Sibling love

(Published in Business Standard on August 24, 2013)

Apparently a barn owlet will squawk less if it knows its sibling is hungrier, taking up its own cause only once its sibling has been fed. Isn’t that sweet? Barn owlet siblings are just precious. They sound like atypical siblings, though—if you’ve ever watched piglets fight over access to a sow’s teats, you know the meaning of cutthroat competition.

My own siblings are a huge pain in the posterior, have authored some of my strangest and deepest wounds, and cannot be counted on to pipe down with the squawking just because I’m hungry. However, I do love them to bits, and will methodically disembowel anyone who messes with them.

Raksha Bandhan is the only Indian tradition I know of—not that I know much, having been raised by cultural wolves—that is dedicated to the sibling relationship. Except that it’s not, really. If it were dedicated to siblings, every sibling would tie rakhis on every other sibling. In its present form, Raksha Bandhan is dedicated to the same old paternalistic relationship between men and women that so many of our cultural traditions are dedicated to.

So while I love my brother, I disapprove of raksha bandhan. The notion of going begging to a man for protection makes me green around the gills. A holiday in the service of women worshipping men with sweets and men showering material largesse on women makes me hurl. The whole thing is, I contend, a lousy idea that feeds right into all our worst gender assumptions (women are weaklings in need of paternalistic protection). We tend to defend cultural tradition from critique, but there’s nothing innocuous about culture. It reflects and further institutionalises behaviour.

For some years in my young adulthood I enjoyed rakhi as a sort of social occasion. By the time it started to bother me, my brother was out of the country, where he stayed for years and years, so I never really had to confront the beast. But he’s back now, so I sent him a message stating that the cultural assumptions behind raksha bandhan are not to my taste, and proposing the following alternative: we exchange rakhis, and ditch all commercial transactions. That’s more in line with celebrating general fellow feeling among siblings. When my sister returns to live in India, which should be approximately the same day that pigs start to fly, I will propose the same thing to her.

So now I have a nice flame-coloured rakhi on my wrist, he does too, and we have pledged to support each other. Nobody has yet said anything about toning down the squawking, but at least we’re doing away with the one-way nonsense. I am now my brother’s well-wisher and protector, and he mine.

I inaugurated this solemn vow by offering his daughter five bucks to whack him on the bum without incurring his wrath. (I didn’t have change, so I borrowed it from Tara’s mother, who only had a ten-rupee note, which she said Tara could keep if she whacked him twice. It was a teaching moment: showing Tara that there is no such thing as a free lunch, and schooling her in the art of persuading someone to get on board with an idea that is not necessarily in their self-interest.) What can I tell you, once a sibling, always a sibling.

Tara is a much better sibling to her younger brother and sister: when her three-year-old sister attempted to blow out her birthday candles by sitting very still and going ‘Ffffffffffffffffttt’ many times with no result, Tara stepped in and helped.

In her place I’d have started eating the cake. Or at least squawking loudly.

Home alone: the vampire diaries

(Published in Business Standard on August 10, 2013)

Right around this time of year I begin to worry about garlic and crosses and whether either of them might cause my flesh to start smoking. It’s mostly the fault of the monsoon clouds. Delhi goes without sun for so long that I develop an anaemic pallor, or so I assume because mirrors no longer reflect my face. I develop a cataleptic tendency to lie rigid in bed until mid-morning because the darkness is fooling my circadian rhythm into thinking that it’s still only dawn. I develop an uncontrollable craving to sink my fangs into the necks of passing municipal councillors and drain them of their blood.

My therapist says that last thing is just rage related to sitting in traffic on waterlogged roads. Or at least that is what my therapist would say if I a) had a therapist and b) could attach giant flippers to my car and swim my way to his/her office.

I’m not really turning into a vampire. The reason I know this for sure is that vampires typically make a point of being very well turned out and slick their hair back to really bring out the pallor, while I still dress crappily and don’t always bother to brush my hair. But that’s the only real difference. I was concerned enough to look up the name for the mental illness that causes you to think you are a vampire. (The internet’s best answer: Puberty.)

If this delusion is partly caused by the weather, it is also partly caused by being alone in my house. My mother has left town for a few months, so here I am, rattling around the place by myself. Everywhere I go, there she isn’t. I spent the first few days in a state of cautious optimism, but wasn’t completely convinced that she might not yet leap out from behind the fridge yelling “Just kidding! Still here!” Finally I conducted a conclusive experiment by watching four straight hours of what she calls “American bilge” on television; the only single solitary possible reason that she didn’t make acidic comments the whole time is that she is definitively not here. I celebrated by having a dinner party, at which I left my guests to fend for themselves at the bar and at the dinner table, partly because I have dislocated my thumb and can’t do much with my hand, and partly because that’s what I do anyway.

I love my mother to little itty bits and have a wonderful time when she’s here, but I also love her to little itty bits and have a wonderful time when she’s elsewhere, having a wonderful time of her own.

But I digress. I was saying that there is a downside to solitude, resplendent though it is: if you are fairly introverted and like to spend lots of time on your own, and/or have a vivid imagination, and/or have just read a bunch of short stories with vampires in them, and/or have recently seen your thumb stick out at an unnatural angle, and/or have ever seen the face of Kristen Stewart, you risk ending up haunting yourself a bit. This is payback time for all the horror movies you’ve blithely watched during the day—especially those fantastic Japanese numbers in which creepy, poker-faced women slither down staircases on their bellies, or bend over your sleeping form with their hair hanging over their faces.

Home alone. It’s fantastic. But once in a while it becomes necessary to remind oneself, by stepping out into society now and again, that one is not a vampire, just a regular, garden-variety social misfit.

The Firm

(Published in Business Standard on July 27, 2013)

I was ten years old when Charles and Di got married. Shortly thereafter, I watched her cradle the new-born Prince William in her arms. So I got quite misty watching William and Kate holding their son in front of the same hospital, with Kate wearing a dress much like the one Diana had worn.

I’ve finally worked out why people like me, who think that Prime Ministers should walk or drive themselves to work and sit at round tables that erase hierarchy, can still get mushy about the royals. It’s because royalty is about as relevant to today’s world as a whalebone corset, so it’s an interesting oddity. Also I don’t have to pay for its upkeep. Royalty is a favourite old story, a story that is fascinating for being so completely out of touch.

And yet it keeps, with every generation, a certain contemporariness. Keeping tabs on what the British royals are up to is a lot like keeping tabs on Grey’s Anatomy when you’re not a doctor—it’s a glimpse into a small, specialised world, and the storylines of the characters can be compelling. I’m a sucker for love stories born of dark and twisty places. I’m also a sucker for love stories that might just rise above the dark and twisty places.

William and Kate are not only thoroughly modern royals—insofar as it is possible to be modern when you divide your time between palaces and pay dutiful visits to the colonies—they are also a likeable story. Kate is doing for Will what Diana did for Charles—grafting upon the cactus of the House of Windsor some blossoms of good looks and a likeable common touch (like not trying to hide her mountainous post-baby belly). William went and toyed with our emotions by getting thin on top (best Twitter remark during the royal labour: “Prince William’s heir is falling out”), but he’s still a very charming, presentable chap. I have a softer spot for the strapping, red-haired, often inappropriately behaved Prince Harry, but then I have a long history of poor judgement.

Anyway, they’re a nice young couple and one wishes them the best, so one forgives them for being royals. Plus, I quite like the Queen, who at her fluffiest makes Van Damme and Schwarzenegger look like sissies, and has the kind of dark and twisty humour it takes to call one’s extended family ‘The Firm’. Wouldn’t want to meet that old gal in a dark alley. I think she’s composed mostly of titanium.

That the world enjoys soap operas is clear in the insane royal baby-watching that happens every time a Princess gives birth. The Huffington Post got it right in a story headlined ‘Breaking News: Woman gives birth to Baby’. The story goes as follows:

“A married woman of childbearing age has given birth to a baby boy.
The event followed nine months of pregnancy.
"Both mother and baby are doing well," a spokesman for the woman said.
It is now expected that the baby will grow up.”

Will and Kate are allegedly trying to be as normal a couple as one can in the circumstances. It stands to reason that they’d want, as they claim, to give their sprog as normal an upbringing as possible in the circumstances. Luckily kids are completely oblivious to anything except being kids up until a certain age. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge can expect a large dose of normality on those inevitable occasions when little George Alexander Louis is being a royal pain in the ass.

Diary of a terribly good-looking fugitive

(Published in Business Standard on July 13, 2013)


May 1, 2011

Dear Diary,
I’m soooo bored. I’ve paced around the vegetable patch so often, it’s starting to put me off my food. I can hardly bear to watch my own threats to the United States on loop anymore—and that’s saying something. Things have fallen into a rut. Frankly, if I watch Debbie Does Dallas one more time, I may never be able to get it up again.

Sometimes, I swear upon the Almighty, I would kill to just be able to take a walk down the street, though of course, I’m happy to kill for less than that. You cannot begin to understand the frustration of being the most awesome villain of the 21st century, stuck on the third floor of this whacking great house in the middle of nowhere. There’s nothing I hate worse than a low profile.

And when I’m looking so good! Thank you, Just For Men. Laugh all you like, but grooming is a terrific pick-me-up. I’m sexier than ever with the grey gone, diabetes under control, three frisky wives, and that herbal viagra—and I can’t be seen in public. Grrrr. It puts one in a mood.

Of course, the fact that I’m here at all, living in the middle of an army that is busy hunting for me, means that I could probably cartwheel down the street in a bikini without incident. I actually did that once, in the reckless early years, but they didn’t see me. Once I walked up to an army colonel and tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Hey, which celebrity do I look like?” but he just looked the other way while whistling. Odd country. One day they’re going to ask a lot of questions.

Once, more recently, our car was stopped for speeding and the policeman had words with my driver. I had to hunch my back and tell myself: ‘Make yourself ugly, make yourself ugly!’ The Almighty must have heard me, because despite my being tall and so freakishly handsome, the idiot failed to recognise me. That was too close, though, so now I don’t put one single seductive black hair out the door.

I hope posterity will remember my good looks. I’m thinking of filming myself not speaking, just looking into the camera, maybe pouting and batting my eyelids, just so that all this beauty does not go unwitnessed and unrecorded. Sometimes, watching footage of myself makes me a tiny bit aroused. Speaking of naughty movies, at first I wasn’t sure that the Almighty would approve of watching porn, but given that paradise is about deflowering virgins, I’m going with the theory that sex is okay.

I look like a real cupcake in my cowboy hat—one of the few cultural items for which the infidels can be congratulated. It looks positively rakish. Goes with my rake-like physique. Ha ha! See, just because I’m seriously ill doesn’t mean I don’t have a sense of humour. Humour saves me from going all-out nuts. The other day one of my wives hoped that all the death and destruction was worth my children growing up without friends, in what I felt was a sarcy tone, so I fashioned a whoopee cushion out of the skin of a goat the van brought, and put it on her chair. Oh, how I laughed! A less good-looking man might have broken by now. But I keep myself brimful of dastardly plots, I keep a mirror handy, and I write my feelings down here.

It’s very late, must turn in. Tomorrow I have the regular chinwag with the Pakist—I mean, I have to see a man about a dog. Good night, dear Diary.

PS: I think there’s a rainstorm coming. Yay!