Sometimes, it is brawn over brains

JS Raghavan 

I met Jindar in Calcutta in the early sixties, when I was a gawky teenager. It was my first trip to the metropolis, where I went gaga over shingadas, rosogollas and mishti doi. On the first day, Venu, my bespectacled scholarly-looking cousin, took me to a chai shop. He would, as a rule, speak only in English, even with fellow Tamilians. 'I can write and speak very well in my mother tongue. Why not cultivate the international language, its nuances, idioms and so forth? Language is only a tool,’ he would say.

Jindar was near a tea shop, hurling abuses at the chai-wallah. I asked Venu what ‘sala’ meant. He explained the usage of the word, including its Prakrit origin, appropriateness, pith and vigour it exuded when one wanted to translate red-hot anger into razor-sharp words. After the slanging match was over, the tall, wiry Jindar looked at me sharply like a recruiter sizing up a bare-chested candidate for the Army. Before Venu concluded his introduction, he clasped my hand in a vice-like grip, and gave me a bear hug. I could hear the sounds of crushing bones. 

The process of cultivating his friendship took only a day, though he gave an impression he had known me from my previous birth. He invited me over to his place, where he served me a tall tumbler of thick lassi. To a youngster from Madras, habituated to drink watery buttermilk in a tumbler slightly larger than an ounce glass, it was a tall order. Jindar laughed, swirling the jug in readiness for a refill.   

Within days, I had earfuls of invectives. Venu rendered them in English or Tamil, his colourful vocabulary of colloquial Punjabi and Hindustani coming to his aid. His erudition in quoting Shakespeare or Milton was in contrast to Jindar’s ribaldry. Though Jindar was a burly six-footer, Venu, a mere 5 feet 3, seemed to tower over him, brain calling the shots over brawn. 

Coins have a flipside. I was talking to Jindar, sipping coffee in my uncle’s flat, when I heard a heavy thud and a resounding ‘aiyo’. Jindar hurtled down, taking the stairs two at a time. I followed him as fast as I could. Like a flash, he collected my injured corpulent uncle effortlessly, hailed a hand-pulled rickshaw to rush him to hospital. His shirt was getting splattered with blood. I ran alongside and looked back to see what Venu was doing. The scholar stood petrified, closing his eyes tightly, unable to bear the sight of blood. Jindar looked back shocked and mumbled under his breath ‘sala’. I counted yet another dimension to that cryptic mot juste.