Glory, gory..

Until a few months ago, Manchester was just a drab, cold airport I was stuck at, having missed my return flight from Paris to London. Today, Manchester United (Man U, for the afflicted) is a looming presence in my life—usually something that competes for my time with my object of affection—and wins!

I guess it is one of those functional disorders of dating an alpha male (and enough has been written, some by me, about the lack of them in this universe).

Although, by his own classification, the beau is a simple guy with minimal obsessions —Kingfisher beer, XL t-shirts, mutton do pyaza, Final Fantasy II and Manchester United (not necessarily in that order), it isn’t really as simple as that.

I sense the first alarming signs when “watching a Man U match” is deftly planted as one of those ‘fun things’ you can do when you are together.

Ok, I can deal with 90 minutes of testosterone overdrive, I tell myself. I have no idea what I am walking into.

Next, weird things happen. I leave restaurants with my bladder full (on my own accord) just so that the significant other can catch a few more minutes of the game. I apologise for not carrying football listings in my paper. I scream, “Die Chelsea, die! ” or worse, “Glory, glory, Manchester United” at the TV with the passion of a soccer (sorry, football) fan. I find myself looking at sports pages to find out when the next match is, wondering when one could really have quality time with the beau. Turns out, they are always playing, even if they lose. I don’t get it. (He does try to explain the complicated logic of the whole thing—what was that again?)

I soon resign myself to the fact that Man U will always have to be factored into our lives, and any rendezvous (or lack thereof) would depend on whether or not Man U was playing that night.

I find myself in a strange place. I try to get us to watch Fever Pitch (superb adaptation of Nick Hornby’s classic) in the hope that Drew Barrymore would speak my mind to Jimmy Fallon, and the message would get across. But the americanisation of football (book) to baseball(movie) doesn’t quite work in my favour. And then the power goes off, and that’s a sign, I think..

So then, I go on this spree of knowing my enemy. A few days ago, I solitarily watch the whole game of AC Milan Vs Man U (he misses it, and is peeved at being suspended 30000 feet up above during the ‘biggest game of the season’). With much trepidation, I text him the score. I write, “We lost”.
We? I used the royal ‘we’ for Manchester United? Me, who has never subscribed to the collective pronoun? I need to see a shrink.

Anyway, I am ensconced in the glory (!) that since the “biggest match of the season” is over, life will be back to normal. Little do I know that every match is the “biggest match of the season.”

May be I’ll turn into one of those people who writes letters to agony aunts saying, “I lost my man to another man… make that eleven men..”

My family and other paparazzi

Surprise, surprise! At a recent wedding reception of my cousin, the discussion point was not my singledom or my ‘settling down’. It was my column!

Practically everyone worth his grey moustache or bald pate or diabetic eye or bypassed heart had something to say. And it was all very interesting, as none of them, except one, may be had anything to do with the print/publishing/journalism industry.
They were all readers! That magical, mystical species.

Aunty No. 1 said she knew who idli-face was.
Uncle No 1 accosted me in front of my dad, and said in his I-know-what-you've-been-upto voice, "Did you know she stole your cigarettes?”
Dad and I had the last laugh.
Aunty No 2 told me she never knew I was so traumatised by my hair. She also said she was happy I made women look good.
Uncle No 2 said he was proud that I gave maximum footage to my mother and not my father. I stared at him.. what paper was he reading exactly?
Uncle No 3 moaned that his vendor gave him HT minus Café (Marketing, are you listening?), so he still hasn’t read anything, but gets regular ‘updates’.
Uncle No 4 said DNA gave him a better deal.
Uncle No 5 said he likes the way I spice my articles up, and that he was very proud of me. Spice? Now wait a minute. Now what was that about? Didn’t he know that in the case of our family, truth is stranger than fiction.
Uncle No 6 wanted my visiting card.
Uncle No 7 dropped names of big daddies in HT and asked me if I knew them. I mumbled something about ‘I will, when I have the time’.
Prim and propah Aunty No 3told me her kids also tried smoking and quit. She was amused that an independent woman like me still gets vishukanni from my mother.
Uncle No 8 wondered if Café was going the Bombay Times way, because he saw Pooja Bedi in a bikini on the cover(!). He gave me a mini lecture on how HT should maintain its niche by not doing so.
Uncle No 9 felt that I had finally arrived, as I was working with none other than Khalid Mohamed, and reminded me how he had got me inducted into his film reviews. (Go KM, go!)
Uncle No10 felt that I should be writing my travelogues in the paper, we should be doing more sports features and less gossip.
Uncle No 11, a paper expert wanted to know more about our press and our gsm.
Uncle No 12 dropped some more names.

What baffled me was there was nothing from the ‘young ones.’ Obviously, no one is reading (knock, knock, marketing!). I began to wonder if ours was a geriatric paper.

But what intrigued me the most was that no one asked me who was the significant other I refer to.
May be I had drawn my boundaries of ‘space’ a little too tight. May be there's too much of the 'don't mess with me' hangover I seem to have left behind.
Ho hum!

Oh! To be a smoker……

I am in awe of smokers. I am intrigued by the natural choreography their bodies assume as they pull out their packs, wrench out a solitary cigarette, look purposefully for a lighter, put the ciggy to their mouths, light it with a flourish, and emit a heavenly sigh.
Before they choke you, that is.

What’s fascinating is that the entire sequence takes less than twenty seconds. And it happens with the same languid aesthetic time after time after time.

I tried to do the same thing one (sorry dad, I stole from your pack) and looked so gauche, it wasn’t funny. First of all, the cigarette came out crooked, then the lighter didn’t obey me at the first flick, so I went at it with a vengeance till the entire room smelt like a gas chamber. Then I choked and spluttered, and then felt as if a part of my interiors was sucked out by vacuum.

Gosh, this was really complicated. Beats me how most of my team at work, my friends, my dad and my significant other do it with so much élan.

It intrigues me how the mere act of smoking can transform a gauche body into something that has rhythm and purpose. Take TV soaps, or even plays for example— I always find it odd when eight people stand in a semi-circle and have a conversation. No, I don’t watch them— I only did once when a friend of mine was playing a blue-eyed villain who plots to kill everyone from his wife to his daughter to his daughter’s lover… and stares at a fish tank while plotting his next move, smoking, and blowing rings on to a green-eyed siren. It worked, as he had something to do with his hands.
Yes, I agree. A cigarette is a good prop.

There are other uses too—smoking makes you look engaged, even if you are doing nothing. It gives you an exit option from potential psychos in a random gathering, with a, “Hey, I am stepping out for a smoke.”

What does someone like me say? “ Hey, I have to go munch a carrot”. Not cool.

No wonder I thought my dad was the coolest guy on earth while was growing up, and the only cool uncle I had was the one who smoked (I got a kick going and buying ciggies for him when I was eight or ten, although my grandma thought it was most unladylike for me to do so, and most ungentlemanly for him to ask me..)
As for the rest of the gentry, they were all vibhuti-wearing, sandhyavandanam-chanting, curd-rice eating, sabarimala-going, non-smoking uncles, who ironically, are all ageing gracelessly.

Instead my dad wore tees and jeans, smoked, played bridge (and tried hard to teach us)…and challenged us to the spelling of exorbitant and itinerary. I mean how cool can it get?

Soon, my brother and I went into wheezing zones, and dad was relegated to non-cool status, but he still goes on smoking…although he now lurks in corridors while doing so.

Years later, when I was on a backpacking spree in the hills of Nepal, our mountain-boy guide took us to his ramshackle hut up above, and fed us on rice wine, dal-rice and some local nepalese cigarettes.. I had a reluctant second puff, and felt as weird as I did years ago. It just didn’t work for me.

I resigned myself to the fact that a cigarette doesn’t go with my look. Also I am happy in the knowledge that my lungs are not being coated with stuff that I don’t want, and besides, I like breathing… The challenge is how not to smoke and still look cool.

And oh, btw—cigarette smoking is injurious to health… before I get sued by someone.

Of ones and twos

‘Bring your spouse or significant other’ said the invite to our office party last week.

A voice of authority trailed off in the corridor, “How can they say something like this? What if you don’t have a spouse or a significant other?” Another echoes in support, “I agree, this is so unfair…”

There we go again, I think—damned if you do (have a significant other) and damned if you don’t. Is this going to me yet another ‘us’ vs ‘them’ moments?.. I wonder.

Not that I have a problem being on either side. It is as easy to slide into singledom as into coupledom. I have been through phases of significant others, not-so-significant others, or no significant others. Or even times when my significant other was my cat Lupooh Singh. And believe me, he was the hardest to please. Like Cinderella, I would leave parties and nights of wild dancing midway, because he didn’t quite approve of my night-bird ways. We went on long drives, spent weekends together, watched endless DVDs (dunno how the view is from atop the TV, but I never argued), played ball, ate candle-lit dinners, cuddled.

At times, he tried surprising me by bringing me dinner —a lizard, a pigeon, a sparrow— which I politely turned down, because I preferred things green, but it was a sterling act in tact display.
He ultimately decided that we had issues –he was a home bird and I loved to party. He even began to resent our weekend drives into the wilderness. So he started behaving like a dog in the car—tongue hanging out, panting, and I decided that was the end of our outings. Soon, he had a suitable feline distraction who obviously won him over, and matched his elegance, and I was bereft.

Fortunately, I was not shattered, and I didn’t slit my wrists. May be because a part of me knew that I had an inbuilt significant other that I could always count on ( I’m Gemini, there is at least three of me inside). So I moved on and they lived happily ever after.

********
Finally, I went solo (my significant other had too much to deal with that week), and had a pretty good time, till I had enough of the blinding lights and the gauche musicians. But when I looked around, I noticed that most significant others were absent as well. Which made me realise that it was much ado about nothing after all. It got me wondering— why does a harmless invite like the aforementioned spark off so much insecurity in people? Isn’t it more about having a significant ‘yourself’ before you can have a significant ‘other’?

Bringing up mother

“Are you coming to get your vishukani?”

My mum shakes me out of my slumber on a Sunday morning. It is Vishu, and I am Tam-Bram, so get the picture? “Uh…okay, I guess…” I managed to mumble.

Being summoned into decision making in a somnambulistic mode isn’t exactly good for me, but mothers will be mothers. So I make the trudge to the land of wilderness, and am suitably rewarded with some cash, some silver and a fruit hamper.

Only that, to earn it, I have to first view it through the mirror, and prostrate in front of the deity. “Don’t look at it directly,” says the mother, in all innocence. I don’t have the heart to tell her that I have taken in the spoils the minute I entered the house, and I know all that is on offer.

So I do as I am told, eye the spread in the mirror, and make my baksheesh for the day. Hmm, that was easy.

But then the rituals are not always so rewarding.
On one particular day every year in early January, I think, post pongal, there is always a rude awakening by the mother (or a ceremonial call, these days). I remember it so vividly. It is five am. “Whhhhat happened?” I stutter, shaken out of my bone. She shoves a plate in front of me, lined with balls of various rice preparations. “Come, we have to go to the terrace and feed them to the crows,” she says. There is more—in the form of an enticing couplet sung to attract the crows to your morsels. May be I am a really good daughter, but I do remember croaking into the sky at wee hours of the morning to seduce.. a crow?

Some questions pop in my head: 1) Why do crows wake up so early? 2) Why bother art-directing food for a scavenger? 3) Why is my mother such an enthu cutlet? 4) Am I so low-life that I have to sing to a crow?

I ask none of them. Because I know there is a larger plan. Apparently, the crows are our ancestors, and this is one way of giving back to them. I think, if I had my way, I would invite my grandparents for dinner, instead of this crack of dawn apportioning of food. But I don’t, so I do as I am told.

There are also miscellanous smaller rituals –like wearing a turmeric stained thread for a good husband (there goes my t-shirt, I think). Or “keep this vibhuti under your pillow,” or “say this mantra eleven times..” and more such.

Once, she outdid herself when she handed me a “blessed coconut,” asking me to swirl it around my head three times before taking a shower. And to do it for eleven days or some such.

Only that I noticed aliens breeding on it after the third day, and never touched it after.

Front row blues

I always wanted to be a backbencher.
It is the only thing I ever really wanted when I was in school. Sadly, I never made it.

Okay, here are the gory details—I have a rather short mother and a rather tall father. I inherited the wrong genes—so I ended up with the wrong nose and the wrong height, and spent most of my school years sitting in the first row.

Yes, I was in one of those schools where you 'sit according to your height.' And life always seemed to happen behind my back. All those ample bosomed, long-legged girls in my class seemed to inhabit an ecosystem that thrived on sleaze, sleath, voyeurism, boy-talk, pranks, defiance and all things exciting and wonderful.

I so wanted to belong there, to be part of their plots and schemes, to be the bad girl, to be the one that had the audacity to tell the teacher that she hadn't done her homework.

In contrast, I was the one who 'paid attention in class' and knew all the answers and always turned in my homework on time, my notebooks remained as meticulous as ever, my uniform was always ironed, and my compass box always had everything in it.

So all my life's ambitions paled into the background, while I, completely by default made it to the nerd rank—something that took me years and some serious messed-up-ness to wash off.

Every year in June, when we entered a new class and places were allotted, I would breathe deeply and hope to stretch a few inches, so that I could at least get promoted to the second row. But that never happened. Because at age 11, I realized that I had stopped growing vertically. So there I was—relegated to front bencher status year after year.

Even in the annual class photograph, when I thought I could creep into the back and blend, the teacher would pull me out, and say something derogatory like 'the small ones can sit in front, please!"

I desperately wanted out of the first bench stigma, and as long as I was in school, I didn’t see a way out. So it was no surprise why college felt very democratic and liberating, chiefly because one could sit where one wanted, and no prizes for guessing which was my favourite spot.

Suddenly, the world began to look like a different place, and I felt I had shed my front-bencher baggage.
I felt further rehabilitated when once, I walked out on an exam paper, because I had no clue on the questions asked. The proverbial bad boy hanging outside said, "I like that. You are a cool chick." I hated admitting to him that it was the first time I ever did anything cool.

But it is kind of different now. I am still all of 5" 1, but I can fill a room. And I don't have to be a bad girl to do that. I finally know that small is beautiful. I am at peace with my size. Or the lack of it.

Maid for each other

If there is someone who understands the nuances of male behaviour much better than a gender columnist, it has to be the domestic maid.
I find it absolutely amazing to see men in power, men leading companies—basically men calling the shots in their working life being rendered complete putty in the company of this mystical goddess.

A friend of mine used to unburden regularly about his travails with his domestic. He called her Maxi, as that was her preferred garment and for some reason, it pissed him off. It got his goat that she should trivialize the job so much, she didn’t even bother to be suitably attired.

But that was not all. She just disturbed his calm with her Speedy Gonsalves style of working, and every morning, he felt like his flat was hit by a hurricane. And before he even finished his cup of tea, she would be gone.

He soon reached a point where her attire started giving him the hives—much more than her working style, and finally, in disgust, he decided to sack her. The day he mustered the courage to tell her, she announced that she was pregnant. He freaked out and called me immediately. “Can I get sued for sacking a pregnant woman?” “Depends,” I said. He is still stuck with her. And she still wears a maxi.

In contrast, the benevolent beau has a classic slow-motion cadet who descends on him whenever she feels like, smiling in the most benign manner. When she started out, he, in his usual act of deep concern for fellow humans asked her to take Sundays off. “Good, no? Even we get days off!” he said in all earnest.

She, of course decided to interpret it her way, and decided to work only on Sundays. It took him a whole two months to communicate to her that there had been a misunderstanding. Once, when she disappeared for over two weeks, he even tried to get a replacement, but then she re-emerged, with her beatific smile and he succumbed again.

“Is she good at her job?,” I asked.
“I don’t know, but she is quiet,” he said.
That explained it. Not having to engage was good reason to be loyal to your domestic, even if she never showed up.

The couch-potato father gets instructions from the super-organised mother when she is out on one of her jaunts, “Make sure she cleans the counter and the sink. She has this tendency to slink away. Also insist that she return in the afternoon to do the rest of the dishes,” she tells him.
He turns a shade of purple that his chocolate complexion allows him to and winces, “Yaar, just tell her yourself. Leave me out of this…”

We all know that men have a problem with confrontation and closure. But it is actually the Maxis of the world who really know how to use it to their advantage. May be Maxi should be writing this column next.