It's a fucked up world

The Olympics appears on a few poorly programmed Vietnamese channels. They're the kind who might play golf over the 100m finals.

I try to watch Usain Bolt's Beijing miracle online, but NBC thinks it's grossly unfair; they remove the videos off youtube, and when I check their site, the videos are only for American viewers.

I think we're sophisticated whores, selling everything to fuck-all NBC. I think everyone should get to see the Olympics free of cost.

NBC also schedules the miss universe evening gown contest at 8 in the morning here in Vietnam, so that fat american asses can be warmed in the wide couches, and get fatter on junk food while people elsewhere wake up at 530!

Next time someone in America complains about losing jobs to India, we should remind them.

I visited the War Museum in Saigon. It's difficult to imagine that America has any respect left in the world. They're so fucked up in the head that I think the world should fear them more than the terrorists or the bubonic plague.

Ticket To Ride

Due to a dip in inspiration, my apologies for recycling the old... October 2007, Madras

I’ve been on these roads before. Done this route many times, but that was many years back. The lights are whizzing past like a blur. I feel that the other bikes are conspiring to fuck me. I slip in and out of the dream. I think of how there could be a God inside me who’s controlling everything. I’m the guy on his computer screen, being ordered around by nothing more than the handle of a joy-stick. The music from the twin violins is reaching a crescendo in my head (not in the song being played). I think of something and go into a dream. Since I’m not paying any attention to the road, my body and consequently the bike are put on auto-pilot mode. I simply follow the guys ahead and ride with an absence of awareness. Suddenly I get back to my senses and I look ahead at all the lights, which appear brighter, probably because I’d just woken up. I can’t recognise the roads. It’s been many years, remember? Did I tell you that I’m good with the bike? If I were any less, all the luck and God can’t save me now. Not that I’m brushing aside luck and God. I find myself begging to the God inside me to stop fucking around and show me the way. Then I remembered that beggars can’t be choosers and that I can’t ask God to do shit. Maybe I could request. If he likes having a little fun at my expense, I can’t do shit about it. Then I remembered how at all these times of vulnerability, when my soft tender flesh was waiting to get salted, somehow, something inside me has risen up to save me. How did I remember the route back otherwise?

Suddenly I remember the road where I am, and I tell myself that it’s been awfully long since I left Katan’s place and I’ve reached nowhere. All the dreaming made me feel like it’s been a couple of years on the bike. I thanked God for helping me recognise the road that I’m in. Then I think of God. I feel some dormant power which records all things important in my life – like this road, which is helping me survive right now. It resides inside me and takes control when I give up on everything, when I concede defeat, when I believe that things around me are out of my control, when things seemed to be conspiring in ways I can’t understand.

The Mount Road is long. I look all the bright lights and traffic from the flyover and think of the booming economy, all the wealth being created and cornered, and how happiness is poorly correlated to all of these. Ten years back, people would’ve been thrilled to know that things would turn out this way. To know that the lights would be so bright and so many. To know that tamilmatrimony.com would have a hoarding higher than the ones which said Raymonds and I don’t remember what else.

I remember all my limbs shaking at the Nandanam signal. You know how the involuntary shaking gets more uncontrollable as you tell yourself to stop. A shock runs up my spine and I shake my head violently. I think that everyone at the signal must be looking at me now. Every move I make is being watched and recorded. Then I look around to see people staring at nothing in particular, as if they were professional spies. I calm my nerves down and make an effort to kill the paranoia. That’s the mistake. You can’t kill paranoia. At best you can quietly slither your way out of it. The signal turns green and I look at the maddening traffic and listen to the ugly horns screaming behind me. I feel a need to escape the crowd and I’m off the blocks like a wannabe college fresher eager to show how to open the throttle in a straight road and on a stupid scooter. It doesn’t take much effort – you need your right wrist to work a little and some sense of balance. For me, the latter seemed like a bunch of marbles dipped in oil, slipping thru my fingers. It can’t be true, I tell myself. There are somethings that you take for granted. Like getting 3 + 4 = 7 correct, though I just checked that after I typed it. Sense of balance is one of them. No matter how fucked up my head is, some things don’t go away. However, holding on to that bike on the straight Mount Road with its bright lights, I can sense the doubts creep up like slush sliding between the toes.

I wonder why I’m racing with the other mad fuckers and I realise that I’m a little mad too. I’m nearing Spencers, and I have to take a left, and Alsa mall and it’s sandwiches are only a couple of kms away. My hands start shaking and I feel them being taken away from my control. Control is another thing I took for granted. My hands were obeying someone else. I knew that it was important for my survival, and that my hands would never let me down in such a moment of need. I plead with my head not to give up on me and black out. I promise it some rest as soon as I cross Taj Connemera. When I get there, like a greedy moron I try to fool my mind into thinking that the promise never happened. But whatever was driving me yesterday was smarter than my greedy fucked up head, and I had to stop. I remember thinking that if I black out, I have to call bro so that he can come and pick me up.

Back at the bridge near Connemera, I kill the engine and take my phone out and pretend to be occupied, so that no one gets suspicious. I read a message from Somesh asking me to get fuel for his zippo. I keep my phone inside and stare around without looking at anything in particular, blinking like the worst criminal ever born.

I want to leave before the cops got me. So I speed off and wait at the signal. Suddenly time seems to have passed by quickly and I’m almost there at Alsa mall. The last 100 metres are painfully long. The mall simply wouldn’t come any closer. It’s like one of those ancient screensavers on Windows, where the scenery on either side is moving past but the finish line stays fixed in the distance. I stop the bike and stumble onto my feet clumsily. I am so clumsy that I’m sure half the jobless fuckers sitting there know that I’m running short of stability. I walk to the sandwich guy and order whatever he suggests. I’d say 3 sandwiches, and his efforts at repeating the order would be “ok, 4 sandwiches… then?” Sometimes I think he’s wiser and better equipped to make these decisions and agree to whatever he repeats. On other occasions, I feel like retaining some self-respect, so I assert my original order.

The bread omelette guy gives me the bread omelette and stares at me suspiciously - so suspicious that I feel guilty at having done what I’d done, of which I have absolutely no idea.

I take the bike out clumsily. Oh, and I’d cut the music out earlier, when I stopped outside Connemera. I figured that my disobeying hands could be a result of the trippy music. It had taken me close to an hour and a dozen shaky kms to arrive at that thought. I wonder what to do with my helmet, and so I wear it. I feel like an idiot for wearing a helmet on an Activa. I feel self-conscious and uncool. I tell myself that it’s wrong to judge yourself on these things and that this is uncool. But at this moment, my need to look good and maintain an image takes over and I ride the long route back, to avoid the crowd sitting outside Alsa Mall.

I keep telling myself that I can go back and prove a point to myself. It would be cooler to conquer my image fears. In any case nobody can see the face inside the helmet. But my need to appear cool or run away otherwise is too strong. I feel ashamed and weak.

I ride awkwardly to Chetpet and Swami’s place. There is a bunch of unruly bikers, who could be fairly categorised as anti-social elements, who are in some sort of drag race or genuinely speeding for someone’s throat. I see a Yamaha whiz past me, making me feel like a smaller man on the Activa. I hear screams of ‘Oye!” and “Heeyyyyyyy” for the next 10 minutes. For some reason I feel like I’m being chased. I take the right at the Chetpet signal and things calm down. Soon after, I enter Swami’s apartments and ask many questions to the security guard who has no answers. Let me clarify that my questions weren’t smart or witty. The guard was just indifferent towards life. He didn’t tell me where I could park or where Swami stayed inside that building. Ok that’s the end of that ride.

New country, old story

Today is one of those days when I feel like giving up, for want of pity.

Lick, soak in self-pity, but get out before you drown.

Post # 100

Many years back we used to wear ‘coloured clothes’ (we never considered the blue in our shorts to be a real colour) to school on our birthdays. We’d distribute chocolates with pride. It was the big day in school for every kid. The one day where the kid got everyone’s attention (at least once) no matter how ugly, how uncool.

On others’ birthdays, the mission was to score more than the one chocolate every kid in the class was owed. I’d plead that I promised never to eat a chocolate without giving one to my loving brother, who I hated. It was as untrue as a lie can be.

Later it became cool to get mad drunk on birthdays, thanks to sex-booze-smoke-guru Hari The Slapper. Rumor (initiated by Hari) has it that he has been taking two days off to drink since the year he stopped sucking to drink. Two days of both years at Indore, around the time of Hari’s birthday, were wiped off our slates. There was not a care in the world while we were on C-top at IIM Indore.

I miss Indore like I thought I would. But there are too many places in this world. I’m getting used to being alone, and life now is good and different.

The Child, at 24, is still curious and cribbing often.

Vietnamese

I think the people who first spoke Vietnamese didn’t want outsiders to learn. They came up with 6 tones, which they denote by putting various marks on top of vowels. It’s also a sing-song language. No singing = no Vietnamese.

English: Tư commits suicide slowly.

Vietnamese: Tư Tự Tử Từ Từ

English: The size of the warehouse is small; hence drying is difficult and miserable.

Vietnamese: Khổ nhà kho nhỏ vì thế độ khô khó và khổ

The language has many traps. Thieu means pepper, Dieu means cashew, and Thieu Dieu means disaster. Similarly, some word with a cap on the vowel could mean ‘God is great’, the same word with a question mark on the vowel could mean ‘you fucking bitch!’

Letter

"...My Vietnamese is improving. I can speak a little. Your food (mostly) I cannot eat because I’m vegetarian (an chay). Initially it was because of religion, but even later, when I wasn’t religious anymore… I’m confused, so I don’t eat meat. I might start one of these days though.

I’m from a city called Madras in India. It’s a big city – a little smaller than Saigon maybe. We have the second longest beach in the world.

I lived in Madras for 22 years. Then I went to a city called Indore to study business. Life in the hostel in Indore is the best thing. I miss Indore and my friends in the hostel more than Madras.

Most of my friends from Madras are from a younger age, and I’ve changed a lot since, so it’s not the same anymore. They’re now scattered all over the world..."

The Touchable Boy

Once there was a little boy from a village. He came to the city to work in a Juice Shop. Labour laws can’t apply to little boys working in juice shops. He lived with The Juice Shop Family, in their home. This was allowed because he was a touchable Brahmin. Fortunate boy, one might say. As the years rolled, we got used to having him around.

We played cricket with him, he joined us in festive meals and happy times… he even wore the sacred thread, which was like his swipe card to everything in my sizable Brahmin family.

Being a Brahmin didn’t solve all of the boy’s problems. The Boy had a Master, and the Master had Family and Friends, who, by association, became Masters in their own capacity. And there were Rules. The Rules were never broken, so nothing was ever said. The Boy volunteered to do any work he can before one of his Masters did. If there is a letter to be posted, if someone knocks on the door when everyone’s asleep, if the dishes demand work… The Boy will volunteer, out of instinct. He never needed to be told, never disagreed with anything. In every point of choice, he would naturally take the worst. The worst apple, the worst seat…

When I entered teenage, I’d steal five or ten rupees every now and then. The Boy would always give with a smile, like it amused him to give (in a round-about sense) my money back to me. The Boy stole some more for himself, and perhaps for others like me. The money, which was black to start with, got darker.

One day The Masters discovered the leak in their pockets. The Boy was beaten up and put in jail, where he confessed. Maybe my contribution to the leak was negligible, but The Boy never mentioned my name. In the Masters’ story, he was buried while still alive. Nobody speaks about him, like the episodes featuring the boy were lost in a fire. If they met him on the street in some impossible coincidence, they’d treat him like an irritating ghost from their past. An ungrateful dog, they might say in Tamil.

Indian food is an addiction that I'm struggling to kick out.

Yesterday, the maid who helps run our home got tired of cooking Indian food. Learning Vietnamese has helped me empathise.

The little note read:

“Sorry. I will’nt come tomorrow. I not working for you.”

Timber

Let’s say you’re in an exam where every kid cheats. The examiner cares, but there aren’t enough examiners to stop the kids from cheating. The powers that use the exam scores are blind. The just don’t know. If you’re an honest kid, you get fucked. What do you do?

A Vietnamese might say “Timber – same same!”