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I look around, and pause again to take them all in, as I have done numerous times on this trip. We're all here, the original gang of four, chilling like it's 1999, like numerous summer vacations spent lounging under rubber trees in our paternal home playing made-up games and swapping made-up stories of bravado and discovery. We don't have to fib about body hair or school yard heroics any more; the pube-counter has been abandoned years ago, and we're not as fascinated by Bruce Lee movies or Steven Segal fight sequences as we used to be. Of course, not having to fib and doing it anyway are two different things- the playground may have changed but the games remain the same.

We're alike in ways only brothers can be: the dip of our shoulders, the chicken legs, the predilection for deep-fried-anything, mouths arched in permanent readiness for a good laugh. We like to have a good time, and we're good people who like to believe we're good people. My brothers have all brought women with them- life partners in various stages of permanence. They point out more distinguishing features of the group: the eagerness to be liked, the lack of get-up-and-go, the mishmash of good intentions and inertia. But they say this with affection, with almost-motherly indulgence, and we are perhaps more pleased than we should be.
     
Back in the long-ago, when we were still children, we used to have this tradition of prolonging every game of Donkey till the last possible second. Come end of summer, we'd all go our different ways from our grandparents' home, driven away to the closest railway station or airport by some accommodating relative or the other. This meant picking up the deck of cards from our usual spot on the veranda and carrying the hand in play all the way up to the top of the slope where the ancestral Ambassador car lay in wait, honking impatiently, glinting ominously in the sun. The end has come early, abruptly, this holiday. We're still splashing about in the little creek we found; still waiting for another joint to be rolled. We're still upholding tradition, still playing till we absolutely have to leave, till the taxi turns up, because it's the only way we know to deal with parting. But we're trying out a new game. It's called "Waiting For Grandma To Die".

Thank God she fell ill-er last night, when we had already moved to Agonda Beach blessed with signals our phones can intercept and a secure 3G line over which tickets can be booked at the last minute. Thank God she didn't steal away in the middle of the night when we were still on wind-swept, grid-less Cola Beach, chosen painstakingly to liberate us from emails and Whatsapp and con-calls, if only for a couple of nights. Because when you reach a certain age, when the pube-counter makes way for the grey-counter or the baldness quotient, it's all you can do to assuage the guilt of not-being-reachable. The grandparents who were always in touch somehow throughout our childhood with promises of kappa-irachi and Alphonsa mangoes the next time we visit would never forgive us if we didn't show up to say goodbye because we had no network.
       

When a little longing goes a long way

Pulling into Kakori: seriously, who names a town after a kebab?

"No, of course I'm not bored," I assured her, "just thought you may want to try something new. You're what, 25? Live a little!" 

''Oh I know it's not like there's nothing left to try," she said, "I even have a list. It's not that. I'm just not that interested in theatre or... shopping or... I don't know.. freebasing." 

''Freebasing's overrated anyway,'' I told her. 

''So you agree?'' she asked. 

I looked at her. 

''I guess so,'' I said, ''summer's almost over. You should leave. That was the plan.'' 

''That was my plan,'' she said, ''you have a better idea?''

I scoured her face for sarcasm. She looked as sincere as she sounded.

"Look," I said, "I'm getting the feeling I'm a little out of my depth here. When I asked you if you'd like to try something new, I just meant try the kakori kebabs. They have a new chef here and the kebabs are  on an introductory half price deal." 

Icy Highs's Music Recco: A little longing goes away - The Books, Lost And Safe (2005)   

The Uncle Trap

Today's been a day of discoveries of EPIC proportions. Firstly, I found out that my niblings think I'm a human-sized rodent in a human suit. Secondly, a little less than five minutes ago, I discovered that there's a collective, gender-neutral term for 'the children of one's siblings': yup, it's NIBLINGS! Told you, epic stuff. Here's how it all went down.

As some of you may know, my nephew and niece are spending the summer at my parents' house. I beached up on their doorstep a little before my niblings did, entitled brat that I am, to pursue my lifelong ambition of gainful unemployment and partaking-of-free-meals. And the little business of writing. So far, so good.

Now much as I love my niblings, I don't particularly care for children. This leaves me in a love-hate existential conundrum whenever I spend more than five minutes with them. The initial burst of affection for my flesh and blood (in a manner of speaking) quickly gives way to the more familiar loathing of our pint-sized brethren, and their disdain for Adult words.

To be fair, their presence does not in any way affect my lifestyle as I spend my days locked up in my room any way, my fingers a whirl of type-and-delete. I only ever step out and interact with the rest of the world at mealtimes, and that too only to load my plate and haul it back to the mothership.

Of course, every so often I hear them chattering outside my door and go out and play the benevolent uncle: a game of hide and seek, or maybe a drive to the pastry shop in town. But these occasions are utilitarian -they have a defined purpose- and therefore exert no conversational stress on any of the parties involved.

Little did I know that my niblings were quite taken by these spontaneous visits of mine to their world, and had asked Mom how best to coax me out more often. Neither did I know that they had taken her throwaway remark rather seriously, and decided to act on it.

So I open my door this afternoon, and find a big bowl of melted ice cream, a cherry and a chocolate wafer floating in the mess, and two pairs of eyes watching my every move from behind the couch. I walk past them, casual as a cucumber, push one end of the couch into the wall with a Bournesque flourish, and demand an explanation.

They crack like eggs. They sell the other down the river in their desperation for lenience but they're both guilty as sin, the jittery juveniles. They even try to take Mom down with them. As it turns out, she had told them- in jest no doubt- that their uncle would only ever be tempted out of his room by the promise of a good meal.

This little nugget of wisdom, coupled with their experience of setting mousetraps in the storeroom with my Dad last week, had somehow snowballed into the masterplan to leave a bowl of ice cream under my door to lure me out, like a common rodent. Presumably, they intended to pop a bucket over my head once I was suitably distracted.  

                                          Icy Highs's Video Recco

                                    'The Mouse Trap' scene from Tom and Jerry








      

The Wonder Years

The summer of ’94, cruel though it was, was a magical one. Our mango tree, which hadn’t borne fruit in five years, was re-acquainted with the thirst for life, for immortality. Our courtyard was thick with the sticky-sweet scent of her yearning, her branches bustling once again with activity, red ants and bees and crows visiting once more to convey their regards and partake of the festivities. Unbeknownst to her, a few feet away, summer had stirred similar desires in Rita’s young guava tree who now peeked nosily over their wall and into our make-shift cricket pitch, winking knowingly at the sudden spring in our steps.

For it wasn’t just the trees and the ants, and the birds and the bees, that summer had chosen to enchant with its ways. Ramesh and I, in our own ways, were unwitting participants in the game of life. It was neither spoken of, nor quietly acknowledged, mainly because we weren’t entirely certain what ‘it’ was. But it was felt when Ramesh theatrically ran his hand through his hair after bowling a particularly good delivery, or when I raised my bat skywards after hitting a boundary. We were at that age when we could still openly take delight in imitation of our heroes (not just their motives, but their gestures, their mannerisms), and we were all the protagonists of our own mind-movies. Rita too, probably. We weren’t societally obliged to feign cool indifference or intellectually programmed to spew cynicism just yet. Those years were on their way. In the summer of ’94, we were content to be led, and to follow. We knew our heroes, and we knew what beverages they preferred, what cars they drove and what hair conditioner they used, and we wanted what we knew because what we knew was happiness.

We didn’t know why we fought over whose team Rita would play on, though she almost always cost her team the game. We didn’t know why we let her bowl and bat more than any of us ever did though she was patently terrible at all aspects of the game. We didn’t know why we were so much more competitive when Rita was around. I didn’t know why I boasted continuously about cricket camp to her though I dreaded the thought of attending it. We did know though that we wanted her around, and what we knew was happiness.

                                                          Icy Highs's Video Recco                                                                        

  The First Kiss scene from Wonder Years 

Extremely loud and indelibly close

It has now been a little less than a month since I upped and left my Old Life, and re-joined the Fam. This is easily the longest I have spent with them since the Summer of Love & Detox, 2005, which was a recuperative stint post-rehab and probably doesn't count. In other words, this is the longest I have spent with my family without compulsion -or a padlock on my door- since I finished school in 2002. That was ten years ago, back when Facebook was still a gritty little chromosome in Satan's ballsack, cheering on Zuckerberg's synchronized swimmers from the stands.

I left home before my nephew and niece were born, and though we've always been in touch, we have never really spent more than a few hours together in the same room. Which is why I jumped at the chance to take responsibility for their conveyance from their home to that of my parents for their summer break. Summer-at- grandparents' is a family tradition, and plays motif to my favorite childhood memories. My cousins are all grown up and too busy now to spend an entire summer in front of TV or playing cricket under rubber trees like we used to, but growing up together -if every summer- helped create a bond that will only be nourished by age.

Many summers ago at Vagamon, Kerala with the gang

With my younger sibling soon expecting her first-born, I want to ensure these kids have something similar to look back on when they're fucked up and miserable in their late twenties. It helps. I diligently planned the twelve hour drive, penciling in educational, recreational, nutritional and excremental pit-stops. I loaded universal favorites on the MP3 player - surely, even Noughties kids would appreciate the possibly-racist but undeniably lovable durability of Sweet Home Alabama?  This was going to be our Memory; this was how they would remember their coolest uncle after his promising writing career was stopped short by alcoholism and too much hour-long nookie. Or got run over by a scooter while crossing the road from his security job at the mall.

Over the Easter weekend, I came to realize that my sister had talked me up over the years into an almost magical figure of superhero-like abilities to entertain kids. My nephew and niece had endured several hours of toilet-training, teeth-pulling, math classes and violin lessons to please their walking fun-fest of an uncle, and were -surprise!- rewarded with bicycles and skateboards and doll houses. Though they were a little disappointed that I arrived and left while they were asleep every time, they were no less thankful- and expectant of more super-fun times.

Now I'm no expert but children are not terribly reasonable creatures. I was therefore prepared to hit a few rough patches on the way, confident that we would prevail with a little compromise and understanding. What I hadn't steeled myself for was the weight of their expectations. You've never really let someone down till you let down an 8-year old. They're not very adult about this either - they don't swear and punch walls like ex- girlfriends or parents. They just accept it, albeit with a little initial reluctance. When they finally come to grips with the fact that Uncle Cool is in fact quite boring and doesn't really have that many interesting stories to tell, they just go: "oh, well." They shrug it off. They have no time or patience for disappointment.

It drives me mad. I first noticed it around a quarter of the way in. I had just confirmed to my nephew -for the third time- that Uncle Cool could neither fly our Toyota nor grow a crazy beard and populate it with bees like the freak from that program on some channel. Call me petty but this speech was met with such utter disbelief both the previous times that I was almost beginning to believe that I probably could do one of those things if I set my mind to it. I mean how hard can it be to fly a car? I waited for their pleas to try, their chants of "liar, liar!" Nothing. So I look at them in the rearview, and that's when it happens. The elder one-my niece- shrugs. It works like a slow-motion electric current. I watch her indifference move steadily from the tilt of her shoulder to the tip of my nephew's fingers in one steady flow. And suddenly, it's over. They're both staring out the window, content to gaze at cars and people rushing by as I drive them home.

I'm incensed. Not by how easily they give up the ghost of my legend, but how callously they deal with it's passing. They have just found out the truth about a man who got them through measles and exams and a junior karate championship. They have just found out that he may well have had nowt to do with them, that they may have scaled those peaks on their own. Where's the epiphany, the drama? What kind of robotic beings refute the allure of crushing disappointment, and choose instead to be strong and carry on? Cowards!

We drive in silence. My musical sensibilities have long since been decreed intolerable. I decide to never have children, constituted as they are of such fickle moral fibre. The kids know too that something is wrong. The mood is tense. And then, out of the corner of my eye, I see my nephew wipe a tear from his eye. It could have been a speck of dust, or those dastardly Doritos he's been munching on all day, but adults need their legends too and I'm sticking with mine. A tear it was. We gallop over a speedbump that escaped my attention, and he lets out a smelly, resounding fart. It's potent to the point of suffocation, and we lower the windows before we even laugh. The sounds and the sights and the wind and the sun all rush in, and we're all alright with the world again, extremely loud, and incredibly, indelibly close.  

               (My absolute favorite summer song. Here comes the sun, Abbey Road - The Beatles.) 

Small World + Big Data = Not So Great Second Date

So I was thinking (and thinking is never good): if the internet and the mobile phone and budget airlines have all made the world smaller, why is it so much more difficult now to connect?

I remember growing up in Trivandrum,   all those years ago. Those days, it seemed almost normal to make a new friend every other day. Not a friend for life admittedly, not a bro or a wingman or any of those sitcom-flavored forever-relationships. Just people, people who would calmly step into your life with a lightness of feet and clarity of purpose so transparent, you practically welcomed the intrusion. The Trivandrum Public Library was a great place to make new friends; playing cricket in the little lane we shared with the other three houses on our little residential colony was another. Strange kids would step up and ask you when you planned to return The Five Find-Outers mystery you were holding. The conversation would turn to other authors of interest or maybe a new movie, and for the rest of the summer we'd talk and eat ethakka appam in the old canteen and swap books. And every now and again, a new kid would show up with tennis ball and MRF-emblazoned bat and maybe a bottle of Pepsi and ask if he could play the next game; "I live right around the corner," he'd say," in Shanti Nagar, and I saw you guys playing yesterday and I thought I'd join in."  It seemed like the most natural thing -that somebody passing by would want to do that- and of course we'd let him, if a little proprietorially of the house rules. Because every group of children who've ever had to make do with a straight strip of cement instead of a grass-green cricket ground have their own rules - dispatching the ball into the unfriendly neighbor's house was out, you could only bowl under-arm, something or the other. But we made do. And they came knocking. And we went asking. And we played.

Its not much harder to meet people these days. But unlike then, you can't help googling (yes, it is a verb) a new acquaintance every time you make one. Inevitably, you're hit with a storm of information - confessions of bed-wetting on their blog, photographs of bad hair days on Facebook, shameless self-promotion on Linkedin- and you can't help thinking its all a little too much a little too soon. Of course its your fault for looking; but its also human nature isn't it? You don't clap a hand over your ear if you just happen to be sitting next to a loudly bickering couple at a boring conference. Why do people do this then? Why do we put ourselves on display for such intense inspection, why do we voluntarily make ourselves vulnerable to constant public character dissection? I know I'm as guilty as the next person, and the only reason I can think of is that its somehow gratifying to get a response, to be heard. And because a response -any response- is sometimes so much more gratifying than just being heard, we constantly create content that's guaranteed to do just that. Which also means a lot of those "OMG!!" moments never actually happened. Or that picture where you're "soooo drunk!" at "Pat's pad" was really just a picture you took off your own sleepy self after a boring movie marathon at Pat's pad. Or maybe Pat doesn't even exist. I don't know. It's just so frustrating when you meet someone and you meet them a second time loaded with all that detail from the internet, dying to talk all night about their passion for wildlife or a new band or cooking in the nude, only to find that it was all a carefully constructed branding exercise.

Whereas all those years ago, it was okay to find out the new kid with the great bowling arm has a disgusting habit of rubbing snot all over the ball because you've already known him for a good few weeks then. You've exchanged sweaty high-fives and smelled each other's farts and met his sociopath parents before the disturbing snot-revelation, and while its no less disgusting, it is eminently more forgivable. He had time on his side, we had something going already. Finding out on the second date that she really doesn't like the Screaming Trees all that much on the other hand is the deception of an almost-stranger. And that much more grave. It leaves her with no chance really. You already don't trust her, you already think she's a drunk or an exhibitionist or a wonk.

What's the solution then? I don't know. But if you're going to piss yourself every time you have a few mojitos, I'd rather find out after we've known each other a while. Or I could just not find out at all if that's possible; just go to the bathroom or don't get that drunk. Either way, don't let it show up on your Facebook page in the  form of a picture of a wet denim-clad crotch and a hundred thousand comments below it all touting the tune of "Oh no, not AGAIN, tee hee!". Really? We've known each other a total of three days. We've only spent three of those hours in each other's company. What am I supposed to do with that kind of information? What face do I put on tonight if you order a drink? You've only just gone and ruined my Saturday night. You silly little piss-pot.


  *Image courtesy Weheartit

    

London (cold) Calling

It was summer in London. Chances are it was summer elsewhere too, being May and such, but when it's summer in London, you just know. I was peddling gas and electricity, door-to-door. As though the Ozone didnt have it's share of woes already. I knew I was going to make a sale the moment the hippie opened the door. We bonded over herbal tea and his collection of Rolling Stones bootlegs. Somewhere between my introducing myself and his signing the contract, the hippie told me, "happiness is wearing jeans to work, man." I signed up for an account on Monster Jobs that evening. Last week, while getting dressed for the interview, I googled 'windsor knot+how to'. My tie looks just fine, if I may so myself.