He didn't realise he had been holding his breath after he heard the door close. That was when he heard her giggle.

It was all about sharing, she had said. Imperialists were scum and capitalists were fucking up the eco-fucking-system. It was all demand and supply and everyone was a fascist. She could not be objectified. Nothing could. Including her love. Especially her love. His too. Everyone's.

So, it was all about sharing.  Tossing her stubborn tendril and slanting her head such that her eyes seemed to answer all his questions she had said that the Afghan would be coming home that night. Surely, he didn't mind...

It was the tendril that had snared him. Tendril. The word seemed so close to 'thendral' which in Tamil meant a sweet gust of wind. That was what he had thought when he had first seen her. Was it just a month ago?

He was Gauguin, he had told himself as he walked into the cafe on a Saturday afternoon. It was time for the stockbroker to buy his ticket to Tahiti. Six people, a poetry reading and she was there in the middle. Her dimpled cheek and those eyes that always seemed to question him while providing all the answers. He sat down loosely clutching a leather bound maroon diary stamped with gold letters proclaiming the name of his investment firm.
That was when he heard her talking about monotones.

Gently prodding that tendril with a gust of air from her lower lip, she had begun. Her poem was called it the 'Song of the kitchen sink'. A princess was stuck singing a monotone as she laboured over the kitchen sink.
He fell headlong into the kitchen sink. The chai dust swirled and rose to clog his nasal passages. Remnants of dried palak stubbornly refusing to leave the ceramic plate taunted him as he desperately tried to scrub it, breathless. That's when the bones of the dead bird chose to caress his cheek.

A prince had resuced her by giving her melodies, she said. He opened his eyes and her voice was the melody that made him come up for air. After all, who else but a poet would know what is love and he was a poet.

They both believed that there was no right and no wrong. When they made love, it all seemed right. She told him about her first lover. It had been seven years ago. And he had been his age now. The difference between their ages was twenty-two. She was twenty two now. It was like a fifth standard algebra problem, she said. Mathematics was the only truth, he said. Probably, she smiled.

It was a month ago. Now she was in the other room with the Afghan and it was ok. The poet understood all about capitalism. And understood what imperialists thought of commies.

She had named her Afghan Schezwan. The Afghan loved noodles, especially the desi Chinese variety. He also spoke like an American and cursed Americans. He had serenaded her with twenty-six cuss words, each beginning with each letter of the alphabet. And he too loved 'Like water for chocolate'. For that, someone deserved her love, she had said.

Surely, he didn't mind...Gauguin would not have minded. Gauguin would have probably joined them.

Now he wanted to go and knock on the door and join them. Maybe he needn't knock. He could just go in. After all, they shared the house and had shared that bed till yesterday. She was right. Posessiveness also came out of treating everything like a commodity. His bed, his house. And her. Beyond that door with the Afghan.
The sounds of jazz floated through the locked door. Was it locked? She didn't even lock the door in the toilet. It was constraining, she said. There had to be more space. Why did we have to compartmentalise houses into functional areas? Why houses at all? Who gave anyone the idea that a piece of the  earth could be owned?

The question mark was the hook he held on to gasping for air.

His wife believed in algorithms that ended with full stops. Ellipses were abhorred. She would tie socks together and wash coloured clothes separately. She bought a bottle of Harpic every week as the toilets had to be scrubbed every day. It was a germicidal and it had a pine scent. And when closed the toilet door did not allow even light to escape. Only the pine smell could manage to do so.
He came back after the poetry reading and inhaled the scent of pine. And vomitted all over the toilet. And then he walked out with his jazz records.

He could hear it now.

The first day they had made love, he had put on music. It was necessary to drown out the barking dogs, the screeching cars and the television serials. And his thoughts. He floated over her on a cloud of jazz and then stroked her with slow sclaes. It was slow, as slow as time stilling with her breath punctuating the pauses. The full stops had gathered now to form ellipses. No words. She hummed and together they floated. It was Tahiti. But then the alarm had rung and even though it had Jai Hanuman grinning from one of its hands, the sound wasn't jazz.

And the hands of the clock followed them around the house, marking the time taken to move from the fridge to the dining table to pour freshly boiled milk over corn flakes which was sugar free with added nuts. Poets had to have the most important meal of the day without fail, otherwise ulcers tended to spoil lovemaking.
After breakfast came lunch, a light evening snack and dinner. Patterns and mathematics followed.

There were lists again. Written on scraps of paper smudged kaajal. And the laundry had to be done and they both had to shit. They kept the door open and did not use Harpic.

He had continued to work as an investment consultant. They had to go to the cafe to attend poetry readings and have lattes. She always had the hazlenut essence. For extra charge. She continued to go to the school of the arts. Where there was a cafe which served delicious kala khatta sherbet. Which was petitioning people to support it and save it from bankruptcy. And there she had met the Afghan.

She asked him whether he had minded. The Afghan had left his cigarette smoke behind. It was different from her smoke. She was puffing now, ringlets round and growing larger as she peered at him and asked him whether he minded.

No, he said. She didn't reply. He almost thought she was disappointed. He thought he would write a poem to explain to her. She walked to the music system and started playing the same piece of jazz again. His thoughts drowned.

After two weeks, she brought the dancer home. She had kohl lined eyes and always wore black, she said.

He now had ear phones. He listened to jazz. He didn't have time to catch up with his old records, he said. He could hear them giggle in return. From the next room.

She asked him if he minded. Can I join you the next time around, he asked. She stared at him. He needed language. Her chosen medium was painting.

He bought a fresh set of CDs. They were on sale. Five for the price of three. They could listen together to the Story of Bossa Nova. The toilet door was open. She wasn't there. There was a note. It had a smudges made of an impatient finger that had dabbled in kajal. Or was it kohl. "I did the dishes."
 

Central Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi is going to hear an important dispute relating to the Right To Information act. Prof. Rajeev Sharma, a computer sciences professor at IIT Kharagpur has filed an RTI application seeking test scores of all applicants who appeared in the IIT Joint Entrance Examination in 2006. The JEE exam board is stalling the process.

It has been very hard to get complete information on this dispute. Reporting, like it is usually the norm, has been pathetic. Here is what I understand of where this dispute currently stands.

Some irregularities in the JEE exam

The plaintiff Prof. Kumar has been doggedly seeking information about the IIT JEE 2006 examination. He alleges irregularities in calculating which students made the cut. In fact, the Calcutta High Court is currently hearing a case on this very issue. The court asked the IITs to submit the formulae used to calculate applicants who are offered admits. The IITs have submitted several different formulae on different occasions. Moreover, they destroyed all answer sheets before they were supposed to.

Soft-copy versus hard-copy

Now, let's come back to the RTI application that that IITs have not yet responded to. Times of India has reported that this is an issue of soft-copy of data versus hard-copy. The paper reports that the IITs have offered to provide printouts of the data (running to tens of thousands of pages) at cost to the plaintiff. This clearly would be ridiculous.

However, I am not sure if this is the case. Prof. Gautam Barua, Director of IIT Guwahati, who is also responsible for the entrance examinations, responded to me that the dispute was not one of hard or soft copy, but one of privacy. I could not reach the reporter and got no response from Prof. Kumar. So, I have to give the IITs the benefit of doubt.

Privacy issue

Prof. Barua claimed to me that the IITs offered to provide the data after removing personally identifying information. In fact, a news report seems to corroborate this claim.

IIT Guwahati Director Gautam Barua has said that he had offered the appellant data for scrutiny with the names made anonymous. IIT Guwahati [...] had refused to provide marks and personal details of candidates on a CD as requested by Prof Rajeev Kumar of IIT Kharagpur.

Releasing personal information of applicants would be ridiculous. However Prof. Barua did not clarify where he stood on the soft-copy issue.

Where it stands now

To me this is such an open and shut case. There is no question that privacy should not violated. There is also no question that information should be provided in the most accessible form, in this case a soft-copy. I don't know why this has been dragging for so long.

Prof. Barua agrees that they have not provided the application any information yet, and are waiting for the CIC's hearing. This puzzles me. They could have provided a soft copy of data without private information on their own accord.

Resolution?

Shailesh Gandhi is going to hear this soon. I hope he clarifies one important piece of this issue. The RTI act clearly specifies that information includes electronic data and that citizens have a right to this data in an electronic form or in the form of printouts. The act does not specify that a soft-copy, where available, should be preferred. I hope he does that.

"information" means any material in any form, including records, documents, memos, e-mails, opinions, advices, press releases, circulars, orders, logbooks, contracts, reports, papers, samples, models, data material held in any electronic form and information relating to any private body which can be accessed by a public authority under any other law for the time being in force;

["right to information"] includes the right to obtaining information in the form of diskettes, floppies, tapes, video cassettes or in any other electronic mode or through printouts where such information is stored in a computer or in any other device;