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)



          
  

Rent Boy

(This post made Éditor's Pick' on Open Salon on 21 March, 2012. Don't believe me? See for yourself!)

"I'll just hang my PhD next to Black Sabbath." 

Seems I'm not the only late-20-something moving back in with parents. Most of them have reasons more logical than mine - redundancy, or a bad divorce, or cancer- but it's happening. It's a thing. More 28-year olds than ever are moving back home. As always, I'm at the cusp of something borrowed, something new. So contemporary and with it, me.

In other news, my parents still don't know I've moved back in. I suspect they suspect that something's afoot -I should never have bought that bedside lamp- but I think they think I'm just gathering up enough courage to make some sort of life-changing Announcement, and then leave.

I first got this impression when I overheard Dad's side of a phone conversation with Uncle Psy. They almost always compare notes on their offspring, because you know how women in prison supposedly synchronize their menstrual cycles? Well, Uncle Psy's boy and I almost always get in trouble at the same time. It's a thing.

We always outdo each other too. He gets caught with porn, I get caught with pot. He flunks a year, I crash a car. He joins a Satanic church, I quit my job and move back in with my parents at the grand old age of 28. So Uncle Psy is now justifiably worried if my showing up at home after seven long years spells some sort of repercussion at his end.

Uncle Psy isn't thrilled about the Church of St. Ronnie Dio.

"He just sits around," says Dad into the phone.
"Yesterday, I was reading the paper and he came down and sat across from me for two hours. No, didn't say anything."
"I'm telling you, he just sits. When I look at him, he smiles this dopey smile. Even makes conversation."
"Oh, who knows? Probably wants some money or something. Yeah, call the terrible twin, he'll know."

Then, there was this little vignette from Mom, on the phone to my sister: "I don't know, honey. Honest. We don't think it's drugs or anything, he's way too lucid to be on anything serious. Your father thinks it might be a ... you know ... sexual ... thing." (That's when my jaw dropped and shattered on the floor. Luckily, that doesn't make as much noise as you'd think.)

I didn't stay to hear the rest of that conversation. It was clear what I had to: man up, and allay my parent's fears. I would have to lie. I've decided to make a Big Announcement, it's just the kind of thing my family would do. We actually have a code of conduct too: if any of us is suspected of carrying an announcement-baby, everybody shuts the hell up and makes nice and gives him/her all the time and convenience in the world.    

They once waited seven days for me to announce that I had indeed failed to wean my goldfish off water. Poor Goldie's earthly remains waited three days in my drawer for a respectful burial, before they were carted away by a team of rowdy red ants. Watching their unholy procession over my chair and across the floor to their lair under my bed, I cried my hear out. But I couldn't tell my family yet, I wasn't ready. And they respect that where I come from.

My mom nearly cracked on the fifth day. She handed me Goldie's daily ration of fish food pellets, and seeing something broken in my face, lunged forward to fix me. She was about to burst, tell me it was over, that they knew, that I could mourn in peace. But Dad salvaged status quo, rushing to her rescue. "Here, let me get that for you buddy," he said and calmly took Mom in his hands. My sister started a slow clap, quickly joined in by Grammy. It was family drama gold.

All of which leads me to conclude I better be gay or terminally ill. After supporting me through addiction and depression and -most traumatically- an emo phase, no other announcement will be quite Big enough. I'm tempted to go with the man-love because Dad will probably want to see medical reports if I claim illness. But Uncle Psy's boy points out the danger of Dad calling my bluff - he may want proof that I'm gay.

Knowing my family, I may well end up playing out the charade of bringing home my 'boyfriend', pretending to be madly in love, never taking my eyes off Dad, both of us waiting for the other to blink. I'll have to cuddle with a man on my childhood couch, or fly a spoon-aeroplane loaded with Mom's apple custard pie into his mouth just to fool my Dad into thinking I'm gay. *Shudder*

Dad will no doubt raise the stakes, ask to meet the poor man's parents. And so on and so forth till I impale  myself on a strange man's cock on the living room floor, to the careful scrutiny of my Dad and rapturous applause from Grammy, all just to weasel free lodging and food out of my parents. I can just imagine my Dad consulting some sort of manual to make sure we're doing it right, and Grammy retrieving her dentures to congratulate us on a job well done.

The other option would be to saw off a toe, and announce I've caught a bout of leprosy.
Hmm.

Dear Twinky, I kind of have an Announcement to make....  

 

It didn't help that Twinky was also stinky. 

Neon Lights - Black Sabbath (The Ronnie James Dio years)

Bringing up parents

Some of you may know I sort of moved back to India from Singapore recently. 'Sort of' because it's very much an experimental situation - I really hate Singapore and I want to go back to Uni to study english literature or shadow puppetry or invisible dog walking, something that cannot possibly spawn gainful employment (because work is Death)- so I packed all my stuff and hopped a flight to the ol' parental residence. But they don't know I've moved because they're kind of on probation - I'm in the process of determining if I can cope with living with them again, after eleven grand years, at the ripe old age of almost-28. I need to find out if their views have changed on midnight curfews, on coming home drunk, on coming home at all. If not, hey I haven't even unpacked - I'll hop a flight right back to stupid Singapore.

Over the last few days, I couldn't help feeling a little like a private detective or a spy or an investigative reporter at the least. I've been walking around taking notes: "hmm..Dad still doesn't tip, and his dinner conversation skills may actually bore me into finding a job" or "ooh, Mom just dumps any clothes I leave lying around in the washing machine - with other peoples' stuff. Not cool." Sometimes, I ask them hypothetical-sounding questions to guage their responses: "so Dad, if I suddenly quit my job and decided to go to uni and moved in with you guys and needed a monthly allowance, that'd be pretty fun huh?" Dad looks up from his paper and says: "No." Mom just nods.

Sometimes I lull them into a false sense of security:"Dad, this may be the last time we sleep under one roof."
Dad: "Hope springs eternal, son."
Sometimes I just lie: "Dad, you know how you're kind of my hero? I mean I'd like to think I remind people of you." 
Dad: "That's right, give your father a heart attack before you go back. Please go back. And don't tell the paramedics we're related."

So far, it's not looking good. I'll probably have to go back to work, bloody hell. So I made a pros and cons (if I stay).

Pros
No bills, no rent, no work, no wearing a suit, fun times at uni (probably), no pressure to get married, have babies, be normal etc because "he's still studying".

Cons
Dad will list every single vitamin and the diseases those vitamins cure every time I eat a fruit.
Mom will keep washing my shirts with my little niece's poo-and-piss-covered underthings.
Dad will keep stealing up behind me while I use the comp (go away pop, yes I know you're there right now.)
Mom will end sentences with variants of "if our son ever settles down". Like today: "I'm just saying the chicken's a little undercooked. The new maid's not settled in yet. Bit like our only son, who'll never settle down."
Dad will also list all the things that can go wrong every time I eat a fruit: "I hear they inject pig ejaculate into oranges to give them their sheen". (seriously Dad, I can hear you giggling behind me, just go away.)

I'm still undecided. They'll probably hold my old job for me for another week, max. God, if you're listening, send me a Sign. In varsity colours. Something obvious. Like a recently divorced, picking-up-the-pieces-by-joining-uni woman who needs a live-in rebound. Please.  

Good vibrations

It's been a long time coming, but I've finally decided to go back to University. I've always wanted to pursue writing in some seriousness and I figure if I can't find an agent, then the next best thing is undoubtedly to become an academic. Those who can't do, teach. Right?

So MA English Literature, here I come. Cue: beer bongs, road trips and poverty, all set to the delicious stylings of Classic Rock FM (which is probably not what the kids are listening to these days). Over the next few weeks, I will therefore embark on an arduous journey to find out what's in, what's not, and how to effectively fake it. Any advice on this front would be greatly appreciated.

I will no doubt be the oldest bloke in class but hey it just means I'm fair game for both the students and teachers. That can't be a bad thing. I hope they don't still haze freshers. I may have to go back to rolling my cigarettes. Maybe I'll grow my hair back long. Maybe I'll dust off my Converses.

I may even be able to get over my crippling fear of public toilets. Volunteer, get involved in stuff, write for free publications, entrap myself in a meaningful relationship, do new things, attend lectures, try and remember what happens in Uni this time. I have a good feeling about this. Never too old to learn, as my granddad used to say.          

            Good vibrations - The Beach Boys 

White People Problems

The sibling and I have an off-on relationship. Sometimes we don't talk for months at a stretch. Despite which, we are completely in sync whenever we get back in touch, like it was only yesterday that we were chasing each other around our family home.

There is an unwritten understanding between us that the caller is the one who needs to vent, that the role of the receiver of the call is simply to listen and occasionally offer vaguely comforting truisms. Neither of us are  particularly averse to suffering, so it would be counter-productive to actually try to help.

Bearing this in mind, I call her and launch straight into a vicious diatribe on the pointlessness of existence, the failure of the education system,  the price of alcohol and cigarettes, the loneliness and the despair, the lack of ambition, the depression, the ghosts of childhood.

She listens with the practiced silence of one who knows the narrative all too well. Throughout my rant, I have flashes of her clipping her nails, flipping channels on the television, making faces at her eldest, steering her ridiculous Volkswagon, her phone balanced precariously between ear and shoulder at all times.

Suddenly, I'm flummoxed. The Listener has just pulled a meta, and spoken! We have not reached her scene just yet. Her's shouldn't even be a speaking part. Any leeway on this front is an act of charity, of generosity of the Sufferer. "What?" I splutter.      

"I'm just saying," she says, "seems to me you're an Indian man with white people problems. And you're living in China for fuck's sake. That can't be good. Come home, bro."

How the West was won and where it got us

"Honey, I SWEAR Fannie May is not another woman!"

Dear Leaders of the First World,

I spent the majority of the week just past reading blogs. Strangers' blogs, random blogs, blogs of pretty women. All in a  Sisyphusian effort to find a few like-minded individuals, people who write about stuff I'm interested in, who share the same disdain for lite beer and gainful employment.

Here's what I found: most bloggers are newly-mommied-up women who think no end of their toddlers. They put up myriad pictures of their infants in space suits and document their bowel movements online for no discernible reason other than abject apathy to the problem of overpopulation, and possibly, severely ignored  childhoods. 

The other sizable demographic comprises Jesus-freaks and conservatives. From my limited understanding, they limit all real life socializing to handing out Christian pamphlets at tea parties, and presumably, phoning in to Rush Limbaugh's talk show. All of which is perfectly reasonable behavior for two equally hormonally-oppressed groups of people. 

What gets my goat are the 'artists'. The writers, the poets, the painters, the designers, the photographers, the dancers. Not all of them, obviously. Just the younger ones who are following the dream, doing what they've always wanted to do with perfect calm and clarity of thought. 

A lot of them are university-educated, reasonable, articulate, entertaining, employable white people in their mid-20s, working in retail or in the hospitality industry while astutely typing away at their Macbooks, waiting for their big break. This pisses me off. Because they've only just gone and gentrified the third world. 

I'm Indian. My country is all of  64 years old. I should be the one toiling away at a thankless, demeaning Mcjob in a floundering economy. Instead, I'm stuck in an air-conditioned office all day here in Singapore, organizing international conferences for business leaders and management gurus from all over the world, picking and choosing speakers and subject experts for events I conceive, deliver and make a 400% return on. And all I want is to be a struggling, unpublished writer. 

Do you know how hard it is to struggle with a view of the magnificent Singapore Flyer from my bedroom window? Do you realize how difficult it is to feel hard-done-by and unappreciated when bank managers queue up to offer you platinum credit cards like bananas to some ridiculous monkey deity? Do you comprehend the tragedy of having to leave one's motherland just to be able to under-achieve? 

Thirty years ago, it would have been perfectly reasonable for young middle-class Indian men to live off the rent collected on their parents' multiple real estate investments. Of course, they didn't call it an 'investment' then; they were simply plots of inherited, ancestral  land. And rent at the time was nowhere near the mind-numbing 5-digit figure it is now - I could have leeched off my parents but only enough to survive. I may even have had to do some subsistence agriculture on the side.  

But in 1991, in the summer of my childhood, the whole world decided to throw us their lifelines, to anchor their economies on our shores. Result: by the time I grow up, there are jobs aplenty, salaries on offer that can feed small countries in Africa. And these alien jobs, these extra-terrestrial salaries, are all housed in the motherships of multinational corporations that are more than willing to spread a little monetary joy in the lives of the owners of the properties they operate from. So like any nouveau riche couple, it will simply not do for my parents for their offspring to be anything less than uber-successful.      

I had to flee to Britain in shame to pursue my higher education in development economics. How else would my parents explain such a terribly romantic field of study to their contemporaries? Whereas in Glasgow, I could soak my soul in whiskey and embrace writerly existential angst and temp my life away without the scrutiny of my self-appointed mentors back home. Alas, those still-colonial Brits only extend your visa if you're a doctor or an engineer, the 'technical' jobs the natives refuse to accept because they're too busy finding themselves on a beach in India! Here in Singapore, I do my best to not impress but they simply refuse to fire a man with a British degree. Unless a suitably qualified Brit comes along to take the job, of course. 

My request, Messrs Obama and Cameron, and Frau Merkel, is simple. Give me back my economic uncertainty, my lack of career prospects, my birthright to toil and suffer. I man the 7/11s, I drive your big yellow taxicabs, while you lot run banks, manufacture weapons and generally rule the world. That was our understanding, remember, before all this outsourcing nonsense? In the slightly modified words of some of your own salt-of-the-earth countrymen, stop coming to my country and giving us your jobs.  

Sincerely,

Renaissance Hippie           

P.S. Image courtesy here  

                              Losing my religion - REM

     

    

Nowhere, now.

I'm 26. That's a nowhere-age. Sure, there are folk my age who have it all figured out, but that seems incongruous somehow. Professionally, I'm diligently chasing my parents' dream-job, preparing for the Civil Services exam in June. Physically, I'm back in Kerala, back home in Trivandrum. Emotionally, I'm alone, and probably better off than I'd be in company.

Today morning, Mom called and said she's finally managed to catch hold of an agent for me. I've waited 6 months for that. I've waited 4 years (and counting) to be published with a novel that has aged cancerously. What now, cosmic prankster? 

I'm working on a new novel that I quite like, something that doesn't echo with the ebullient enthusiasm of my early twenties. The first three chapters wrote themselves; my writer's senses were on over-drive. That was 8 months ago. But things changed with the unlikely arrival of the Other Woman - ambition. Ever since the possibility of publishing my abandoned first novel reared it's shiny head,ever since I moved back to Kerala to study and get my career back on track, the well has dried up. I have ceased to excite her, to conjure up in her wanting or even interest.

Is this how it's meant to be? Are creativity and pragmatism mutually exclusive? Don't doctors write novels, engineers make films? Am I so dependent on aimlessness for inspiration? Now that my days are full, and my mind in constant use, I have no drunken conversations at the pub to elaborate on, no late night bumpings-into to romanticize about.  Does that make me a leech? Are writers merely parasites with a better turn-of-phrase than the average prostitute?

Yesterday was Valentine's Day. I don't feel the need to be anti-establishment anymore, I caved in. It's the intellectual equivalent of a rectal collapse, watching Hugh Grant marathons on HBO and wanting desperately to be with someone. You're ashamed, everybody around you is embarrassed and the stench of shit is everywhere. It permeates your being as you drunk-dial your ex, it seeps into your skin as you wonder where it all went so horribly wrong.

Still, there's always the morning-after. And being a nowhere-age. And the statutory cigarette-packet promise of an early exit. Maybe, I'll get back to that novel after all.

             In spite of all the danger - The Quarrymen (Nowhere Boy OST)