I hate tears. I don’t care if they are genuine tears or crocodile tears or genuine tears wept by a fake crocodile. In general, lachrymal precipitation troubles me. The tears I hate the most are the tears cried by those I love the most.
The three people I love more than anyone else in the world are Bharat Mata, my own personal mata (that’s my mom), and our dear Prime Minister. Bharat Mata is going great guns right now, so I don’t have to worry. My mom does cry when she’s watching some old Sivaji Ganesan film, but that’s like periodically emptying the overhead water tank for maintenance. So it’s not a problem either.
That leaves the Prime Minister. Every time he gets emotional, my eyes well up too. For this I hold the media responsible. Instead of respecting his privacy, it captures all his tears on camera and beams them into your face until you cry. But last week, when he cried three times in one day, I didn’t mind too much because they were tears of joy, shed in celebration of a hard-fought victory over anti-national forces in Gujarat and that other State below Kashmir. I also cried thrice, shocking my colleagues, who know me only as a cold, ruthless and calculating mercenary who can stoop to any level.
Weddings are a bother
The Prime Minister’s tears apart, even otherwise this has been an emotionally draining month for me. And I blame Virushka for it.
Frankly, weddings are not my thing. For one, they tend to attract too many people, and I don’t like crowds. Secondly, the atmosphere is too cheerful – I would even say falsely cheerful – which doesn’t suit my temperament. I am more at home in gatherings where everyone is morose and depressed and discussing post-human literature through quivering rings of beedi smoke. But what bothers me the most is everyone taking photographs. I don’t think people should take photographs. I don’t mean only at weddings – in general people shouldn’t take photographs ever. And weddings are but an excuse for a photographic orgy.
So I really didn’t want to go all the way to Tuscany. It’s not as if Virat and Anuskha are my personal relatives.
They first wrote to me in October, offering to fly me to Italy and back business class. I politely informed them that I cannot attend any wedding until I had completed the 56 pending linkages on my Aadhaar to-do list.
The next day I got a call from someone claiming to be Anushka. She told me that not only she and her fiancé but her entire production team, the entire Indian cricket team, the BCCI, their wedding planners, the hairstylists, the caterers, the flower people, the electricians, the security, and the shopkeeper who sold them a ₹1 crore wedding ring were all huge fans of my work and would be devastated if I did not grace the occasion with my august company.
I again explained that I didn’t have the time. Then someone claiming to be Virat took the phone from her. He pleaded with me, saying that both the Dhol team and the DJ would go on strike if I didn’t show up. He said the owners of Borgo Finocchieto were so besotted with my work that they had booked an entire villa for me and painted the walls in the colours of my book covers (saffron, white and green).
While all this was perfectly believable, I found it incredible that the wedding card had no mention of Virushka’s Aadhaar numbers. Even more shocking, there was to be no biometric authentication of the invited guests. When I mentioned this, Virat burst into tears and said that if I didn’t agree to come, the entire BCCI, including himself, would commit mass suicide.
That was a double whammy. As you know by now, I hate tears. Secondly, the one thing I have in common with Sunny Leone is an allergy to mass suicide. You can get me to do anything by threatening to commit mass suicide – doesn’t matter whether you are BCCI or some Katthirika Sena. Defenceless against such emotional blackmail, I gave in.
From Tuscany to India
I must say I quite enjoyed Tuscany, though it doesn’t compare to T Nagar. It was true that Virushka had memorised every word I’ve ever written. I was touched to see them constantly quoting from my work. I was moved to find that the songs sung by a gaggle of aunties during the mehndi and haldi ceremonies were actually Punjabi translations of my essays set to music. And I was close to tears when I discovered that the return gifts for every guest included an audio book of my collected works in Italian, voiced by none other than Monica Bellucci.
But I broke down only when I returned to India and learnt that all the 2G accused had been let off but three donkeys were sent to jail.
