Lisa Salinger didn’t go to court as Malik or Siddiqui had feared. However, roughly a week after that story was aired on TV, Malik received a call from Brenda Segal’s Long Island office. One of Brenda Segal’s assistants informed Malik over the phone that Lisa Salinger had contacted their law firm. She also suggested that Malik should talk to his mother-in-law, HIV Kasturi, before making any move. The office warned him that he may not fully understand the extent of losses various people might suffer if Lisa went to court.
She further said that Senator Kasturi had already approached their law firm to proceed with the process of arbitrations and wanted Malik to sign a bunch of papers in that regard. She emphasised that it would be better if Malik met them somewhere in person in the best interest of all.
Malik struggled to figure out if it was an order or a request or a veiled threat. He got mad at Kasturi for her high-handedness. What the heck does she think of herself? What have I done that she thinks is wrong? Was the expression on my face in that video so obscene? So what if it was? Isn’t Lisa an escort? Doesn’t she get paid for her “escorting”? How many times has she taken her clothes off for her clients? Why on earth is she creating such havoc now?
Apparently, the world knows an entirely different Lisa Salinger. She is a Long Island soccer mom with three kids who moonlights as an escort, it seems. They say the ramifications of unshrouding her real face to the public would be disastrous. The moment her profile is known to the public, apparently, a lot of big heads would roll. Maybe that’s why Mom is so concerned. That’s why all these arbitrations and mediations.
How long can anyone keep the face of this high-profile woman under wraps?
To hell with these lawyers, Malik contemptuously cursed the whole fraternity of lawyers and called Siddiqui.
“Don’t you make the mistake of meeting anyone in my absence. Don’t answer any calls from unknown numbers. I’m on my way to the gym. Do you want to come there? We can talk about this,” said Siddiqui.
In the locker room of the LA Fitness Centre, Malik undressed himself. He noticed Siddiqui’s text message. “Doctor Saab, I’m sitting in the hot tub right now. Nobody else is here. Please come,” read the text.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” replied Malik and started walking towards the towel closet.
Malik was never comfortable getting naked even in the gym’s locker room. He had never visited a gym before coming to America. He was aghast when he first saw men of all shapes and sizes freely roaming around in the gym’s locker room without a single piece of clothing on. They were all around – right from well-toned bodies with six-pack abs to those with scars from surgeries like cardiac bypass or hip replacement; people with papaya-sized hernias, with sagging folds of fat that covered their private parts. He felt ill at ease watching all sorts of people roam around in gay abandon. He would walk around such places without ever raising his head. Although he’d been going to the gym for almost two decades, he still detested this kind of semi-public nudity.
On the other extreme was Siddiqui. He didn’t spare a chance to get naked. Siddiqui didn’t have a body that he could flaunt. But, he didn’t mind walking, sometimes even discussing business with his clients in a sauna or hot tub, completely naked.
Malik draped himself with a small towel. He hated gym towels. They were so small, revealing more than they concealed. Why couldn’t they get bigger towels? He remembered draping himself with transparent loincloth in Kalburgi with his father every day for his Sandhyavandhana. He hated the ritual because of the attire.
He always wondered what might be more distressing – revealing while concealing or concealing while revealing.
He remembered a quote he had read somewhere: All fashion is a compromise between the admitted desire to dress and the unadmitted desire to undress.
He felt that the loincloth and gym towels in American gyms did the same. Reveal rather than conceal!
He didn’t have the same feelings about G-strings. A lot of his clients wore them even when they visited him in the office, to give proper measurements for repair jobs in the area – the mounds and the valleys.
He remembered Pari going to a particular tailor in Bangalore to get her blouses stitched because he physically measured her rather than relying on one of her pre-stitched prototypes.
He didn’t complain. G-strings always revealed. They were meant to reveal.
But, the loincloths and gym towels were meant to conceal.
Malik saw a naked Siddiqui casually relaxing in the hot tub. “Doctor Saab, get rid of your wraps and chill out a bit; we are all men out here,” said Siddiqui, chuckling.
“Spare me that one thing. I just can’t sit in a tub with another man naked,” said Malik.
“Isn’t that funny, Doctor Saab? Everybody takes off their clothes in front of you, don’t they? Even I do,” snapped Siddiqui.
“Watch what you say, dude. These are ‘MeToo’ times. If someone listens to our talk, I might get arrested. That’s exactly why I don’t want anyone to walk around naked, even in locker rooms. One of my friends got sued for ‘indecent leering’ at another guy who was naked in the locker room. And you, my friend, take your clothes off for a free consultation when you are worried about a mole or a lump. That’s medicine. You and I shouldn’t have a chat sitting naked. You are my lawyer. You should be advising me against these kinds of things.” Siddiqui sensed that Malik’s mind was engrossed in Lisa Salinger’s case.
“Doctor Saab, people don’t walk around naked in the gym to flaunt their bodies. They are worried about hygiene. To avoid muddling the water in the bathtub with their sweaty clothes after a rigorous workout,” Siddiqui tried to rationalise.
“To hell with all this. Now, have I not come here straight and sit with you in the bathtub? How’s that hygienic?”
“Hey, you … don’t you know that you should shower before getting into the bathtub? You have got used to breaking the rules, haven’t you?” said Siddiqui and perhaps quickly realised that he’d gone a little overboard. As if to make amends, he added, “Let it go, Doctor Saab. You never take your work home. I never discuss my cases at home. Likewise, as someone who repairs body parts for a living, you may detest watching the same in public places. You may even find it disgusting, right?”
Although Malik was a little irked with the way the conversation was drifting from its intended course, he felt Siddiqui, after all, had a valid point.
Why am I not able to flaunt my body like everybody else, even in a gym locker room? It’s not as if my body isn’t worth showing off, he thought. Thanks to regular workouts, his body was quite well-toned without an iota of flab. Moreover, the laser treatment had made his chest smooth. The shapely eyebrows – thanks to regular threading – added an extra fillip to his charm.
Malik remembered a relatively old incident suddenly. Even now, he found the incident embarrassing.
About four years ago, Malik and Siddiqui were sitting in the sauna and sweating out their toxins. Malik, as usual, was draped in his gym towel. Siddiqui, as usual, was completely naked. Both were dripping with sweat. A guy suddenly entered the sauna and sat next to Malik. He had an impeccable body, meticulously built with years of workouts. Staring at Malik for a minute, the hunk came a little closer and said, “Please don’t get me wrong for saying this. But, dude, I’m very impressed with your near-perfect body. But, your crooked lips are a real spoilsport, like the blemish on the moon.”
Malik felt that he was sweating more than what the sweat house made him do. For the umpteenth time, he cursed the Yunani quack who had mended his lips in Kalburgi. As long as that hunk remained there, despite the sauna’s heat, Malik stayed frozen right where he was. Siddiqui’s pregnant chuckles continued to tease Malik all through.
“Doctor Saab, today you proved to be a lodestone for a pair of male eyes too. I was surprised that he didn’t ask for your phone number,” guffawed Siddiqui, the moment the guy walked out.
“Shut up, you asshole,” snarled Malik.
“Doctor Saab, why do you get so uncomfortable when a guy tells you that you look great? Why can’t you take the compliment gracefully? Is this a ‘man’ issue? Haven’t you seen girls going gaga over each other’s looks? Why can’t a man appreciate another man’s physical looks without being sexual?”
“Come on, Siddiqui, stop being a smartass. Beauty is essentially feminine. The male body is like a tractor. It’s utilitarian. No one says a tractor is beautiful or expects it to be beautiful. Trust me on this, if someone says that a tractor is beautiful, he wants to ride it. I never knew that my body was desirable to my own kind.”
“Oh, Doctor Saab, why do you overthink so much? He didn’t ask for your phone number or anything, right?”
“Shut up, Siddiqui, I’m actually thinking about his comment about my body being near perfect,”
“What about it, Doctor Saab?”
“Well, I’m a plastic surgeon, right? So I’m wondering if it’s good or bad for me to have a near-perfect body.”
As a person seeking perfection in his profession, Malik had always pondered whether it was good or bad to possess better looks than his patients. Shouldn’t a hairstylist have a great hairstyle? Shouldn’t a tailor wear a perfect suit?
Or was it my crooked lips that made my perfect body less than perfect?
Perhaps it was the sheer perspective of a plastic surgeon. Malik believed that beauty could only be chiselled. He was of the conviction that creating and accentuating beauty was the ‘job’ of a plastic surgeon like him. So, for him to appear well-toned was nothing but a “job” well done. He had no qualms in admitting that his stylist, his groomer, his designer, his personal trainer and, of course, his plastic surgeon had all chipped in to make him look like he did.
Yes, Malik had some minor jobs done on himself – Botox to the forehead and his baggy eyelids; cartilage to the crooked lips and regular waxing in the areas inaccessible to lasers. But, this was to present himself as an ace plastic surgeon in Manhattan. He didn’t want to look better than his work, nor did he want to acknowledge that someone else was better than him in his trade.
It was a fine balance. He had managed to look great but not perfect. With his less-than-perfect looks, he assured his clients that he cared about them more than he cared about himself.
Excerpted with permission from Kaayaa, Guruprasad Kaginele, translated from the Kannada by Narayan Shankaran, Penguin India.
