Ravan and-Eddie excerpt

From Ravan & Eddie by Kiran Nagarkar

 There were barely seventeen members in the Mazagaon branch of the Sabha. Once, when Ravan showed some resistance to attending the Sabha sessions, Parvati hauled him along to Lele Guruji. The Guru looked genuinely puzzled as he listened to Parvati's plaint. 'Now why would you want to stay at home when you can build a great Hindu nation?' he wondered as he lifted Ravan off the earth by the narrow edge of his ear. It was a stunning experience. Ravan felt he had been shot in the head by a million pin-point pellets that exploded in undreamt of colours like Republic Day fireworks. He was not overly keen to repeat this exercise in levitation. Putting on the white shirt and khaki half-pats (never called shorts) was a ritual as complex as a samurai initiation. First, the loin cloth. You tie the strings around the waist at the belly button while the tail of the loin cloth trails on the ground. Ensure that it's the dead centre of the cleavage of the buttocks. Now pick it up, bring it forward between your legs and pass it under the knot at your navel. Heave. Tighter and tighter. Can't breathe? You're joking. Looks loose even from this distance. Haul, heave, pull, and then pull some more till your testicles have ascended all the way into your brains. Now pass the band of cloth over your crotch once again and tuck in the reminder as tightly as you can at the back. Your balls may be pinched, smashed, squashed and crushed but this home-made jock strap will make sure you'll never get hernia. Put on your vest and your shirt. Pick up your half-pants. The relationship of the bottom of each leg of the pants to the waist is as precise as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. The flare is 7.19378345267 times the waist. Put the left leg through the left khaki pyramid, then the right leg through the other pyramid. Tuck in the shirt, very tight please. Don't want to see a single crease in it at the waist, do we? Okay, button up and buckle up. All set? Good. Now just before you step out, shove your hand under the pants, get hold of your shirt and pull. Go on, keep at it, the idea is to use your shirt to lever up your half-pants up to your rib-cage, preferably all the way to the neck. As soo as you reach the grounds, shove your hand in again and hoist the recalcitrant pants. This is the only way they can defy gravity. Any time there's a break in exercises, or your sister-in-law or Lele Guruji himself comes over to talk to you, pull. Even when you grow up and become Shakha Pramukh and are talking to an assembly of distinguished guests, don't forget to yank up the pants. 

© Kiran Nagarkar