Colty At The Crossroads

Curiosity, which spurs people to do weird things, once gripped Colty and made him shell out a few bucks for a chick lit novel, despite Mme's cheeky warning that all he would encounter between the sheets would be watered down versions of her. After a few pages, he felt the entire chick lit genre was a species a tad beneath even trash. He tried to dump the book on Mme (with a look of horror, she had exclaimed: "Colt! You are succha pain in ma left eyebrow!") who said if he gifted her such chick lit ever, she would take it to signify the relationship was over, a red flag that Colty hoisted in his memory forever.

After the gang refused to accept such a pathetic piece of writing, Colty, who was at the crossroads for some time, decided to exchange the book. He knew the shop people would discover the book has been read, but went ahead with the idea. After all, nothing ventured, nothing gained...

He notices 3 salespeople manning 3 counters at the well-known bookstore chain - 2 chaps and 1 chick. Colty didn't need to be an Einstein to figure out which pair of ears would be the most sympathetic to his problem.The guys he dismissed of as being 'wimpish-looking' (here Colty empathises with the female customers who get a raw deal. Surely the store could have hired better-looking representatives of his gender? No wonder Mme, Mimi & Dot prefer the other bookstore chain, he thought). But the lone grapefruit-green-eyed (or moss-green-eyed, Colty is yet to decide on this contentious issue ) beauty, with burgundy-coloured hair and collar bones jutting out like two sleek strokes drawn by a Renaissance painter, Colty found particularly commendable. As Mme says, it's when he describes women that you realise the intellectual breadth, verbal skills and the eye for details and colour Colty is blessed with.


"Hi there! Lovely weather!" Colty ventures as if the painted darling was at a bus-stop, inside a metro or just a customer like him at the shop.
"Hello Sir! How can I help you?" Colty's first opponent asks in a business-like tone.
"Uh..well..I had bought this book for a friend but HE has already read it, it seems. So may I please exchange it for another one as I need to gift HIM a book? Here's the bill," Colty says with tranquility in a business-like manner, though his large intestine feels like it has been caught in a whirlpool. He hopes she had heard the stress on the 'HE' which meant 'am still unattached - am available' for you. Though Colty and Mme are dating, both when asked would say they are 'single'.

The bored beauty's eyes and hands feel the book, and her right eye twitches as if she had been handed a fake Rs 500 note by Colty (though Mme would say Colty and his money are not easily parted, even if it's all fake). She then asks the store manager to help her deal with a dolt of a customer. Colty turns around to size up his next opponent when what he sees staggers him for a nanosecond.

The store manager is a female carved entirely out of a huge mass of adipose tissue and whose world inflation is yet to despoil. Though Mr Chidambaram has admitted inflation's indeed a serious issue, she at gunpoint would never even admit the existence of a seven-year high inflation (when this blog was published, it was said to be at a 7-yr high...when you read this, it might have have reached even a 20-year high). Crude oil prices hit a new record daily, food crisis plagues mankind - but the store manager's world is immune from such unpleasant realities. Colty feels like surrendering to the heavy arms of this woman who is all softness with no hard angles anywhere, depositing his troubles at her swollen feet and wants to be buried deep under this comforting mass of flesh.

"What's the problem?" Ms Manager asks briskly.
"The gentleman here wants us to exchange this book. Take a look," she passes the book, along with Colty's fate, to the well-fed manager.
The high-density body holds the slim volume and runs her fat fingers through the pages. She turns to Colty and masks her accusation with a soft, sensuous voice: "This book has been read...We would have exchanged it Sir but these many pages have already been read..."
"Yeah, I said so..My buddy read a few pages and couldn't go further...So I'd like to gift HER a new one," Colty says, fearing he may soon lose this battle. He stresses on 'HER' to tell the manager that he had bought this gift for a special someone, who being a woman is capricious and the manager would understand his girl's whims and take pity on him...
"We understand your problem, Sir..But the thing is we don't exchange books that have already been read....
Colty cuts in with a devil-may-care smile which has slayed countless women: "I understand but it would be a huge favour if you could exchange it. Really.." Colty decides if she refuses, he's gonna fall at her Royal Highness' high heels, shed copious tears and bring the roof down with his wails...but he won't return home with that same old hideous chick lit specimen...

Colty wins, for the manager decides it's better to let the fellow have his way as he's a regular jerk here and asks Colty to go and choose a new one. Colty starts checking out the various sections - all the while, the manager is hovering around him, trying to act invisible. Colty, to rub in the fact that he's indeed buying a book for a friend, rings up Ozzy.
"Hello Ozzy? Tell me what book you'd like for I can't come everyday and get it exchanged."
"Colty u cretin! What's wrong with you man? Looks like you've lost it! Don't need any book...Don't even remember when I last took a book to bed!" Ozzy is flummoxed.
"Ozzy you oaf! Am mighty pissed off! Just lemme know what kinda book you want , you imbecile!" Colty rattles off the titles at random while Ozzy lets loose a stream of curses and disconnects the call.
Colty pretends he's still hanging around and says like a true friend: "OK, buddy..I'll look for it. ..If it's not there, will get whatever I want and you have to read it..."

The manager looks convinced and walks away while Colty spends the next hour buying a book for himself. He buys a costlier book and yet feels guilty for he knows the manager and the salespeople would soon be cursing his damned fib and relate the story when they sit down for dinner with their families..and so thinks how best to salvage his reputation. He finally thanks the corpulent manager, and says he will remain indebted forever for this 'huge help'.

Later, Colty narrates the episode to his gang, and it was then that Ozzy understood the curious incident of the book at night time. For four consecutive Sundays, Colty dragged Ozzy to the store while on four consecutive Saturdays, Mme gave him company, unwillingly though. Colty was on a book-buying spree, trying to make it look to the shop people like he had enough money to splurge, lil things like exchanges didn't really matter in his topsy-turvy universe, and he was indeed magnanimous enough to rain books on his friends out of habit. Hope I didn't look like a fool, Colty still thought though what is done cannot be undone...

He went to Dr Pipsqueak to expunge his guilt. The doc consoled his soul with words of wisdom: "These modern booksellers make profits from all kinds of devious ways...Buggers don't even offer discounts these days unlike in my days when if you bought one Complete Works Of Shakespeare, you got an Elizabethan English Translation, an Elizabethan Sonnet Collection, Understanding Shakespeare and How To Talk In Normal English After Reading Shakespeare for free...What's your fault? That you bought a book hoping to like it but it made you choke? Reading a few pages is OK as so many twerps come and read these books over coffee and then don't buy them, even after spilling their mocha or mochachillo or whatever on them...So just relax son..It's a good anecdote and it amused me enormously like it amused your gang...Ah, how nice it must be to be young and get away with lil mischiefs!"

Pipsqueakian Analysis - Theory In Practice

Dr Pipsqueak's fame spreads like wild fire, thanks to Mme who made her brother Spooky and her buddy Colty consult him...Colty was to later whisper to Ozzy, another member of the gang, about making old PA visit him just once....Spooky enters the famous consulting room. The paintings of Dali tell him in 1000 words that after an eternity of suffering, he has finally met the doctor he was looking for...and not losing a moment, wields the pen and scribbles:


1. Think i woke up at 4:00 am and noticed the cracks in the damp, purple ceiling and the plaster peeling off...cobwebs hang precariously, plants sprout from the corners, a three-inch layer of soot on the ancient fan...and desolation enveloped my being....

2. Toothpaste's cap missing, so had to waste 10 minutes trying to coax the paste out of the tube -and somebody had deliberately hidden my toothbrush in a bucket...towel and the magazines in the loo were wet...think someone had been using them or they had fallen on the wet floor and some unhygienic clod had just picked them up and left....

3. My cook serves burnt omelette and watery tea, day after day...despite repeated requests, she serves the omelette minus the yolk, which used to be the only bright spot during the mornings... always offers cholesterol as an excuse...loves to expose my ignorance of biology and chemistry, though I know cholesterol is a steroid...I don't see why I should be denied yolks....

4. At office, everyone tries to take a sneak peek at my mail, colleagues talk behind my back and make me pay for everything they eat...a few even hide my tissues, medicines, combs, cologne and pens...all these mysteriously reappear when I dont need them anymore

5. The office peon always answers back, snaps at me when I ask him about certain important matters, sends away my visitors and brings tea one and half hours after I plead for it and to spite me, dumps stale sandwiches on me....this has been going on since November, 2007...he hates me, I think...

6. What my peon does at office, the exact behaviour my wife duplicates at home...she also exhibits some unique, repulsive behaviour like nocturnal headaches & halitosis....this has been going on since January 2007 when I married her.....

7. Have begun my magnum opus "The Discovery of Colty" which is the unauthorised biography of my sister's buddy, Colty...have written the perfect first sentence too:"The accidental birth of Colty, who was conceived in Nainital, born in Tamil Nadu and brought up in West Bengal, was no accident as though his parents knew the dreadful consequences of submitting innocently to an all-consuming passion, they did not foresee that one rakish sperm with a mind of its own would seduce an unsuspecting lil doe-eyed egg to unleash a calamity called Colty...."

But the writer's block, I think, prevents me from going ahead...

8. My decade-old pair of clingy jeans aint comfortable anymore...am distressed...dont think am OK....

Think everything's wrong....

With that, Spooky leaves the paper with the doc and after much bantering, the doc tells him to return the next day to collect the results of the analysis.

Dr Pipsqueak writes back, and Spooky reads it, feels like Browning "God's in his heaven and all's right with the world" and sinks peacefully into a deep siesta at home.

Here's the doc's prescription for Spooky:

1. Try to wake up at 6 and arrange for a renovation of the house as it sounds to me like one of those dingy mansions one rented 88 years back and for which the rent continues to be Rs. 88 per month despite all the amendments to the Rent Control Act. And enlighten your landlord about the changes

2. Is Mme your elder sis? I had someone by that name drop in last evening and what was remarkable about her was her desire to do lil things to annoy her brother. When asked to give examples, she said things like hiding toothpaste caps and toothbrushes, something about towels. Confront her. Immediately.

3. Fire the cook. Forget the yolks.

4. The same things I've observed at my office too. So the inference I draw is all offices are the same. Learn to live with it. Pay them back - hide their stuff, read their mail. Aggression is the key. And it's fun too. Always look for entertainment, and it will spring at you in the last place you expected it - your office.

5. Did you forget the Diwali tip by any chance? Make up with him, quick! You think wrong - he hates you all.

6. Allow me a joke, at your expense of course. Definitely not a marriage made in heaven! (Here I laugh a bit - hahaha - and beg your pardon. I need a wee bit of comic relief when I read about the tragedies that befall men. Thanks). Warn your wife. Strictly. If her behaviour doesn't change after 3 severe warnings, resign yourself to your fate. I can see you are rich, successful, ambitious, great-looking and healthy. Only sore point is your wife, who spoils the picture-perfect life of yours. But that's normal. Thank God for it. Life was never meant to be perfect.

7. Publish and be damned?!!! Drop the book idea. Besides, it's mean to write your sister's buddy's unauthorised biography, while he's still alive. Perhaps we can revisit the idea later...perhaps, I said...And the first sentence of yours - I wonder whether Freud was right about the three-letter word being the source of misery after all...Kill the dreadful first sentence, PLEASE.

8. No, not you but your old pair of jeans sounds distressed. Change or exchange it. You are OK, I'm OK.
Don't think too much. I think it was Keats who said in this world "to think is to be full of sorrow.."

So I repeat, don't think...I can sense that you are already better. Good! I dont want you writing in another 6 months - I can see you are better already...You are perfect! Good! Good! Drop in whenever you feel game for a nice chat....Pips

Say Hello To Dr Pipsqueak!

Dr Pipsqueak, the man who revolutionised 21st century psychology, is Mme's ex-professor and also her brother Spooky's analyst. He counts among his loyalists not only the who's who in the world of psychoanalysis and psychiatry but also those from the world of entertainment like politicians. Dr Pipsqueak, according to Colty's cliched summary, is the friend, philosopher and analyst of all and sundry. He was in the news recently when he signed an MoU with a well-known telecom company. According to the terms, for every call you make to Dr Pipsqueak, he answers with glee "Yeah, I am Dr Wily Fox. Tell me about your troubles" and gets paid handsomely in seconds by the above-mentioned company. He can retire right now comfortably but keeping in mind the interests of medicine and the wishes of his friends, continues to practise the "sacred art of healing."

Now you may ask how exactly did he disturb the much-disturbed world of psychoanalysis and create ripples all over the planet. Now's the time for details. He refused to endorse Dr Freud's simplistic and naive argument that a three-letter word is the source of all neuroses and later, banished the term 'patient' once and for ever. 'Patient,' an unmentionable term, is in exile now, and no friend or even foe of this marvellous doc dares to use the abusive term for it would simply show that you are yet to keep pace with the rapid strides psychoanaylsis has made since 2001. An unfortunate journalist had once asked him for professional reasons: "So Dr Pipsqueak, why is it that you don't use the term 'patient'?"


Let's wind back to what the doc said in a measured, soft tone: "Well...a man under trial for a crime is always the accused...And the accused is always assumed to be innocent till he's proven guilty...In short, though we might have seen him plunging the knife 22 times into the pink teddy bear of his girlfriend, till it is proved in the court that indeed we saw him doing so, he's innocent...Similarly, when a man is brought for psychoanalysis, it is wrong to categorise him as as 'patient' for I yet do not know something's wrong with him...He might sing like a canary and claim to be a cat and may even purr and meow...But till I've sat down and analysed him and found about the curious ways in which his thought process works, I really cannot pronounce him an abnormal specimen, a 'patient'...He might have his valid reason for saying and behaving in such an incongruous manner...And that's where I come in...Everyone who walks in is healthy till I certify him to be a patient...So till I begin my analysis, he's as normal and healthy as YOU are not..."


With that devastating punchline, Dr Pipsqueak established his career and killed that of the journalist. Since we journos belong to the same fraternity (or sorority), I had asked why he had uttered that killer line. Doc said he had been the journo's analyst for quite some time, and not even his editor knew the levels he could stoop to for that coveted 'exclusive.' Again, unlike Dr Freud who had a couch in his consulting room where 'patients' reclined and spilled the beans, Dr Pipsqueak believes a couch only adds to your upholstery costs (all sorts of characters lie down and bring with them their characteristic smells and stains, which they without fail leave behind) and increases the chances of infection. So the doc's preferred method of analysis is something like this.

The healthy fellow is asked if he's frightened, and till date, answers have never been in the negative. He's taken to a room whose walls are covered with frightening works of Salvador Dali. This is to ensure that the man's normal state of being in perpetual fright is not tampered with at any cost - this room resembles his natural habitat, and he is at home here. After the man has feasted on the scary drawings, he notices a metallic chair and table and proceeds towards it, drawn by an irresistible force. He is thrilled to see a notepad and a fountain pen, and proceeds to write, draw or practise origami. What he does with such inanimate objects apparently reveals much to the doc than if he were allowed to babble on a couch. Dr Pipsqueak has noted that though initially many may do several things with such implements, they invariably turn to writing on the notepad. At this critical juncture, the doc wonders how long he'll write. Again statistics reveal they will write till there's no paper left or the ink runs out.


The doc then enters the room (he had been watching the fellow all this while - yeah, right... that mirror - he saw through his manic narcissism too) and reveals himself with the line:"Hey! Say hello to your doc!" and in a chummy-like way, slaps his back and does some small talk, then slowly proceeds to decipher the squiggles on the notepad and finally, writes down his verdict in a few seconds or hours. And for those who cannot afford a private visit because of space-time inconveniences, he's just a phone call away! If you are still not convinced, let me impress on you the fact that Spooky and Colty swear by Dr Pipsqueak, and a day may come when even old PA would swear by him!


PSSSSST: When Dr Pipsqueak reveals himself with the line:"Hey! Say hello to your doc!", never ever ask (though you may have buck tooth) like Bugs Bunny "What's up, Doc?" as then your analysis would be reduced in a split second to the doc's laconic verdict:"Juvenile delinquent."

An After-Dinner Speech

When the last crumbs were dutifully scraped off the last plate by the slowest eater Ozzy, and dinner was officially over as Ozzy's Dad (my uncle) said like he had been saying for the last 54 years:"That was a good meal," Ozzy & I got up, only to be told to sit down by his Dad whom we shall refer to as PA (Pompous Ass). PA was to make an after-dinner speech - not unusual of the old man but an awful habit of his which we had forgotten, though we realised he hadn't. He looked with a strange warmth at my aunt, Dot, Ozzy & me, which meant he was going to announce something really, really trivial. Shucks! At this goddamn place, one can't hit the sack in peace after some grub!

PA stood and said in his customary manner: "It'll be a short speech. And it's about food." I wondered whether he was going to thank my Aunt for the excellent dinner when as an afterthought he added: "About the food crisis, to be precise. Economics - the dismal science. So lend me your ears." Ozzy looked stunned. 'Economics' was one of those hazy words which when uttered with the solemnity of a butler announcing the arrival of an important personage would hardly make Ozzy get up and offer his seat, leave alone his ears. In fact, if one were to write 'Economics,' 'The Economist' and 'The Economic Times' on three bits of paper and ask Ozzy which was the magazine, which the newspaper and which the subject, he would have stared right through you as if you had just asked him for the nuclear bomb's recipe.

Ozzy turned to me and whispered: "We do earn enough to keep our body and soul together, right? And I believe there's still all those money under the wooden floor and above the false ceilings, hmm?" I nodded to reassure him.
"Ahem..Any questions may be put forward to me...After the speech," twittered PA. I heard Ozzy say something about the Mad Hatter.
"Do I have your ears?" PA persists. We chorused: "Yeah, yeah..You do."

And thus was born the longest and most monotonous monologue four pairs of ears have been subjected to in the written history of mankind. I've memorised the speech for the benefit of my enemies; my friends shall only have to bear with the gist. PA spoke about the food crisis, how it was always around but only now had it become so enormous that people had begun to notice it and write about it (and as Ozzy snidely remarked:"And also give after-dinner speech about it"), how growing demand in India and China, subsidies of developed nations, export controls and the voracious appetite of US & EU for biofuels would result one fine day in all of us observing a minute's silence in memory of gud ol' food before our empty pots and pans. And again Ozzy drily said: "You would, on such a day, probably give a speech about that miraculous, now extinct, thing called food and then exclaim the speech was the dinner!" I, who often indulged my cousin's worst PJs, gave him a stern look to mean: "I can't go along with your sense of humour all the time as even I have my limits."

When PA suggested solutions like tweaking of trade policies and delved deeper into the mechanism of subsidies, Ozzy could take it no more. His soul shrieked at the injustice of it all, and he blurted out: "What is the point?"
To which PA said: "What point?"
"Where are you leading us?" Ozzy asked and at once felt like a lamb smartly asking the shepherd, if a sheep could speak the human tongue or speak at all, where indeed was he leading the flock. Others may be meek and blind, but not me, Sir, not me, Ozzy thought.
"Nowhere."
"OK? I get it now...Are you suggesting we cut down our intake of carbs?"
Silence, followed by more silence. Silence of the lambs, Ozzy can conceive of a PJ, even if he were to face a firing squad. And just when Ozzy opens his mouth to let out an audible word...
"No," PA says calmly, like a jury member pronouncing a verdict after much deliberation on being asked whether he favoured the death sentence for the accused.
"Are you insinuating that I trim my flab?"
"No."
"Are you hinting that from tomorrow am gonna be starved?"
"No."
"Then, what are you driving at? What? What? What?"
"Three whats are not going to make me answer you so fast, son."
"What the hell! What's the purpose of all these words you have been flinging at us?!"
At this point, Dot, who cannot begin a sentence without 'actually,' 'basically,' 'generally,' and 'simply,' turns to Ozzy : "Actually Ozzy, you can't talk to Daddy like this. You have a weak heart."
"Well, I just did."
"Basically, you need to relax. Take it easy. Chill. Relax. Chillax," Dot chants her favourite words.
"I'm not gonna let an old man ruin my after-dinner hours further unless he tells me why he held us captive for two hours...I demand an explanation like any rational creature...What's the P.O.I.N.T?"

Now that Old PA had everyone looking at him like he was an Old Testament prophet about to throw more pearls of wisdom their way, he said with great composure and a serene smile: "The point is I've got all the material I need for my forthcoming book 'Why BPL Families Jump The Ration Queue.' Trust me, the arguments I will put forth would hold true for Abidjan in Cote d'Ivoire as much as for India and I hope to deliver an after-dinner speech at a FAO meet and sometime in the future, perhaps a Nobel...Uh, I mean my noble endeavour might...."
At this point, Ozzy asks everyone to imagine that old PA had turned to stone, and so ignore him like we ignore the busts of Lord Clive or Lord Dalhousie on the streets of Calcutta and like a true man of the house, takes charge of the situation: "Everyone evacuate this room fast!" And as I narrate this to Mme on the phone, Ozzy begs -'Enough, Mimi. Lord! Either this old chap goes to the asylum or I go. Please don't give him too much importance by continuing with his story. Cut the crap right here, and go to sleep."And I obliged, as my poor cousin muttered something about why one can't choose one's dad...and Dot added her bit about how one can't choose one's mom or brother and I caught on and contributed by saying for that matter, how one can't choose one's uncle or aunt either and clever Mme thoughtfully followed our train of thought and supplied from the other end of the line how one can't choose one's grandpa or grandma...Really, everyone can go on...

Enter Mme, In A Reverie

Mme (don't confuse her with me whose name is pronounced precisely the way it's spelt - Mimi), Colty's sensibly eccentric or eccentrically sensible girlfriend, wrote this when she was dating Colty (though Colty would have you believe it was he who was dating her...hahaha) and she reached the fatal conclusion that her no-nonsense heart had flipped (three somersaults it did inside her has-experienced-it-all rib cage) for him when she was listening to his usual inanities and profanities.
Colty, at that precise point in history, was not sure whether all the mails Mme wrote should be saved in the inbox under "Friends", "Spl friends", "Friends who show the potential to become girlfriends" , "She thinks am just a friend but I think otherwise", "I think she's just a friend but she thinks otherwise" or simply under the vacant "Girlfriend" slot. Historians have confirmed one truth, which is indeed beautiful (and hence it must be the truth, after all "Truth is beauty, beauty is truth" - Keats, yeah?) and that is when Mme "confessed" to the supremely useless Colty, it was 2:57 pm on a windy Wednesday at Mainland China: "I was happy, till I met you...Now, am troubled..only because of you" to which an annoyed Colty had said:" Yeah? Always my fault!" With that, he allows Mme to foot their fat bill for the none-too-slim lunch both had merrily polished off a few minutes back.
Mme, unable to express in speech what her depraved mind craved for, sat down by the river Ganges and wept like those sad creatures in Eliot's The Wasteland, whom he stole from the Bible, who wept by the waters of Leman, I think. Then her nebulous emotions fell out in concrete, little, crisp sentences which Colty had the pleasure of reading. In every word of hers was reflected his own word...(You, my dear reader, do take this tissue and wipe the snot) and her letter only corroborated his own feelings...Here's Mme at her best behaviour, waxing eloquent for that bugger called Colty...(Now, buy me a new tissue, will ya?!)

As I pay the bills and clear your debts, I wonder... How long will it be before you say you will remain indebted to me for playing along with you in this game? These warm coffee vapours that now glide their way up and diffuse into this wet air - why don't they enchant you for once as you ask me what else I want? Why don't they charm you into forgetting all that you have been taught? This is a test too - and yet you lose more if you win at your own game! Why didn't you set aside your conventions too along with your prosaic bag which you left by your feet on the floor? For once, why dont you shred apart the paper-thin talks you carry on about your office and the people here, and reveal some tender, elemental truths about yourself...and some about me?

And how long must I wear this indulgent foolish smile, as you tell me about your life and I think why you are taking so much time? This mask of casualness you wear - shall I unmask you now and touch the careless desolation you hide? And this assortment of mundane words, that accompany this assortment of salads- shall I swallow them at once or shall I wait for the magical ones I want to hear and chew over and over again when you are no more here with me? Now and then, you graze my ear with some harsh consonants with harsher meanings and scatter them along my path. I trip. I stumble. And sometimes, I fall. Shall I wait for the mellifluous, soft words to gatecrash or are these words still awaiting a formal invite from me? Why don't you let me be the woman that I am, instead of wanting me to usurp your rightful role?

How many sly glances must I cast your way to catch one stealthy glance from you? And when your eyes meet mine, shall I wither you with a stern look or shall I look coyly the other way? How long must I wait before you discard this flimsy raiment of sophistication that you wear, which I must admit, looks good on you? And this ephemeral fragrance that gently traverses across this afternoon breeze - is that some cologne or some aftershave that you use? Or is that wafting from another soul like you, who sits a few steps away from us, watching you and me who entertain him as these slow hours slowly kill him too?How long will you remain entangled in this mesh of artifice and pretend that I don't mean a thing to you?
Or shall I play the knight-errant...and rescue myself from your tangled thoughts to which I have willingly surrendered?

Colty says it's these lines of Mme's that have done him in..once and for all...That lil twerp!