CHAPTER TWO

OPENING THE DOOR

Right on, c’mon in.

Into the rooms where army dames drone and boredom lolls as the evening violetly spreads across one orgasmly violent, autumn sky.

Note: Delhi Cantt layout 2 b introduced here

We were the citizens of the Pentangulars and were planning to split the scene. Or do a doosra.

Enough being said and imagined, we were gonna venture into the land of the great green card go-go of the awesome ga ga: U. S. of A.

After the glorious flash of midsummer dreams and dingo, army- type frick ups, five of us, from the four exclusive convents for boys in New Delhi, were now men with a pause. And a cause.

Don’t push it, it makes us indignant.

Let it be known: we are the Pent Angs. And that’s cause enough for all and sundry, especially, the publicshublic and govtshovement school types. They always cleared the path for us, for we were the flag bearers of new tidings.

We have our problems, like blowing our own trumpets and a casual regard for esquires, Wren and Martin, which you will notice as we squeeze our tenses around during this entire tell-tale.

You know how it is with dingo school guys who go by names such as Colvin Harris and Julian Bonaparte.

We were gonna cross the Rubicon.

No, no - it’s not a dotcom, dear call-centre, country cousin. It’s a frickin stream, now lost, meandering somewhere in north Italia, where a big shot, hereby, recalled as Pompey was ding-donging whether he should grab Rome in the time of Julius Caesar, an ancient, legal and popular mobster. JC was allegedly an ancestor of Michael Corleone though it has to be said that Paolo Maldini should really claim that royal lineage. Genes, they say, is what really counts these days of post-capitalist positions, post Putin and post all those Bushes in line. Like Maldini, Julius was an incomparable defender of team values, whose goal was to turn Romans into true Republicans.

No, we aren’t talking about how Schwarzenegger became the California guv, but in the way we are used to good old Abe go:

“We the people, for the people... yeah, yeah, and yeah!”

So, there we are – New Delhi in the 60`s and 70`s.

Now here’s the thing, doveys:

Imagine a cat grooving with a dame in a basement disco called Cellars in Connaught Place, all decked up in technicolour, boutique dream coats, while Lysergic acid was being dropped, while a purple haze numbed (and Nam-d) a world that was revolting…while Nehru had already grooved around, with all and sundry, non-aligned except to his emancipatory notions and to a certain lady of the manor.

Men of manners, men of honour – that’s who we were. Five jacks from Mt St Mary’s, St Columbus, St Xavier’s and the lesser Frank Anthony. Crossing the Rubicon on a jet airliner, leaving behind the landlocked lot of Gangetic barbarians that featured in the Babar Nama. What filthy buggers!

Nothing has really changed.

Time to spill the beans on the Pent Angs.