An Essay on the Existence of Capt.Tony Mundackal.

Capt.Tony Mundackal never existed. He is a dream-character appeared in the delusions of a maverick mujahideen who fell down unconscious on the ice. A blizzard blew over his frozen body. In those unbearable moments of iciness, the jehadi’s mind escaped into a stream of psychedelic visions, which was decoded as follows:
The jehadi managed to infiltrate. He met the military officer who shared his love problems. There he happened to meet an Indo-American young Lady Professor to whom the jehadi got so attracted. Recognizing his ‘crush’, the woman talked to him. She took him to Cochin, where they happened to meet Rekha Pavlova; a multi-faceted personality, who claims to be just another normal girl because of an inability to accept praise. In Cochin, he witnessed an event which indicated the ‘civil unrest’ in Kerala. Kerala is a land prone to sudden communist outbursts and backlashes. Something happened, which reminded him of the stories narrated to him by a crew of the National Geographic channel. In front of a restaurant called Bimbis at Menaka , a Mercedes Benz came to a halt. All of a sudden, a bearded Malayalee young man wearing a white shirt and a white mundu climbed up the Mercedes and stood on top of the car with a timber baton in his right hand like a statue, (the proletariat gaining control over a bourgeoisie luxury icon) as if striking a pose to impress the teresian neo-bourgeoisie dravidian supergirls…but they never even looked at the bearded young man standing on top of a Mercedes…in stead they focused on the clean-shaven young man who came out of the car wearing a ‘Manchester United’ t-shirt, faded blue jeans and Nike’s tennis shoes. The teresian neo-bourgeoisie dravidian supergirls speak good English, fluently in a Bombay MTV accent and they immediately started a conversation with the rich young man asking him, “Hi…! Are you Renjini’s brother… ?”
The jehadi’s mind floated around, always slipping away from the attempted embraces of the Death.

Here is an explanation of the sociological terminology, teresian neo-bourgeoisie dravidian supergirl…a social phenomenon which has been evolving subsequent to the development of an ‘urban consciousness’ in Cochin.

teresian = a girl who is or was a full time bonafide student of St. Teresa’s College,
                   Ernakulam.

neo-bourgeoisie = the rich upper middle class of the globalised post-Perestroikan
                                  New Economy of make-believe Capitalism and Americanism.

dravidian = of South Indian origin or habitat (the word dravidian is not used in a
                      racial sense; it’s only to indicate the geographic location. In a visual
                      anthropometrical analysis, the girls are not essentially Dravidian.)

supergirls = astonishingly Westernized girls
                     - who speak English in a fake American accent (and terribly poor
                       Malayalam, if at all they speak Malayalam. )
                     - who have pizzas, sandwiches, burgers, sausages, noodles, salads with continental shrubs, frankfurters,                        French toasts, chappathis, spaghetti and Coca-Cola.
                     - who wear t-shirts, full sleeved shirts, boot-legged jeans, cotton trousers, side-slitted stretchable pants with                        floral or other trendy prints, Lycra tops in various patterns and colours, wrap-arounds, ethnic cotton tops                        with prints of Ganapati or other vedic motifs, short kurtas, most commonly tight-fit churidars with highly                        cut slits beside either thigh (in so many colours and designs), may be saree at occasions……high heels,                        floaters, sneakers….
(As for girls, this liberty to experiment with fashionable clothes is an advantage of the absence of orthodox Malayalee males at St.Teresa’s College. But in the absence of males, what is the driving force behind turning out fashionably! To irritate other girls? There are so many young men who come to see girls at Convent Junction. May be, that’s a motivation.)

If Tony Mundackal had really existed, he could not have made it to the military service because of a criminal record. Not a big crime but something very offensive like inability to control himself while meeting a woman at the bus-stop and trying to embrace her, not an ill will or an attempt to insult the woman, but being succumbed to the purely biological libidinal impulse or a kind of parental fancy when he happens to see his unborn child (a Sooraj Balaji ?) in the eyes of the woman. If it was in New Delhi or New York, this indecent behaviour would have been answered with a tight slap but in Cochin this issue cannot be settled unless the offender is publicly beaten up by merciless Malayalee well-wishers. ‘Public beating’ is a dravidian festival which the police also appreciates; the civic consciousness of the public to let the criminal know that what he has done is wrong trying to embrace a woman at the bus-stop. After the arrest the police do not beat up the criminal as it is shown in Malayalam movies. In a case of attempting to embrace a woman at a public place, the police would ask the criminal to sit down on the floor, his hands tied behind and legs wide apart. A police-man would kick on the criminal’s private parts, like a penalty kick in soccer, leaving the criminal medically unfit to lead a normal life, let alone military service.
From a sociological perspective, the whole drama is male dominated, leaving the offended woman a mute spectator, her opinions and reactions taken for granted and denied of an opportunity to express herself by slapping the man on his face. In circumstances like this, the Malayalee woman is at a loss compared to the Punjabi woman; the behavioural diseconomies that the society inflicts. Malayalee women do not slap!
So this incident makes Tony Mundackal medically unfit for military service. Furthermore, he does not have the decency expected of a military officer. Decency in this context of meeting a woman at the bus-stop means, talk for a while politely…that’s it. While looking into her eyes, if he feels that biological impulse or parental fancy, he has to say ‘Bye’ and walk away. Decency is a function of geographical location, historical time period and the local code of ethics. In Paris, the man’s courteousness towards the woman is defined differently. In Roland Garros, during Mixed Doubles matches, male and female tennis stars are not ashamed to hug each other, in front of some thousands of spectators. A surprising intellectual break-through in the history of humanity.

The existence of Capt. Tony Mundackal is something that can be debated. There are two equal possibilities:
Firstly, Captain existed in the valley but the question arises whether he was really needed in the military service! Wasn’t he disguisedly unemployed near the border ?
Secondly, Captain never existed. He appeared in the dream of a dying mujahideen because too much sufferings of the blustering snow made a peace-lover out of the jehadi…(deep inside, do jehadis really enjoy infiltration!) Before the Death comes to dance with the blizzard over his body, the mujahideen started to imagine occasions of a peaceful co-existence with an Indian military officer, a sort of defensive mechanism of the brain to keep the good-will alert because the man has to be pure when the Death arrives. The moment stars descend down from the black void Einsteinian space…the moment you wish you had a close companion to shake you up and say “Come on. Let’s go,” extending a hand of friendship, leading you back to life. But the dying jehadi didn’t have friends. It’s a sad organic reality.
In Northern Pakistan, exchanging ‘Friendship Day’ cards as a token of love has not come about as a custom. Otherwise, he could have patched up broken relationships, erasing prejudices, through this short-cut. But this emotional need is largely ignored in that part of the world.

Now let’s discuss the characterization of Rekha Pavlova. The name in itself is an impossibility; a Sanskrit first name and a Russian second name, sounds awkward; it may represent the transnational identities and the melting of borders but the world is not yet ‘small’ enough to have a demographic condition in which human beings are addressed in a Sanskrit first name and a Slav surname. This very confusion of the national identity of Rekha was the Achilles’ heel in the characterization. And it’s time to make things clearer. The surname Pavlova was taken from the Russian ballerina, Anna Pavlova; for the Indian female character we are referring to (as Rekha) is related to Classical dance but the absurdity of naming lies in the fact that this South Indian woman has nothing to do with Russian ballet. ‘Pavlova’ does not hold good as a metaphor.
An alternative naming could be Venus de Edapally II but ‘Venus’ is not reasonable. Indeed, she has got an attribute of the legendary Venus de Edapally , that is recurring appearances in dreams….not 25 times…not 50 times…not 75 times…more dreams, without any rational explanation. This is not ‘The Art of Dreaming’ of Carlos Castaneda. This is an extended manifestation of a mad infatuation. Nevertheless, Rekha Pavlova cannot be renamed as Venus. Since ‘Venus’ is not reasonable, we could think of Indian equivalents like Apsara or Menaka….Menaka of Edapally!…but Menaka has other connotations like the seductiveness to derail the spiritual engine of a rajarshi…..
No…no...not at all…!
Why don’t we call her Aarathy? The Sanskrit word aarathy is Vedic in origin and aarathy means ‘the act of worshipping a Hindu idol with the circular movements of a lamp (chirag) in one’s hand.’ A beautiful tantric ritual. In India, there are dance-forms in which girls carry chirags in their hands (aarathy) performed in colleges, especially on College Days.
For the time being, let’s call her Rekha Pavlova, keeping the aarathy factor constant. The fictional value should not be lost; that’s why.
Rekha Pavlova got the longest mail in the history of rediffmail. It was a thesis on “Friendship among College Students in Post-Colonial India,” which made the conclusion that Indian youngsters are orthodox, hence unable to establish affectionate relationships, to which Rekha Pavlova just could not agree. But she does not get time to respond to this treatise…not her fault…it’s lack of priority to this academically less important topic, “Friendship among College Students in Post-Colonial India.” Can’t a boy and a girl be just good friends? Friendship in itself is a beautiful relationship…Oh! Yeah…But who gets time to carry on the discussions. To progress in practical life, one should not spend time discussing these trivial topics. There are other significant topics like the ‘road map’ to peace in Palestine or may be, the downward slope of the demand curve.
Why demand curve slopes downwards? Because the artist drew it that way. It does not make sense to ask why a line is downward sloping after drawing it that way. It’s like asking why the mail-van is red! If a line is drawn sloping downwards, it will remain like that unless you erase it and draw it straight. What is it terribly wrong about the downward slope! Just kidding…..Sorry!

Tony Mundackal was so badly injured that the police could not have brought him in front of a magistrate. So the police removed a concrete slab above a sewage canal, lowered his body into the canal, tying his shivering hands to a pipe and replaced the slab. This loss of freedom is the punishment for perversions like attempting to embrace a woman publicly. Adivasi leader, C.K.Janu could at least limp, despite a swollen face when she was brought in front of the judicial magistrate. In that case, the police had the silent approval of the Malayalee well-wishers and the upper castes to beat up a woman who instigated her down-trodden and marginalised community to take arms against a pseudo-Constitutional order of a pseudo-Republic. (If somebody asks me, whom will you marry; C.K.Janu or Aishwarya Rai…I would say Aishwarya Rai for the simple reason that Aishwarya Rai is Aryan whereas Janu, an adivasi. Racism is primitive, but in this dichotomous choice game, I go for the Aryan woman Aishwarya Rai who is in the prime of her life. Adivasi women do not have a prime of their life, in the conventional sense.)

The National Geographic channel’s film-maker told the jehadi a true story: Once upon a time, in Cochin, in a restaurant at Menaka where the teresian neo-bourgeoisie dravidian supergirls and their boy-friends chill out, a dalit young man (wearing a kaavi jubba and kaavi mundu, with a budhijeevi bag hanging down his shoulder) came in and ordered a black coffee!!!!! The teresian neo-bourgeoisie dravidian supergirls didn’t like the presence of a dalit plebian in their midst, as if it is a place exclusive for them. The young girls started to tease the dalit, makings remarks on his clothes…on his poverty. The boy-friends were so amused and impressed seeing the smartness and wit of their female counterparts and sympathised with the dalit young man for his unwelcome presence. These boy-friends spend their mom’s money to take the girls out. Their mothers may be public school teachers, bank officers, surgeons, senior bureaucrats, journalists, NRIs, beauticians….The young men are not abashed to get money from their moms to feed their girl-friends because it’s a desperate attempt for a companionship…a touch. A touch is something precious and rare in Kerala. The teresian neo-bourgeoisie dravidian supergirls do not like young men whose parents are not financially successful. They teased
this dalit plebian because it is this kind of lower class men who make lewd comments on the female body parts when the girls walk down the street. All of a sudden, a mobile phone rang inside the budhijeevi bag of the dalit. Surprising everyone, he took out an Apple Macintosh lap-top and a tiny dish antenna from his bag. Directing the antenna towards the West, he typed in quickly. Reading a message on his lap-top, this brown-skinned ugly man got alarmed, hastily packed up and frantically ran away, throwing an American Express credit card towards the cashier.
An emandan German ship came into the Cochin harbour. Suddenly, the ship lost its rudder-control and came straight towards the main-land Ernakulam, like a charging bull at a very high nautical speed and crashed against the granite barrier, throwing lofty ripples all over, very high waves which flooded the Menaka and Marine Drive area…Water gushed into sewage canals and Tony Mundackal who had been trapped inside one of the canals got washed out into Mullassery canal through which he could escape.
Tony Mundackal emerged out of Mullassery canal, drenched and stinking. He did not have the courage to look at Rekha Pavlova who had been there with her friends. Tony Mundackal and Rekha Pavlova ignored each other. It was a painful experience for these young human beings. Rekha didn’t know how to treat him or behave; so she conveniently avoided an eye contact. If she smiled at him, that would be misunderstood as love, which was a social taboo. And if she didn’t smile at him, that would be misunderstood as jada or arrogance ; jada is ‘shyness misinterpreted as egoism’ which the girls are wary of, because the society expects too much ‘humility’ from them. In Natural History, irrespective of species, the male makes the first move but Tony Mundackal was an egoistic weakling. He was a victim of circumstances…terrified, cut off, overcompensating through withdrawal from normal life; aloof; chronic depression…....Lack of communication made things incomprehensible. Lack of communication is not an excuse any more thanks to the availability of such beautiful mediums like e-mails. But e-mails usually result in breaking relationships rather than making any. When this heartbreaking condition arise in material life, American men and women are more adventurous to try out things like going out together to talk it over, put all that behind and remain friends. Women are sensitive and receptive; men are masculine and annoyingly demanding, as it seems in Hollywood films. But ‘life’ is not 24 frames per second. Life is not a motion picture.

The jehadi’s body was fully covered with the snow. He could never meet an Indo-American young Lady Professor in his life. Still, there is the pleasure of imagination! And the jehadi died, frozen, because it was a historical inevitability.

                                                                                    Fine.                                                                                        May, 2003.