BRO'S YOUR DADDY

Ever a sucker for a good old-fashioned Bollywood romance, I was probably more thrilled than the newly-weds themselves when my childhood friend and his college girlfriend pulled off the star-crossed wedding of the century. Parents were threatened with suicide and fasts-unto-death and chronic spinsterhood, names were called, motives questioned, even a stray pistol or two fired in the air before the two would eventually immerse themselves in the masochist waters of holy matrimony. 

Since we moved to different cities- and later, countries- after school, I was unable to play my dream role of Friend & Facilitator (I never get to facilitate anything; stuff just happens to me) while all the drama was going down, but I always felt part of the proceedings, thanks in no small part to my friend's email updates at every stage of the relationship. But before last weekend, I'd waited some six years to finally meet this woman who had launched a thousand auto-rickshaws, and finally made an honest man of my brotha-from-'notha-motha. 

As we all know, the woman of your bro-from-'notha-maw (there should really be an abbreviation for that) is as off-limits as it gets. No matter how short a while you've known her, she's automatically a girl-bro: someone you can go shopping with and whine to about woman-trouble and generally just be one-of-the-girls with without actually going under the knife. And my bro sure picked a winner- I liked her immediately, and we all got along like a happy house on fire, sipping our brewskis and reminiscing about school days while Green Day moaned tepidly about tattoos and memories on a CD none of us would admit to having plopped on the stereo. Nineties kids, all. 

I'd never had a girl-bro before, so I was really excited to see how far I could push the boundaries of propriety. An off-colour joke here, an MD anecdote there, hell I even squeezed in a racist joke about Hindi People. She didn't seem to mind at all. I'd finally found my Gro. That's when my friend's parents dropped in, balked at me for a second as though experiencing a particularly nasty bout of deja vu, and quickly departed after dropping off his 2-year old son with us.      

The kid was a real people-pleaser, going round our circle handing out head massages like an overweight teenager with low self-esteem hosting her first house party. I was just settling into one-more-and-lunch? mode, when things took an unexpected turn. My friend, who had disappeared into the kitchen with the baby, reappeared wearing a distinctly dour expression I remembered –but couldn’t place- from our kindergarten days. “What’s wrong, buddy?” I asked. “Oh, nothing,” he muttered, and stole a glance at Wifey. Holy Miley, they were doing that weird transference thing couples do and in a couple of seconds she wore the exact same expression as him! Suddenly, looking at the two of them and their toddler who had just sauntered in naked, trailing a stray diaper and the definitive waft of poo behind him, I knew. Oh shit, this is what happens to people after they have babies. The words were out of my mouth before I knew it: “bro, did you just poop your pants?”

He hadn’t, of course. Turned out his son had a habit of swallowing assorted non-edible objects, and my friend had just found the key to his gym locker in the latest poop bouquet he had been presented with. Which in his shock and horror he had subsequently dropped in the pot of biryani that was supposed to be our lunch. “I’m sorry I accused you of hiding the key,” he said and gave Wifey a hug. “Why would you think she’d do that?” I asked, “and go boil your hand in acid or something.” I pricked my ears for the sound of water running as he went back inside. “Oh he’s got it into his head that I don’t let him have any alone-time out of some kind of new-mommy spite,” Wifey explained cheerfully, and patted her son’s bottom, “look, why don’t you go through the menu and we’ll order in some Chinese?” I wasn’t sure if I could eat for a couple of days yet. “Your problems are so different from mine,” I said, “AND WHO THE HELL CHANGES DIAPERS IN THE KITCHEN?” Wifey smiled patiently. “Relax, bro,” she said, “everything you’ve touched in this house has been pissed, pooped or puked on. Repeatedly. Now order some fucking Chinese before I make him swallow your balls.”     

Icy Highs's Video Recco: Justin Bieber vs. Slipknot - Psychosocial Baby

        

Fear and Loathing. And Hindi People.

The Mothership, hardcore Mallu that she is, has a tendency to assume the worst about North Indians- or as we call them in private, 'Hindi people'. Her definition of 'Hindi people' is a wide, sweeping, arc that covers just about every inch of the country north of Bangalore. Naturally, she wasn't thrilled when I moved to Bombay last year. Till recently though, I was under the impression that I had finally converted the Mothership, that I could take comfort in knowing that I'd transformed one bigoted soul forever.  

Not having spent much time in the North myself, I was thrilled when I got the opportunity to spend a few days in Delhi last month to promote my novel. To nobody's surprise, those 'few days' in the capital have somehow stretched into a couple of weeks now, partly because I was down with some stomach trouble, and mostly because it meant I 'd have that much longer before getting back to the daily grind. The Mothership- bless her- fired off two warning texts to my phone before finally calling.

"Tharun," she says, "what do they want?"
"Who, Ma?" I ask, because it's 7 in the morning and I've just returned to the friend's home I'm crashing at from a party with seven hungover strangers.
"The Hindi People," she says, "what will it take to get you out of there?"
"What?" I try to clear my head, "Mom, I just got held up with book stuff here. I'll head back soon."
"Son," she whispers, "I don't know who they are or what they want, but you tell them your Ma's got skills, you hear? You tell them if they don't let you go, your Mommy will look for them, that I will find them, and I will kill them. You hear?"

I consider letting my Mother think I've been kidnapped by Hindi People for just a little longer; it'd be easier than telling her I've been putting off getting back to real life because breakups are hard and I'm in possession of half a brick of primo hashish that needs smoking before I can board a flight without fear of getting an anal probe.
    
"Ma," I say, "I'm not being kept here against my will. My stomach's all screwed. I think I've got Delhi Belly."
"That's good," she says, "speak only in code. "Delhi Belly"! Ha, I bet they're going crazy trying to figure that out!"
"No Ma, 'Delhi Belly' is a real thing," I say, "It's a stomach infection you get from drinking Delhi water or something."
"Good. Now keep using code, but what can you tell me about your location? I'm sure they blindfolded you, but did you happen to hear a train or a plane in the background?"
"The entire city is connected by train, Ma," I say, "and besides, I've not been kidnapped! I can't believe you've never heard of Delhi Belly. Google it. Aamir Khan even made a movie about it. You know it must be contemporary and traumatic and capable of reducing housewives across India to tears if Aamir Khan makes a movie about it."

The Mothership falls silent. Aamir Khan is one of the few Bollywood actors to hold his own in our household, partly because he made a couple of decent movies ten years ago and mainly because, as my mother put it, "I think his people have suffered enough, don't you?" She knows I wouldn't use the Khan's name in vain.

"So you're actually staying longer in Delhi off your own free will?" she asks.
"Bye, Ma," I say, "I love you."

Now as any man will tell you, you can't really look people in the eye after they've just heard you tell your mother you love her. So I put down the phone, make a face, and plant my gaze on a speck on the wall that's a good foot above the tallest person in the little group assembled around me. Though we've boarded up the windows, we can hear the day breaking outside, an angry milkman here, a furious automobile honk there. We haven't slept a wink all night but we've been in Delhi long enough to know we can't afford to waste daylight.

"Right, people," I say, "you know the drill. We're all hungry and this is part of the cultural experience, so no whining. And pick up anything you see that can be concealed in your clothes and can be used as a weapon."

There is a collective nod, and no audible Oedipus jokes. Deciding it's still early, I collect just the assault rifles from the corner and pass them around.

"Ok on the count of three," I say, "ladies, grab your pepper spray and tasers, and other assorted anti-rape devices. Guys, you've got your guns; lock and load. Let's go get some breakfast."

Icy Highs's Music Recco: Bhaag Bhaag DK Bose, Delhi Belly (2011)

How Karan Johar brought back the Raj

Civilized as we are, there's always a certain pride in beating the System. Whether it's returning a not-subtle-enough wine at a classy restaurant or paying somebody an extra hundred bucks to tatkal your ass to whatever last minute destination, nobody says no to a chance to pull one over the System. What the System itself is comprised of - the government? the capitalists? the Mothership?- has never been particularly clear but one thing is for certain: it is not a very nice establishment.

Being a writer -or so I was told- comes with its own set of prescribed ideological affectations. Of which being staunchly anti-System, I gathered, is the most crucial one. A stickler for pretensions myself, I decided many years ago that I would jump on the bandwagon the minute my first novel got published. That happened a little over a month ago. Like any Indian babu worth his salt, I decided to fight the System by first doing a Case Study. What better role models, I thought, than all the firangs on Himachal's famed hippie trail? They're White, they're right and let's be honest, tie-dye never really looks as good on those of tropical complexion.

If anybody can teach me to ditch the 9-5, to live on my own terms and for my own enlightenment, it's these gentle White folk who've abandoned the comfort of microwave pizzas and afternoons at the Gap to bum around them Himalayas. I'm happy to report my instincts weren't so wrong after all. Deliverance came in the shape of an overhead snippet of conversation from a table adjacent to mine at a little cafe in Leh. The French guy at the table had been exhorting the virtues of budget travel and backpacking to a newbie British girl for the better part of my breakfast, and just as I was losing interest....

"But Pierre, how do you keep going without an income? What do you do when the money runs out?"

This was it, the mother lode, the moment that four weeks of painstaking research and analysis had been leading upto. How does one survive without a job? How does one truly beat the System? Pierre would know.

"I'm broke now," declared Pierre proudly, "so I'm off to Bombay. I hear there's a place that pays you 200 rupees just to show up."

Must be an underground moment, I thought, some kind of counter culture organization. Like minds, I thought, brothers in arms. Of course they would pay me 200 rupees just to show up, they get me! I leaned in closer to gather more information on the whereabouts of the Promised Land.

"It's at this cafe in Colaba in Bombay," said Pierre, "they don't want experience, talent, nothing. As long as you're White, they'll hire you as extra dancers in Bollywood movies."

And on hearing that ladies and gents, I spat out my coffee and calmly walked out the door, resolving never to pay for breakfast again. Take a bow, Karan Johar and Bollywood; not only have you broken the System, but you've brought back the old one. I'd stay and chat but I've got job applications to fill in.

Mumbai, Meri Jaan

Turns out the Mothership was right after all. When I moved to Bombay ('Mumbai', to the pedants) last September, she had been apprehensive. "It's a big, bad city," she said. "They're calling it the 'Narcopolis'", she said, "it'll corrupt you." She had a right to be worried of course, what with History and all, however rehabilitated I maybe. But not even hyper-imaginative Mother could have predicted the ease with which a little something here, a little something there, quickly spiraled into a Habit.

I suppose I could have gotten hooked on a greater evil. I should probably be thankful I'm not hawking handjobs on street corners in exchange for a hit; that I still have my health and my (ahem) looks. But addiction, any addiction, is shameful, a burden. And I fell for the most shameful one of them all: My name is Tharun James Jimani, and I'm a benefits scrounge.  

It started off harmlessly enough, like a stray pill somebody hands you at a party. I had been in Bombay three weeks and had had enough of spending hours (and a fortune in cab fare) stuck in traffic jams. I decided to take the advice of Ramu, the office boy, who never tires of telling me that the public transport system in Bombay is "cheap and besht". Don't be fooled by the fancy job description- Ramu is a leprechaun of lifestyle conveniences, and about the size of a football field.

So I gave Bombay's famed local trains a try, romanced as I have always been by their propensity to match-make if Saathiya is to be believed. Oh relax, this is not another dreary account of how dreary the daily commute is in one of the busiest cities in the world. I was ready for that. What I wasn't prepared for was how ridiculously exaggerated those accounts of travel tedium were. "Piece of cake," I thought, as I smiled enthusiastically at the gentleman with a phantom arm seated opposite me on my first foray onto the other side of the tracks- "cattle class" commute.    

"God, Mumbaikars are such whiners," I thought as I nodded in acknowledgement at the lady with the neck brace who had just entered the train. And then it struck me: the elderly blind man with the white cane, the little boy with the Forrest Gump- footwear, they were all special souls in there. I was travelling in the disabled folks' compartment. I looked frantically around to make sure nobody was standing, that I wasn't denying some poor diabetic his government-approved respite, and resolved to exit stage at the next station.

But guilt is a strange thing, and often drops in unannounced.  As the train slowed to a crawl entering Elphinstone Station, I stood up, getting ready to step out. And suddenly, out of nowhere, my right leg picked up a mannerism of its own: it went limp. Try as I might, cuss and threaten and cajole as I did, it refused to stand straight, to resume business as normal. Fuck, now my face is doing it too! For no discernible reason, my cheeks drooped in self-pity, my vocal chords emanated sighs and my right hand made a curious byline for some imagined point-of-most-pain on my leg, and stroked it sympathetically. My body put on the performance of a lifetime in a viciously satirical parody of my parasitic self, as I made the shameful trip from my seat to the door.

It happened again, and again. On a particularly busy night once; because I was exhausted and wanted a seat for certain on another inebriated night. It happened out of curiosity, out of laziness, out of a juvenile tendency to play truant, out of sheer boredom. It became a Habit. My adopted disabilities changed with my mood. I would be deaf one day, dying the next. "It's alright," I consoled myself, as my fingers felt around for words in mock-Braille on the pages of The Hotel New Hampshire   on my way to work one day, "it's not like I'm robbing them of anything, I never sit if one of them is left without a seat."

Excuses, all. Classic denial mode, as any ex-junkie will tell you. As ever, it would take an intervention to set me straight. It came in the shape of a lushly bearded Mullah, a couple of weeks ago. I was just moving in on a seat that had been recently vacated, on the handicapped section of a public bus this time (coz I like to mix things up every now and then, YOLO and what not), when suddenly, Mullah-man shoved me in the chest and fell onto my seat while I was left clutching at strangers to remain upright. I was incensed. I confronted him. "What the fuck dude," I said, "you can't just push people to get a seat."

Mullah-man went ballistic with all the indignation of the wrongfully-condemned. He let loose a volley of abuses, or gaalis as they call them in Hindi, while the whole bus looked on. I may not have caught the intricacies of which of my relatives he wanted me to fornicate with first and in which position, but I did get the gist: I couldn't speak Hindi, and that somehow made me an incestuous snob as opposed to the victim of casual physical assault on a moving bus.

I'd be lying if I said that's what turned the tide. My discomfort must have been obvious. A couple of passengers stepped in, having borne witness to Mullah-man's antics. They were true-blue Mumbaikars, standing up for the disenfranchised, discriminated-against foreigner, sticking it to the man. A few more joined in. There were calls for Mullah-man to apologize, to return to me what was rightfully mine by the order of public transport etiquette. Somebody grabbed his collar; he swatted away somebody's arm. I stood frozen, awed and frightened in equal measure by the riot I had seemingly instigated. And then somebody uttered the dreaded word. "Terrorist," he muttered, "saale terrorist."  

I got out at the next stop, shook up but strangely calm. This too, I thought, this too is Bombay, all-consuming, all-accepting Bombay. Mullah-man may have had a bad leg, or a weak kidney for all I know. But his handicap was far more real: the thick beard that screamed "Muslim", the taqiyah he donned with pride, the mark on his forehead from a thousand sujuds. He should not have pushed me. But irrespective of his indiscretion, I had set in motion a chain of events that resulted in what can only have been traumatic for him, a reminder of the stigma that I frankly wasn't aware was so widespread.

If it weren't for angsty Mullah-man, I'd probably still be cruising the town in 'special' seats, suckling contentedly at the mammaries of the welfare state. I still get the itch, sometimes. But I've learned to deal with it: to pay a little extra and get the AC bus, or wake up a little early and take a slow train. I leave you with A.R. Rahman's "Chaiyya, Chaiyya", easily the classiest item number I've seen in a Bollywood movie, and set atop (what else?) a moving train snaking its way through the Nilgiri mountains. Welcome to Bombay.  

                          Icy Highs's Music Recco: "Chaiyya Chaiyya", Dil Se (1998)

     

 
              

Dirty Picture

I wake up and swear. The clock on my wall tells me it's 11am. I'm in breach of the Third Rule of Living With Parents: No breakfast after 9am. I decide I may as well go downstairs and check if it's worth brushing my teeth.

Dad's in his chair, reading the paper. Strangely, the TV is on. The Fifth Rule of Living With Parents is No TV till three. "Dad", I whisper, "do we have any coffee?" From behind the paper, he says: "no, but there's wine."

I realize I'm still asleep, dreaming. I play along. "Where's Mom?" The paper is lowered. Dad looks flushed. "She's taken Grammy to your sister's," he grins. His joy is palpable, the sense of liberation almost physical. It's real. I look again, and sure enough, there's a half empty bottle of Red by his chair.

I pull up a chair and help myself to a swig. He reaches for the bottle and misses. And laughs. "Dad," I say, "are you drunk?" Dad is a notorious lightweight. He once set fire to his hair after two slices of rum cake. "Have you got anything stronger?" he says.

A few G-and-Ts later, Dad is suddenly morose. We're on the veranda, watching the gardener chat up the neighbor's maid. Nobody works when Mom's not about. Not even the neighbors. "I'm sorry, son," he says, "I screwed up." I look at him. "You shouldn't blame yourself," he says, "you screwed up because I was never there."

I'm unsure how to react. My Dad has just declared I'm a failure, and taken the blame for it. I may never have to work again! Still, I think, it's also kind of insulting. I should be mad. "It's alright," I say, "I'm fine really." "No, you're not," he says sadly. I decide Daddy knows best. "I want to make it up to you," he says, "what can I do?"

"Can you get us some ice?" I ask. "No," he says, "but I can tell you about life. See son, when a man loves a woman." He's giggling. My Dad wants to tell me about the birds and the bees, but he can't because he's having a laughing fit. "Oh, you're never going to believe this," he gives up. He looks me over, then: "probably no use anyway."

We're out of booze. Dad has brought out his records, and is belting out the lyrics to Sweet Caroline. I'm hungry. "DAD," I yell, "DO YOU WANT ANYTHING TO EAT?" He kills the song, and says, "WHAT?" Then he says, "do you want to watch a dirty picture?"

                     "Dirty Picture" (2010): official trailer

Turns out he meant the Dirty Picture, the Silk Smitha biopic that sent Indian testosterone levels sky-high in 2010/'11. Silk Smitha was the first bondafide South Indian cine-vamp. Sadly, she committed suicide in 1996 but not before accruing considerable interest in the collective wankbank of an entire generation. Reportedly, Vidya Balan, the actress who played Silk in the movie, was all kinds of sexy.

The matinee is predictably filled with male drunks and perverts. It's exactly what you'd expect in a town where the majority of women are forced to cover their heads and their faces in public. Our father-son jaunt to a porno is in keeping with the dysfunction of the place. There's a rickshaw driver getting head from a hooker two rows in front of us. His friend appears to be cheering her on. This is where terminally ill self-respect crawls in to die.

Dad wades cautiously into the fog of their frustrations, then joins in with all the enthusiasm of a voyeur-turned-participant at his first bar-fight. He hoots, jeers, attempts a wolf-whistle, and looks to me for approval. He's trying out my skin, imagining what I must have been like as a younger man. He's heard the stories, he's read the pamphlets; this is how addicts and reprobates behave.

I've been clean six years. I don't remember a lot of what happened in the years that immediately preceded that period, but I'm pretty sure they didn't involve soft porn at the cinema. Smackheads on student budgets can't afford the cinema. "Dad," I say, "Dad, the guy next to me is ... errr... cashing his cheque."

Later, back on the veranda, I watch the stars in silence. The night sky and the light breeze would lend themselves to serious contemplation if they weren't soundtracked by my Dad snoring in his easychair next to me. I desist from waking him, and swat gently at a mosquito hovering over his arm. He's had a long day.

                 "Sweet Caroline" - Neil Diamond (1969)



          
  

Run Shahrukh, Run!

An excerpt from my novel, COUGH SYRUP SURREALISM (2013), Fingerprint! Publishing 

We could be soulmates. Meaning, we weren’t, yet. Meaning, there was a chance that we were soul mates, but she really wasn’t sure. This was disturbing news. And things have been going so well lately. Sure we’d had the proverbial ups and downs, but the last couple of weeks had been especially kind, with lots of private time, and intimate conversations that lasted late into the night and all the way till early morning, and eating stuff off each other’s bodies. “We could?” I asked. I waited impatiently for her to turn around and rephrase. On screen, Preity Zinta continued a monologue on the intricacies of the indigenous Bollywood love triangle. “Of course we could,” she said, and squeezed my arm, her eyes still on the screen. Wherefore art thou Optimistic Charlie?

The moment he was diagnosed with some kind of heart disease, I knew Shahrukh Khan would die a painfully slow, cliché-ridden, glisterine-powered, brave-smile-and-funny-comment-in-response-to-mommy’s-tears death, and hand over the love of his life to his best friend. But the damn movie still kept you on tenterhooks: will she still love him? will he really die? kal ho na hoo? I remembered reading a review in Outlook magazine that noted that Shahrukh Khan shone throughout the movie with stellar brightness, and that much was admittedly true. There may have been a lot of things wrong with his films, but there were two things Shahrukh Khan did admirably well – (1) appeal to the woman in you, and (2) run.

Watching his films was like doing one of those get-in-touch-with-your-feminine-side exercises in Cosmo; SRK was King and Queen of Indian kitsch. He could pull off the most feminine things with almost-boyish charm, and you almost didn’t notice, and when you did, it didn’t matter, not so much.  Which other Indian man was going to shoot an ad sitting in a bathtub surrounded by rose petals and bubbles? As for the running, I’d never seen anybody run better; he had this patented, slow-mo run – shoulders slanted, a briefcase or a bag in one hand, hair flying in the wind (there was always a wind), open overcoat, eyebrows doing their thing, all in all sexy, very sexy. I had watched him do the run in at least five films over the last few days- multiple times, mind – but this was his best one yet. I had to physically restrain myself from jumping up and cheering as he took off with his ticker on its last legs -heart ailing, body flailing- across heavy traffic and through crowds of indifferent New Yorkers  to see his love one last time. Not plausible necessarily, but certainly vital, vital because it was an SRK movie, and run was what SRK did best, run was what we were all there to see. So with the jhankar beats in crescendo, and the under-dog gut-wrenchingly close to victory - run Shahrukh, RUN! - straightened hair and manicured hands and plucked eyebrows all over the screen, I choked back a tear. All these drugs are FUCKING me up!

It wasn’t just the movie, I knew. Or the coke. I wanted what they had in the movie – I wanted a lover chasing after me, death chasing after her. Whether we admit it or not, it’s what we all want – we want a Shahrukh Khan romance where the girl’s dad and his cronies beat you up mercilessly for loving her, but she loves you anyway, despite your ineptness at being a manly man and standing up to them. Shahrukh Khan is not just a matinee idol; he’s an urban, metrosexual aspiration. This is NOT constructive. This is not cool! I had to pull myself together. I tried to put in practice a piece of Buddhist philosophy I picked up from a Chuck Norris movie many years ago. Become the master of your self. Focus on the part of your body that hurts, accept it and find solace in the good health of the rest. A question of mind over matter. Easy-peasy. We lit up a couple of cigarettes and headed home on foot.