Nonstop Nonsense

 

To be the first person to warn Sunil Parandham that he had gotten himself into a catch-22 situation by standing on the top of the apartment complex totally vulnerable to the massive man standing right behind him – was not something I was totally comfortable with.

 

Sunil had two choices. Either he could jump off the apartment complex and kill himself or he could engage the services of the massive man who had given him these two choices.

 

“Catch-22 situation. What are you going to do now?” I asked as per the script.

 

Sunil thought for a moment and said, “What if I double your fees?”

 

The massive man thought for a moment and shook his head, “You ain’t have no money.”

 

Sunil nodded, “But what if I could really manage it?”

 

The massive man folded his hands and solemnly spoke – “Convince me with your business proposition. Or face death – face down.”

 

I looked at the watch. “It has better be good.”

 

Sunil politely told me to shut up. He would have killed me if I had a body. However as per the last census – there was no record of me anywhere in the state of Andhra Pradesh. The fact that I existed – only Parandham knew. And he knew because he nurtured me. He carved me out of nothing.

 

“I can sing really well,” Sunil started his business proposition. I cursed myself for getting into this. Mr. Parandham obviously had a really distorted view of how macho men like the massive guy in front of us treated arts and music.

 

“So?” MM barked, “What does it change?”

 

Sunil smiled, “Imagine an auditorium full of people. Imagine the tension in the air while everyone waits for The Icon. Imagine the hundred thousand patrons swinging and jumping along with the greatest voice they have ever heard. Imagine them getting wild every minute. Imagine my concert MM. Imagine. Just close your eyes and imagine the cash counters. Sunil Parandham is the world’s most popular and most underrated Diffusion Singer. You know what I mean?”

 

I didn’t know what he meant. Diffusion Singing? Never heard of any such thing. However when I found MM closing his eyes apparently to imagine the cash registers – I couldn’t believe my eyes.

 

Sunil whispered, “Now, I’ll be Ben Johnson and you can choose between Flojo and Jesse Owens. Let us get the hell out of here before the mad man opens his eyes and the cash registers dry up right in front of him.”

 

I nodded. That looked, felt and smelt like a plan to me.

 

An hour later, we sipped coffee in the friendly neighborhood Barista Café with Mr. Kripakar Rao enquiring eagerly about the level of involvement of the audience in a Diffusion Concert.

 

“It varies” Sunil started his lecture, “They sometimes forget their homes, nationalities and even their existence. However mostly it is their girlfriend’s birthdays that they forget.”

 

I looked out at the sunny beach. The mad man had reportedly chased those cash registers without ever opening his eyes and in the process managed to get on the wrong side of the parapet wall of the apartment complex terrace. He’d never had a chance to open his eyes at all.

 

Sunil’s belief in unbelievable escape routes usually caught me off guard. When you could confidently say that Sunil would be dead in a minute, he would split open the logic of common perception and walk out stately like a conqueror with absolute disregard to poor fella like me who believed in and vehemently argued for the importance of sanity in our daily lives.

 

He shunned sanity. That was his secret.

 

Three years after this incident, Diffusion Singing was a rage all over the world. They sang Diffusion songs effortlessly and people swayed left and right in absolute bliss.

 

Sunil from his luxurious office overlooking the skyline of Manhattan told me one fine day – “Diffusion is a way of life.”

 

I believed him. I had no reason not to. He coined a term Diffusion Singing when he almost died. Then he developed it and sold the idea to Kripakar Rao – a drunkard fighting hangover the other day in Barista. Kripakar Rao – a man with a congenital silver spoon and no brains worth speaking of – was convinced of the business model and embraced the religion of Diffusion Singing.

 

Venture capitalists like Kripakar Rao existed solely for one purpose – to ensure that the world is constantly moving from orderliness to disorderliness. They made sure that human beings constantly were reminded of the wonderful concept called Entropy.

 

“Humanity is going to the dogs” I declared.

 

Sunil smiled, “So what? You are not a human anyway.”

 

I didn’t like it. “I consider myself a proper fellow. You just can’t write me off like that. I have a distinct personality.”

 

“Yeah right!” Sunil went back to his laptop to check the bank balance. “Four hundred thousand increase in ten minutes. I love Diffusion Singing.”

 

Just then a lean man entered the office and pointed a gun at Sunil, “I’ve been ordered to eliminate you. You can commit suicide by jumping off the building or you can choose to get shot at the temple.”

 

“Who are you?” Sunil asked perplexed.

 

“No harm in telling you that now. I have been hired by Fusion musicians who are now begging on the streets of Philadelphia thanks to your Diffusion wave. They gathered every penny on the streets near the toll booths all over the country and sent me in to kill you. But I confess I loved your Beca Beca Lea number very much. It is a pity you didn’t release an audio CD of this song.”

 

“Thanks” Said Sunil Parandham, “Diffusion Songs are never released on audio CDs. They are only sung in concerts. That is why they are so popular. So are you going to spare me?”

 

“No!” the stern voice spoke, “I am going to kill you because I’ve been paid for doing this job.”

 

“How much?” Sunil asked him.

 

“Doesn’t matter. I believe in ethics.”

 

“What if I offer you two hundred thousand Euros and a kilogram of Bose Einstein Condensate?”

 

I couldn’t believe my ears. Bose Einstein condensate? Where did it come from?

 

The jaw of the assassin dropped. “Bose Einstein Condensate? You kidding me!”

 

“No I am not. It is right there in the refrigerator. Feel free to take a look. But be careful. It is a fourth state of matter and is very difficult to contain.” Sunil showed him the way to the executive kitchen at the far end of the room.

 

The guy was undecided. “Is this a trap? Do you really have a Bose Einstein Condensate sample there??”

 

Sunil brought on a quirky smile and presented the clincher very smoothly – “Yes! It is sitting right next to the unreleased audio CD of Beca Beca Lea. While you are at it, feel free to take home the CD. It is my gift to you.”

 

The guy sped like a warhorse towards the kitchen and the rest was history.

 

“It was just a blind shot you know! Most geeks these days are going gaga over useless terminology. It worked.” Sunil explained to me later in the day.

 

Being with Sunil had always been a learning experience for me. The guy had loads of luck, loads of potatoes in the sack and many such sacks stacked neatly in bank vaults and accounts all over the world. His Mantra of success? Simple – Believe in the stupidity of mankind!

 

One day he fired his chef for serving him Broccoli.

 

“But why? Broccoli is such a nice vegetable!” I argued with him.

 

He shook his head, “Broccoli is simply a waste of Nature’s resources. It has this remarkable quality of tasting saline when salt is sprinkled on it, sweet when Aunt Jemima is poured on it and paper when tasted without any additives. God’s rare defective product it is. Has no personality at all of its own.”

 

My association with Sunil Parandham goes back all the way to his childhood. I could still remember the day I was born. He called me to help him fight the monsters under his bed. I readily agreed and we were successful in driving the monsters away – from under the bed and inside the closet.

 

He is incredibly lucky and God favors him all the time. His concepts of Diffusion Singing and Bose Einstein paranoia have rescued him many times in his life.

 

The other day this guy comes and tells me animatedly that the Subway guys in India do not have his favorite bread.

 

“What is your favorite bread?” I asked him politely. As far as I knew he couldn’t tell an Italian from a Wheat.

 

“Jagadeesan or something like that.” Sunil told me.

 

“Jagadeesan?” I was intrigued, “You mean you actually asked the Subway guy for Jagadeesan Bread?”

 

“Yes I did, and he took his own time to reply that he had never heard of such bread! Man, I always ate Jagadeesan Bread in Manhattan.”

 

I asked him – “By any chance do you mean – Parmesan bread?”

 

He stared at me. His face lit up. “Yes! Paramesan Bread it is. I knew it was some south Indian name but couldn’t recollect it. Confused with Jagadeesan.”

 

That is Sunil Parandham for you. Let me share with you another interesting story about this guy. He was an electrical engineer by education. It was in his second year of engineering that he was introduced to a lovely little theorem called Thevenin’s theorem. To his surprise Sunil referred three different textbooks to find three different interpretations of the theorem.

 

He used to tell me that Thevenin’s theorem taught him a lot. It told him in clear terms that no matter what he wrote in the examination, the professor would shake his head and say it was not the proper way of expressing the theorem.

 

“I have a great business proposition” he told me the other day. “I want to write the ultimate book on Thevenin’s Theorem – titled – One Hundred Thousand Ways of Stating Thevenin’s theorem.”

 

I blankly stared at him. “How do you plan to find all those definitions? What about the definition Panama Islanders are using?”

 

He smiled, “We are going on a world tour.”

 

Hence the Great Journey started. We covered India first. We went to all the universities and recorded about twenty different statements of the theorem. It wasn’t by any means an easy task.

 

“Ki Bolchi?” asked Professor Debashish Choudhury.

 

“Entantunnaru?” asked Professor Palakollu Parameshwaram.

 

“Maloom nahin” admitted Viswanath Mehta.

 

“Macchi, Rajni padam parunga. Iduyellaam ungalkku thevaiya?” asked Senthil Bhaskaran.

 

Sunil didn’t give up. He relentlessly pursued his mission. His goal was pretty straightforward. No other human being should get confused by the theorem. Thevenin’s theorem should be base-lined in all its forms by the end of the journey.

 

The next stop was Pakistan. Interestingly the universities here followed those flavors of Thevenin’s theorem that were opposite in at least one aspect to the ones taught in India. In some cases the difference was as minute as a passive voice representation of its counterpart in India.

 

China however was quite quick to point out that those versions of Thevenin’s theorem used in Pakistan were actually translated from the Chinese transcripts. So they said we could skip China. But we did visit Taiwan. Surprisingly we could get a radically different presentation of the much-acclaimed theorem there.

 

Sunil wanted to go to Lhasa.

 

“That is like, in Tibet –right?” I asked him suspiciously.

 

“Yes. The Dalai Lama would perhaps throw some light on this mysterious concept.” Sunil said.

 

I sighed and pointed out that The Dalai Lama was taking asylum in Dharam Shaala in India.

 

He was genuinely surprised. “So who is in Tibet now?”

 

“Tibetans” I replied.

 

“Very funny. We are anyway going there.” He firmly declared.

 

Before the trip could materialize, he ended up being chased by goons sent by Dr. Bibek Mishra.

 

Dr. Bibek Mishra is not a medical doctor. He proclaims that he had obtained his doctorate in Criminology from a certain University of Aesthetics, Neverfoundland. Whoever questioned the authenticity of this university or the location of Neverfoundland ended up in a ditch which had quickly become known as Bibek’s Abattoir.

 

Thus people believed that there existed a university of “aesthetics” in Neverfoundland.

 

Sunil Parandham – despite giving me assurances that he’d never question the university or the Land, committed hara-kiri by asking why a University specializing in “Aesthetics” would grant anyone a doctorate in Criminology.

 

Dr. Bibek Mishra had an eyebrow raised.

 

“I mean – what is Aesthetics?” Sunil asked him innocently.

 

Dr. Bibek Mishra had the second eyebrow raised.

 

“I mean – you know. I fail to see the connect between Aesthetics and Criminology.”

 

Dr. Bibek Mishra rang a bell. Three goons came in; lifted Sunil and deposited him in a dust bin right across the street.

 

I was relieved. I was expecting something worse.

 

If you are trying to guess why Sunil had to meet Dr. Bibek Mishra in the first place, you are embarking on a futile journey. A certain degree of randomness drives Sunil Parandham’s daily activities. Trying to put them all in a perspective of logic is nearly impossible.

 

“I heard Neverfoundland is somewhere near Tibet.” He shouted from the dust bin. “I am going there to find out all about the University of Aesthetics.”

 

Dr. Bibek Mishra came out. Sunil was struggling to get on to his feet.

 

Mishra’s advisor Pegelino Renera whispered, “If he manages to get to Neverfoundland, he would uncover certain mysteries. It’s in your best interests that he doesn’t go anywhere near Neverfoundland.”

 

Bibek scratched his head. “But where is Neverfoundland?”

 

Pegelino nodded in the direction of Sunil. “Apparently he knows. Why take a chance.”

 

Bibek was still unsure. “But is there a Neverfoundland?”

 

Pegelino was exasperated, “How many times do I have to tell you Bibek? It doesn’t matter whether he knows about Neverfoundland – We just have to ensure that no one knows about Neverfoundland – its existence or location. If we leave this guy on the loose, he might uncover Neverfoundland and you will no longer be a doctor.”

 

“Of criminology?” Bibek was worried.

 

“Yes, of Criminology.”

 

“So what do we do?” He questioned.

 

Pegelino knew it was a rhetorical question. Yet he responded, “Pack him off.”

 

Dr. Bibek Mishra called the goons. “Pack Sunil off.”

 

They all ran to the dust bin.

 

“Doctor. Subject is at large.”

 

Bibek looked blankly at Pegelino.

 

Pegelino shook his head, “They are saying Sunil has escaped.” He turned to the goons. “Call Burrey Massive right away. Tell him he has to finish off Sunil in a day.” And then he advised Dr. Bibek Mishra, “Cut down on the Hollywood movies these nincompoops are spending time on.”

 

Burrey Massive was the massive man I mentioned in the very first paragraph of this story. You know the rest of the story.