AAK is Gen-X. He cornered me the other day with that look on his face I dread. I would have run, but it was the weekly off. There was no place to run. I did the eyebrow thing…
“Dad, can you tell what is Tytler?”
Easy, I thought, this isn’t going to last long: “Tytler is a politician.”
“You’re fibbing.”
“Why should I, his name is Jagdish Tytler and he is a Congress politician.”
“You’re lying.”
“Tytler was born in Gujranwala which is now in Pakistan to a Hindu father and a Sikh mother. His father died early and when India was partitioned, his mother brought him to Delhi but he got separated from his mother. He used to go to Gurdwara every day thinking that one day he will find his mother but he never did…”
“You can spin a yarn…”
“Don’t be impertinent… Tytler became Tytler when an educationist called James Douglas Tytler adopted him and got him converted to Christianity…”
“You really believe this, don’t you?”
“Don’t interrupt. Tytler joined the Congress Party. He was Sanjay Gandhi’s disciple. In 1984, when Indira Gandhi was assassinated, hundreds of Sikhs were killed in Delhi and other places, slaughtered on the streets, in their homes, many were burnt alive; trains were stopped and burning tyres were put around their necks…”
“You watch too many movies. I’m not wet behind the ears…”
“You’re saying I don’t know anything…”
“It shows, doesn’t it?”
“Look up Wikipedia in the Internet if you don’t believe me. Tytler was first elected to the Lok Sabha in 1980 and he was made minister, first in the Civil Aviation department and then in Labour department”.
“He was re-elected in 1991 and served as minister of state for surface transport. He was again elected in 2004 and made a minister but had to resign when the Nanavati Commission of Inquiry said there was evidence that could link him to the anti-Sikh riots of 1984…”
“Dad, you should be writing fiction instead of lying to your young son…”
“This is the truth. Tytler is the man whose head the Sikhs want. It is all over the news. He is on TV. The man with the dark patch on his chin, I’m sure you must have seen him…”
“Dad, stop …”
“Okay, you tell me who is Tytler?”
“Not ‘who’, what is Tytler? Dad, Tytler is a new brand of super shoes which was launched at a press conference in New Delhi on April 7 in one of those grand affairs with the entire media present. It was launched at a personal computer, what is called PC…”
He caught me gaping.
“…What? Now don’t ask me why a PC? I suppose that must be because a PC is a machine, and they don’t react, don’t have any emotions — love, hate, anger… nothing. You can kill; maim, burn, run riot and it won’t turn a hair…”
“What was thrown was a shoe…”
“Precisemento Dad, not a shoe, the Tytler brand of shoes. It’s a unique brand — you wear one on one foot; the other is carried in the hand. It is selling like hot cakes since the launch on April 7. The biggest order for Tytler shoes has come from Punjab…”
I bolted, barefoot.