Ayn Rand wrote, “Man’s first frown is the touch of God on his forehead. The touch of thought.” I have been frowning ever since I read that. Or possibly before. It is tough to ascertain such things. Anyway that's besides the point here. If you are anything like me, the question that jumps up in your mind immediately will be, 'Has it helped you in any way?' Not at all, I admit. If anything, it has made my life more distraught. Then why do I do it? Am I stupid? Does facial gymnastics imbue some kind of pleasure in me? I'll will tell you that in a while but first, the Art of the Frown!

A frown on your face, round-the-clock, 365 days a year is no joke. It is a Herculean task, one which on a list of Top 10 Herculean Tasks falls just under 'trying to separate two fornicating dogs.' Believe me, I know. You are welcome to try though.

More difficult that frowning itself is finding a good enough reason that would keep the acquired frown without wilting. Yes, the freshness of the frown depends on the juiciness of the cause that supports it. My personal favorites are child molestation, rape, forced prostitution, pedophilia, poverty, hunger, war, corruption, moral debasement, dowry deaths, child marriage, intellectual stagnation, spiritual deprivation, injustice, and the philosophical void that's destroying our society. Well, maybe not always in the same order.

Let me warn my good reader here. Even when you have an exhaustive list like that, (a veritable pick of the scum, if I may) getting a good frown is not an easy task. You need to work a bit to make it appear. For example, let's say my hot favorite frown-generator for today is 'Poverty.' I cannot just sit and meditate on a generic word like that and hope to evoke an authentic frown. Not unless I am faking it. That is, if I am an actor. But actors can do it only for a little while. Then they have to retire to their green rooms, and wash the emotional paint off their face before going to sign autographs or endorse UniLever products. That's kid play compared to what I am talking about it. I am talking about a frown that sticks to your face, roots itself deep in your psyche, grabs you by your soul and stirs up the most scowl-ish emotion you have known by name. I do it. Everyday. All day. Through the year. Till date.

How? Let me explain.

When I think of poverty I don't think of poverty at all. I think of 'Duraisamy.' He is the watchman of my apartment complex. A 60 plus year old frail, ghost of a man who could easily be mistaken for an apparition but for his dark complexion, blue uniform and yellow teeth. You don't seen ghosts like that even in third-rate Bollywood horror flicks.

It is a mystery how he became a watchman in the first place. Obviously, by the looks of it, this jolly good fellow is a tad too old to be doing a job that rightfully can demand a bit of rough-handling or physical exertion in emergencies. Even if we say he is not required to 'catch' a thief, at least he should have the eye-sight to spot one if required, isn't it? No such luck with Duraisamy. He has half an eye at night, and that too I believe, is a myth.

Legend has it that one night he opened the gate for a buffalo that happened to wander in and saluted the fellow mistaking it for the secretary of our building. I heard, Ms.Mahalingam, our secretary, who graces the streets religiously atleast twice a month to keep herself fit was heart broken on being told of the incident and not to be seen outside for almost a week. I am not sure what saved Duraisamy's job.

Forget thieves, by the looks of him, I am sure Duraisamy would have an heart attack even if a rat charged at him. Now, good people, you would think all this would deter Duraisamy from taking command as the guardian of two dozen apartments, protector of it's inhabitants. Nope! He is more than delighted to be the night watchman of our complex. I figured out why it came easy to him.

One night, tired and witless after an unusually long day, I drove home in the wee hours and found Duraisamy adroitly dispensing his duties - snoring away to glory under the large banyan tree in our compound, with his old transistor from the black and white era belting out MGR songs of the yore! Our saviour was in another world, another time, dreaming of what I cannot fathom, but obviously something grand enough to be oblivious to the dangers that may be lurking in the dark. For the occupants of the flats, that is. Oh! By the way, I forgot to mention. He is partially deaf too. Though he never admits it. You will need a wedding band doing an out-of-sync waltz around him just to welcome him back to earth. He also keeps telling me he is 45. Insists the greys are because he has so much tension in his job! Right. The logic in his illogic is so logical that you just can't beat it.

You see, I belong to the old school. I fiercely believe that a man should earn his bread by the sweat on his brow. Not by the cold sweet breeze of banyan trees under his ass! Duraisamy gets paid to do a job. If he cannot do it, does not do it, is too old to do it, fire him! 2,500 bucks a month for enjoying a good night's sleep does seem unjust when there are unemployed people out there who can actually work their back off, and would be grateful to earn their pay check.

This is when the frown, the would be etched on my face like the palm prints of stars on Hollywood Hall of Fame, starts to appear on my brow. Ideally, it should cross your face too. Questions such as these demand our attention. Our moral judgement. When Pink Flyod sang, 'Comfortably Numb' they were singing about those whom the frown no longer touches.

Well, back to Duraisamy. Because the frown isn't THE frown yet. It will take some more time. Some more information. So here we go.

D.Samy is is earnest. A sweet pain in the ass. There is something child-like about the thin, old man. You can see it when his face lights up at the sight of a tattered sweater or shirt you offer him. You can see it in the proud display he makes of it. You can see it in the way his eyes take in the Pizza Hut or KFC packing – drinking in the wonders from a world he doesn't know of and maybe never will, trying to retain bits of a fantasy that will never be part of his life - before he gingerly puts his hand inside to take out the chicken you left for him. There is almost discernible impatience in the way he answers when you call out for his share of Sunday Specials at home. In a world made hollow and predictable by pretenses, Duraisamy stands out as an odd figure. There is no dubiousness or cultivated indifference in his eyes. He comes to you as he is – a poor man, and blissfully untouched by the shame society casts upon such. A Don Quixote of our times. A Don Quixote of Chennai.

Only Duraisamy can think of skimming you off cash by cheating on the price of cigarettes he is asked to buy. A pack which regularly costs me 80 bucks sometimes costs 82, sometimes 85 and even 83.50 when he gets it!

The first time he pulled that trick, I was disappointed. And a little angry too. If he wanted money, he could have asked, I thought. Especially if it was loose change. The second time around I was amused. This man actually had no clue that cigarettes had MRP! Then I was intrigued. Till it was imperative for me to find out what the hell he was up to.

A friend has left behind an unfinished bottle of single malt whisky at home. As an ex-connoisseur of single malts, I figured it as a generous quantity by all standards. On a particular evening when my wife was out with her friends, I shared this potent emulsifier of human differences such as caste, creed, color, social status, education back ground and bank balance, with Duraisamy. We became equals for a while.

Stirred by the genteel passion that he could hardly recognize in himself, but which I knew as the effects of my single malt, he spoke about his life, stopping only to take another sip from his glass and beam at me with pride.

Duraisamy had three daughters, all school-going, he emphasized. He had come to Chennai looking for a better life, from one of the most backward villages in Tamilnadu. I said I haven't heard of that place. He laughed uproariously and said in Chennai Tamil, which is a mix of broken english and urbanised tamil, “Worry not, sir, even Chelamma don't know it!” I ask who Chelamma is? Happens to be his wife. She knows everything, he says.

The Duraisamy family lives in a rented single room which they call their home. For the six of them, this one room doubles up as kitchen, sleeping quarters and living room. This subsistence costs him 750 rupees a month. That is, 30% of his salary goes towards having a roof over his head. In metros like Chennai, Multi-national Companies recommend 20% of salary as adequate House Rent Allowance for it's employees. Obviously, they haven't met Duraisamy.

He sends his three children to a school that has a uniform. They read and write English. He wants me to pay particular attention to that fact. They can read and write English! The eldest, who is the eight standard, has been teaching him to sign in the Queen's language. He have never been to school himself. Chelamma is fourth standard fail. He smiles sheepishly. Embarrassed that the better-half is also better qualified, I assume. Ah! That hurts everywhere, I see. Not just in the make-believe, middle-class hell we exist in.

But yes, he says, it costs money. Three kids in a school that has uniform and teaches them to read and write English is sure to charge good money. The uniform, fees, books, it is an up-hill struggle for the old man. Plus, the two mothers are pushing 80 plus. They need proper medical care and nutrition. His mother still helps with the house work, but Chellamma's mother is completely bed-ridden. Chronic Arthritis is worse than death, he laments.

Slowly I probe about the missing change. The little amounts of money that disappear every now and then when he goes to buy me cigarettes. He smiles, but this time without looking me in the eyes. I really don't want to upset this guy. I just want to know.

And he told me. With the same innocence that a child believes and speaks of a benevolent world. I don't know if it broke my heart, but it sure did bring a lump to my throat.

Duraisamy loved omelettes. Every evening, he had to have two of them. To visit the 'mobile eatery' next to our supermarket, and order a roasted, double-omelette, sprinkled with lot of pepper and slicked onion was a ritual he never missed. He would down that with a glass of water and rush back to his position at our gate, am sure breathing fire from all bodily orifices.

This came easy to Duraisamy. Commonsense or logic didn't. He ate omelettes whether he had money or not. He had to. He told me later why. The double omelette cost him 5 bucks. Some days he had the money, on some he didn't. On the days he was short, the loose change from some tenant's cash made it's way to the omelette guy's coffer. But it was always the double omelettes, never the cash that Duraisamy was interested in.

I have a logical question. Why eat it when you have no money? Duraisamy beams again. He leans over and shares his secret with me. Two omelettes a day is what keeps his youth intact. Chellamma says so. And Chellamma knows everything. So he never breaks that ritual. It works, he says, giving me a toothy smile. There are only a dozen or less of those yellow things left inside his mouth. But the sparkle in his eyes is more evident than mine. Inside my mind, a thought tries to wake up from it's slumber but finds itself too lazy for the effort and goes back to its dream-less state again. I cannot but smile back at Duraisamy who is now guiltily looking at the empty bottle before him. Yes, he has finished it most happily but is not sure if he was supposed to do it. Has he taken advantage of my generosity? I reassure him, it's all right.

Damn! What am I supposed to do now? Fire Duraisamy from his job or let him sleep under the banyan tree all night and pay him 2500 rupees a month for it? What about his family? But then, what about my principles and values? What about the 'value for value' motto? What about all those unemployed youth who can actually work for their money?

The frown is fixed permanently on my face. In my mind. On my soul. Another hard day's work is over.