The Illicit Happiness Of Other People by Manu Joseph

On the days of sorrow she would put her nervous head on his shoulder and cry, inaudibly, and just for a few moments, not long. She would have long braided hair, she would be in a red cotton sari, and a tight blue blouse, and she would be somewhat scared of him. But when he becomes a man he wants a pretty wife. It is his future wife, a fate foretold to all the boys who are not very clever. The thought of his bleak future brings the apparition of a woman to his mind. Every day, Thoma hopes a miracle will occur and Mythili Balasubramanium will ask him, “Thoma, what does KGB stand for? And I wonder if Pele is his real name.” But miracles do not happen in Thoma’s life, even though he is Christian. For some reason they have stuck in his head-the full form of KGB, which is Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti, and Pele’s real name, which is Edson Arantes do Nascimento. There are only two impressive facts he knows. In this world, there is no respect for Mercury.Įvery day, Thoma tries to memorise Interesting Facts but his head is porous.

And the smallness of Mercury, always a mere dot next to a yellow sun. It affects him, the great arrogance of the Equilateral Triangle, the failed aspiration of the octagon to be a circle, the eternal suffocation of the denominator that has to bear the weight of the unjust numerator, the loneliness of Pluto. His nails scratch the page to straighten its tired limbs. He stares at the open textbook for hours and is distracted by the pain of the parallelogram, which is slanted for ever. But then it was probably a lie, like the many other things he used to say.Įvery day, Thoma tries to improve his mind, but he does not possess the Power of Concentration, he is a Wool-gatherer. He said the home minister, who is responsible for happy homes, would soon pass a law changing the value of pi from 3.14159 to just 3, making it easier for all Indian children to calculate the area of a circle.

Will Thoma make it? Unni had always tried to reassure him, he even said maths was about to get a lot easier. He imagines the sheer length of human life, the many years ahead of him. He considers how hard it is to be a bright person. IN THESE circumstances, as he listens to the beatings in the next classroom, Thoma Chacko feels a liquid gloom in his groin.

The clues that a seventeen-year-old cartoonist has left behind after his death, which his alcoholic father is trying to decipher

The Illicit Happiness Of Other People by Manu Joseph