I’ve been chewing on the words “twenty twenty one” a whole lot these last few weeks and they just don’t go down right. There’s an uncanny sense the earth’s been spinning a little too fast and the world’s been hoodwinked into counting store brand days.
I met an old friend recently- well I say friend because I can’t bring myself say the actual words because they might ring out like a foul incantation.
I find it difficult to imagine a family member with whom I might feel a kind of solidarity. In a rather embarrassing fact of life, I was a bit too young to actually register the kindness and support we found in each other. It must have been a rather bleak home to have six year old me as the only source of good conversation.
However incomprehensible I find our camaraderie with only a self centered void where they recount old tales, I find it strange how they became a persistent phantom in my life. The empty figure becoming an archetype I see in my friends and the ones who aren’t. I have been looking for the same person over and over again. The way I talk to people, the same pantomime playing out again and again. Yet after casting a shadow that’s followed me my entire life I’ve nothing left to say to the progenitor. We’re not the same people anymore and you can’t search for old ghosts when nothing is the same. Like me, my old companion has forgotten who they were and unlike me have no reasons to look back, with so much in the present.
Previously I only had fragments. Fragments of other scandalous fragments, angsty, adolescence oriented Japanese TV programming that hinted at transgression. I could never find these shows a second time which gave the memories an esoteric quality always maddeningly out of reach of my hands that only grasp the bleakest realisms that forced themselves on me. I have drifted, constantly, relentlessly in the dull tyranny of my circumstance.
I’ve always had the notion that relations are panopticons. I can’t bear the foolish mouth sucking guards uniformed in familiarity saying isn’t it nice? Are we all getting along? Aren’t you glad we’re here? I don’t know what to say; I’m fighting the urge to do what comes naturally, hoping I’ll float away. One day I’ll leave them all behind.
Category: Family writing
Toy Land
A dragon crowns the fridge, a miscolored gremlin winks at me, the table is filled with heads and trophies.
My grandfather’s newest hobby, collecting lost toys he finds on the streets. Everyone else jokes: “he’s stealing from little girls” .
On the table besides an assortment of McDonald’s toys based on movies you have a faceless Lego, an amused (angry) bird, a cross between spock and the hulk, plastic ducks, Mario and a deformed hello kitty tied with rubber bands to a shot glass, a well dressed snowman, a pencil with a jester’s face. Oh and two dogs, one wags his tail my grandfather points out.
Getting old seems kinda fun.
Insanity and the Family
Psychologists, or mind bender as my grandfather calls them, are objects of much curiosity in my family. I don’t mind their playful accusations of me trying to brain wash people; I’ve met far to many people who demand I read their minds for that.
Yesterday my mother challenged me to diagnose the various tales of bizarre behavior that haunted the family. The first story was about an old great grand uncle who lived the life of a simple shop owner and land owner. Since everyone used to walk back them, he walked a lot too. But one day he left his travel companions to pee behind a bush. He soon returned and began speaking to everyone in Malayalam, which no one understood. No was able to figure out how he knew Malayalam either. He was soon ravaged but whatever afflicted him and his metal health disintegrated.
The next story was that of grand uncle who had an annoying habit of loudly narrating whatever he was doing. Even more irritating was his tendency to narrate what other people were doing while he stood about staring at them. When people asked him to stop narrating and just finish what he was doing he’d walk off angrily. My mother recalled that she hates people pointing out the obvious too and wondered if she was crazy too. She was quickly distracted by other memories of his fingers playing imaginary instruments and him singing notes “ahaaa vheeee huuummm” as he walked the long corridors that South Kenaran houses used to have.
The last story of insanity was of a great grandfather who’d have windows nailed shut if people forgot to close them when he asked them to. He also insisted on people waiting for him to wake up before they opened the front door. Since the bathrooms were outside the house, people inside had to wait anxiously till they could relieve themselves.The fact that he’d wait for his cat, that slept on top of him, to wake up before he rose must have made the wait a lot more painful.
The stories of insanity didn’t really interest me as much as the amount of information my mother knew about the family. I can’t even remember the names of all my uncles. I guess she kinda had to pick it up when one of my great grandfathers had as many as 22 children between two women.
The whole thing makes me wonder what normal is. Normal must just be the generic behavior society wants from you, but honestly I can’t think of many normal people. My grandfather isn’t crazy but I’m sure the people who see him walking around the house quoting 60’s movies and random children’s rhymes have a hard time figuring out what’s happening. Not being eccentric is a little odd given our families history.
The Sleepy City
Visiting my grandparents was always an ordeal that inspired a variety of emotions. Every holiday I’d be sent away to their farm; until last year when they moved to city after my grandfather developed heart problems.
While I was still in school visiting the estate was something I looked forward to; I had next to no homework and could explore the farm or have people regal me stories all day long. When I was an adolescent I resented it because of how slow everything went and the lack of cable TV. When they moved to the city and had access to a greater amount of channels I had long since given up on TV and had moved onto the internet. This time however I think I’ve had a little too much of it all.
I decided that if I spent anymore time staring at a screen I’ll go blind and insane, or be overcome come by a desire to become one with the internet. While Mangalore isn’t the sleepy, green memory from my childhood it does have many quiet spots where moss grows on the walls next to quiet streams, cats laze about in the few spots where the sun makes it past the trees and human life seems non-existent. Every time I see an old building being torn down I repeatedly tell my companion for the day about the many woes of capitalism .
So much gets done when you have nothing to do. My minds still races around trying to figure out what it needs to get done. I’ve decided to not try and stop it since realizing that there’s nothing to do is an awesome feeling. I woke up at around 8:30 and spent an hour or so looking at the chickens next door than hopped up a few branches. It’s 11:30 now.So far I’ve read bit of Ruskin Bond and decided I should take note of his essay and strive for clarity in my writing. I’ve also started reading a history book in french, a Kannada magazine, watched a bit of tennis with my grandfather etc.
Among the many unusual delights the cities sleepiness has thrown up so far is the odd little man who stands in the apartment basement. I saw him yesterday and recalled my grandfathers curiosity about what might be ailing the man. I saw him again today while I was happily deleting the alarms I’d set on my phone.
The odd man was a skinny old thing with a house fly mustache clad in formal clothing. The sort of creature that anyone from the Indian sub-continent would classify as an “uncle”.
He stood by the desolate office in the apartment that I could see from our house. He stood there for an hour or so. He stood there by the stairs for an hour more. He was standing so I’m not sure if he was really sick. He chatted with a few people who’d come up to him so I reasoned he was quiet capable upstairs. He disappeared though after I started writing this. No one has seen him come or go. They haven’t even seem him move for that matter.
It’s odd writing about him. A man who just… stands. Stranger than fiction. I’d investigate further under normal circumstances and try to find out why the man spends his day day dreaming but I can’t help but feel inspired to lose myself to a day dream of my own, in the sleepy city.
An Old Phtograph
I don’t really have many pictures of myself when I was young, I was far to self-conscious and would scatter the second I heard some eager creature with a camera. So when I realize that my makeshift mouse-pad was an old picture of me on my 8th birthday I was quite startled.
I’d say something cliché like “memories came rushing back”, but really, that isn’t the truth. The picture felt like a rough jab because it reminded me that the memory -or even memories were always around. I remember what T-shirts people wore, how they smelt and where my dog had bitten three of my friends. It’s like writing a word on paper, closing your eyes and recalling every curve,swish and dot. On the left, my other wise pretty cousin is on the sofa with us, mouth wide open ready to chomp on a slice of chocolate cake she holds. I am in between. I look anorexic you’d think my cousin was inspired to enjoy her meal because of my plight yet I smile away trying to adjust my red birthday cap. My father sits on the right with his hand awkwardly feeling the wall behind the sofa. He looks like a cat about to be run over.
Most of those parties always went the same way. My dad would yell and throw a fit about me not helping him decorate, I’d ask him why people need birthdays in the first place (while I wondered why I had to decorate if the whole thing was about me). My father wears a simple white shirt and looks 40. He’s looked like he’s 40 ever since he finished high school. Now he’s 55 and still looks 40.
My cousin and I, both skinny and young, both in bright yellow hand me downs and with birthday caps that just won’t stay on our heads look like natural allies. She was almost done with high-school by then, but had not yet learnt how to avoid getting yelled at by the many aunts who inhabited the mansion. Back then I never understood why she was so eager to drag me away from cartoon network, and talk to me about the most random things. I never got why people kept telling her to go ask her mother to pay her bills. We’d sit by the little outlook on the hill and count the number of black cars and buses that needed a wash. She’d talk about how she’d have to dig up graves to find teeth so she could study dentistry.
I forgot about her entirely when my mother and I left that old house and that part of the family. In my defense I was a kid, I never got her rants about her nokia and pink cycle. I saw her again 3 years ago when both of us went back to the old house. We shrugged and said “meh” to everyone else there. We saw each other. We shrugged and said “meh”. She had a kid apparently.
It’s an odd photo. Very obviously candid. None of us seem affected by the din that must have been taking place in the center of the room. There only three of us three, on a sofa colored like pencil lead, against a bland green wall. For some reason that image always seems to simple,recent and familiar to forget.
The Slow Wagon To No-Where
My father has this amazing ability to change opinions depending on how far away he is.
When he’s in Mangalore, everyone agrees that a car ride with him is torture. His trusty steed is a dented, old Wagon R, is painted brown by the omnipresent coating of dust [legend has it that it was once as black as the hair dye my grandfather always gets all over his neck]. The Wagon R has a disturbing tendency to fall apart in the oddest ways, ooze strange fluids that seem to have been food during a bygone age,have strange insects crawl out etc. The furious family head shaking at my father driving [which gets my grandfathers hair dye all over the rest of the family] dies down the closer to Bangalore my father gets. By the time my father has driven into city limits everyone seems to have forgotten about their disgust at his driving, and insist that I have nothing better to do than accompany my father to where ever it is he needs to go.
My family has this weird thing about road. To most people road’s don’t matter all that much unless they’re being launched into orbit by some inconsiderate pothole or being offered an unwelcome shower by a motorist who hasn’t noticed that the pothole you are walking next to is filled with water. To my family it’s the pinnacle of civilization. Show them a documentary on the Romans? “Wow look at those roads!”. Images of Afghanistan? “My god look at those roads! How can they be so good when Taliban and American terrorists are bombing everything?”. My mother has recently become interest in Urdu poetry. Every time the discussion turns to Pakistani poetry and some patriot uncle decides that Pakistan is nothing but my sand, my mother will argue “That’s not true! Don’t underestimate them, have you even seen their roads?”
Perhaps this love of perfectly paved tar can be traced to Mangalore. Mangalore and the villages in the area ,like Bantwal, have for a very long time, had atrocious roads. How atrocious? So atrocious that every single car ride must warrant comment on the roads. There has never, and I mean NEVER, been a car ride without complaints about the road. So my father who has been bouncing up and down the poorly laid mixtures of tar,dirt and speed bumps for most of the day-long car ride from Mangalore to Bangalore achieves a state of maddened euphoria when he sees patches of good road. Suddenly the accelerator is his worst enemy that needs to be crushed under his foot, the break needs to be kicked violently or it’ll disappear and ever traffic jam a excuse to stop and snooze while maintaining a 7 meter distance from the vehicle in front. Unlike my family, normal motorists have a consistent view about my father’s driving.
Every time we start off from home, a hour later than planned, my father and I spend a minimum of 15 minutes sorting the many many plastic bags, ferrying all the things he’s brought into the house, throwing away all the random derbies and aged fruit his journey has accumulated. My father also has this habit of buying fruit juice every 20 minutes of the car ends up having a lot of thing spilt all over it. Occasionally he’ll hang it on the door locks. If your aren’t careful the paper cups with the juice can get caught between car and door. A wet explosion of water melon is sometime I’m all to familiar with. Once my father didn’t notice I was half red and drenched till we got back home.
Honestly I’m surprised by how easily I’ve reached 600 words. I guess that’s because we travel everywhere by car. It’s always the first option which is weird since none of us can stand each other. My father and I have debates about religion, or at least we used to when I was foolish enough to think I could change his opinion. He has some pretty bizarre ideas, like moon rays affecting everything he does, random anecdotes about wells filled with money being proof of god etc. At one point of time he hoped I’d become an astrologer.
My father also comes up the weirdest of conspiracy theories. Rahul Gandhi is a cocaine addict, the CIA funds global warming etc. Occasionally random friends of his who are almost always filthy rich hotel owner from Goa who dress like hobo’s and share his taste in cheap hotels that where built back when Joseph Stalin was yet to hit puberty. I could go on the utter bizzarness of the conversations but if you really want to keep your mouth shut you can which is a plus. Or maybe he’s learnt that it’s no use trying, I’m not very sure.
He always sends passenger to fetch morning, afternoon and evening papers. They can be any south Indian language, but if they are Kannada he has to get a copy from very specific publishers, who’s names I can never remember. I don’t know anyone else who read’s afternoon or evening papers. I guess this is because he spends most on his day inside the car like some 21st desert nomad on his camel.He doesn’t have a modern phone either [he has three Chinese made one which have survived a ridiculous amount of punishment and are of the following colors: Pink, Bright yellow and violet.
Occasionally if we’re on some scenic route, he’ll start driving slower than butter melts in refrigerators and become the most mundane travel guide ever. Stories of how some random grand uncles, nephew’s wife’s friends substitute teacher fell down while running barefoot will turn up. At time the choice of sites leaves me baffled. “Look a golf course”,”Look a field of paddy”,”Look a river” . I’m not quite sure how I’m expected to respond to that. Or why we took a 30 minute diversion to go see it. If my mother is also with us, she’ll rip the back of the drivers seat to shreds[ I always ride shotgun, it’s not that I care but it’s been my default position for some reason.]
For a stinky, sweaty, battered, old car that always leads to some fight or outrage, it has a lot of memories that tag with each trip.
Rijul Ballal 