Free Sorting Out Sid by Yashodra Lal Page B

that he might soon get a cabin of his own now that he was slated to become a vice president. It would be useful on days like this.

    ‘Arrey … Khatam?’ Sid looked with surprise and confusion at his empty beer bottle. That was quick. He had intended to savour his first bottle, savour the feeling of an evening alone at home and the ability to do exactly what he wanted. Chalo, no matter, he still had a few bottles to go. He leaned over and stretched out to grab another bottle, singing out an impromptu and cheerful ditty.
    ‘Come here, my dear, you are so near…
    Please have no fear, I love my beer…’
    He ransacked his brain to come up with a last line that would do justice to the poet in him. But he could only manage a lame ‘And my name is … Sid’. He cackled at his own silliness. He had been going for the style of Urdu poets, like Ghalib. The last line of a couplet usually had the writer’s name inserted into it, as a sort of signature. It didn’t always work, he decided. Those Urdu poet guys weren’t practical, he concluded. Nowonder most of them were dead. Still, they had churned out some pretty riveting stuff. Sid liked Urdu couplets and felt the urge to recite one, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember a single one at the moment.
    He used his handy-dandy Swiss pocket-knife-cum-bottle-opener-cum-keychain to pop the cap off the second beer bottle and took another long, cold swig. He let out a loud ‘aaaah…’ as he leaned back and closed his eyes. He tended to get vocal when he got high irrespective of whether he had an audience or not. He just felt the need to speak, and it was nice to be able to speak without being judged.
    He felt a fart coming, but held it in. He wasn’t going to fart on his favourite beanbag. It wouldn’t be fair to her. He patted her lovingly. It felt natural to converse with her at the moment. ‘Eh, Brownie? What has it been, fifteen years? We’ve been through too much for me to fart on you, right?’ Fifteen years with Mandira too, but wouldn’t mind farting on her right now, he thought, and immediately regretted it. That was low, below the belt, you might say. He giggled.
    He shifted around a bit, snuggling deeper into Brownie. She was undoubtedly his favourite piece of furniture. She was one of the first purchases Mandira and he had made together. Well, he had made the purchase; Mandira had protested vociferously that a dirty brown beanbag wouldn’t go with anything else that she had in mind for the house. Sid let Mandira have her way on most counts, but on this one, he had put his foot down and insisted that he was buying the beanbag; he needed one to relax on, and besides, he insisted, it wasn’t dirty brown, it was chocolatey, really. Finally, she yielded, though grudgingly, and they had carted Brownie home. However, he had since caught her many times giving Brownie glares that alternatedbetween merely disdainful to positively malevolent. Sid defiantly resisted all her attempts – and there had been quite a few over the years – to get rid of Brownie. During every furniture rearrangement, Mandira tried to convince Sid that Brownie was now too old and tatty in contrast to the rest of the furniture in the living room. To this, Sid would always say that Brownie was getting more and more comfortable with the passing years. In fact, Sid once claimed that when he died, he wanted to be buried with Brownie.
    ‘You’re not Christian, Sid – you will be cremated and not buried.’
    ‘Whatever. I want Brownie with me.’
    Brownie was a silent witness to their relationship. Sid remembered Mandira sulking the very evening they brought Brownie home. After a prolonged argument they had finally made up, and of course, being the early days they had even indulged in some make-up sex on the living-room floor.
    Sid sighed when he remembered the chemistry that Mandira and he shared at the beginning of their marriage. Life had been so different when they were in their