The Fox

The face that looks back at me from the photograph in our Year Book is youthful, of dark complexion and sits lightly on a thin body.  The hair is neatly combed - indeed, I rarely saw a tousled head of hair on him in the two years on campus.  He is wearing a T-shirt and his trademark skin-tight jeans many years before it became fashionable to get your daily exercise and leg-muscles massage by battling with the denim trouser on the bed.  But what is most arresting in the photograph are the smile and the eyes: the smile is benign and teasing and the eyes have a hint of mischief, a trace of childlike naughtiness that we see in some truly special children, who are as troublesome and non-conforming as they are sharp and wonderfully deviant.   

When I got to know him on campus, the first image that came to mind was of an endearing, rather saucy fox, one who would be up to no good because, well, he wanted to be up to no good.  I shall therefore refer to him hereon as the Fox.

He was with us at D Quarters, being a Bangalorean, and, when the two of us compared notes, we found that I had actually spent a few months in his class in the 7^th standard, before switching schools.  Later, when I spoke to our common friends about the Fox, they would immediately have a mildly startled air about them, as if I had suggested that their house had been selected for the forthcoming landing of a payload satellite. 

It took me, and the others who spent our happy two years years in DQ and G-top together, very little time to find out why.  For the Fox was the mimic of our batch, an outstanding, exaggerated imitator when in the company of friends (which included a diminishing Old Monk), and a careful performer when in not-so-comfortable company. 

We read nowadays a great deal about method-acting; actors observing others’ mannerisms and then duplicating them on screen.  The Fox needed none of this, for it came to him easily, just as dismay came naturally to an academic topper on knowing the grades of others, just as revulsion came to me when double beans were served for dinner, just, indeed, as cows belch.  He was, in other words, a Natural and would choose some daring moments to display that ferocious talent.

In the first year, we had an Economics professor, whom I shall simply called Bala; there is no point in identifying someone you intend to describe (hopefully) to comic relief.  Bala had the most astonishing mannerisms and, in the rather arduous pursuit of the subject, most of us missed these gems of idiosyncrasy.  For one, he would snort at frequent intervals, rather like a wild buffalo that is cross with its next meal, - the poor fellow, I suspect had asthma or certainly something else that blocked his air passage and the snort had begun as a determined effort to keep the engine going; over a period of time though it had become a habit and now, even when the engine was purring away and conforming to Euro 4 standards, the snort ensued at regular intervals.  His second habit, and this was so fascinating to watch that I nearly failed in the subject, was to swing a leg (alternating between the right and the left) to and fro, in the manner of an elephant contemplating its next course of action.  When he had to smile, the muscles around the lips seemed to cause indefinable agony and he kept the effort to the minimum. 

Well, the story is that, on a particular occasion, before the class began, the Fox walked up to the podium of a semi-empty class and began to snort and swing his legs.  Now, you see, we can all snort and swing our legs, but few can do it in precisely the same way that Bala did.  The observers erupted into laughter, even as the Fox turned to the board behind to begin a mock session and observed Bala watching him with a rather puzzled air. 

In the brief silence that followed, I am told, the Fox gave Bala the same smile – the agony of muscular strain exemplified – and quietly walked up to his place in front.  That he passed Economics implies that either the good Professor did not catch on, or, if he did, is worthy of canonisation.

But the Fox's best acts – his piece de resistance, as it were – were the imitations of the many couples on campus that were dating or certainly of fellows who had set their eyes on a girl.  With uncanny precision, often with us discreetly watching, he would walk past the guy or indeed the girl, imitating the mannerisms of either or both parties.  There would be no advance notice, no ‘watch me do this’, just a natural slippage into a role that he would click out of in a minute, as we rolled over laughing at the sheer audacity of the whole thing.  To this day, of course, most of those subjects have no idea of the Fox’s manoeuvres. 

When he mimicked each one of us at G-Top – his best friends (if such chaps can actually retain best friends) – it was to much merriment, generally after we had downed a measure of warmth from the bottle in regular State of the World Round Tables.  As the evening progressed, the Fox would warm up, his rendition of the day’s ordinary events, embellished with rip-roaring imitation.  Godfy, whose endearment for the 555 cigarette is the stuff of legend, was one of the Fox’s favourite subjects.  He was always, with exaggerated panache, imitating the Godfather’s style: he would pretend to puff away, walk with an air of supreme importance, looking out at the sea of humanity and drawing the conclusion that on him depended any improvement in the national average.  He made fun of me regularly of course, but it was impossible to be offended.  The trademark of genius is when you have the subject helplessly laugh in disagreement.

The thing about the Fox is, we could take his ‘trip’ as well, and did so in considerable measure, for the small of his back – his bottom, in other words – had been constructed generously and the tight jeans made it all come to life. 

On campus, he got himself a marketing job, and we re-lived much of his mischief when we met later in 1992 and, perhaps, 1993 (the way I get dates mixed up, there is reason to suspect prefrontal cortex decay), but you know how it is: you lose touch and people go their separate ways, some in pursuit of a dream,  others a livelihood, yet others, in search of meaning.  At times I think that we should have had today’s mobiles on campus, to capture this hilarity for good, but perhaps, all in all, it’s a good thing that it is what it is. 

I have been staring into space for much of the last few minutes, and I now look down with a start.  Is it my imagination or is the face in the photograph now sporting a Bala smile, of gentle, momentary imitation? I feel a surge of emotion and, I will confess, a lump in the throat – for those days, for those moments when a sportive, naughty, mind would put on an impressive display because it was fun, because it was mild, perhaps even because it needed to be there.
But one cannot go on and on, isn't it?  It is time to turn the page.

Sampy, when we all meet in a few days time, those who knew you well will miss you and your splendid, warm, enchanting company. 

But some of us will try to imitate you, that is for sure.