Prakash’s spy-camera-eye noticed that the foreskin was concealing malli. It became clear to him, the ‘doctor’s’ son, that a minor surgery, which he called circumcision, was the only way out for me. That is, if I ever wanted to sleep with a woman ‘successfully’ in my lifetime, he added. 

He further said, “Hey Ravi, (that’s what they called me in town. There’s a story behind it, which I’ll share later. If I tell it now, it might spoil the interest of the current story); I was like this at first. Later, I did a lot of ‘handjob’, and the skin tore and went inward on its own. Don’t you do ‘handjob’?” 

“No, I do that every day, sometimes even twice or thrice!” 

Prakash took me to a doctor in Karaikal and took care of the expenses, too. The doctor examined my malli and said, ‘We can have the surgery tomorrow.’ The next day, in the operating theatre, there was a nurse. She was around twenty-one or twenty-two years old. She instructed me to take off my pants and undergarments. 

It was very embarrassing. How could I stand naked in front of a woman? I did stand like that in Silladi just the week before, but nothing was visible there. It was not just because it was dark. There, I felt for a moment that I was the master and the girl was my slave. But in the hospital, roles had changed drastically. And now this nurse was the master, and I was the slave. 

I undressed in front of her. Motivated maybe, by fears of an endangered future sex life. After looking at me, the nurse started making loud disapproving sounds. 

“Don’t you know this? Have you ever been to a doctor? How can you undergo surgery with so much hair? Go back and get your hair clean-shaven,” she told me. 

Prakash scolded me too. I was angry with myself. But at that age, I hadn’t even started shaving off the hair on my face. After watching Arkay Saar and Naina’s shaving histrionics, I had decided that I could go without shaving in life and would walk around with a beard. When Naina finished shaving, his face would bleed from many places. 

Prakash bought the blade and said, “Do it carefully da. If you cut a vital nerve, you’ll have to live as a khosa for the rest of your life.” So, I took the soap and the blade, stole Naina’s shaving brush and went to the cremation ground. I finished the shave. I kept the brush back at its place, once the job was done. 

For a week, I stayed at home with only a cloth tied around because it hurt so bad when anything scraped against it. Muslims in the town called this the sunnath. The male kids got circumcised before they reach the age of four or five. When I asked my friends why they did it, they said it helped prevent urinary infections and that it is a very healthy practice. I later learned that this practice has existed in Africa for 4000 years. As far as I am concerned, my sensitivity had only increased, not decreased, after circumcision. 

Moreover, it was only after circumcision that I understood what some Muslim friends in town meant when they sarcastically referred to Hindus as maavu (flour). Now that my foreskin was removed, I realised that until then, there had been something resembling maavu covering the area underneath. 

Ten years ago, I had a friend who became famous for writing about her experiences as a sex worker. We were discussing her life, and that conversation eventually turned into a book. We had this conversation in a hotel in Chennai, and another friend was present. The conversation continued past ten o’clock at night, and we received a phone call from the reception. The receptionist said that female guests should not stay in the room after ten at night. 

I said angrily, ‘Come here to the room and have a look. The room’s door is open. No one has sex with the door open. And there is another person with us. We are writers. Don’t disturb us.’ 

But the receptionist refused to listen to me. She kept repeating herself. At that time, the Commissioner of Police, Chennai was an avid reader of my books. I called him and explained the situation. After that, the receptionist paid a little more attention to what I was trying to tell her. 

The friend mentioned something while sharing her life experiences. It seems she would refuse to go down on Indian customers. Hygiene was a deterrent. Another factor was the stink. 

After talking to the sex worker-turned-writer friend, I thought I wouldn’t earn much from writing anyway. So why not take on the responsibility of educating Indians about sexual hygiene as a side business? ‘How to enhance Malli’s performance? What herbs are more potent than Viagra?’ I considered earning money through sex education talks. However, all my ideas of making money vanish instantly, like the solemn vows of a man at a cremation ground. 

I still have another question to ask of Indian men. Why do they wash both their hands with soap so thoroughly after urinating, as if the skin would peel off? Did they jerk off or pee? You would think they had spilled semen on their hands. Shouldn’t they wash their malli instead of their hands? 

Well, let it go. I feel there is another benefit to circumcision. Chances of premature ejaculation reduce with time. I attribute it to the numbness caused due to constant friction any clothing had on the malli’s tip. 

Seeing that I was suffering and lying at home, my mother mentioned a couple of times, ‘What’s the point of all this at this age? Couldn’t you have waited till you were married?’ 

Maybe Prakash, the ‘doctor’s’ son, could have given her an answer. I had none.

***

So much for ‘man talk’. Now, let me get back to the man I had set out to write about- Naina. 

I was in college in Thanjavur. The distance between the two towns is 85 kilometres. I used to leave home on Monday and stay at Periamma’s (mother’s elder sister) house in Thanjavur. I would return to Nagore on Friday evening. 

That day, I was on the bus to Thanjavur. The bus departed at five o’clock in the morning. The journey normally lasted for about three hours. 

As the bus was leaving, a man on a bicycle was shouting at us, asking the driver to stop. Sitting by the window, I wondered, ‘How can someone planning to travel by bus arrive on a bicycle?’ Then, I saw Naina. The driver halted the bus, and Naina looked at me through the window, saying, “Thambudu, it’s winter; put on this muffler.”

***

“Malli” is a Sinhala word used to refer to a younger brother. In Tamil, the equivalent term is “Thambi,” which also has another meaning, as it’s used to refer to the male organ.

“Naina” is a term used exclusively in Telugu families to refer to the father.

By Charu Nivedita