Bringing Up Uncle

I’ve always taken my uncling responsibilities seriously. Even before my little nephew was born, this much was clear to me: growing up, I didn’t have an elder male figure I could depend on to bail me out of trouble, or even to show me the ropes to basic adult stuff like shaving in a hurry or sleeping with women without falling in love with them, and this sort of deprival lasts a lifetime.  I would not let my nephew grow up a fuzzy-chinned romantic fool.

My approach to uncling my little niece however, is a little different. Having played easily manipulated filler middle sibling to the estrogen sandwich with extra cheese and evil that was my two sisters all through my blunder years, I was trained early on –despite the lack of formal education- to be terrified of all women under legal drinking age. It doesn’t help that my niece is the spitting image of her mother at the same age. What little niece wants, little niece gets.   

Having said that, I’m quite fond of this gig I have going as the niblings’ only maternal uncle, and the unofficial “fun uncle” by a mile. As my sis never tires of pointing out, mine is a kingdom founded entirely on the great institution of the uncle-in-transit. I’ve never lived in the same city, or even the same state as the niblings till I moved recently to Cochin, so I’ve never had to unplug the X-box just as the nephew was approaching his top score or take a U-turn and head right back into the city after a long day at work because I forgot to pick up glitter pens for the niece’s ‘art’ project. I come bearing gifts, and when I’m visiting no household item can not be converted into a plaything.  

So when my sister announced recently that she and her husband would be out of town for a  night, I jumped at the chance to re-write a little history. When Fun Uncle was on the throne, the niblings would look back and remember, bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. Not only would the fun never set on his empire, but the subjects would also eat their five greens with relish, shower without complaint and scoot off to bed in orderly fashion at quarter to ten. It was only a matter of a few hours before I would be inducted into the pantheon of all time greats- Uncles Bun, Charlie and …err.. Kracker.    

The first evening, a Sunday, passed uneventfully enough. I reached their place around five with a party-planner’s diary worth of things-to-do only to find that the agenda had not just been set, but that it was cast in stone: a trip to Donut Factory, followed by a visit to Crossword bookstore, both conveniently located almost across the road from each other in Panampilly Nagar where they stay. Fair enough, I thought, especially since my own game plan would have taken us on a criss-cross road trip across the heart and whatever soul is left of commerce-heavy Cochin.

The outdoor seating arrangement at Donut Factory did however tear a significant hole in my comfort zone. My nephew, who takes great pleasure in reading out- and consequently inquiring as to the meaning of- just about any road/shop/other sign he can find, pointed a questioning finger at the poster behind us: “A hole looks better on a donut than on your  lungs”. The words were accompanied by a picture of the universal circle around a cigarette with a line running across it. “It means you shouldn’t smoke,” I said, “because smoking pokes holes in your chest.” “But shouldn’t that be your choice?” he asked immediately, with all the privileged disdain for authority of his particular breed of Cochin’s private school populace.  

If they can sell cigarettes, and tax cigarettes, then of course it should be your choice, I wanted to tell him. Screw choice, smoking is just awesome, I wanted to say. But one look at his comically revolutionary face, and a quick flashback of him running circles around me in his Messi jersey as I lunged about gasping for breath during our impromptu football game a few minutes earlier, and I turned into my dad. “You’re seven,” I barked, “you have no choice.”

My niece plays games of a subtler kind. At Crossword bookstore a little later, after explaining to me the literary merits of the many numerous diaries maintained by a kid whodescribes himself as “wimpy” with a sense of irony I suspected was lost on her, she asked me: “So how much can I spend?” I quickly scanned the price tags on the shelf in front of me, and said: “you can both pick up a book each.” “No” she declared, “tell me how much we can spend, that’s what we always do.” As I tried to remember if I even understood the concept of spending power at her age, she added, “our other uncle always lets us spend five hundred each.” I nodded in the affirmative, and prayed to all the Gods I’d heard of that she didn’t grow up to be a politician or a banker.    

Of course the real test came the morning after. My niece woke me up at six to make her a poster for her campaign; she was running for Class Monitor and her pitch was “I will increase lunch hour by one hour”. “More glitter, dude,” she sighed exasperatedly every time she walked past in various stages of undress until the maid finally scooped her up and stationed her under the shower. I think she actually flicked my ear one time, but that may also have been my brain exploding. Only when the early morning wind did a little jig around my face as she waved goodbye from her bus did I fully realize the absurdity of the Goldingesque nightmare I had woken up to.       

My nephew had courteously decided to exit his royal chambers when I returned, at least physically if not in spirit. I walked in on the sight of the maid flying spoon-aeroplanes of sliced idlis into his open mouth as he stood in front of the television, his hand operating the video game console out of sheer muscular memory even as his head drooped to one side, his eyes tighter shut than Kerala’s shops on a hartal. The kid was half-naked and asleep on his feet as a middle-aged woman spoon-fed him breakfast, as the streets of some ghetto or the other rose up in flames on the TV screen to electronic punk rock! The world hadn’t witnessed such decadence since the Romans.

         

His eyes remained shut as I helped the maid plant one of his legs after the other into freshly ironed shorts, tucked in his shirt, converted the signature quiff of his hair into a side parting just to spite him a little and deposited him on the bus next to a cute girl who looked around his age. I made my way back to the flat in a daze. I must have dozed off on the couch because the next thing I knew, the phone was ringing in the vague vicinity of my ear. It was my sister. “You okay?” she asked. “Oh I really hope I can’t have kids,” I told her. “We’ll be back before noon,” she laughed. “You should,” I said, “they grow up so fast.”  

Icy Highs's Music Recco: Four Times and Once After - The Superfuzz/ Indigo Children

This piece was originally published in Helter Skelter magazine on 03-03-14

Man, Interrupted

 Sandra Bullock has confirmed she will not appear in Speed 3. 

It was probably my fault. In a moment of weakness, brought on by a severely late night that I could have avoided and sheer physical inability to face the day before the sun had started its mournful descend down the clock, I found myself boarding a KSRTC Super Fast Passenger bus from Trivandrum to Cochin last Saturday. A journey I usually make in under five hours from behind the air-conditioned comfort of my steering wheel. I can do this, I told myself, I can middle class it one weekend.

 My suspicion that the bus service was named by a clinically optimistic mid-level bureaucrat on a sleepy Friday afternoon many sleepy afternoons ago was confirmed almost as soon as we left the suburbs and hit the highway. "Why won't a Super Fast overtake autorickshaws?" inquired fellow-passengers, "I could have paid 50 bucks less and taken the Fast Passenger instead!" Aah the joys, and fleeting entitlement, we derive from public sector nomenclature.

I was still mulling over excuses to give my Mom on showing up a couple of days late for her sixtieth birthday when we stopped at the Kayamkulam bus station: a fifteen minute snack break, announced the conductor cheerfully. Desperate for a cigarette and having heard horror stories about how strictly the anti-smoking laws are enforced in Kerala, I made my way to the washroom while mapping out a Bourne-style mental lay of the land- here a cop, there a "No Smoking" sign, etc.

The washroom was a study in the famed Mallu eye for a quick buck. Under the cover of a desk that men in urgent need of bladder relief threw mandatory 1-rupee coins on before making their hasty way to the urinal, was a thriving cigarette business! See, the cops needed their nictonie fix too. So rather than let the law be flouted across the bus stand, they had quietly convened all lawlessness to a corner, where men could urinate and suck on phallus-shaped cancer sticks without detracting from the status quo. How empowering, how communal, to bum a light off a policeman to spark up a cigarette in a No-Smoking zone!

But if the washroom already evokes images of an Oscar Wilde-designed utopia, let's bear in mind that every revolution has a Dick That Takes It Too Far. So there I was, my body as far as possible from the urinal to avoid splashage, encouraging the little man to do maximum damage in lieu of the many hours of travel ahead, when I sensed this presence, this intrusion into the most private of men's worlds- the space between urinal walls.

I looked up, and sure enough, there's this middle-aged guy at the adjacent stall, his dhoti hitched up around his waist and neither hand on deck, peeking. I stood rooted to the spot in fear and embarrassment, unable to take my eyes off his face, as he continued to stare right at my cock and appeared to be shaking himself clean a little too vehemently.

It's my fault.
These shorts are a little too tight.
I am showing a little more leg than what may be considered savory.    
Fuck this, I'm the Victim here!

"Seen enough?" I asked, in a voice calculated to imply manly, gym shower-indifference and the casual nature of having one's privates ogled at. That's when the Middle-Aged Masturbator looked up, calmly lifted a hand from underneath his dhoti, and proceeded to gently box my ear. "What'd you say?" he asked.
He hadn't even considered punching me, the patronly pervert, he thought it fitting to punish my bringing down the fourth wall with a clip of my ear!  

Now say what you will of the Straight Man and his propensity to attribute all kinds of terror to the Unknown, but it arises out of a Fear that is both recurring and real: that of Another Man's Penis. It's a nightmare that twitches threateningly in the back of our minds, one that snakes its way without invitation into a multitude of our orifices from nostril to asshole on any given day of the week. Not that I didn't think I could take him in an altercation, but somehow the nature of his perversion filled me with images of him using his Penis as a weapon. I looked around the otherwise-empty washroom and decided I may very well end up in a Borat-style battle of the brosephs if I were to pick a fight. So I lowered my gaze, furious at myself for having backed down, zipped myself up as quickly as I could while the Middle-Aged Masturbator continued to have his merry way with my johnson in his mind.

 I did manage a parting blow though, even if it was in flight. Business unsatisfactorily concluded (on my end, at any rate), I stepped back and kicked the guy right in the middle of his back. I didn't stay to bask in the glory of my legwork though few sounds have pleased my ear more than the sickening splash of all the collected urine in his pot as he helplessly lowered his hand in it to brace himself. Outside, I decided I could risk missing my bus to catch a glimpse of my tormentor's walk of shame. And if any political party promises to arm women (and... ahem.. boyishly good-looking men) using public transport in India with switchblades and guns, they have my vote.          

Icy Highs's Video Recco: The Smoking Area clip from the always brilliant The IT Crowd

     

The Forbidden Gadget

There are few sights more beautiful on a lazy morning than sleeping Girlfriend's visage. Aah who am I kidding, it's my favourite sight of all time: those few minutes of bliss before Girlfriend wakes up and becomes...well, herself, again.A vision so tranquil that I regularly douse her morning coffee with whiskey just to see those curtains come down again, however temporarily. Not that I'm some kind of compulsive coffee-spiking psychopath. Sometimes, I just pepper her pasta with finely powdered Paracetamol. One particularly lovelorn afternoon, I knocked her out with a rolling pin. Those tightly shut eyes, those gently cascading eyelashes, are the promises, the visions, all relationships are built on- the promise of calm and quiet, the hope that those sleep-gooey lips will not always chastise or criticize or order you to stop smoking during meals.

Since we started seeing each other regularly, I have always made sure I wake up a good five minutes before she does just to get a glimpse of those non-judgmental eyes. It wasn't easy in the beginning, what with my predilection for sleeping in, and Girlfriend's demanding job that requires her to don pinstripes and create PDFs or pour through Excel sheets or whatever it is real adults do for a living as early as 9 in the AM. But when you want something strongly enough, you're all sorts of resourceful. The solution to my little conundrum, I discovered, was fairly simple: I'd just have to wait for Girlfriend to fall asleep at night, and reset her alarm to a later time. Must be love.

Imagine my surprise then, when a few days ago, I woke up to find Girlfriend not just awake, but not even in  sight. I shut my eyes, telling myself it was just a dream, that I'd wake up any second now. I was jolted back to reality by the sound of the bathroom door opening, and out peeped Girlfriend's head. It banged shut again almost immediately, Girlfriend's head retreating like that of a startled turtle the moment she caught my eye.

"Girlfriend," I call out, "you ok?"
"Yes," comes her voice, cautious but steady.
"Did you forget to flush again?" I ask.
"I told you that was the cat!" she shouts back.
"I forgot. So what's wrong, baby?"

The door opens again, and out steps suddenly-nonchalant Girlfriend, clad in boxers and tee, her laptop in her hand. "Nothing" she says, defiantly. She places the laptop on the dresser, and busies herself in front of the mirror. "Baby," I say, "were you using your laptop in the loo?"

"What if I was?"
"It's a little...weird, no?"
"There's an entire stack of your magazines by the pot."
"I know, but they're paper. A dump is not traditionally a technology-friendly activity."
"A tech-friendly activity? Why is everything so complicated with you?"
"It's a slippery slope, that's all. Next thing you know, you'll be texting at the cinema, and playing fruit-chucker on your tablet."
"It's called 'Fruit Ninja'."
"Oh my god."
"What?"
"How do you know that? You don't know any sixteen year olds."

Aah, the calm before the storm. The lull before Techocalypse. That guilty-flirty look Eve gave Adam while biting into Apple.

"I got an iPad, ok?"
"What? But we're against mass-produced consumer goods."
"No, you are."
"But they cut off the poor little Chinese kids' fingers after they assemble those things."
"They build computers, not the Taj Mahal."
"But.. when did you get it?"
"Two weeks ago."

Modern life is rubbish. 

"Where is it? How have I not seen it yet?"
"Coz I knew how you'd react. I keep it at work. And in the car, sometimes."
"You've never brought it home?"
"Only..just on that night you were out with Fatboy."
"Is it bigger than me?"
"What?"
"Sorry, I anthropomorphized my fear of being displaced by technology. It's a guy thing."
"No it's not. It's a you thing."
"How would you know?"
"There's an app for it."

Icy Highs's Music Recco: Video Killed The Radio Star by Buggles, The Age of Plastic (1979)

This blogpost is part of a series called The Girlfriend Chronicles - which went on to form the crux of my second novel Mornings After (2016, Bloomsbury India). You can buy it here on Amazon. 

       

Coffee and Cigarettes. And PMS.

I knew this wouldn't end well when you suggested meeting at Gloria Jeans. I mean seriously, when's the last time we met up at a coffeeshop? Is that even normal? I heard the rumours- just like everybody else- but I've tried my best to remain unaffected. You're my bro, my oldest friend, and I'm not going to buy into the nonsense that has been doing the rounds about you. I'm here and waiting, and you're ten minutes late and you won't answer your phone, but I'm counting on you to show up and tell me the coffeeshop thing was a joke and take us to some crazy new bar you've discovered and end the night scoring eckies off some random in the Red Light District or some such. Rock out with our cocks out, etc. Don't let me down, broheim.

You're wearing a pink shirt. You tell me it's not pink, that it's salmon, that the 'l' in salmon is silent because it originates from the French 'saumon'. I just want to have a drink. I want you to shave off that ridiculous hipster beard, and ditch the man-bag, and insist the barista top up our cappuccinos with a sprinkling of Ketamine. I want to go back in time to an age when you would never use the word 'sprinkling'. It'll have to wait. Because you want to wait for your girlfriend, whom you're so excited for me to meet. So she's Frankenstein. I don't like her already.

She's not unattractive. She's actually quite nice. She's interested in my novel, she reels off football stats like a pro, and chases her espresso with a smoke and pokes indulgently at your nicotine patch. I think I like her a little bit, but then I notice you're wearing suede loafers. Did she do this to you? Does she do your shopping now? Would you like me to take her out, Liam Neeson-style? I've got your back, bro. Just say the words.

She's going to the loo. And she's taking your man-bag with her. So it's her bag. I'm sorry I'm such a superficial bastard but I'm so glad it's her's. So glad, that I'm going to ignore the fact that you lug around your girlfriend's bag. Holy fuck, you have a new tattoo. I love that you didn't post pictures of it on Facebook or show it off to me the moment you walked in. That's the cool motherfucker I used to know. I wish your tattoo weren't of a Puerto Riccan Parrot, though. I get that it's an endangered species, but I don't know if a tattoo of it on your neck is going to help them live long and prosper.      

Fuck, my stomach is cramping up again. Fuuuucccccck. Fucking fuckitty motherfucking fuckbiscuit. FUCK. Oh great, now my nipples are sore. I knew I shouldn't have worn my stupid polyester Chelsea jersey. God, it chaffs so bad. Who thought making replica football jerseys for scrawny men with all the upper body strength of an 8-year old was a good idea? Why the fuck did I ever think buying it was a good idea? I'm so susceptible to male wish-fulfillment. I'm every advertiser's dream consumer. God, men can be so stupid sometimes.

She wants to go to Totos for a drink. It's just past one in the afternoon. What a couple of alcoholics. I just want some chocolate. All I want is to sit around at home in my boxers, order that pork thing with the black bean sauce from that Chinese take-out place, and watch that Sandra Bullock movie I've been saving for just this kind of day. But I'm never going to tell anybody that. Unless my stomach starts cramping again. Oh fuck, it's cramping again. I hope a bus runs me over the moment we step out.

"Dude, you look like you're going to pass out. You ok?", you want to know.
"Oh, finally you noticed?" I find myself saying, and realize immediately how mean that sounds.
"What? You don't like her or something?", you whisper, though she's in the loo again.
"I'm sorry man, it's just... that time of the month again," I say. And die a little inside.
"What time?", you say.
"You know, that time. The whole... menstrual thing." Why do men always pretend like they don't know? 
"But you're a dude", you say, as if the universe really is that cut and dry.
"It's my girlfriend, man. She's getting her thing. I'm getting them sympathy-cramps. You know."

You're silent. You're doing that thing men do. Please don't do that thing, we're bros. I stood guard while you took a drunken shit on your ex-girlfriend's car when you found out she was cheating on you. Don't do this to me.

"Did you just say sympathy cramps?"
"Oh for fuck's sake, don't go on like you don't know. Everybody gets them."
"You get cramps when your girlfriend's PMS-ing?"
"Yes. Everybody does."
"No they don't."
"Yes, they do. It's a thing."
"It's not a thing. But do you need meds or something?"
"I don't needs meds, alright? Who even says 'meds'? Why can't you just say 'medicine' like normal people? God, I can't even stand to look at you. Why are you wearing a fucking pink shirt?"
"It's salmon."
"It's not. It's PINK."
"Whatever, man."
"I'm sorry. You make it work. Salmon is good on you."
"Really? Lisa picked it up for me. I wasn't too sure about it."
"It's beautiful. It really brings out your eyes. I love you, man. I'm sorry."
"It's alright, bro. Just don't mention the sympathy-cramps things around her, ok? I don't get those."
"Yeah, sure you don't. Ooh, cupcakes! You want one?"  

Punk Rock Princess

I was ten. She was my sister's best friend, and my first love. She was a newly America-returned, furious-to-be-back-in-India law student, and my sister's classmate. She would come over on weekends, as much for respite from the matronly clutches of Catholic hostel life as for home-cooked meals and companionship. She was the queen of detached-cool, as apathetic to the disciplinarian regime of our household as she was to brassieres and conversational propriety.

She would complain loudly of menstrual cramps at dinner. She would swear at the maid if her clothes were left in the sun to dry, and openly poke fun at our accents. She was mean and terrifying and the antithesis of everything I was brought up to believe girls were like. She introduced me to Nirvana and Soundgarden, and my sister to lip gloss and mascara. She had black stars on her nails, and heartbreak in every footstep. For two days every week that year, I was a sickly lone leaf trembling in the wake of her hurricane.

She knew, of course. She was nice about it. She would do that indulgent flirty thing eighteen year old girls do- tussle my hair, and wink conspiratorially when I came out of the bathroom, and ask me if I had a girlfriend. I wasn't the only one either. My sister started walking like her, and prefixing sentences with "like". My Dad dug up an old pair of bell bottomed Levis he probably last wore in the Seventies, and started wearing them around the house. I had been asking him for years if I could cut them into shorts, and now they looked destined to explode around my Dad one day owing to sheer gut pressure. My mother -sensible, self-contained mother- said she had a refreshing individuality when she set our Parakeet free. We were a family of fools, all hopelessly enamored with a punk rock princess from hell.     

I was the first person she told when she found out she was leaving. For that, I will always be grateful. It was Valentine's Day. I made her a card, with an anatomically accurate drawing of a human heart on the front that I traced from my sister's old textbook. I was certain she would appreciate the humor, that it would unite us forever in loving embrace. I was always one for forevers. I had even prepared a speech for the occasion.

I told her I wanted to tell her something, that she shouldn't go to bed immediately after dinner. She said -to my utter horror- that she needed to tell me something too, to meet her by the water tank after everybody went to bed. The water tank was our place. It was where we went when my sister was at dance classes, or moot court practice. It was on the terrace, on the third floor, and we would sit on it swinging our legs, or lie on our backs, listening to music on her Walkman, one earphone in each of our ears, our faces sometimes so close it was all I could do to stop breathing.

I had never been up there at night before. Judging by the ease with which she navigated the stairs, leading the way, deftly skipping the broken rung, reaching for the banister just before the climb got tricky, it wasn't her first time. She offered her hand, and I refused, determined to be as much of a man as my little lovesick heart would allow me to be.

The sky was everything the movies tell you these moments should be. We clambered on to the water tank and sat in silence, just looking at the stars, the odd foot brushing against the other's in mid-swing. She asked me if I wanted to listen to some music. I declined. We sat a little longer, no words exchanged. I had never felt that calm around her before. She was just a girl. I was going to do this.

And then she did something. A little movement of the hand, a pursing of the lips, that would change my life for ever. She lit up a cigarette. I had never seen a woman smoke before, not even on TV. It was the most beautiful, most sensuous, most ridiculously cool moment of my life. It was the endearing image of my first love, the prototype for the kind of woman I would fall again and again in love with in my adolescence, in my adulthood, possibly the rest of my life.

She offered me a drag. I coughed and she put her hand to my mouth, laughing. The world swum around me, just a little at first, then with great violent thrusts of its limbs that made me seasick. I decided to lie down. She reached for my face, concerned, and did something to my hair that made her seem far away and deep inside me all at once. I struggled back up. "I love you," I said. 

She said she was sorry. She thanked me for the card, she loved it. She said she was leaving, back to Seattle where her friends and family were. She said I needed to lighten up, that rules weren't all meant to be followed. "Don't tell anybody," she said, "but you're the only friend I have here." She was gone when I woke up. Typically, she had left me sleeping on the water tank, knowing fully well the trouble I'd get into.

I walked gingerly down the stairs, my face caked with tears and dust. My father sat in his usual chair, the newspaper held across his face. "We'll talk later," he said as I passed him. I didn't care. No parental admonition was going to rob me of my right to grieve and write terrible poetry and break things. But first, I would get some sleep. On my bed, I found my Dad's Levis, folded clumsily like only he can. I never did make shorts out of them. I had just outgrown my roller skates.       

 "It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn't heard us calling, still do not hear us, up here in the tree house, with our thinning hair and soft bellies, calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time."

 The Virgin Suicides,  Jeffrey Eugenides. 

                 Icy Highs's Music Recco: Rock & Roll Queen by The Subways 

A Vagina Darkly

For a few weeks now, the media has been in a tizzy over a product launched by an Indian company - the Clean and Dry Intimate Wash for women that promises to not only disinfect, but also 'brighten' one's vagina. The feminists and the nationalists and the easily-offended are all up in arms against the willful colonization of the dark-skinned vagina. Why, they ask, would Indians brighten their vagina(e)? What, they want to know, is wrong with brown, black or wheatish vaginae, completely ignoring the forces of demand and supply that likely dictated the company's market research. I'm undecided on the moral repercussions of the free market, but this piece is dedicated to the average Indian male who is now faced with the quandary of how to approach his woman with this wonder-drug without getting his head chewed off. Chances are, they're not all as receptive to  preferences as the lovely lady in the ad, below.  

Long before my first kiss, or my first girlfriend, I had learnt all there was to learn about women from my family. When your father is away for work during most of your boyhood, and you spend all of your time holed up at home with one angry mother, two scheming sisters, and a bevy of supporting roles played by women in various stages of life, ranging from Nubile Maid to Spinster Aunt, you tend to make observations and draw conclusions that will serve you well for the rest of your life.

I was surrounded by just about every female trope ever conceived in cinema (admittedly by male scriptwriters who haven't had a date in years): from manic pixie dream girl (Sis Junior who would only wear, eat from and sleep on polka-dotted material, and preferred roller skates to using her feet) to prom queen (I'll never forget the sight of the school football captain asleep in our guava tree, holding a poster he had made to express his love for Sis Senior) to Jane Austen heroine (sensible, well-read Sheila, loyal friend to Sis Senior and always the second-most beautiful girl in the room, who finally married an actual Prince- albeit of some unheard of tribe in the North East- whom she met in dental school in Shillong) to ball-busting career woman (I'm sorry, Mom.)  

As unique and different as we all like to think we are, the truth is women really are all the same. As are men. No woman recollects how scary and unreasonable she is during her monthly downtime. All men forget drunken episodes of public urination and shameless chasing of tail the next morning (if it even happened, pfft!) Women think mealtime should always be followed by cleaning-of-dishes. Men don't. Only men understand why watching-sport-on-TV is never complete without the commentary on full blast. Women think it's reasonable to hit mute, and natter on about babies, or Twilight. During a quarter-final!

Let's face it, the male-female twain shall never meet. The trick -as I learned early on- is simply to approach the fairer  other sex carefully, and with lowered expectations, from the very beginning, and to treat all women with the utmost respect at all times, like you would a vicious Doberman. I also find it useful to remember two oft-heard sentiments from my childhood. "Do unto others as you wish to be done unto you," said Spinster Aunt every time I requested she change the channel to a program not about God. Or as my mother always said: "come back when you've pushed three bawling brats out your end."

I naturally combined the spirit of their words into a sort of mantra on how to handle women. When you've been seeing each other a while for instance, and your girlfriend starts slacking off in the sexy underwear department (the elastic starts to sag, too many granny-pants days in a week, that furry, electrostatic collection of lint at the crotch), I make a trip to the nearest Agent Provocateur, pick up some edible thongs and a peek-a-boo bra, and simply slap them on yours truly, dim the lights and wait. (This is almost certainly more effective if your girlfriend walks in without her mother in tow.)

Sometimes, when dinner's not been fantastic a couple of nights in a row, I gallantly pick up my favorite sea food pizza on the way back from the pub. She may be allergic to shrimp, but at least now she knows her cooking's not been hitting the spot lately. We've just communicated. It's also good to use your imagination in these situations. Once when the ex was dragging her foot a little on the old body hair upkeep, not only did I do a little manscaping of my own but I also gave Pommy a buzzcut. Nothing says "wax that thing" like a bald Pomeranian.

Coming back to the issue at hand- vagina brightening- I can tell you that I have selflessly applied the above mantra to it with spectacular results. First of all, no woman should be told just what complexion her vagina should be. In fact, women should not be told how anything should be, period. They like to make their own (and your) decisions. However, if you happen to be in the kind of healthy, non-abusive relationship one hears about in love songs and Hallmark cards and stuff, your girlfriend may just be amenable to a little suggestion from you every now and again.

Still, you cannot just bring it up in conversation like you would with menreasonable adults. No, you've got to play the "as you wish to be done unto you" card: buy yourself a tube of Clean and Dry Intimate Wash, wet and towel-dry your face, and apply product carefully on your lips using your index finger. Proceed to regale your woman with that rarest of rituals in the Indian bedroom: cunnilingus. Not only does this increase levels of satisfaction all round, but it also keeps your lips from chaffing, and considerably lightens nicotine stains if you're a smoker. I hope this helps.

Last word: I strongly recommend that you consult with the lady in question before you fire up a cigarette while you're at her service.                   

  

Potty Mouth

My parents are about as liberal and open-minded as you can reasonably expect Indian parents to be. While this is a blessing in most scenarios, you can't sometimes help wishing they were just a little repressed. Privacy, for instance, is a concept as alien in our household as democracy is in (insert whatever dictatorship is currently trendy to deplore). If my Dad were Osama Bin Laden (and alive), he would send out easily influenced youth to crowded malls and national landmarks in the developed world with huge quantities of Too Much Information strapped to their chests.

So the other day, we were just settling in to watch the video of Cousin Chaz's wedding. I fired up the Home Theatre system, set the surround speakers to optimum, made sure Grammy had her glasses and her Tweety Bird comforter, dimmed the lights and hit play. Being a Catholic wedding, it was considerably shorter than your average Bollywood 3-day affair, but I still couldn't share in my family's enthusiasm for watching videos of wedding ceremonies we had just attened a week ago. About fifteen restless minutes in, I decided I'd better sneak a cigarette now if I wanted to catch the hilarious drunken-Dad-dancing footage at the end.

I stood up as quietly as I could and made to leave.
"Where are you going?" came my Dad's voice, eyes still glued to the screen.
"Oh, just to the toilet," I said, in what I hoped was a dismissive tone.

Before I could take another step, the speakers died. The video paused in an ungainly close-up of the priest's jaws that reminded me of Teeth, the movie directly responsible for my irrational nervousness around lady-parts. There were audible groans and airs of discontent from Grammy, Mom, Cousin Chaz, his newly-wife Flora, her nerdy younger sister Fauna and their mother Florence. After much fumbling, the lights came on. Suddenly, I was awash in interrogative, zero-watt incandescence.

Dad swivelled around in his chair. "Why," he said- fatherly, predatorly, "what's wrong?"
I looked around the room. The newly-weds hastily re-arranged clothing and posture, while Mom looked away, eyes hinting at equal measures of indulgence and disgust. Grammy appeared to be cleaning her nails with a biro. Fauna typed furiously on her phone, while Aunt Florence quietly chastized her for her anti-social tendency to social-network in society.
"Nothing's wrong, just need the toilet," I said, fully aware that things didn't get much wrong-er than a fully grown man being asked to justify his ablutions. "Didn't we agree Fauna would stop live-tweeting everything once the wedding's over?"

"The site's gove viral," said Dad, "people want to know how the family's doing post-wedding. It's a human interest story now. Do we like the in-laws, do they like us, does Chaz's mother resent Flora, etc. She has 11,000 followers. But what I'm concerned about is," he paused and looked around the room, playing to the gallery, "are you feeling a little viral?" There was a tectonic shift in attention. I was now the centre, the core, the black hole, sucking it all in.

That familiar flush of embarassment under my collar, the bane of my teenage existence. Hello, Darkness.

"Wh-what do you mean?"
"Well, we all had a heavy meal. Now you're rushing to the toilet. Are you feeling a little... unwell?"
"I wasn't rushing. I just needed to freshen up. It's no big deal."
"Yes, but did you intend to freshen up with a Number 1 or Number 2?"

The room spun. Time slowed to a dizzying crawl. My eyes fixed themselves on Fauna's fingers, ready to telecast temporary teenage trauma to the Twitterverse. Inside, I wept. And just as suddenly, I snapped. I had contact! I could feel something, furious and molten. There was anger there, there was indignance, there was life! My testicles came plunging back, and re-established themselves in their rightful sockets for I was once again a Man!

"Dad," I said.
Do it man, be an adult, tell him it's none of his business, tell him you're going for a smoke.
"I think it might be Number 2."

Flora smirked. Chaz guffawed. Mom and Grammy looked down, let down. Aunt Florence studied the hem of her top. Dad just nodded; the nod of the all-knowing, almighty Shit Detector.

And then there was Fauna. Nerdy, bespectacled, pig-tailed, unrequited-crush-on-me, vindictive Fauna. Fauna tweeted. Merde, she wrote.


      

The dude abides not

Icyhighs and Fatboy, back in the day

Two weeks of being back at my parents' house, and I've already fallen down the rabbit hole and straight into my teenage garb somehow. I have to constantly remind myself that I'm now an adult, that I can probably look my Dad in the eye and speak as I would to another adult, that I don't have to tiptoe around the house to avoid getting in trouble. Being here has somehow reversed time and cast me back in the role of Awkward Teenager. Take last night for instance.

It's a little past midnight, I'm down a few, and bored out of my skull in my room, and I suddenly remember Fatboy has a friend-who-smokes somewhere in this area. If you smoke, you'll know that a friend-who-smokes is a generic term that can apply to just about anybody-who-smokes whose existence you're vaguely aware of. If you're a smoker and you're new in town, or if you don't know where you can score some quality pot, you're within your rights to call the friend-who-smokes. The friend-who-smokes WILL comply. It's a thing.

I call Fatboy. But Fatboy doesn't want to hook me up. He has Stuff on his mind. Girl-stuff. It's boring, and we've gone over this a hundred times but I will comply. It's a bro thing.

"I swear nothing happened. I met her for like five hours. She took a shower, we had a drink in her room and she hurried back to the airport for her flight."
"It's not that I don't trust you. You know that, yeah? I don't trust her. I know she was into you."
"She was not into me. She was seeing you for fuck's sake. Besides, who cares, you dumped her ages ago."
"Yeah but you know what it's like. Imagine if-"
"Lalalallalalalalallalalala don't want to hear it."
"What?"
"I don't want to hear it. I forbid you from completing that sentence."
"What do you think I'm going to say?"
"I know what you're going to say. Don't say it."
"It's not what you think I'm going to say."
"How do you know what I think you're going to say?"

CLICK!


"What the hell was that?"
"Dad? Dad, I'm on the phone, if you're there. Just give me two minutes ok?"
"He's not on the phone, man. What are you, twelve?"
"Yeah, he wouldn't do that right? I'm almost thirty."
"Of course not. He'd probably think we're being a bit silly if he did hear us though."
"I guess. Anyway, nothing happened between us, you've got nothing to worry about-"
"But IMAGINEIFISLEPTWITH-"
"Oh my God, why the hell would you say that? Great, I can't get the image out of my head now. FUCK!"
"You broke up three years ago. Let it go. But now you understand yeah, why I keep asking you about-"
"FUCK you man, I fucked her, I fucked your chick you fat fuck."
"I knew it. That bitch. You bitch."
"Oh relax, I'm only messing."
"Oh. I knew....what the fuck? Did you just hear someone giggle?"
"What? It's Dad! DAD! Can you please get off the phone? Come on!"
"Mr. Highs.
WE.CAN.STILL.HEAR.YOU.GIGGLING.PLEASE.STEP.AWAY.FROM.THE.PHONE.SIR"
"Why're you doing that?"
"What?"
"The funny voice. He's my Dad, not a bank robber. Dad, can you please get off.... I think he's gone."
"Good. Listen, how do you know she wasn't into you? I don't care, I just want to know why you think that."
"Jesus, Fatboy. I don't know man, there was this invisible signboard: no sexual attraction lives in this town."
"This is what freaks me out. You think everybody wants to sleep with you. You said Sam's gran gave you a vibe! And you're telling me my absolute fucking whore of an ex didn't? You slept with her didn't you?"
"Oh, look, not this again. She had ZERO interest in me. I swear. It's something she said, that's how I know."
"What? What did she say?"
"It's embarassing. Not something she said exactly, something she called me."
"What? What did she call you?"
"It's embarassing. She said it ok? She said the word, so I know there was nothing going on."
"Oh my God, she didn't?"
"What?"
"She called you-"
"She called me 'dude' ok? She kept calling me 'dude'. Lke five times a minute. And we both know, 'dude' is just a less-brutal version of 'bro'. Girls don't call you 'dude' if they're planning on sleeping with you. Chicks get stoned with dudes. They don't fuck dudes."

That's when it happened. Have you ever jumped out of your skin because somebody just started talking behind you when you thought you were all alone? Something like that.

"Both of you," boomed my Dad's voice, "are idiots. I have never heard a more vaginal conversation, EVER. Your mother and sister speak about more interesting things than you two. And you have no respect for women. Stop running up the phone bill, and go to bed. Icy, you're going jogging with me tomorrow."
CLICK.

"Dude, I can't believe your Dad just did that. My Dad would never do that."
"Oh fuck off, your Dad is gay."
"Your Dad is gay. My Dad would kick your Dad's ass if he didn't enjoy it so much."

"GOTHEHELLTOSLEEP!"

"Sorry Dad, bye man."
"Bye man, bye Mr. Highs."

Let's hear it for suicide

It's a shame that suicide has such a bad name, that it's considered the cowardly way out. If women and homosexuals and transgender types can all (rightfully) fight for equality and respect, why can't the suicidal? Some people are good at life, some are not. Just like some like their wine red, others white. Why the hypocrisy in accepting people as they are? I just want to leave with my held high, with the grace of one who has made an intelligent decision. I shouldn't have to up and leave without saying goodbye, to steal away in the night. 


If people can renounce gym memberships and citizenship, they should be able to cancel their subscription to Life & Co without penalty. There should of course be some sort of franchising arrangement. A nine year-old shouldn't be able to make the decision to kill himself, I agree. How about sixteen, or eighteen? If you're old enough to drive, to buy cigarettes, to give life without judgement, you're old enough to take your own in peace. I'm twenty seven, and I want nothing more than to Exit Stage. I'd like to have my family around, email my friends and acquaintances and generally have one last goodbye. I understand some of them might miss me, or mourn me, but I should be able to inform them of my decision without being forcefully institutionalized. 


What suicide needs is a good PR campaign. Create a Facebook page, a Twitter hashtag. Get corporate cheerleaders on board, and we might just see a new dawn of respect for the circumspect. The commercial possibilities are endless. McDonalds could film my last Big Mac, and put it up on Youtube.  "One for the road," I'd cheerfully declare. Or I could take a sip of my favourite beverage, put down my can, and say "ooh, this Coke is to die for" before putting a bullet in my head. It'd be a fantastic way to create awareness that the suicidal are people too. You consume, we consume. We've just consumed enough. 


It could give rise to a whole new industry in these recession-struck times. Fun ways to die! Choose a death that says something about your personality! Get shot out of a cannon, or swim with piranhas for 500 bucks. Who hasn't wanted to do that? Go one-on-one with Mike Tyson, or fly a plane into ... no wait, that one's just morbid. Vegas could prop up it's dwindling marriage market with a line of pop culture-referencing suicide options. Elvis could chop you a line laced with Anthrax, or you could email Keyser Söze and tell him the whole thing was really quite predictable. 


I hate to say this, but the easiest way to make suicide the new Normal might be to get Zooey Deschanel involved. Some of you may already be familiar with how I feel about Zooey. But why not? It's for a good cause, and Lord knows she's done enough to make zombies out of an entire generation. These kids are never getting their individuality back; the least she could do is sing a quirky suicide ditty that will inevitably go viral and give them all a way out when they need one. 


Till I can get her to pitch in, maybe the lot of you can spread the word. Promise me you'll cash your cheques when it's obvious there's no point waiting any longer. Call it quits the moment you realize there's no grand finale, no blaze of glory, that this is about as good as it gets. Let's not hang around once the party's over, that's just sad. And till you get there, have a "No Rest For The Depressed" badge on your blogs, or wear a "Suicide FTW!" teeshirt or something. Do something, you guys, or all this apathy is just going to kill you.      

Jim Carrey sings Jumper by Third Eye Blind to prevent a guy from committing suicide in Yes Man.




    

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."

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)

I've met someone

It's been a good few years since the last time eh? I know I promised I'd text/e-mail/whatever. We both know it wasn't quite working out. Though if you were interested then, you should still be interested now. Because as it turns out, not a lot has changed, really. I still listen to pretty much the same music, that gym membership never really paid off, I'm still trying to quit smoking. There's more : I'm still gainfully unemployed, I still alternately romanticize and internalize the plight of the struggling writer, I still have that recurring fantasy I borrowed from Generation X. The one about just floating belly-up in the Dead Sea, full of life and still as a corpse. That's probably also the best metaphor for these last few years. If I were the type to go to psychologists, and the one I went to happened to be the type who advises patients to ''go to their happy place'', mine would be a little town called 'Inertia'. And I'd love her back.