The Illicit Happines of Other People PDF
Preview The Illicit Happines of Other People
MANU JOSEPH THE ILLICIT HAPPINESS OF OTHER PEOPLE For Anuradha Contents Cover Title Page 1 The Underdog Family 2 How To Name It 3 The Album of the Dead 4 Gentleman’s Cholesterol 5 Philipose, Philipose 6 Corpse 7 The Folly of Two Acknowledgements About the Author Copyright About the Publisher 1 The Underdog Family OUSEP CHACKO, ACCORDING TO Mariamma Chacko, is the kind of man who has to be killed at the end of a story. But he knows that she is not very sure about this sometimes, especially in the mornings. He sits at his desk, as usual, studying a large pile of cartoons, trying to solve the only mystery that matters to her. He does not ask for coffee, but she brings it anyway, landing the glass on the wooden desk with minor violence to remind him of last night’s disgrace. She flings open the windows, empties his ashtray and arranges the newspapers on the table. And when he finally leaves for work without a word, she stands in the hall and watches him go down the stairs. On the playground below, a hard brown earth with stray grass, Ousep walks with quick short strides towards the gate. He can see the other men, the good husbands and the good fathers, their black shoes polished, serious shirts already damp in the humid air. They walk to the scooter shed, carrying inverted helmets that contain their outrageously small vegetarian lunches. More men emerge from the stairway tunnels of Block A, which is an austere white building with three floors. Their tidy, auspicious wives in cotton saris now appear in the balconies to bid goodbye. They are mumbling prayers, smiling at other women, peeping with one eye into their own blouses. The men never greet Ousep. They turn away, or become interested in the ground, or wipe their spectacles. But among their own, they have great affection. They are a fellowship, and they can communicate by just clearing the phlegm in their throats. ‘Gorbachev,’ a delicate man says. ‘Gorbachev,’ the other one says. Having thus completed the analysis of the main story in The
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