across from the nursing home at 77, Sullivan’s Garden Road. Just beyond a big, green swinging gate was this somewhat nondescript, smallish place, my first home. Many roads in Madras those days were named after lords, masters and other influential Englishmen. ‘Sullivan’ was apparently some postmaster general in nineteenth-century Madras, who was given a sizeable piece of land in what is now in the heart of the city.

Our home consisted of a single row of rooms – the hall, followed by a bedroom, dining and pooja room, kitchen and shower – one behind the other. To reach the loo however, you had to get out of the house from the back and walk left towards where it was housed, small and separate, as if the rest of the house had put it firmly in its place. The living room had four large, comfortable, green cane chairs with a black, diamond-shaped design where the back rested. In the bedroom, some distance away from the fan was a large hook that hung from the ceiling. In Madras, those days, every time a baby arrived, a rope was hung from a hook on the ceiling. No, no! It’s not what you are thinking, nothing half as macabre. The rope would go through the hook and down. To the two ends of the rope, they would tie an old, folded saree belonging to the lady of the house, forming a mini hammock. For the baby in the daytime, it served both as a bed and as a rocker. It was cheap and it was soft. Moreover, it smelt like mum. It was every baby’s delight. No house came without it. It was called thooli. The question of ‘Where should we have the thooli?’ was at least as thoroughly discussed as the business of where to place the windows. Our bedroom had a few mattresses but no cot. In the day time, the mattresses leaned against the wall. At night, they were placed on the floor. All five of us slept in that small bedroom. Often, the innocent peacefulness of the night would be interrupted by sudden violence; its benign stillness pierced by a sharp, adult yelp of pain resulting from a swift, unexpected, somnambulistic kick from one of the kids.

1963 was a big year. I didn’t realize it then, but I see it now. The year’s most important births you already know about, but there was a major death, too. In an event that shocked the world, Lee Oswald – for reasons no one is still absolutely sure about – put a bullet through American President John F. Kennedy. Two days later, the killer himself was killed. The Beatles mania took firm grip on the pulse of the music world. The popularity of the Beatles is relevant to my autobiography. You will see why, as my life slowly unfolds in front of you in this no-holds-barred book. Here is a question for you from 1963.

Q. What is the first name of Beatle ‘Paul McCartney’? (No, the answer is not ‘Paul’.)

1964

The Beatles kept singing ‘All my lovin’ and ‘I wanna hold your hand’ but American president Lyndon Johnson was in no mood for this kind of mushy nonsense. ‘Enough is enough,’ he said. Vietnamese torpedo boats had attacked an American navy fleet, so he got the US Congress to declare war. The Civil Rights Bill also got passed and Martin Luther King Jr became the winner of the Nobel Peace prize. Jailbird in one year, hero the next. Oh, how fickle is our world!

But none of this affected me very much. I had my own problems. My mother had started spying on the maid. She couldn’t quite figure how – when she herself couldn’t get me to eat all the stuff she put on my plate – the maid managed to feed me in just a matter of minutes. The dark monster of suspicion filled her mind. Could it be … could it possibly be that the maid was tucking into my food? She deputed my sisters to keep watch. The two young espionage agents got extremely excited. Their adrenalin flowing like the Brahmaputra in spate, they discussed and finalized their strategy. The suspense was killing. They crept to the windows and peered out cautiously. And they were just in time to see their little baby brother drowning in a pool of blood.

Well, no, not that exactly – I have this slight tendency to exaggerate, which I need to correct. The maid, as always, was standing by the green gate carrying me on her hip and feeding me from the plate placed on the compound wall. While moving her hand, she accidentally banged her wrist against the wall. One of the bangles that she was wearing broke and tore into the skin on my back. As I have mentioned, I didn’t wear too many clothes those days, just the bare minimum. I let out a yell that could have been heard everywhere from Vietnam to the USA. For the next several years, I proudly showed off my scar to hundreds of visitors. If I had charged even a small sum for a look, it would have compounded to a tidy sum over the last few decades and I wouldn’t have had to spend time writing silly autobiographies. But no such thought entered my head. Those were not the crass commercial times that we live in nowadays. It was a different era. Ronald Reagan was still acting. (His film, The Killers, a crime film by Universal Studios based on one of Ernest Hemingway’s stories was released in 1964.) Muhammad Ali, floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee, was still called Cassius Clay (which you hopefully remember) and during the year, he beat Sonny Liston (which of course you had forgotten) to win the world heavyweight championships.

Not surprisingly, I began to grow and 77 Sullivan’s Garden Road began to grow on me. I didn’t get to go out a great deal. We had no car or scooter at home. The subject of a scooter did come up once, when the family had managed to put aside a bit of money. My father wanted a scooter but my mother wanted a refrigerator for the house. A fridge wouldn’t get him to work, my dad argued cleverly, mixing practicality with sheer cold logic. Ah, but you can’t keep food inside a scooter, my mum pointed out, with remorseless reasoning. The latter won and we welcomed home our first-ever fridge, a squat, white ice box that would go on to serve our household for the next two decades.

My dad continued to take the bus to the offices of the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) where he worked. His work was something called ‘oddit’. I didn’t know what it was but it couldn’t have been anything very nice, because he didn’t seem particularly happy about it. But my sisters were awfully thrilled with his job simply because at fourteen storeys, the LIC building on Mount Road was the tallest in the city, by far. Apart from the Kapaleeswarar temple, it was the only other landmark structure in Madras and the pride of every resident. My father didn’t actually work in that building. I was told he worked in ‘Paris’. But he had occasion to visit that haloed building sometimes. And that was enough for us. The LIC building! It inspired such awe. People who saw it for the first time stood open-mouthed, staring in wonder. Fourteen floors! Almost touching the sky! Tourists to Madras in those days were not allowed to leave the city unless they looked at the LIC and expressed wonder. Even if they were visiting from Manhattan.

They called me ‘Chinni’ at home, no one quite knows why. It was one of those things. As my neighbour, there was this chap called Kanna who lived in the house to the left; he owned a red pedal car that I secretly coveted. On the other side, there were some older girls who were my sisters’ friends. Just across the road in front was ‘Baroda House’ which housed a floppy-haired young man called Venkataraghavan, who was just beginning to flirt with fame in the cricketing world. Occasionally, he condescended to play cricket with his sisters and mine, which made all of them feel terribly proud.

My thooli of the previous year gave way to a blue-and-black wooden rocking horse. My sisters would place a pillow on the nape of the horse’s neck on which I’d place my head before being rocked to sleep. My sisters couldn’t have been more different from each other even if they tried. Shobi was the cerebral one, introverted, thoughtful, perceptive. Sheela, two years younger, was the enterprising one, talkative, outgoing. To most people in the neighbourhood, 77 Sullivan’s Garden Road was ‘Sheela’s house’. After school, Shobi would come straight home. A couple of hours later, she would be despatched by my mum to bring the younger one home. So Shobi would have to do the rounds of all the likely places (and there were several of them) hoping to find Sheela in one of them.

We didn’t have to go too far from home for anything. Vegetable vendors came by with hand carts. Adimoolam, a cycle rickshaw man who permanently wore red shorts under a doubled-up white veshti, was always on call. In a small shed just outside our house, Mannarsami ran a little store that sold confectionary and other odds and ends. Our family doctor lived nearby and the beach was within walking distance for all except me. So was my sisters’ school, St Ebba’s.

It was an uncomplicated, straightforward world. Costs were low. A chewy kamarkat cost one paisa; toffee and ice fruit cost two paise apiece. They were all handmade, probably with tons of sugar and bacteria, building in me the necessary immunity that I would need to eat Bombay street food fifteen years later. Our pleasures were simple. Like sucking on candy bought with my sisters’ savings or watching my sisters play hopscotch. Pain too was simple. For some reason my mum would always get the same set of clothes stitched for both my sisters. It would irritate Shobi no end to find Sheela turning up in her class, wearing – on purpose – the identical skirt and blouse as Shobi herself.

Publishing Attempt 2

Having now two chapters under my belt, I decided to meet those publishers again. I am nothing if not resilient. I had also given it a working title to make it look more impressive. I had called it Fifty-one* (Fifty-one not out) intended to convey fifty-one unfinished years of my life. I thought it was rather a nice name for an autobiography. It attracted a predictable reaction. Publishers rarely change their minds about these things. I suppose they could have let it go gracefully. But no, they chided me and went out of their way to have some more fun at my expense.

I turned away and went to another publisher, a big, bearded bounder, who looked very intense.

The man frowned over the first few lines. ‘Is this an authorized biography?’ he asked, in a powerful, rasping voice that did my confidence no good.

‘No! It’s an … autobiography, y’know. One of those things, heh.’

‘Autobiography of Jet Li?’

‘No, … not Jet Li. I mean to say, it’s sort of … it’s my autobiography.’

‘But who are you?’

‘I’m … well, it’s just an autobiography of … an ordinary man. Slices of life, as may happen to anyone of us. It’s just a … well, just sort of a little thing, y’know. I thought maybe people might kind of like it a bit, hopefully.’

‘And what is this Fifty-one?’

‘Not out.’

‘What?’

‘Fifty-one not out. That asterisk next to fifty-one denotes not out, you know. It is meant to show how old I’ll be if … when the book gets published. It covers fifty-one years of my life. Fifty-one not out. That’s because I hope to be still around, you see, heh heh.’

The man stared incredulously. First at me and then at the pages he held in front of him. Briefly he glanced at a couple of inner pages and then handed over the paper to me with undisguised scorn on his face.

‘Fifty-one!’ he said, sneering in an ugly, mocking way.

‘Not out,’ I persevered.

‘Get out!’ he barked. ‘This is all rubbish!’

‘It is not rubbish!’ I bleated, protesting bravely. Then deciding that attack is the best form of defence, I added, ‘I know what to write!’

‘And I know what is right,’ he retorted and walked off in a huff, leaving me alone, confused and more than a little hurt.

I stood there silently for a long time, fuming, small internal fires eating away tiny pieces of me. Then, breathing stentoriously and unevenly, I walked rapidly home, quivering in self-pity. What was this nonsense? Why should only celebrities write autobiographies? Why not me? What was wrong with the idea?

My mind was made up. No amount of derision would deter me. I would continue writing my autobiography. I would write up the first ten years and then take another shot at finding a publisher. But I would do it, come what may.

1965

Of course my dad didn’t actually work in Paris. It was just that everyone pronounced it that way. The place was actually – I realized only later – ‘Parry’s’, named after a Welsh businessman Thomas Parry. The entire Georgetown area in Madras was simply called Parry’s.

I had mentioned earlier that the growing popularity of the Beatles was significant. Surprising, but true. During those happy days, even a telephone connection was rare in Madras and of course, there was no television. Internet connectivity was still light years away and was not even a filament of tungsten in anyone’s brain, but yet, somehow, within this traditional Brahmin stronghold in conservative Madras, slipping in between the Kalyani ragam and the Adi talam, the Beatles quartet had managed to reach out to my two sisters now aged ten and twelve. Under any different circumstance, my appearance could have been different. I might have had my hair combed left, right or upwards. Or, I might have had it combed into a ‘puff’ as they called it, with just the hair in front being rolled back into a sort of ball, giving me a Dev Anand-like appearance. I might even have had a centre parting like M. Karunanidhi, a film scriptwriter who was just beginning to make his presence felt in Madras state politics. But no, such is destiny. The Beatles had sneaked in and lit up my sisters’ imagination and they commanded the barber to give me a ‘Beatle cut’. And so it was. For the next several years, I sported hair combed over my forehead ending in a straight line just above my eyebrows. I must confess it suited John Lennon and Co. more than it suited me. But if you had tried telling my family that, you’d have been lynched.

I was just two feet tall

And couldn’t sing at all

But after my little haircut

I looked just like the quartet

John, Ringo, George and Paul.

Madras, and in particular Mylapore, was predominantly about Carnatic music, Bharatanatyam dances, silk sarees, learning, temples, beaches, early mornings, coffee, punctuality, curd rice and early nights. Simple living and high thinking for some; simple living and simple thinking for many. The place had an academic leaning. People dressed in keeping with the hot and sultry weather. In May every year, when the temperature inched towards 40° C, people would shake their heads and unfailingly remind each other that it was Agni nakshatram. But come January, when the temperature plummeted dramatically to 30° C, the men would pull out their scarves and sweaters from the paran – a mini attic, another sought after feature in many Madras houses – and