Scenes from a wedding

‘Mon weds Kohima’ glittered on a red velvet board outside the venue, as the sun set on their single lives. Mon wore a shining suit and tie, smoking secretly in the balcony in his changing room. He didn’t wish to get married, but this was the best catch. He was 26, educated and overpaid due to the trap called potential, his stock at its peak – it was time to sell. He wanted to roll the weed in his pocket and join his friends, who were pulling outside with religious fervor. He had also wanted to marry one of the girls pulling outside… they were new age liberated women, with opinions and second names they wouldn’t surrender to his masculine whims… “Girlfriend material… good to fuck, but cannot live with them” his best friend Dim had told him a month back when he was having second thoughts. Mon wanted a pure girl, untouched by the evil world outside, of which he was a part. He dreamed of undressing Kohima, watching her blush with the shyness of untouched purity, which tugged at his pants already. He lit another cigarette and slipped into a dream… piping hot food awaiting him every evening, freedom from household chores, obedient sex whenever he pleased… he liked dominating, and wondered if Kohima would complain to her parents if he tied her up.

Around the same time Kohima sat with Ahmed and drank vodka. Rum was her thing, but vodka didn’t smell. She guzzled her third drink and licked her bee-stung lips. Alcohol made her horny, and Ahmed sensed this and walked around her and held her throat from behind and kissed her… a farewell kiss, she thought as she felt his arms slip under her dress… he clumsily lifted her to the dressing table while she struggled to suppress her moan… things clattered, bottles fell and broke, the room was filled with the smell of perfume… in her drunken disbelief she felt him inside her, reminding her of everything she had tried washing down with the vodka… for the next few moments she lived in another world, where they were birds, free from the infinites strings of real life. The serendipity of her unwed life she now bid farewell to, as he stroked her violently. One Last Time, she thought.

Ahmed was from another religion, and didn’t have a regular job. His most regular income came from copying assignments for rich college kids… sometimes his phone would ring and he would rush off to fix someone’s broken bike or car… he ran errands for households, paid their bills and dropped their kids to school, fixed the leaking pipe and listened to wives pouring out their woes (he was their free shrink)… by night he arranged all things illegal except children and violence… he was the man who could fix things for you that you couldn’t fix yourself – because money breeds ignorance. Why do something when you can buy it off the shelf? Ahmed owned the shelf. He could get things for you that you couldn’t get yourself –because with fame and wealth comes a disease called self-respect. Like the whorehouses which you crave to visit but cannot be spotted visiting. Ahmed never said no (except for children and violence) – why say no when you can put a price on something?

But Ahmed had younger siblings whose future sat on his shoulders… running away was not an option. Their communities didn’t get along, and convincing them was impractical. Not all stories have happy endings. Some die under the weight of the one constant in our evolving race – convenience. Ahmed and Kohima decided to not fight society and its infinite strings that pull them in directions they didn’t choose.

So they made love as a farewell to their unfulfilled unspeakable love – the hazy potential of which made it more alluring. They held each other tight for a few minutes when senses of time and space were warped and flushed down the pot. The dramatic weight of the moment was knocked out by a knock on the door. Luckily, it was Simal – Kohima’s best friend and co-conspirer, who warned them of the hordes of relatives arriving to fetch her. Ahmed kissed her quickly and made a quick escape. Kohima’s eyes were (also) wet as she quickly arranged her dress and sat on the dressing table, pretending to be busy looking pretty.

Mon’s father Billu was a nervous wreck, running the most challenging management assignment since he graduated from business school three decades back. He wished education were of greater help than earning a sweet salary as he attended to the countless relatives and in-laws. His education and dedication had lifted the family to prosperity, which was under public scrutiny tonight..

Billu’s mother Mary was 75, grey-haired and wrinkled like she just walked out of a washing machine, living with the mad confidence of someone who knew 76 is unlikely to happen… she disliked her son’s wife Billi because of Billu’s limited love that they had to share. Despite the tablets, age had its benefits – respect and reverence, and the illusion of wisdom that everyone found in her words. When she fell down in the loo and broke her hip, she stayed in bed for 3 months, during which time Billi took care of her like her son couldn’t. She took leave from work and, amongst other things, helped her shit into a pan and wiped her ass clean. Still, the hatred ran deeper than the hole that Billi cleaned.

This was Mary’s last chance to get drunk on power, and she drank hard, compensating for a youth spent dancing for the pleasures of people much older and now long dead. She could barely walk, ate finely mashed food that required almost no digestion, fought a dozen ailments that cling to old age like flies on fresh shit. To her credit, during the pre-education days, she had toiled hard to raise a family with the little nothings her husband managed to earn. Her husband could’ve been mute and people might not have noticed, but he was tired after a lifetime of obeying his wife. If only feminists knew all this they’d be incredibly proud.

Mary’s husband managed to retain a name of his own – Johnny, and had his own share of old-age friends. He ate even more finely mashed food, without salt or sugar or anything that tickled the tongue or altered his blood, and pissed into a tube that ran from his penis to a bottle that proudly showed off the color of his piss. Johnny was deeply embarrassed to walk around carrying his pee, so he hid the bottle beneath the seat and crossed his legs so people couldn’t see. Through all the painful weekly trips to the hospital, a Mary who turned more Antoinette by the day, the nightly spasms in his chest, and grandchildren who mercilessly made fun of his pee… he pulled on, driven only by the urge to live on for life’s sake. There was no purpose, no hope for a better future, and certainly no happiness in life… but any pain can be weathered by the strongest force in mankind - fear of death. He could hear whispers of his eight sons forming early alliances in the fight for his wealth, and when he closed his eyes his sons morphed into vultures and hovered over him.

Sitting at the wedding, staring at the countless grandchildren that he indirectly helped spawn, he remembered his eldest grandson asking him quizzically how he had the strength to have eight of his own. He remembered his youth when there was no television or internet or movies… there was one clear vent for boredom. His grandson didn’t know that Johnny had really fathered 12 kids – 3 of whom died in child birth and one died of diarrhea at the age of 3. Yes, the next time your shit turns loose, remember that people die of it. Before you accuse Johnny of obsolete nostalgia, you may want to know that children still die of diarrhea in certain dark patches on our map – 3 per minute, if you wish precision.

Around the same time, Johnny’s fat grandchildren walked around like advertisements of the prosperity that now besotted their large family. Some of the kids were so obese that their chins ate up the neck and merged with their shoulders. They sat at the dining hall and ate like pigs (no offence to our porcine friends). Skinny men served food cooked in the huge cauldron they called kitchen. The cooks were muscular and dark and wore thin vests soaked in their sweat, which dripped into the food, adding much needed salt. The old guy stirring the soup scratched his itching armpits, freeing curly strands of white hair, which flew without a care, landing where it pleased.

While the curly hair was garnishing the soup of the day (and more elegantly – the coconut rice)… Kohima was bathed in gold that her father bought with a loan. If the chains were not made of some shiny metal she could’ve been a prisoner. She felt no different for the shine, and walked out carrying 2 kgs of metal and the self-esteem of elders. Her mother wore half a kg of shine herself, while Supong wore rings on all 10 fingers. People who shook his hand felt more cold metal than warm hand. The next-generation photographer – Humbal, who left his corporate job and now clicked colourful pictures, whose inexperience came at a discount (distrustful, they also hired the traditional guy), clicked the girl’s every move and every breath. He also spun stories around them – which gave an aura of romance to the marriage of convenience. Humbal preserved as much shine into one frame as is optically possible, and later enhanced it using photoshop, knowing it would massage the fragile egos that paid him. He knew what normal photographers didn’t – people liked bokeh and black & white. So as he clicked, you could listen to an inner voice (of Nagesh Kukunoor in Bollywood Calling?) that screamed “I wan’t more bokeh! Put more bokeh!! NOW!”

While Humbal spun a sympathy story on the poor bride’s 2 kg burden while she waited for the groom, unseen old skinny women and men carried sacks of rice and vegetables into the kitchen. Two men sat at the back slitting the throats of ducks as they quackquacked, while two others worked on the chicken. In a nearby construction site, women carried bricks and cement, while their husbands smoked beedis and built a wall. 6 year old Amu, whose father was busy chewing weed to forget the pain of building a wall – the pain of building so many walls yet never having one for his own family - had her yettobenamed 1 year old brother strapped onto her back as she foraged the waste that the wedding produced. The food that couldn’t fit into old Johnny’s fat grandchildren’s fat-chins-that-threatened-to-swallow-necks made its way to the dark pile of waste piled up outside the kitchen. Amu squatted and gathered food into a plastic cover she had picked off the road, to take back to her parents and their wall-building-cement-carrying friends. She had to fight off dogs carefully, for she couldn’t afford to get bitten. The dogs could sense her fear and inched closer. She threw picked up 3 stones and threw one at the dog, screaming in her 6 year old voice. When she turned back, the food mine had been taken over by rats – which are braver than house-rats, like Amu is braver than the fat kids who helped create the food mine. She kicked the pile violently, and one rat flew and fell on another pile of human gluttony. She watched two of them run into the kitchen, and felt envy fill her heart. She got up to leave when an older kid from the neighborhood snatched her plastic bag and ran away. She sulked in dejection, and looked around for another plastic bag and another pile. She was still happy that there was so much food to scavenge; so long as buildings were built next to wedding halls, it was a almost a dream… life’s other problems are so much simpler with a full stomach, she thought, and looked forward to each wedding with more eagerness than the Mons and Kohimas of that night.

Not far from Amu, Ahmed squatted against the wall, making oral love to the bottle of rum, as he broke into fits of crying. His customers heard no for the first time that night.

Back inside the wedding hall, flashlights went off a thousand times, wedding albums were created with people smiling fake-smiles, stories were spun and history written. Mon wed Kohima, on a red carpet that hid untold secrets, secret fears and frightening truths.Mon suppressed his eagerness to cut to the chase that night… Kohima shed tears that people mistook for joy and the pain of separation from family… Ahmed lay on the road outside, staring at the sky and choking on his own puke (he didn’t die, so no rockstar ending!)… Johnny watched his pee drip into the bottle, holding onto life nervously… Mary picked on irregularities in the ceremony and expressed her disapproval, despite which she was the most content person in the entire crowd… Amu returned home with so much food that the builders had a small party that night under the same stars they shared with Ahmed.

The next day, the wedding album came out on a CD titled “Happily Ever After – Mon & Kohima”

the story of pleiku

Pleiku was born at 11 pm on a night with no moon and no power. People said it was a bad omen. Starting with the immeasurable pain he caused his mother while coming out, anything that went wrong was blamed on this. Alternatively, they could’ve blamed the cat sitting on the bed or the blue shirt that his father was wearing, but they didn’t. For the first few years everyone found Pleiku cute. But all babies are cute, no? Slowly Darwin drew out of Pleiku differences that make us different. He grew up into a slow, shy kid, not notably good at anything. He watched movies where the main guy appears useless yet has a talent hidden. Pleiku searched everyday in the mirror and found nothing. Through adolescence he got picked on by boys who couldn’t pick on anybody else. He personified purposeless existence; floating through life like nothing separated yesterday from today. The only thing he looked forward to was the next morning’s newspaper, which he loved reading over an hour long dump. Teachers with frustrating lives took it out on kids who misbehaved (as kids must). But Pleiku had no friends and didn’t say much, so it was morally challenging for the teachers to beat him. Still his teachers yelled at him for his stupidity. Back home, his parents fought silently, and the times they went too far apart Pleiku was the invisible cord that pulled them together. Wedded in a loveless relationship, their purpose in life was to educate Pleiku, keep him away from vices, and marry him to an obedient girl of their choice, who will then take care of them in old age and make babies (nothing satisfied them like seeing the baby’s penis) who can then be educated, kept off vices and married off.

Higher education took him to a college far away from home and parents, who he unfailingly called everyday. He never understood why his mother asked him what he ate in that shithole of a mess in college. Far from home, where nobody knew of his silent past, Pleiku reinvented himself. He loved the fact that he could be anybody he wanted to be; people simply assumed that he’d been like that all his life. He got ragged, made friends, drank and smoked... by now he’d learnt to score enough to get by, and thus drifted thru 4 years without a scratch. Some nights when he drank rum by the lake bordering his college, he wondered why he couldn’t live here forever. Why graduate and become like his parents?

Pleiku made so many friends that he forgot his forgettable time in school. Looking back, it seemed like somebody else lived in this body of his. His mum still called to enquire what he ate, which he found increasingly silly and irritable. He barely spoke to his father, who paid his fees unfailingly, who made sure he had smart clothes to wear, who trusted him implicitly - out of love, not confidence.

Towards the end, Pleiku found a girl who thought just like him. Next to his reinvention it was the best thing in his life. It was so unbelievable that it kept him in disbelief for a good year. By the time he believed (which promptly made it less sweet) he was sitting in a cubicle with bright white lighting for maximum efficiency, punching mindlessly into a computer like everyone else in the room. He had moved to another city, and his girl had moved on. His friends were all scattered like dots on the map, getting hitched with someone or the other. His life went back to school, where it felt like the day never ended, each sunrise merging seamlessly into the next.

Pleiku’s parents looked for a suitable girl for their kid, who they felt was calm and soft-spoken. Pleiku was sniffing 30 and had no fight left in him to find a girl for himself. He liked plump women, and picked one from the first list of 13 pictures that were given to him. Her name was Dalat. Much later Pleiku wondered how his life would’ve been if he had been as decisive all his life. He only saw Dalat once before she became his wife, when she prostrated in front of him and sought his blessings while he approved the match. Even though Pleiku had agreed to everything the rival parents had said, he still had to watch them fight in his wedding over things he didn’t care about. After such prolonged starvation, he was merely hungry to dip his beak. The girl loved the spotlight and all the pampering. Never had so many people worked so hard to make her look pretty. What she didn’t know was how her whitewashed face contrasted against her brown arms, despite which she had now achieved the pinnacle of her pretty existence… and how things would go downhill from here.

They spent the first 2 weeks welded in bed. For the sake of their families and facebook (and thanks to the digital revolution) they took 800 pictures, going out once a day so they didn’t appear too obsessed. When they got back they painfully realised that life existed outside of bed… that there were dishes to be done, clothes to be washed and chores to be completed… Pleiku hated it even more that he was now responsible for another person. Dalat went to the temple every morning and prayed that a little penis was growing somewhere inside her… when the doctor spotted the penis on the hideous scan, Pleiku’s parents opened the sweet box and fed Dalat until she threw up. They took such good care of Dalat that even in her dreamy eyes she knew it wouldn’t last after the baby came out.

As Dalat grew bigger with Hue, Pleiku cursed the baby for killing his sex life. With Dalat due in one month, Pleiku lost his head and picked up a whore on a business trip to the far-east. He liked how he could have the girl without being responsible for feeding her tomorrow. He resumed his love for alcohol and smoke which he’d shelved thanks to sober colleagues and the excitement of baby-making. On weekends he started snorting with his old pals from school, bonded by the common purpose of escaping the purposeless present.

After the initial excitement of the new baby, Pleiku couldn’t wait to see his little Hue grow up and learn to pee and crap by himself. Every Monday Pleiku cursed reality for being such a bitch. During this time he sought frequent trips to the far-east while Dalat was tormented by her in-laws. Dalat knew that the only way out was to have another penis inside her, but Pleiku – no longer hungry – steadfastly refused to be responsible for another mouth.

Dalat could smell other women on Pleiku, but by now she didn’t care enough to reform Pleiku. She quietly waited for his end, which came on a Sunday morning. They found him by the lake in his college, smelling of rum, nose white without cotton, with a filmy streak of red and bile dripping down.

Dalat took the money and Hue, and left for some place far away. Before leaving she spat blood-red betel juice on the pictures of the Gods worshipped by her in-laws. Pleiku’s nameless faceless friends had absconded, fearing questions about the white in Pleiku’s nose. His parents stood crying alone at the mortuary, watching their flesh and blood burn in the oven, wondering what they did wrong.

one step forward, two steps backward

There are two kinds – the oppressors and the oppressed. Sometimes the oppressed hit back, like when the Maoists decide to screw the Bengal government, or when they get the politicians to reserve seats for the lower castes in universities. The Forward Ones cry in protest. The Backward Ones know that a rule once made is hard to shake. Ask Ambedkar no?

The Forwards argue that we should focus on primary education, and uplift the masses instead of lowering the bar. Fair enough. In an ideal world, we could use primary education to liberate The Oppressed – oppressed since we began recording history. The oppression of The Forward Ones has just begun, and they’re weeping already.

In my Brahmin school called P.S. Senior in Mylapore, Madras, I recollect seeing 2 lower caste students in my 15 years holed up in that school. Now that I think of it, perhaps there were a few more, bunched up and banished from the rest. Then I looked up Wikipedia, which generously put my school as one of the top 5 schools in Madras, along with similar schools with purely elite or forward children.

Some 3 year old kid is taken to my school’s Principal, who then passes judgment on whether the kid is suitable for this school. It’s no coincidence that the Principals always pick one way. Essentially, The Forward Ones impose near 100% reservation right at the start, and then go on to celebrate their success and crib about reservations in higher education.

This kind of unwritten social reservation is infinitely more crushing than a 50% hurdle the Forward Ones face higher up… there is no number fixed, no explanations required… and nobody finds it odd. There is pride in sending kids to these schools. There is pride in oppression.

For the sake of the Principals who judge 3 year olds, and their kind, I hope hell exists, with 50% reservation for The Forwards.

rain

another storm in pleiku. a swim in the lake. rain is cold, lake is warm. a few feet below cold current grips feet. rain bounces off lake's skin like baby bulbs flickering. infinite baby bulbs. lungs are tired, feet tickled by slush and grass. floating alone to the sound of thunder and rain.

Skin

In a land of silky hair and smooth skin, where people were white thanks to the Chinese whose sperm and eggs spread like the dingo in a large island, lived a group of brown skinned natives in conflict with the outside world. That they survived the attack from the most voracious breeders in the world is credit to their will and discipline.

While the rest of the country thrives on vices, the natives are a peculiar, sober bunch. Contradict : The entire community wipes out 3 days on toddy when someone dies. Like celebrating the life more than mourning the death.

They live in houses not too different from before the Chinese sperm and eggs first arrived over a thousand years ago, unaffected by changes elsewhere is education, healthcare, farming methods… entering the village is like visiting a live museum.

The man invites us into his wooden house on stilts, spreads a mattress and we sit down. There is one room with a small partition for his eldest son and his young wife. He has a little farm full of coffee, grown and sold at whatever price the only middleman visiting the village offers. Lack of choice makes life simpler. Fewer things to decide. Fewer decisions to regret.

The rain came like an angry ghost. Water sprinkled on us from top, and he apologized. He also apologized for not having drinking water to serve at that time. His little children sat next to the burning wood as dinner was being cooked and played with corn in the fire.

One of the Chinese descendents in our group of three is encouraged to light up even though nobody in that house smoked. No ashtray is necessary since the wooden flooring has gaps providing a large tray for the ash.

The different skins live in close proximity, share the same society. The rest of the country finds no use for the dark-skinned. They’re primitive and uneducated, and treated like the American government would treat an aspiring egalitarian society in a cave rich with oil.

The white-skinned shower contempt and hatred is rarely not reciprocated. They fought and spilled blood and bullets some years back. Contradict: In my factory the white-skinned refuse to work with the dark-skinned, not vice versa. Elitist behaviour and caste struggles don’t die in the face of socialism. It’s in our sperm and eggs.

Back to our farmer, who goes to work on a farm pulling out weed for less than a dollar a day. He has seven kids to feed, clothe and raise. Death is not uncommon, so they learn quickly and well to deal with it. There is so much uncertainty in life that they truly live in the moment. The warmth was genuine, the happiness honest and overwhelming. Truly, happiness is poorly correlated to things outside our mind.

Before we left I wondered what he thought of us. My capitalist roots won’t have much interest in his town for they don’t have any resources that can be plundered and passed on so you can drink and piss out.

Maybe the outside world isn’t a happier place.

Fast Runner

As kids, Fast Runner and Joker were inseparable. Joker envied Fast Runner for how fast he could run. In Joker’s eyes it gave Fast Runner unmatched power in this world. Like a caste system. How fast one could run was determined at birth, and stuck like caste.

During competitions in school, Joker would cheer madly for Fast Runner, even if the bigger boys often outran his friend. Fast Runner couldn’t charm the teachers or the girls. Running was his thing.

Joker, Fast Runner and their gang of kids would eagerly await the end of the day in school. The shoes slowed them down, so they were kept in a heap and played China Town - an exotic chasing game with rules nobody outside the kids knew. Till dusk they ran. Chasing and being chased. Like a video game, Chinatown had traps like railings and parapets, which were designed to favor the most athletic, who invariably sucked inside the classroom. Those 3 hours of sun after school was the only time they were elite and acknowledged suitably. So they waited, through the insults and reprimands from teachers through the day for the evening bell, like bird for air. Sports Day was even better than Birthday, because for the only time in the year, the fast runners earned the applause. Everybody got cheered on their birthdays.

As people's brains grew older and seemingly bigger, running was overpowered by exam scores. Fast Runner was no longer celebrated or envied like before. Joker, steadily average inside the classroom, scraped through. Fast Runner’s run stopped. They went to different schools, became older, and shed the innocence that once served as oil for their fry.

distrust, equality & gambling

Distrust is tiring. The world is out to suck on your wallet. Turns out that Co Huong is a bitch, who thinks she is Robin Hood. I was happier when I didn’t know. I’m the evil colonial bitch that everyone’s out to fuck. The big fat target that a blind fuck can hit.

Equality is against everything biology stands for. The oppressed are waiting to have someone to oppress or die trying. However, here its much harder to tell someone’s occupation (or social class) from the way they look or speak or are spoken to. The workers in my factory refuse to accept an office job because they earn more lifting bags than they would punching into a computer.

Vietnam is like a chronic chain-smoking gambler with a drinking problem and an eagerness to breed. Everyone bets all the time. And they’re always betting on the same side – the price will go up. The only time they stop betting is when they don’t have resources to continue speculating. Its hard to eat out without someone trying to nag you into buying lottery tickets. There is a friend’s maid who bought 20 kilos of onions and kept it hidden because she thought the price will go up.

Abstinence is easier when you don’t know what you’re abstaining from.

From The Hippie Uncle

We are on the highway.

One more hour of bumpy jeep drive is to be covered.
The hot wind dries up the wet towel I have put on my face.

It is plain land with gentle undulation as far as the eyes could see. To break the monotony few trees, far from each other, dot the landscape. Its shade can barely protect a person from the scorching sun. Resilient trees. Not a soul in sight.

Somewhere in North Karnataka on a hot summer day. (40 C is cool)

We reach our destination, a cluster of thatched huts, big and small. Regional command centre for the social service organization.

Padmini is going to help them with their accounts and I escort her as this is her first trip. After the exchange of pleasantries with the top guy we are shown our respective huts.

Basics.
Below this level you will be in misery. There is a cot with a thin mattress to sleep on; a net saves you from the mosquitoes; between the sunny sky and you there is protection by coconut thatch; three feet high asbestos sheets act as a wall and prevents the occasional rain water from entering your abode; since you are a nobody there is no need for a door! Water trickles and drips down from the tap in the open-to-sky bathroom. I am comfortable.

Glasses of water just evaporate through the millions of pores on my skin in no time.
The stifling heat and the spicy dinner deprive me of sleep till the early hours of the next morning.

At this centre there is good amount of human traffic. A lot of activities go on at this place. Health, educational, cultural and economical aspects of the populace are taken care of.

Mid day.

There is a lull in the human activities after the lunch. A full stomach and a cloudless summer sky have sent most of the staff to siesta indoor. A couple of guys sitting under an open hut are browsing the news paper.

You could see him coming.
A dot on the horizon becoming larger and larger.

He enters the camp with his son perched on his shoulders. The boy about five years old is polio affected. The man talks with the health worker who was reading the news paper. From the body language and facial expressions of the staff you understand that he is asked to come back on some other day. Without a murmur he turns and heads back on the same path to trek back to his village. As he goes past, you catch a glimpse.

He may be in his early thirties. Browbeaten by fate. Poverty, extreme suffering, helplessness have made the face calm; no sign of sadness; no disappointment. Not even a flinch. Total acceptance and dignity .He just turns and walks off towards the horizon; clad in a worn-out shirt and a pale, knee length dhoti he carries the burden of his life back home. Searing sun, blistering tar road, parched earth and the heat wave dries up the moisture deep inside the nostrils. No head gear, no dark glasses, no sun cream, no water bottle; and he walks into the wavy cauldren.. ….barefoot.

***
the same Himalayan monk?

-KLK aka Sakshi

co huong

Co Huong, my maid, talks to me more than anybody else these days. The first day I met her, when she came to the interview dressed in a suit, I understood one in 20 words she said. now im up to 3 in 10. the pride she takes in her work easily puts me to shame. I’m not that passionate about anything, least of all work. She cares more about cleanliness and the house than I do… so im asking her to go home and sleep but she insists on cleaning something.

When im sick she offers some leaves plucked from her garden, or a piece of wood, some white paste… so I’m nature boy now. She feeds me vegetables and leaves that I’ve never seen, some plucked from my garden, experiments generously with Indian cooking and keeps me well fed.

When I come home drunk she’ll scold me and put some salt in my coconut water, which she knows I dislike. But the next morning she’ll bring green tea and watermelon juice to wake me up and threaten to pour chillis (plucked from my garden) in the next meal. Sometimes she really pours chillis, like a wicked joke. She once said that nobody in her place drinks… when we had a little beer party at my place, her sister was the beer dealer who delivered, and co huong took a splash. She later said she drinks only on occasions and 3 pints.

Co huong tells me she was born in 1960 (though she once claimed to be 55), in Hanoi. When you go from Saigon to Hanoi, ‘r’ becomes ‘z’ and ‘y’ becomes ‘z’, so there is quite a buzz as you go north, and co huong is very proud of it. She likes the 4 distinct seasons in Hanoi, for which she holds it higher than Saigon. In 1971, when she was 11, her dad was killed in the war and he wasn’t found until November of 2008. co huong grew up working in the rice fields and moved to pleiku where she now has three kids my age. The kids speak a mix of Hanoi and Saigon Vietnamese, and they help translate to English things she buys in the book of accounts.