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Illegal Download

Posted on April 10, 2007
Filed Under The Stories |

They were drinking coffee; cheap stuff from plastic cups that served the purpose of putting something into their stomachs without actually providing any appreciable benefits. In their defense, they didn’t know what good coffee tasted like. Their comparative skills extended as far as being able to tell which railway station sold the least milky, most taste-rich light brown sludge. In that respect at least, they were connoisseurs and went for the best they could find.

To look at them was to see two regular Mumbai man-boys, lost in a dream world as their only escape from the reality that surrounded them. In their own lifetimes they had watched things get better and worse. It was a cleaner city than it used to be but Singapore it was not. One of them had actually been to Singapore so he got to tell his friend, show him pictures and help him colour the dream of a city where everything was in order, new movies were actually brand new and the latest gadgets and the coolest toys were legitimately available.

Hiten liked to think that he understood a little more of the world because he had traveled a bit. It wasn’t an idea he would actually share with Jiten because he knew it would be the source of a useless argument he didn’t have the energy for. He knew Jiten wouldn’t see the logic of it so he let it be, but in his head he did feel ever so slightly superior.

Jiten wondered how Hiten could be so naïve about the world they lived in, especially since he had traveled a bit. Though the guy blowing over the surface of his scalding hot coffee was his best friend he despaired for the man’s innocence sometimes. He knew things about the world that Hiten wouldn’t even be able to comprehend. He had seen it all or read about it on the internet. He had watched six different men have sex with a blonde woman, no condoms or lubrication or anything.

He knew that terrorists were a figment of government imaginations, unleashed on the people as a desperate gambit to exert mass control. He knew that the stock market was being manipulated by forces more powerful than the underworld and that cricket was less a sport of skill and chance and more an orchestrated dance designed to flood the market with black money.

Jiten suspected that all actors were really just highly paid prostitutes; especially when his niece and nephew did a better job of pretending to be angels when they had done something bad for free.

He wasn’t even one of those retromancers who seemed to think that everything worthwhile had been produced and consumed fifty years before he was born. No he just liked to believe that his eyes were wide open in a world that was content to sleepwalk. And he had a treat in store for Hiten.

It had never occurred to Hiten that he didn’t know or understand how the world operated. He had his niche, he knew how to work that niche for all it was worth and between trading in the cusp of profit every day and going home to a nephew, niece, brother, sister-in-law and parents every night, he thought he had it made. Life couldn’t be better. Actually it could but he tried not to think of Alka in that way. She was his sister-in-law after all and even though his brother treated her like shit there was little he could do without suffering some very large repercussions.

For one thing he was sure that Mitesh drank. Theirs was a vegetarian household but it wasn’t like their parents could administer a breathalyzer test every time his brother came home. Hiten also entertained the suspicion that his brother had a mistress. That or he wasn’t above visiting the occasional prostitute. He didn’t have any real evidence to support his theory other than the fact that his niece and nephew had been born within fifteen months of each other and there had been no further activity on the childbirth front since then.

To his eyes Alka didn’t look any worse for the wear, having birthed two children and being cooped up at home all day long. She seemed content to look after her in-laws and care for her children. He wondered whether she got lonely once the kids went to school. He wondered what she did all day. He remembered the sari he had considered buying her while in Singapore. He thought of his brother thrusting into her and had to screw his eyes shut and shake his head violently to rid himself of the image.

Jiten noticed and asked what was wrong. Hiten changed the subject by sipping on his coffee and asking if he had anything for him. Jiten smiled and placed his battered shoulder bag on the table they were standing at. He slipped an anonymous CD in an unremarkable case out of its depths and slid it across the table. Hiten didn’t immediately accept it. Jiten looked around and leaned in, “This is brand new stuff. I got it from a new site.”

Hiten didn’t look impressed, “That’s what you said the last time.”

Jiten slid the CD closer and closed his eyes reassuringly, “You just try this. I’m telling you, you won’t be able to walk for a week.”

He enacted the universal sign for jerking off, “You’ll wear it out. Start shooting blanks but you won’t be able to stop.”

Though he didn’t like to betray it, Hiten’s curiosity had been piqued, “What is it?”

Jiten slid the CD even closer, “Check it out and tell me what you think. Train is here.”

They finished their coffee and left. Trotted alongside the train until it had picked up enough speed to pose a challenge and then Jiten jumped onboard. He smiled down at Hiten, “I promise you, you’ll never be able to look at your sister-in-law the same again.”

The words came as such a surprise to him, Hiten stopped running. Jiten watched him disappear from sight until the train turned a corner and picked up speed. As he wended his way towards the middle of the semi-crowded compartment he muttered to himself, “Sometimes I have no idea what goes on in that fellow’s head.”

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