My Alcaponian Self

It is not everyday that my mother gives me a compliment and when she said I was looking good
with my new hair style, I almost stumbled and fell down. I thought I always looked good, with
hair parted in the middle, combed and pasted tight against the head with coconut oil, which gave
me that 'Al Capone' look. Every now and then, I would go on a crash diet of just eggs, milk and
few slices of bread, which brought in an advent of pimples all over my face, not to mention a few
on my head. This prevented me from pressing my hair tight against the cranium, the style my
mom alluded to,causing it to be wavy and flutter evertime mother nature let out a yawn. Al Capone never had wavy hair, neither did any of his goons, but then you didn't look very tough
and gangster-like if you sported a wavy tuft atop your skull.


Al Capone always was an inspiration to me. I knew everything about him, from the time he was just a teenager looking for a job to the time when he became the top notch hooch seller in Chicago. He had to brave all odds in his quest to brew the best +cooh for the citizens of Chicago
and the effort that went into becoming the best was not lost on me and I worshipped him for that. If ever I wanted to be anything in life, I wanted to be another Alphonse Capone.


Now how do I go about being Alcapone? I did not know how to make hooch..come to think about
it, I couldn't make a lemon juice if I died of thirst. The occasional bru coffee that I made would
wake up the dead", if you asked my mother. I could emulate other attributes of the great guy.
e was a great shooter and a fantastic marksman, and I could miss an elephant if I shot at it from two feet away. He had killed and put away a few people in his time and I, well..I never needed to, in the first place. But I knew there was a killer in me and was determined to take a leaf out of his book .

I knew an oppertunity would present itself someday and I would rise to the occassion. And it did, which shook my Al Caponian self so bad it almost did in my dream to be ...


I was madly in love with a woman named Rose and there wasn't anything in the world that I couldn't do for her. I knew that because there wasn't anything in the world that she did not
make me do. Women were such sensitive creatures that they needed to know how far their man
would go to woo her , which was often a test of patience for your ear drums; clever, smooth and deft manuevering skills vis a vis the topics to avoid and that which caused a lot of agonising mental stress, because you never know if you really passed the test or not. And their sensitivity
would never leave you in doubt how far you could go with your taunts and tests, which wasn't very far by any yardstick. Faltering just once is the end of the road for the relationship and off
she will go to evaluate the skills and patience of another guy and believe me , there are hundreds of men willing to subject themselves to such ordeal and trials. I think all men have an inherent
urge to submit themselves to these torture sessions and even jump themselves overboard in a mad rush to be first to get the treatment.


And I was a seasoned campaigner. I always knew when to say yes and also, never to say no, as it
happened in the story Iam about to narrate. It happened as we were taking a walk down the
museum road to the park nearby, when she suddenly said,

"I don't like the way this guy is staring at me".

It seemed like the time you were in school and the teacher made you constructsentences in an exercise called fill-in-the -blanks. That was as far as she would go to suggest that I teach this guy some manners. Now I wasn't built like Arnold Shwarzennegger nor was I proficient in any martial arts. But then, neither was Alcapone. And yet he knew where to push, to flush the guy crimson red with fear. He had "connections" and that would take care of a lot of things. If I had connections, they would disconnect the moment I asked something of them.

But I had to do something. It was either that or melt in the molten lava of words that would gush
out incessently from her mouth the whole week. The thing with women is that they cared only
for the results and never interfered or confused you with abstract suggestions on how to carry
out their suggestions. And when she says this guy has no manners, it means that he needs to
learn some, with a suble hint that I take over the reins of teaching him some. She will never
prescribe the syllabus nor the method, but will give you all the freedom in the world to do it
your way. "That is my man" she would say when you rise to occassion and successfully complete
the job. You have to admit that men would kill to hear that from a woman.


I turned around to face the guy and gave him one of my meanest, hardest stare. There was a
glint of amusement in his eyes when he saw I was beginning to walk towards him. Rose put
her arm around mine and said something like "don't bother dear, let's ignore this guy and
walk away". But I knew that if I walked away, she would skin me alive with the whiplash of
her tongue, much later during the day. You had to learn to interpret and know when her
'yes' meant 'yes' and when it meant 'no', if you cherished a life with her, that is. I donned my
'Am-all-man' look and said, " hon, this is a man's game. You stay out of this". With misty
eyes and in a voice quivering with reverence, she said ," I understand". Which simply meant
"go beat that guy up and save my face or don't come back to me".

With a heart laden with fear and a face frozen out of terror, I started my slow, staggered walk towards the guy. I had seen Clint Eastwood do this with much effect and read somewhere that that was how tough guys walked when they meant business. To my utter dismay, his amused expression turned into a low chuckle and was joined by three others. That was four chuckles to one pair of feet that buckled. I tried to think how Alcapone would have handled such a situation, before he made connections that made him what he was. Time was running out and I was almost upon them when I heard myself hiss,

" Do you know Bosco Tandon?".

Rose was just so far away that she couldn't hear what was being said. The guys looked stunned. Their amused expression turned into total disbelief . They looked at each other and then at me.

"What if I do?"

"Bosco is my best friend and if any of you rats push it a wee little bit, I am gonna turn him loose
on you."


Bosco Tandon was a ganglord who had earned a name for himself, with a string of fights and
murder attemps to his credit. He lived in the neighbourhood and I had read a lot about him. I also knew from the news papers that Bosco was serving time in prison. I had never seen him in my life and so it was just as well that he was in prison because there was no way any of these guys could check with him. A smile played on my lips as I congratulated myself on the quick thinking and also the freezing effect the word Bosco had on them.


He raised his hand in a gesture of peace and walking backwards, said

"Ok, ok, bud. Now that you mention Bosco...we don't have any problem with you. Din't know you were Bosco's friend".

The guys started to walk away, but there was something about their behaviour that irked my
intelligence or whatever was left of it. I felt drained, probably due to the intelligence drain, but also had a funny feeling these guys were laughing at me though their faces did not betray any such emotion. I was also panting a little bit as relief hit me all over, shaking me from head to toe, as they are wont to. I had expected the worst, to be beaten up blue and black by gang of thugs. Instead I came back thumps up, even threw a scare over those guys and won tons of gratitude from Rose. I turned back to look at her and found her agape with admiration. I walked towards her with air of a man who was used to settling disputes the hard way. Now I knew how Alcapone must have felt all those years, settling disputes, throwing a scare and walking away feeling a winner inside him. I made a note in mind that I had to make this a habit, this art of walking like a winner.

Rose hugged and pressed her head against my chest and was besides herself with emotion.

" Easy girl, moments like this happen everyday in a man's life. When I say men, I mean real men. They couldn't walk away from it, but turn around and face them, like I did today. I had
to meet them head on or something in me dies, baby. Iam sorry if I scared you, lovebug".

"My god, Venu!! You have a nerve walking up to Bosco Tandon and scare him off with a few
words. It was only this morning that I read in the paper that Bosco was let out because the
murder charges against him could not be proved. I took a while recognising him, because the
photo in the paper wasn't that good. Imagine shooing Bosco Tandon off...oh.. you were wonderful,
oooh, that's my man!!..my man!!!".