Bala Takes the Plunge

by Melvin Durai

Genres: Humor & Satire

Synopsis

Bala dreams of making Tamil films and directing his favourite actor Rajnikanth – a dream that leads him naturally to study engineering in college. This earns him his father's approval and the opportunity to export himself to America. As Director of Design at Flexit Inc., thinking up new ways to help Americans shed the excess weight around their middles and in their wallets, he is at least some kind of director. Bala loves America, and America it seems loves him even more. He has everything he needs to be happy: a green card, a satellite dish to watch cricket and a companion to share his home – albeit one with a very limited vocabulary. But he is now less than a year away from the big 30, and if he doesn't act fast he might have to settle for whichever bride his Amma chooses. So begins Bala's quest for romance as he meets both American and Indian women. Some who are too old, others too young, and yet others just too stuck up. Will he ever find someone just right for him – and good enough to inherit his mother's Corelle dishes?

Release date: August 7, 2012

Publisher: Hachette India

Print pages: 200

Sample

B. BALASUBRAMANIAM, B.E., HAD ALWAYS WANTED TO BE A director, but not quite the director he had become. He had wanted to direct Tamil movies and work with superstars like Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan. What a thrill that would be, having the power to tell Rajini what to do: ‘Sit here, put your legs up, allow me to get you some coffee, sir.’

He had dreamt of putting his name in the opening credits – ‘Directed by B. Balasubramaniam’ – and ending the movie with the initials ABC emblazoned across the screen, which everyone in India would come to recognize as ‘A Balasubramaniam Classic’. The President of India would award him the Padma Bhushan and the Queen of England would make him an O.B.E., which would look far more impressive than just a B.E. Every other Indian, after all, seemed to possess a Bachelor of Engineering degree. India had become the world’s biggest factory for engineers. The government was wisely considering a law requiring all engineering students to wear helmets, so they wouldn’t hurt themselves when they fell off the conveyor belts. They were India’s chief export to the developed world, finding themselves in countries like Australia, New Zealand, Canada and America, where Permanent Resident status was granted to anyone who could prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that they had a brain.

It would have been exceptional, of course, if Bala had earned his B.E. at IIT, the Indian Institute of Technology, where, even during the height of monsoon season, brainstorms were more common than rainstorms. Bala’s father, a civil engineer, had studied at the College of Engineering, Guindy (now part of Anna University), but never hesitated to sing praises of IIT. ‘It is tops in whole world,’ Appa would say. ‘Even better than Masterji Seth’s Institute of Technology.’

‘Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Appa,’ Bala would gently correct him. But Appa, as usual, was beyond correction.

‘Masterji Seth’s. That is what I said. It is not so good as IIT.’

Bala didn’t come close to getting into IIT and he blamed this on the Indian cricket board. If they hadn’t scheduled a series against New Zealand in the same month as his entrance exam, he would have studied harder and scored better. As it was, he kept getting distracted, much to his mother’s dismay. ‘You are ready, kanna?’ Amma asked one morning, serving idlis and tomato chutney to Bala and his younger sister, Chitra.

‘Not yet,’ he replied. ‘Appa’s hogging the sports page.’

It was a miracle he got into engineering at all. He was granted admission to Sri Harichandran Institute of Technology in Chennai, named after its benefactor, a well-known businessman. Though only a few years old, the college was already well-regarded around the state, being affiliated to a college that was affiliated to Anna University. Its reputation got a further boost in Bala’s third year, when administrators wisely changed its name to Thiru Harichandran Institute of Technology, compelling students to use the much-improved acronym of THIT.

Bala’s dream of becoming a film director was put on hold, not permanently he hoped. He had mentioned this desire several times to his parents and each time they had splashed water on it, like it was a pesky ant climbing up the drain in the bathroom sink.

‘Don’t be stupid idiot, Bala!’ Appa said one evening, his nostrils flaring. ‘What film you are capable of making? Maybe you can make film about me. You can call it The Civil Engineer and show everyone how I am designing bridges that will be able to survive any amount of flooding. That would be blockbusting film, no?’

Bala wondered why Appa had become a civil engineer. There was nothing civil about him. If he made a film about Appa, he would have to call it The Uncivil Engineer. And he would never work with Appa – that would be unbearable. If he messed up, he would be called a ‘stupid idiot’, and if the film won an Oscar or another big award, he’d be elevated only to a ‘lucky idiot’. No, it would be wiser to find an actor to play Appa, someone with a dimpled chin, receding hairline and moustache thick enough to be the actual hiding place of Osama bin Laden.

His mother was more gentle and gracious, but even she disapproved of her son’s ambition. ‘Look at the films today, kanna,’ Amma said. ‘The actresses – they are showing everything. What I am wearing as a blouse, they are wearing as a dress. One film I saw last year at the theatre – what was its name, I don’t remember – this girl was lifting her sari while walking through a puddle and everyone could see her thighs! Chee chee! Did she not know she was being filmed? How people are paying good money to watch films like this, I have no idea.’

Bala was momentarily confused: Had Amma sneaked into the theatre without paying? No, she was incapable of breaking the law. She was the model of honesty. If a shopkeeper gave her an extra Rs. 10 in change, she would return it immediately. Appa, on the other hand, would pocket the money, saying it was only fair and citing at least three reasons: (1) He had been shortchanged at the very same store thirty-eight years ago; (2) the store was gouging its customers with high prices; and (3) it was up to him to balance out Amma’s honesty. ‘Do unto others,’ he would say, ‘as they would have done unto you.’

Bala’s parents did not agree on many things, so he took it seriously when they both raised objections to his ambition. He wondered if it was worth the effort to go against their wishes and become a film director. They would never understand his career, never be fully proud of him. But on the positive side, he could get beautiful actresses to walk through puddles and show their thighs. He imagined himself directing a movie called Monsoon Rain in which all the actresses walked through puddles, lifting their saris high in the air. It would surely make a killing in the box office – but then it might also make Amma want to kill herself.

She had wanted him to be more practical about his career choice. ‘I am not asking you to do anything in particular,’ she insisted. ‘You have many choices. For example, you can be cardiologist, neurologist, ophthalmologist, oncologist or gynaecologist. All good choices. You can even be gastroenterologist, like my brother.’

Bala’s uncle was the only doctor in the family and everyone was either proud or envious of him. He worked from morning to night, both at a busy government hospital and thriving private practice, earning so much money that his wife, according to Amma and others, could live in the sari shop if she wanted to. Uncle and Aunty Balakrishnan had a cook, maid and driver (part of a growing staff), three cars in the garage and elegant furniture in their three-storey house, yet still had the means to take annual vacations in Europe and America and bring home expensive gifts. Thanks to their generosity or what Appa considered their constant and overwhelming need to exhibit their wealth, Amma was the proud owner of a cupboard full of shiny white Corelle dishes. She treasured them so much, she couldn’t bear to put any food on them. Even on special occasions like Pongal and Deepavali, she couldn’t justify using the dinnerware, partly because, as Bala surmised, the guests were mere commoners, not the prime minister or president or someone really important like Rajinikanth. Her family and friends were unworthy of fine ceramic; they were treated to fine stainless steel. If Rajini ever came for dinner, Amma would not only bring out her prized dishes, she probably wouldn’t wash them afterwards either. The display in her cupboard would include a few signs, such as ‘Rajini ate from this plate,’ ‘Rajini drank from this cup’ and ‘I poured sambhar from this bowl while staring at Rajini.’ Amma often bragged that she was Rajini’s ‘biggest fan’, upon which Appa would pat her on the back and say, ‘Don’t worry, Meena. You can always go on diet.’

At times, Bala wondered if Amma wanted him to become a doctor so he could go on shopping sprees to western countries and bring home more dinnerware that would never be used. He envied Balakrishnan Uncle’s wealth, but didn’t want a career that might require him to look down people’s throats or, even worse, look up the other way. He didn’t want to view blood and internal organs. He didn’t want to have to cut people up, not unless they called him in the middle of the night. He was relieved that his father gave him the option of becoming an engineer. ‘You are intelligent boy, so you must become doctor or engineer,’ Appa said, forgetting how often he had called Bala a stupid idiot. ‘You can go to Amricka and get exhalent salary.’ (An exhalent salary, Bala thought, would be far more beneficial to his health than an inhalant one.)

If only he had been less intelligent, he could have become a film director. But with intelligence came responsibility – the responsibility to make all that grey matter matter. Engineering undoubtedly required vast amounts of intelligence. There were so many principles to learn, so many problems to solve, that Bala spent many a night racking his brain, searching for some unused portion of his cerebral cortex that he could tap for insight. It didn’t help that the textbooks were dense and dry, with few illustrations and complicated writing, which the authors evidently hoped would produce greater analytical thinking from prospective engineers. Indeed, Bala had spent countless hours analyzing the various methods that could be used to torture the authors. According to his calculations, taking mass and gravity into account, a textbook dropped from a height of only one metre would cause considerable pain, as long as it fell on the right spot, which for male authors would have the added benefit of preventing any textbook-writing offspring.

Bala could think of several lecturers deserving of the same fate – it would make up for all the times in his life he had been hit or pinched in front of his classmates. These were lecturers who possessed advanced degrees and could take the material in any textbook – Machine Dynamics, Applied Thermodynamics or Manufacturing Technology – and make it far more boring. None could do it as well as Mr. Ganesan, who specialized in thermodynamics and was certainly a brilliant man. His brilliance was clear to Bala during the very first class, when he made the mistake of staring at Mr. Ganesan’s bald head. He was so dazed that when Mr. Ganesan asked him to name the second law of thermodynamics, he started reciting Shakespeare. ‘All that glitters is not gold, often have you heard that told…’ Later, after his classmates had stopped teasing him, he took it upon himself to warn them to look away or shield their eyes when facing Mr. Ganesan. But unlike him, his friends Gopal and Thiru were filled with more admiration than apprehension.

‘When his head is shining so much on the outside,’ Gopal said, ‘how much brighter it must be on the inside.’

‘I can bet you he polishes it,’ Bala said.

‘I wish he would tell us what polish he uses,’ Thiru said. ‘I’d like to try it on my shoes.’

‘Forget about your shoes,’ Bala said. ‘It’s not your shoes that need brightening.’

If any student felt too bright, Mr. Ganesan’s lectures served as a dimming switch. Nobody could keep up with them, let alone understand them. He spoke at a rate of three hundred words per minute, often while facing the blackboard. If the entire class took a nap, he wouldn’t notice anything until halfway through his lecture. And even then, he’d go on lecturing, pleased that his students looked more absorbed than usual.

Bala somehow managed to get through Mr. Ganesan’s class, largely with help from a booklet called Thermodynamics Made Easy. It was one of a series of ‘made easy’ booklets Bala had found at Amma’s Zone bookstore, with titles such as Engineering Graphics Made Easy, Calculus Made Easy, and Brain Surgery Made Easy. After buying the Thermodynamics booklet and surviving Mr. Ganesan’s tests, Bala bought a dozen more booklets in various engineering subjects, just in case the publisher, Chandra Publications, went out of business. It was an investment in his future and he didn’t want to take any chances. Concerned that a single booklet could be easily misplaced, he had them all bound together and wrote a new title on the cover: B.E. Made Easy. He felt only a trace of guilt about reading the booklets and depending on them to get through engineering. After all, his friends were hooked on them, too. Thiru had even gone to the temple and paid for a special puja to be performed in honour of Chandra Publications. But he and other students were careful not to take the booklets to college. The lecturers frowned on them. Mr. Ganesan would be outraged to see one of his students poring over Thermodynamics Made Easy. He would snatch the booklet and say, ‘Thermodynamics is not supposed to be easy.’ Then he’d call the editor of Chandra Publications and offer to write a booklet called Thermodynamics Made Difficult.

Getting through engineering college was more a case of survival than brilliant achievement. But it made Bala a success in the eyes of his relatives and, more importantly, turned him into what Appa had hoped he would become: an export-quality Indian. Not every Indian had skills that were in demand abroad. Varun, the son of the ironing lady, for example, would not be able to work outside Tamil Nadu, let alone India, though he was an artist whose work was seen and admired by millions of people. He specialized in painting pictures of the Chief Minister on walls and buildings. He had been doing it for almost two decades – even when she was out of power – and had lost count of how many portraits he had done, how many paint shops he had single-handedly kept in business. He had become so adept at painting her that he once finished an entire portrait while completely drunk. He claimed that his hands had been conditioned, through years of repetition, to follow a precise pattern of brushstrokes, that if he tried to paint any other politician, his hands would not cooperate. He imbued his portraits with such elaborate detail – you could even see the slight protrusion of the Chief Minister’s right incisor tooth – that Bala often wondered if future generations would come to remember him as Varun van Gogh.

But Varun, for all his success, could not entertain thoughts of working abroad, not unless he took the Chief Minister with him. Even then, they would have to move to a country where wall portraits were permitted. In India, nobody seemed to care what happened to walls; in the view of the common man, a politician’s portrait was at least a slight improvement over spit stains.

With his B.E. in mechanical engineering, Bala was confident he could work abroad without having to take a politician with him. Indeed, after gaining just two years of experience at a small manufacturing firm, he landed a job with an American company called FlexIt Inc., which made exercise equipment. It took him three months to receive his h-1 visa, permitting him to wor. . .