My editor, Avtar, has taken exception to the fact that I have been slamming all Delhi men. As he said to me this morning, “How can you say such things about Delhi men when you have such a fine specimen standing in front of you? In each post you write slamming men, you are to write, ‘Avtar, of course, excepted’… it’s only four words.”
So, to give Avtar the greatest exception of all, I may as well attribute a post to him, possibly one of the most entertaining presences in my life in Delhi, even if, at times, a bit scary.
I first met Avtar Singh when a friend working for TimeOut Delhi, the magazine that I now write for, told me to come and hang out in her office with her. Avtar was sitting at his desk… or I should say, he was lying at it. Avtar has a habit of stretching out his entire body over the length of his black, reclining chair, resting one arm languorously over his perfectly pinned turban, and waving the other at whichever one of his minions, as he affly calls us, is being most faaltu at the time. The day I took a job with him was no different. I walked into the office, nervous and not quite sure what was about to happen to me, when Avtar strolled in and exclaimed “Wah! A new minion?!! Good girl the laltain!” I quickly learned that this was the highest form of praise from the bossman.
What I also learned quickly was Avtar’s particular way of exerting authority over us. There is, of course, the calling of names. His favourites: minion, dumbass, silly woman, and Gujju (for the one half-Gujurati girl in our office). Then there are the threatening text messages when we’re late. And then there’s always the screaming at us from his office… he won’t say which one of us he needs to yell at; he’ll just start yelling and you better as hell figure out if it’s you or not. But my favorite is his intense male assertion. In an office full of women, Avtar prides himself on being the only large, Sikh man, capable of commanding absolutely everything and everyone in Delhi. He makes bold statements as he stands in the middle of the office, and smiles knowingly to himself when we can’t think of clever comebacks (which is almost always… competing with Avtar’s peculiar wit and humour is not an easy task). He rests his hands affirmatively on his hips and says things like “Yaar, why the fuck do you guys order this shit from McDonalds, man? Do you know you’re eating your way to cancer? Give me a bite immediately!” Or, he’ll turn to me and say “What were you just discussing? I won’t listen to girltalk in this office. You’ll go outside and get wet in the rain if you want to discuss shit like that,” after which he’ll pick up the paper and say “Look at that, dude! Jennifer Aniston’s going porno!”
I have to say, though, that Avtar’s presence in office is what gives this magazine the kick that it has. While he was taking leave after the birth of his son, the office seemed to die a little. When he came back, while we all went back to doing more work, we also all seemed to cheer up a bit, as we’ve all seemed to learn his humour and now actually find all his jokes funny. Possibily Avtar’s most entertaining moments are the days he decides to play “Desert Island” with us. Desert Island is a game in which Avtar asks us questions about what sorts of experiences we would prefer if we were stranded on a desert island. There are, of course, right and wrong answers, though he’ll never admit it and he’ll never tell you what they are. Example: “If you were stranded on a desert island, would you rather have one fabulous, gourmet, pepperoni pizza on Monday, or ganda butter chicken from Gulati’s for the whole week?” The answer any normal person would give, of course, is butter chicken because of survival. But that answer is incorrect. The secret information that you have to be aware of is the fact that: a) Avtar’s favourite meal in the whole world is a good pizza pie and a beer, and b) Avtar will always claim that gourmet food is the only type of food worth eating, even though he WILL steal all of your fries if you order them. So, in the world of Avtar Singh, if you prefer butter chicken from Gulati’s on a desert island, you are a silly minion indeed.
But under the (not so) hardened exterior, Avtar is an incredibly sweet man who really loves us. (Don’t tell him I said that). How do I know this? Well, there are the names that he affectionately calls us (aka, adding ‘kaur’ to each of our names… I’m PiyalKaur), and there’s the fact that if you do good work, he’ll smile and say “good girl the laltain!” There’s also the fact that he actually cares about what happens to us. When I first arrived in Delhi and had no place to stay, Avtar asked me on a daily basis what he could do to help me find housing. When he learned I was taking cold showers even in the winter because my incredibly tiny post-college flat didn’t have a water heater, I mean, he’s never stopped making fun of me for it, but he also did offer to buy me a heater. He’s incredibly sensitive to our personal life struggles. This office is chock full of young women, just out of college, desperately trying to make their way in the world, and Avtar (who, at thirty-five, thinks of himself as a big brother/father figure/older and wiser gentleman who needs to teach us about life) takes us all under his wing. Whether this means dispensing advice (“Let me tell you something about the world, PiyalKaur…”), or relentlessly making fun of us until we change a bad habit (“Dude, can I buy you some fucking shoe polish?! How can you leave the house with such battered shoes?!), Avtar loves us enough to want to “sort all of us out.”
So, here’s to you, Avtar. The man that gave me my first job, the man that made me laugh every day at work, the man that taught me more about writing, life, and humour than any professor or class ever did. I’ll refrain from calling him the “perfect specimen” that he seems to think he is, but I will say that I’ll never forget him.
