Sex is not such a bad thing. And neither are strip clubs

There, do I have your attention now? Good, because the rest of this entry is about algebra.

    Hah, got you!

    Why I'm writing again is because I visited a strip club last week. Not my first visit, may I add, but being there as a customer is definitely nothing like being there as a reporter who's trying to be all business-like.

    Because for starters, I could actually stare. And second, I could get out when I wanted to.

    So that was that, and apart from the initial 10 minutes of ickiness, we all eased into the ambience pretty well, and was at home enough to compliment a dancer on her shoes, and reject a lap dance.

    And no, I'm not going to give you a blow by blow account of their routines. You get your own trip for that. Or read Savita Bhabhi or whatever. Basically, look elsewhere because what I would actually want to do here is make some observations, as always.

    1. Didn't Bernard Shaw ask whoever looks at beauty when it's been around for three days? Make it 30 minutes. The rule still holds, and equally well for everything from the nice painting you paid a bomb for, to SRK (yeah I met him once when I was in college) to naked women. None of us said the experience was life altering, all captivating, or even that big a deal. And yes that includes the man in the group. His wife appreciated the lingerie, my other friend liked how fit the dancers were and I, well, complimented one girl on her shoes.

    2. When I was over the gaping, I noted how controlled the environment was in the lounge/bar. Not one person misbehaving, not one unwanted or unsolicited comment or even gaze. If you want some action, you pay and you get it. If you don't, no one will bother you. One might argue that the big bouncers have that effect on people, but hey, it is a dark room and the bouncers aren't everywhere. Plus, the men who were getting dances were not allowed to touch the girls, and I actually saw one poor person's hands go up and then him willing them back on the couch. Couldn't help but feel bad for him, poor bloke. I really did think it comes from people trying to behave by themselves. I mean if external control stopped men and women from misbehaving, why would we have weirdoes touching themselves in a crowded bus?

    3. Which brings me to the real reason why I am writing this. Sex and sexuality is so very oppressed in the society I come from, it is really ridiculous. And it is refreshing to see a change from my norm. And this extends way beyond strip clubs into everyday living.

     Most Asian families I know behave like the very concept of sex does not even exist, and yet we give birth to more and more children every passing year. I mean sure I am happy that society has cast some rules that people are expected to follow.

    A free rein sounds cool, but think about it-- would you like to be the person who is not really sure of who your father is, just because no one can tell? Call me a prude, but I like to know where I come from. I also like the fact that I get to decide who I want to be with, and no one has the right to force/persuade me if I don't want them. And that in the current social framework, all sensible men accept that. Or I've just been lucky.

    But does that mean we turn a total blind eye to the very fact that men and women have some urges and that it is needed that they satisfy some of it? Mostly to stop them from turning  to be weirdoes that get kicks from throwing themselves at random strangers in public areas?

    Think about that man I just described at the bar. That he could freely walk in and buy his dance probably saved New York City one sexual offender.

    And what is the other option anyway? Fine, we as Indians (my favorite sample, because I know us the best) won't accept that our children have any physical desires, so we don't allow "dates" and if we are really that stuck up, we don't even allow free mingling of both sexes. Do we even look around us?

    Each public park that I have been to in India is a make-out spot for teenagers and sadly, even older people to various degrees and at different times of the day. We are generally still not at home with kissing in public, but we accept the fact that grown men and women can slip their hands inside each other's clothes at places where children can watch, under the safety net of an umbrella. An umbrella!

     I appreciate cultural differences, and I subscribe to the idea of not everyone needs to be "Westernised". But why is it that while we have no trouble accepting Coca Cola, mini skirts, Hollywood movies and even foreign accents, we can't man up and accept this one true fact of life? One of us did write the Kamasutra, did he not?

    I have seen parents being extremely protective about their children-- no boys/girls, no late nights, no sleepovers, no nothing. And I know for a fact that ALL of those protected children have consistently done all of it, but without telling their parents.

    Or, the one chance they could try out "freedom", they went totally overboard leaving the rest of us to clean up after them. Literally and metaphorically. Concept of freedom lost, and concept of self restraint totally done away with. Not funny. Especially since these very boys and girls grow up to be men and women and still do the same. Why else would 50 year old men throw up after drinking too much at parties? Most people across the world would agree that the throwing up stage comes and goes with your teens.

     At 50, or for that matter even at 30, you need to know how to hold your drink. Or how to control your hand that "slips" below your lady dancing partner's waist or rubs against her in such a way that you can't tell if if was deliberate or not. Why do people do that? Here are my guesses:

    A. Because they do not know that there is another way of propositioning. That you can actually talk about it without being sleazy.

    B. Because how can you ask! It is so "isss chee chee". Or because even if one did ask, there are very few people that will say "at least s/he was upfront and respected my decision of going with it/not going with it." Most will say "OMG, can you believe what s/he did?" And the honest person gets branded a philanderer for life. So let us just molest each other and pretend nothing happened.

                                                                             

    From what I understand, on a deeper level, this culture of having a fake respectability also breeds a more dangerous culture of lying. I mean, because most parents won't say "yes, I am ok that you have a boyfriend at 16" even if they are and even if they know it is really normal, in a twisted manner, they force their children to lie.

    Were you with that girl? No mama. Is aunty lying? Maybe mama. Where were you? In the coaching class that was never actually scheduled for that day and so on and so forth till meddlesome local boys find the young kids fornicating under the slide in the park and raise hell. 

    The park keeps coming back, sorry about that.

    Wouldn't you rather these kids had some chance at normal mingling under some supervision than be forced to hide in dark alleys? I know a 8 year old that was introduced to pornography by a 13 something year old. In India, in a decent, bhadralok middleclass environment. So the naiveté of "our children are not like that" is lost on me. Every children is like that, ignore the English.

    Having siblings and cousins that are as much as 15 years younger has its benefits-- I am unusually up to date on the latest in teen and tween town. And take my word for it: 14 and above year olds in mid to big cities in India not only have sex, smoke, and generally do whatever their parents think can never be done, they also do it under the constant pressure of not letting people find out. Which equals to lying 24 X 7.

    (I add my usual caveat here: not everyone does it, and I did not conduct an official poll. But I do know that the percentage is rising, through first hand accounts and anecdotes.)

    You think I am exaggerating? I am not.

    Now give me the argument that not having any control or rules will only create a mess of everyone. Yes, I agree, but the point never was to do away with all kinds of rules and regulations. The point is to do away with rules that are so far removed from reality that you would think those who come up with them never lived on planet Earth as we know it.

     So do I have to sleep with someone just because they want it, because we are cool like that, and society won't disapprove and/or I want to one-up them? Hell no.

    But should people be able to do it if/when they both want to without fearing the collective raised eyebrows of everyone they knowl? "Yes" seems to be the only logical answer, does it not?

And that begs the question: is it so bad then, to pay for it? 

Beneath the jazz, we are all the same.

I was reading President Obama’s response to the Trayvon Martin murder, and couldn’t help wonder at how similar all the people in the world are, once you cut through the jazz of lifestyle, region and developed versus developing economies.

While  reading the articles (I hope there aren’t many who don’t know what I’m talking about, but if you are one of them, I do hope you have clicked on the link by now) I was reminded of this one instance where I was having a particularly tough day in college, and poor mom called at the wrong time.

Well, Bengalis have a bit of racial snobbishness ingrained in them, and I had just been exposed to new levels of inanity – a Gucci wearing classmate who had just said something to the tune of Thomas Hardy being one of the Hardy boys—I kid you not.  And she was my partner for an assignment which I obviously was doing all by myself, not trusting her film evaluating capabilities after that statement.

Now the mother is a riddle.  She is your average middle-class Indian parent with middle-class values that are constantly having head-on collisions with the urban, global platform the kid brother and I find ourselves operating in.

 And yet, from time to time, she will say or do things that will totally overwhelm us with the “modern” approach (“of course your daughter should get out of your house and live by herself. She is 19. How else will she learn to be independent?”) and make us thank our collective stars.

For those of you who are a little lost, it is not very average for kids in middle-class India to be on their own. Hell, we have 40 year old men living with their parents. Some families resist the move on excuses of safety, others do not even think of it as an option, especially if it is a girl, and yet others don’t just accept the fact that there are things in life that you never learn unless you are on your own, paying your own bills.

So while I went on a tirade on how I could lose my culturally rich Bengali mind if I was exposed to such intellectual stimulus for 2 years, my mom stopped me, and said, “You have to learn to deal with everyone and learn that beneath all the jazz, we are all the same. You are a Bengali and you like your books and music, but she is from the class that makes the money.  Each people have their own skills and that does not make anyone good or bad. She might drop dead if she finds out about your great mathematical skills.”

Despite that reality check (yeah ok, I suck at math), I still can’t wrap my head around Thomas Hardy being Fenton Hardy’s fictitious son.  But the bit about ‘everyone being basically the same” stuck on, and has helped me appreciate a lot of people in life.

What does this have to do with Martin?  A lot, I think. I am not going to get into a discourse on the unfairness or the unbelievable outrageousness of the entire episode. That will take 100 pages. But to my non-American eyes, it did bring out one basic problem in the American society that most of us are only too happy to ignore, or overlook.

People in the “emerging world” celebrated with absolute gusto when Obama was made the President. Office chatter revolved predominantly around how “only in America can you break free of the slave trading history and have a Black president”, college kids wore “yes you can” T shirts and bags, and people sang praises of the great democracy.

No conflicts of opinion there— it is, in many ways, a great country with great people.

 But the image most Indians or South Asians have of this country is kind of airbrushed.  

And as the Martin murder shows, the problems here are not only about distant issues of Ponzi schemers and rich, irate ex bankers.

We deal with our cross of caste and creed, and Americans deal with their baggage of apartheid.  And it is a dangerous baggage. Most people (needless to keep reminding everyone, most in this blog is most of those I met or have interacted with) in the country that has a black President still largely sees “blacks” as a group to be avoided when you are a minority in numbers, categorizes fashion in terms of “this is very black, I am not sure I can wear it”, and advises you not live in areas dominated by them. My through and through American familiarization guide categorically told me this and this block is more black and so unsafe and my rental agent told me she would not set up viewings in those areas at all, even if there were good or cheap apartments. Not that I had any particular liking for any of the off-limits places or that I am challenging their judgment. These women have been doing it for more than 15 years and they know their job.

But that is pretty much like we treat Muslims in India, I thought. Most of us have Muslim friends, respect the fact that there are many erudite Muslims who are a blessing to the society, and know that there is no reason for any educated and rational being to feel any bit threatened by them, and yet we treat Muslims pretty much like how black men and women are here. Avoid in large groups, steer clear of areas dominated by them especially after dark, discard fashion that is associated with them, and go on in our fake erudite lives without accepting that this is a problem.

Now I know from experience that there is some valid argument to this. At least in India, it is true that many Muslim neighbourhoods tend to have high crime rates, and from what I hear, such is the case here too.  As a Muslim friend says, “it is true that all of us are not terrorists, but it is also true that 99 percent of terrorists are Muslims.”  So ok, no smoke without fire, agreed.

But India is a backward, developing nation that is still struggling with basics like clean drinking water everywhere (which is not available everywhere in the US either by the way), female infanticide and general discrimination against girls (which I would love my American friends to give my Indian friends a lesson in), and so on and so forth. So on that level, I still grudgingly accept the fact that the large lot of Indians will have these illogical biases. But how does this persist in one of the most developed nations in the world? What is their excuse?

There need be none, because like my mother in her non English speaking wisdom realized, basic human nature tends to stay the same despite the differences of how and where you grow up. More so in its fallacies and biases. 

PS: did you know apartheid is still a huge problem in South Africa, as vouched for by my South African friend on a project here? "If I date a black guy no white guy will ever date me again." Her words, not mine. And judging from the fact that this is a 30-something working individual who has traveled quite a bit of  the world, I would bet it is not a "certain section of the society" there that we are talking about. I mean if the urban, working crowd says this, it can't be any better in the really rural, orthodox parts of the country. So all in all, it is the story of the pot calling the kettle black. 

Oh, pun was not intended. Maybe we should change that idiom and make it "dirty" or "sooty". 

Mind your Ps and Qs

    Of the many things that Indians have to adjust to in this country, one of the most difficult is understanding and maintaining the standards of propriety in daily living.
    I said in my last post that there is great respect for people and their work in this country.
    I have noticed almost without exception, tenants talk to the building boy the same way they talk to their neighbours and all human labor-- from your carpenter, to house cleaning, to whatyoumayhave is extremely expensive.
    A simple translation is: "you are using my skill set, so you had better appreciate it. No one is stopping you from cleaning your house yourself, or mending your bathroom sink, but if you want my help, you pay. And that does not make me a lesser person than you."
    (most)People in this country think like that, so the regular cleaner is often asked to join for a drink after work, and also tipped while at work.
    However, years of practising this has extended this well measured cordiality to such extremes that one has to be blind not to notice the plasticity in the entire scheme of things.
    Commuters on a bus at 6 in the morning wish and greet the bus driver on the way out. I know, because I take that bus everyday (yes, I wake up that early.) Sounds good, but before long, I was forced to wonder if every single person in the bus is actually grateful that the bus driver is doing her duty, or it is just a reaction mechanism?
    I took a closer look at those people, and realised that none of them were even looking at the driver when they said thanks, and neither did the driver. People just go through the mechanism because that is the way they have grown up.
    Just like people in India do not even think of greeting the bus driver on the way out because that is the way they have known.
    It IS a reaction mechanism. I don't blame anyone. No one can be that bright and cheery everyday so early in the morning, but then the natural question is, why make yourself to do it?
    And I will preempt you and say this here. A fake greeting is probably better than the stand offishness drivers and other blue collar job holders get from the rest of us back home, but what gets to me at times is when that falseness creeps into all aspects of life, and somehow makes it difficult for people to interact.
    People here may be friends, but they formally check with each other every single time they make any small decision or move. For example, my Indian friends would think nothing of taking a bottle of water from my desk for themselves if they need it, or sharing my food.
    My American friends will. Actually, most won't even ask, because they do not think it is nice or courteous to ask me to share something I bought with my money.
   Now when it comes to my pricey stilettos, makeup or even wine, I appreciate that mentality like every other urban, educated, working friend or acquaintance back home.
   But I doubt people can take it beyond that to everyday living without some kind of a hit. Manners practiced in extremes does have a way of draining you out.
    In this case, it is easily noticeable that it is more difficult for a person here to let others in than in India.
    There are so many "rules" to follow, that natural interaction is almost always stunted, because you are busy keeping a mental tab of the dos and don'ts.
    A friend who has lived in this country for some six odd years, had a date the other day and was describing it to me.
    "You have to keep note of all the rules, especially if it is a first date, because otherwise you will be cast as a 'type'."
    This is so well ingrained in society here that people practice it subconsciously-- you are a cat person or a dog person, you are an icecream person or a chocolate person, you are a trousers person or a skirt person.
    Difficult for someone like me, who dislikes both cats and dogs and wears trousers or skirts depending on what ironed top is avaliable to go with it.
    True, I like chocolates and have no great love for icecreams, but I dare you to stereotype me for it!
    Rules were always meant to help people, not turn them into zombies. A Delhi and a Calcutta can probably do well with following the rules of the road, which say bus stops are the places where the bus should actually stop.
    But if it is an emergency, sure, go ahead and stop it at the first convenient spot.
    Not so easy here. I had gone out for dinner one day when on the way back, it started snowing. We saw an empty bus in an empty street waiting at the light, and a friend asked if we could be taken in and saved from the snow. The driver said no, waited for the lights to turn green, and then stopped at the bus stop that was less than 3 feet away.
   Sure, me caught without a hat and gloves in the snow may not exactly make it as an "emergency" (I will give in to that argument, thought trust me, it felt very much like an emergency to me), but that somehow mirrors society here in its obsession with rules.
   There is this other anecdote that comes to mind. Someone I know had to recently call NYPD after he found a fellow student and roommate in such a state of waste it was difficult to figure what he had taken.
    In his words: "the guy is unconscious and retching, but because NYPD cannot touch him physically without a fair warning, they keep asking XYZ,  to please cooperate."
    Apparently after 3 such questions which were obviously met with no answers, my friend and his other pals butted in to assure the cops/paramedics that it was ok to lift him and do what it takes to take him to the hospital.
   You see what I mean?

Customer service, professionalism and efficiency: what we can learn from the US of A

Yesterday, I went into the Nike store on Michigan Avenue to buy running shoes. A pronounced cat, I left the ones I owned behind when I moved, quite confident I would never ever need another pair. As a friend once pointed out, it is a wonder I don't get along with those feline furry domestic animals. I think it has to do with the fact that we are too alike, at least when it comes to curling up on the couch and enjoying some cheese.

But I digress from what I set out to discuss.

So I walked into Nike Town, fell in love with a pair, over paid, and came home. And because I had to justify the money I spent on them, I went for a jog (I don't/can't/won't run).

But when the great wise men came up with idioms, they must have put a lot of thought into it. A leopard, you see, never really changes its spots.

The initial euphoria of the purchase over, I went on a guilt trip on how much I spent for shoes that I could not even motivate myself to use regularly. I'm not telling you how much, it is much too embarrassing, but let's just say I paid more than double of what I could really afford. So I looked up Nike's return policy.

Now I was more or less familiar with such policies thanks to my job, but even so, was completely bowled over by how efficiently stores here run themselves.

The entire process can be described in less than 10 words. I went, returned, got my money back. Just like that, no questions other than the necessary asked. (Do you have the receipt? Do you have the card you paid with?)

When that happens, it is but impossible not to compare similar Indian experiences. I am not your poster starry-eyed-over-Umreeka kind of person-- there are things about this country that totally get my goat-- but inefficiency is not something I can fault this land with.

I remember when I had to exchange (not even return) a pair of shoes at a Metro store on Bangalore's 100 feet road. I had to wait for about 15-20 minutes before a store personnel could tend to me. He took the pair from me, asked me edgily about when I had purchased them even though I had handed him the receipt, and then vanished into the interiors for another 15 minutes.

When he came out, I was told they do not have the size I wanted, so I had to check with them next week. Could they call me to let me know? No. Note here, stores in India do not have a refund policy-- shoppers can only get store credit.

And it is not just pricey Nike. Shop at Ikea, the mecca of everything affordable for home furnishing, and one sees the same kind of efficiency. Sure, you won't have two store people waiting on you when you shop at Ikea, but then they never promised you that. What they promised is cheap and efficient furniture, and that you will get.

On a budget, I bought lamps that were towards the lower end of their price range. When I set them up at home, the bases were wobbly. I told myself that cheaper products will come with some defects, until the Ikea person fixed them for me. And I realised what India lacks in its "shining" and why so may foreigners have some genuine problems adjusting to the ways of the country.

We make too many false promises, and take too much for granted.

A shopkeeper can be cocky with his client there because they know they can get away with it, especially if the client is younger. (We still try to stick to a strange code of respect towards elders that is getting more and more irrelevant, but more on that later.)

Shoppers deal with the fact that the ready to eat dinner they bought will not taste/feel like what is on the box, because "waisa hi hain."

Here, Trader Joes, a grocery chain, will take back an open pack of dip/sauce/food if the buyer is not happy with it. Almost no questions asked.

And I won't hear of the argument that there are too many people in India who would resort to cheap tricks like using the merchandise and then returning them. There are people who do that here too, and anyway, I don't see the lower income group shopping at Nike, Spar or Shoppers Stop in India either.

Respect begets respect, and I realised that all other points I talked about : customer care, efficiency, professionalism, are natural derivatives of that.

I respect the fact that you are taking time out to meet me, so I will be on time. I appreciate that you are not happy with the purchase you made and don't want to spend money on something you won't use, so I will accommodate you without making you feel cheap.

I understand that the boy waiting on me at the store is probably doing it to save up for his college funds, so I won't be snooty to him and talk to him like an equal.

India as a country has a long way to go to cover these basics, to say the least.

Let there be snow

So there was snow yesterday. Of all the things that I am having to adjust to, right from showering in the restricted space of a bathtub to food proportions that can feed the entire population of a small village in Asia, the snow is the most unsettling. The cold, you can live with. Trust me, if I say you can live with the cold, you actually can. I am a summer babe if there ever was. But the snow! It is nice, white, fluffy and pure when it first falls to the ground. It turns everything into a magic fairyland, just like the picture postcards we seee back home. And then, just when you think it is the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, they turn to slush. Grimy, black slush that wets your shoes and feet if you are stupid enough to not wear snow boots. Grimy black slush that is more ugly than normal after the virginal, angelic beauty of the first shower.

And it is here to stay. Unlike in India, where it is summer all the year through in most parts, most of America has winter all the time. Chicago definitely does. And so I am going to take a page out of my mother's life and train my mind to adjust and accept. Over 45 years of experience has taught her that doing so makes everything much more bearable. And I sure need bearable at this time.

Treatments, huh?

It's funny, how much we women take up, bear with, and accept in our individual attempts to be "beautiful".

Take our average parlour experience for example. 

Wait, before you get cheesed off and brand me, here's a disclaimer. I'm not your bra-burning feminist who refuses to shave her armpits and/or to use perfume.

Uhh, no. I like clean arms and legs -- on me and others ;) as much as you do. But my recent trip to one of these modern-day temples for women realy got me thinking.

My mom, like every other middle-class Indian mother worried about her daughter (read, worried about her looks, skin tone and eating habits) kept insisting it's time for me to take that plunge.

 If you are anywhere in the 20s zone, and a single woman, you'll immediately understand what I'm talking of.

For us,  "coming of age", is intricately related to the kind of treatments and the amount of money you spend at the parlour. Still lost? OK, I'll explain.   

When you are in school, the max you are scheduled to try out at the parlour is the haircut. Okay, hair styling for today's kids, but that's pretty much about it. You jump onto that styling chair, while dying to be like the style divas who disappear behind the parlour's screens/curtains, to emerge shining after an hour or two. Or not. :P

Then, you take to your threading/waxing chapter, so the screens are no longer a mystery, but you are still not a diva. 

And then comes the time when you graduate to the world of masks and steams and facials. Oooooh! Now, we have come of age!!

Well, being naturaly disinclined towards this 'coming of age', (it scares me, coz talks of marriage almost invariably follow), I agree I've been pushing it off and generally delaying the experience for some time now. 

But what the hell, I said to myself today, and bravely walked into one of the best parlours the city has to offer. Bangalore, that is.

I looked at the card and asked for one of the 'treatments'. (Why do they call it a treatment? Am I infected/sick?). 

Anyway, a charming lady (er make up is meticulosly done and her feet look like she hardly ever walks on Bangalore roads) leads me to a smallish room, tastefully done up in white and lavender.

"Lie down, relax", says Miss Beautiful Feet. With due credit to her, her smile seems genuine.

Anyway, I lie down, mortified of my horribly large feet and almost unkempt hair.

Did I catch a secretly disapproving look?

I already begin to have misgivings.

However, I'm inside now, and lying down on their bed, so there's no way I can run away, can I?

And the "treatment" begins. It's suposed to de-tan me, while cleaning my skin pores and generaly taking me a step closer to looking like Aishwarya Rai.

Hah. I suddenly have a vision of myself, with shining hair, glowing skin and 'take-your-breath-away' looks.

And that's enough to make me fight my misgivings.

But wait. Why's she tugging and pulling at my face? 

'Hummmph?' I ask

'Its the massage,madam,' the clever girl deciphers my question and replies.

Aaah, ok. So I let my cheeks be pulled at, lips twisted, forehead bulldosed for almost 10 mintes. Or so I think.

And just as I feel the intensity slowing down, I get slapped. Seriously. Slapped.

'Whtttt?' I ask. BUt I know already. MASSAGE. 

And I get slapped all over my face for some more minutes.

 I'm already losing it by now.

To make matters worse, now Im supposed to burn myself with steam. It's horribly hot, and don't these guys know the latent heat in steam is much more than in water? It burns!!

But Miss Beauty Feet is smiling. And she launches into a diatribe on the benefits of steaming oneself up, and how people come in and request more steam time and etc etc etc.

Her look of disapproval is no more subtle now. She's judging me.

And I'm sick of it all.  And I'm past caring.

Hah, I say. Will I let her pull away at my cheeks (I have always hated it, even when people would do it to me as a child), tug at my lips, press my nose with metal weapons and then burn me....AND rip me apart for this?

No. So I dish ourt a curt "you know what, I don't want the treatment anymore," and get off the bed.

Miss Beauty feet is so startled she doesn't  know what to do, and I'm out of the room before she can recover.

The manager is worried. Yeas, these high-funda places have managers too, like the maitre-d at high-funda restaurants.

But I just ignore the questions and the stares (and occasional jeery smiles). I pay and leave.

And I call my Ma to make a point. If she wants me to "come-of-age", she had better throw a ball.

Why Terrorise?

How important is it for young (and otherwise) people to be afraid of their parents?
This is something that has troubled me ever since I was a pre-teenager, and started appreciating the one glaring difference between me and my other mates (they weren't friends, and I hardly speak to any of them anymore. I met my friends later in life, and consider myself lucky to know them). But anyway, this is not about my friends and non-friends, it's about that question that has troubled me for quite some time now, and also about the glaring difference between me and most, almost all, others. That is, being scared of ma and baba. I never have been, now or ever.
Does that make me one of the bad people? Does that mean I don't love or respect my parents? I don't think so.
I have always failed to understand the big gloating hoopla parents make about how terrified their kids are of them. Years ago, when the "aunties" of the neighbourhood would prattle about it, I would notice my ma keep quiet, having no contributions to make to the terror stories. My baba, in the rare occasions that he did land into one of these gatherings, would softly but deftly put in his views: "Moon or her brother are not terrified of us, and I see no reason why they should be"...well, not always those words, but something to that effect.
As for me, I would hear stories and first-hand accounts of domestic fear-factors everyday of my life. "My dad will kill me, my mom will clobber me"... they will this, they will that, they will basically flip at every attempt that the child makes towards having an independent existence.
And I would often wonder, am I missing something in life? Is my house the weird one, where there are no death threats or the necessity to hide, hush-up, act?
It was much later that I realised how weird my house was/is. Weird in a wonderful way. I have never been terrorised of my parents, so I have never had the overwhelming need to lie to them, or to hoodwink them.
Which is why I speak to my ma as if she were a friend ( okay, I will openly accept that there are some things that I do that they don't know I do, but that is really another story. I'll let in one reason here, and that is this. I firmly believe that different people have different places in your life. So, a friend cannot fill in for parents and vice versa. Notice, I said I speak to ma as if she were a friend. Maybe I'll write about it sometime later.)
To get back on track, let's fast forward to my college days. This is when I learnt that the in-house terrorisation has nothing to do with age, and that people become so whimpy with the constant grueling throughout their childhood that they barely have any will left to stand up for themselves. So what if they are 20 by now?
"You read The God of Small Things? I heard it's meant for adults." That's a first-year graduate pursuing a degree in English Honours (who's also my immediate junior) from one of the most reputed colleges in the country.
I stare, gulp, try to disguise my disgust in an awkward smile and hide my laughter by coughing. The most I manage is "Well, yes, it is meant for adults, but aren't you already 18?" And then I walk away. Not because I have nothing more to say. Oh yes, I do, but because I figure it would all be lost on her. I later find out how her mom (or was it the dad) always had a "strict watch" over what books she read, and what movies she watched, and she would be so scared of them that she would never venture out on her own. I know, I know, this could be a boon for fresh young minds, but why is it that most of the times parents keep the "watch", kids learn to read nothing more than Sidney Sheldon and often name Femina or Vougue or Overdrive as their favourite books?
Or helplessly accept that they cannot sit through any movie that makes them exercise their cerebral facilities even a bit? As far as I have seen, the "strict watch" destroys more than it builds, and coupled with the terror factor, well....
I know someone who has always balked at the fearlessness in my family. Her idea of a perfect mother (I speak more of mothers because where and when I grew up, moms have always had more to do with the moulding of the child, as most were home-makers and were more in touch with their children's lives) was/is of someone who has absolute control over her child's life, and in return, the ideal child would drop dead for fear as soon as s/he heard "ma ke boley debo" (i'm going to tell your mom) from any quarter.
Today, her 14 year old child hides more number of things from her than I could have even begun to think is necessary at that age, has an orkut profile that she uses to make "chat friends" who call her up late at night to often whisper ugly things (I know, as I'm a confidante, and I'm never going to let out the child's identity), complains about the "demonic mother" to anyone who is willing to lend a ear, and in general, cannot wait to move out of the parental home.
But then comes the big doubt. In the form of my sibling. He and I are opposites in more than external appearances. Where I live on books, he has hardly read one outside of his syllabus, while he's a sports enthusiast, I run away from any mention of the word sports, where I have always been a smart worker (and would hence tide through my academic years with pretty decent marks), his is an eternal struggle to cross the 40-mark line.
And my parents would often call up (by now I was already away from my parent's house), worried specially about his academics, his antics with the motorbike, his fights with other boys on the block (I'm tired of telling my kid brother that the smart never get caught. At least, not while boxing each other.)
But anyway, it was then that I often thought, would it be different if he were, like others, scared to death of our parents? So he never would think of not studying when asked to, of never doing anything we was forbidden to. But then, one day, Mrs-Demon-Mother's child, who would study, eat, exercise, talk, smile all with the Ma's permission, failed to graduate to the next class.
"I have no idea what happened. The child would be at the study table for as long as I asked. She never dared disobey. How could this happen?" wondered the mom.
My ma calls me to update me on how my brother, yet again, managed to clear by the skin of his teeth. And on the mom-in-question's predicament.
I sigh and laugh at the same time. Yes, the child would sit at the study table...thinking of newer and better ways to hoodwink you, knowing that the simple way of saying "Mom, I really don't want to study for so long today, can I get off this once" wasn't an option.
And thinking about it, my kid brother might have his faults, but we know well enough to trust him. Where play-acting is increasingly becoming the thing to do within families, mine is one where we talk, laugh, shout, scream, love, yell at each other without the slightest pretence, or the slightest misgivings.
So there, guess, I know the answer to my question now.