Giddyup, Waste Fellow

Em is sitting here, bloody wailing in my very own grandmother’s lap and saying that I won’t let her sleep, men. And it’s not even like that, no funny business, don’t worry. We’ve had no funny business since we were trying to have some sort of child two years ago and found out that my swimmers were more of back floaters than anything. Who can blame them? Nothing like glugging some fenny, staring up at the sun and letting the tide take you where it takes you. Bloody right those are my men, and I’m proud of them. We definitely don’t need any more children in this house. Brother’s got two rascals upstairs who won’t stop jangling across the floor, all day, all night, even in the sacred hours of the afternoon, and brother’s just changed the floors to linoleum because he thinks that’s the way to be. Bugger got upgraded to head chef on the cruise ship so got a new haircut, started wearing tighter shirts—someone ought to tell him you can see his big overripe tomatoes in those—and then went and swapped out the tiled floors for linoleum like some real big shot, and now all anyone can hear down below is the feet of his two little devils sticking to it and peeling off. That is, when they’re not already screaming, “Dada, can we watch another episode of Big Boss?” Bloody Bollywood rubbish, don’t ask me. When I was growing up we had none of that disco ball gangster shit. But my point is Em is howling in grannies lap… still! And it’s not because I keep her awake for any joy of mine, trust me. Since the news about my swimmers came through she started to wear these hideous housecoats. I don’t know why she pays money for them, might as well repurpose the gunny sacks that they store the ragi for the dog in. And the dog, don’t get me started on that one, can’t keep her yapper shut either and that’s no help. But Em in these housecoats, I wouldn’t be able to tell if I wanted, which was her navel and which was her safe deposit box because it all hangs over her like she’s some sort of whale shark and even when I’m looking at her right now, non stop slobbering all over Granny’s lap, I’m not sure if she’s become double or half her size.

“Cliff, look what you’ve done to this poor chile, look how tired she is. Whatever problem you’ve got you better get some help for it, you idiot.”

Granny thinks I haven’t been trying to get help, what and all I’ve been doing, I tell you. Brother’s wife said to try yoga, she’s the one who introduced the kids to the Bollywood. Pain in the backside, more so than yoga which made me fart like a sow in heat. Em herself said to drink a glass of warm milk before bed, that also had me heating up the blankets into all hours.

“You smell like a water treatment plant,” Em acted surprised.

“I never even drink milk in the morning,” I told her. “Who asked you to give me a laxative before bed?”

Mother said to try herbal tea, and she’s the one I can’t afford to ignore. Imagine if I did, then even now at 42, I’d get a nice thulping on the backside. So, she made me a cup, ruddy tulsi in it, tasted like cow dung and made me want to vomit. Then the father came into the picture, the old man in his banyan and boxers stood before me and cleared his throat,

“Son,” he said, “What about the Whim Hoff method?”

I thought this was the end. I thought, in fact, I might fall to the floor right there— my very own father, from downing tetra packs of Old Monk and putting sweet and sour ketchup on his upma, to this! Must have been talking to the brother’s wife too much. Someone should shut that woman up. Even when she does her yoga she’s always moaning and when I was growing up if any one of us was caught moaning mother would think we’d let the devil in, then she’d call in the exorcist, sacrifice two chickens and thulp the living daylights out of us.

“There’ll be none of those disgusting sounds in this house until and unless you’re on your deathbed and even then you better try and keep it courteous,” she’d say.

“Cliff!” Granny is saying. “Are you even bothered by this? Look at this girl, she is miserable. A lack of sleep can kill someone you know, and I am too old to still be sorting out your problems, chile.”

I tell them both I’ll sleep in the hall and that if lack of sleep was going to kill anyone it’ll be me first and then Em can sleep soundly because I won’t be there to ruin her precious sleep cycles in the first place.

“You have always been a stubborn boy,” Granny says.

I leave.

Three flights of stairs back to ours. Em and mine’s. Granny at the very bottom, Mum and Dad right above her, the brother and his clan nearest the heavens, a joke. They should get their own place if you ask me, it’s them that’s throwing everything off. I used to be able to sleep soundly. In fact, I used to be able to sleep anywhere and at any time. It was like that in school, maths and history in particular, the boys would call me sleeping beauty and the teachers would give me lashings. In church, mother would say, “Christ has died for you and here you are snoring right in his face.” But my point is I could conk out quite fine till the claustrophobia started, but I can’t tell anyone that, can I? Because then they’ll think I’m really pulling a number on them, or worse they’ll quickly pack me up tight in some dirty laundry and send me off to the nuthouse.

It was never a problem before. Quite simply, I’m a compact man, with compact dreams, and I never had any issues with a compact space. Tucked up tight and cozy, nothing wrong with it when you know the ruddy walls will stay where they are and not inch in on ya like some heathens in full suits of armour getting ready for the final countdown. I can’t stand it now, makes me shake in sweat. And it’s not any better when I open my eyes, let me tell you, momentarily it’s ok. Em will switch on the light, looking exhausted in her housecoat, she will put her hand on my back and say, “Again? What was it this time?” And I will be hunched over panting because I can’t breathe, the walls will be crouching down on my lungs, grinding their knees into my air sacs, each one bursting, going pop, pop, pop. But I will try and gather myself because I have to tell Em, “It’s nothing, just that bloody nightmare again, sorry Em, I’ll try the herbal tea tomorrow.” And she will continue to stroke my back till her eyes start flickering like the bathroom lightbulb and she says, “I used to have a bad dream about the hunchbacked laundry woman chasing me round the terrace, and I kept having it, till one day I turned around, screamed, ‘Get away from me you dirty rakshasee bitch,’ and chased her back, and it’s never happened since. Why don’t you try that?” And she will yawn and whimper and fall asleep, her mouth always open on the pillow, drooling like one Labrador only. In those moments, if I could keep the suits of armour at bay and pry my lungs open for long enough to wipe her cheek dry, kiss the beauty spots round her collarbones, join the dots all the way down to her navel, stick my tongue in, clean out all the lint and say something like oooh woooh hallelujah and joy joy joy to heaven above, just to let her bloody know, coz she forgot, somewhere in between the wedding and last Wednesday, that I would die for her, then I would, ten thousand times. But normally I can’t catch my breath long enough to even pretend, so I hunch over and start counting till I can just about manage to lie down straight, hands by my side, focus up at the hole in the ceiling, and pretend there are no walls.

I start folding up the dried clothes, Em comes running in in a frenzy.

“What are you doing?” She says.

“Tidying up.”

“Thank god, I thought you were packing.”

“Could do if you want me to, but then you’d have to fight off the rest on your own.”

She presses her lips together and tries to hold back a smile like she’s a naughty school child being scolded. I try to catch hold of her like this, but then two seconds later she is lost in the dark circles, dejected expression, complete hopelessness swaddled in that disgusting housecoat.

“Em, let’s get you some new clothes.”

“I don’t need anything but some bloody sleep.”

“We’ll get you both,” I attempt to put my hand on her shoulder, if I can find it, “I’m going to fix it, I promise.”

She eases into me and apologises for all the drama.

“Eh don’t worry, men,” I tell her. “That’s why I married you in the first place.”

I give her a big wet one on the forehead. She glistens briefly, I grasp at it, briefly, and then the damn Pomeranian comes in and jumps on the bed and wipes its disgusting sticky bum hole on the sheets. I have been putting off taking the dog to the vet on account of no sleep, and the brother says that he is too busy with ‘his’ family which has suddenly become different from our family and the father says he can’t keep the precious dog upright on his bullet anymore so it’s better one of us takes it in the car, and Em screams, “Get it off, get it off, get it bloody offfff!!!!!!”

I pick it up, its white hair is matted and yellowing near the back end, and the ruddy creature nips me and breaks skin because I’ve pressed too hard into its armpits. A joke, since when were dogs so aware of their armpits? Mum would’ve given the thing one nice wallop, would’ve terrified it into sticking its tail between its legs forever. But even as I’m sucking on my bleeding finger, I feel a pang in my heart for its focussed determination on shitting out whatever is eating it from the inside…Christ, if I could! I will take it to the vet soon. I take it to the garden in the meantime, where it immediately starts scoffing up mud from one remaining patch close to the edge of the compound wall. It’s not that the garden has become smaller, it’s just that the buildings around have started towering their way to the cosmic parking garages and astral cineplexes, a joke (fingers crossed), blocking out all sunlight, killing everything, including poor mum’s ridge gourd creeper that she was so proud of because, let’s be honest, she never had a green thumb, not even a chartreuse pinky finger, but somehow this ridge gourd, with its thick skin and bitter taste, could put up with her long enough to live, a little.

Dog starts expunging its anal glands on the concrete driveway. Granny better not see, else she won’t let the dog back in till it’s doused in phenyl and coated over with bleach. “What chile, can’t get a break from dog shit around here these days?” she’ll say. “Learn some bloody respect.” As if it’s my fault the dog has worms. The father is the one who feeds it with everything that is meant to kill it. Two Kit Kat every Sunday and a whole caramel custard on birthdays, he treats it like a spoilt child, calls it “Sweety” like no one’s business. The mother keeps silent, most probably because she thinks the chocolate will finish it off one of these days anyway, but maybe also because it gives the old man something to do, paint the Pomeranian’s nails instead of sitting in his banyan at ten am, and slurring some nonsense, the dirty tetra packs of Old Monk piling near his skinny legs. Because it’s in tetra packs he drinks it like it’s orange juice. Before the dog, he’d start right after he was done clearing his rusty pipes first thing in the morning, wouldn’t even eat breakfast—which explains the faulty plumbing—until the sister in law suggested a ‘sweet little pet for the children’ that somehow moved him enough to start taking ice baths and keep it together till the afternoon. The children ignore the sweet little pet like it’s the plague because they are stuck too firmly to their linoleum floors to appreciate the old chunam walls downstairs. Bloody rascals, don’t even understand what’s stored behind the damp walls. Don’t ask me what the walls have to do with the dog, can’t quite put my finger on it yet, but it’ll come to me like a nagging pain in the backside; like a worm trying to find sunlight through the thick, matted hair of an arse hole.

Nothing that great about the neighbouring skyscraper anyway, it is hideously ugly and burns the eyes because some big shot architect had the very original idea to decorate it up and down with mirrors that just blind everyone and make it look like a fucking giant disco ball in the middle of Tannery Road.

The worm, metaphorical and singular, starts creeping out of my shorts, nasty prickles focussed tight you know where. Feels good as much as it feels mildly bilious. If Granny saw she’d scream, “Paambu Paambu” and the blind thing would feel reverent with this title of a much more advanced and intimidating creature and stick its head out into the sun and gloat about the old days.

In the old days, next door used to be Mrs D’Cunha’s house. Strange bird spent most of her life with her nose tucked under the half lace curtain that hung over the front window, her eyes bulging above it. Mrs. D’Cunha saw everything, even my first kiss with that suzy chick from the tenth standard social. I had said, “Sugar, sugar, honey, honey, you are my candy girl,” and the suzy chick had pulled up her mini skirt and annihilated my epiglottis, and Mrs. D’Cunha started reciting Hail Mary’s behind that lace curtain. Mrs D’Cunha, sole witness to all the times father had come home walloped, pissing into the bushes, even into the ridge gourd, collapsing on to the concrete and one time gashing his skull open. Mrs. D’Cunha phoned us politely that time saying, “Good evening, I suspect your father has tripped on the doorstep.” Thankfully the bugger was hardy enough to make it through, got called motte thalle for the week after coz the doctors shaved off his hair when they did the CT scan. Nothing extraordinary in here, they had said. Mrs D’Cunha, witness to Granny from god knows when, from the days Granny used to powder her face and look like she caught the light through stretched muslin, not like now when she looks like a moulting moth, every spec of powder collecting on her like dust. Sometimes I hold back the urge to pick up one of the kitchen rags and wipe her down or to say, “Granny how about you ask for a good old varnishing with that facial?” Every week a teenager comes home to pull her whiskers out and shape her eyebrows, don’t know who she thinks she’s fooling but maybe it has to do with the fact that she hasn’t stepped out of the house since she started fearing zoonotic viruses, and so hasn’t had the life beaten out of her by the reflecting phallus that stands seventeen stories high right next to us, pardon the language.

The worm is disapproving, shakes its head and holds me to higher standards.

Back to Mrs. D’Cunha who had seen every birthday, every Christmas, every fight, every illness, and who on Sunday afternoons would invite us for tea when her cousin brother would visit to play her baby grand. “Send the children over for sweets and tea,” she’d tell my mother, and we’d be dolled up and oiled down. My mother combed our hair strictly to the right leaving bloody creases in our scalps, the sailor brother would get a cow lick. Father smothered us head to toe with Brylcreem, saying it’d make us real men when the time came, and keep us smelling good until then. Mother would pack caramel custard or masala vadas for us to carry and we would walk neatly over to the big old house with the ceilings so tall that even the ghosts had echoes, where Butch would be leaning back on the piano stool picking at spurs on his cowboy boots, with a cigarette hanging out of his bottom lip, looking one hundred percent like a sundance kid.

He always had Mrs D’Cunha pink in the cheeks and starry in the eyes, she’s the one that named him that in the first place. His real name was Noel, as in the first, as in his father was a Tamil cook in the army, and his father’s father had met some missionary sort while switching the railway tracks on the Shatabdi Express—averting a collision with two humping elephants somewhere in the Western Ghats—who had promised him heaven and home cooked meals if he named his son after Christmas.

“Play something for us, Butch, Mrs. D’Cunha would say cackling like it was the funniest thing she’d ever come up with, calling her cousin Butch. But then it would flow out of him like marbles, unwieldily and circular, but glistening in the sun regardless, “I was dancing, with my darlin’, to the Tenneessaaay Waltz,” swaying his head side to side, barely holding the ciggie in place. He would omit the ‘g’ in ‘darling’ but stress the ‘r’, and thinking back, it may have all sounded a little like he had got his chaddhis a bit caught between the good old cheeks, tucked in tight because of his cowboy pants. Denim jeans brought specially from France by an uncle who had visited for one week and come back with a single slice of camembert and a year’s worth of mercy biccups. But there was Butch, making us think we were in the presence of the Marlboro Man himself–though it was just a 50 paise shitty Kings that balanced precariously on Butch’s lower lip— and making us feel like nothing alive, as if he was saying, “Giddyup, Waste Fellows. we’ve got a life to live, train to ride, best we all waltz our way out on to the other side.”

“Sing along children,” Mrs. D’Cunha would say, and me and the sailor would then both be escorted to stand beside Butch, our backs straight and thoppes out. The sailor had one even then, mine is more recent, has to do with the housecoat and such and such (no action = can’t get no satisfaction = thoppe suffers mild compaction =/> I used to pretend I was Michael Jackson). Then, suddenly we were standing there and singing about Shenandoah Valley and the Blue Ridge Mountains and my heart was yearning for a mild horse and the wild west that I only envisioned through television static or from the back row of Plaza theatre cum dance hall between bursts of mad necking, that suzy girl, I tell you, she could keep it up in more ways than one.

The dog continues thulping the mud like no one’s business, gritting it between her teeth and snarling at me. For a second I wonder if it is a bit more serious than worms, rabies or worse…babies! There had been a mangy looking stray doing the rounds and pissing on the compound wall. Christ, far better it’s rabies, it would be hell trying to get rid of all the mix and match children! At least with rabies it’s just a few shots up the bum.

We had a scare once when we were kids, it was Butch’s mongoose of all things. Bugger had bought the thing off a numerologist outside the slaughter house and had never taken it to get its bloody shots. And while we were all thinking he was the coolest cat in town, catching snakes just to feed his pet, taking his hat off to reveal the creature curled up in his slicked back hair, calling it Patsy, as in Cline, one day said pet started zooming around with its dagger teeth tearing everyone apart. Got Butch in the arm, me in the calf, and Granny, unsuspectingly, in the rear. Poor thing had to be shot with Mr. D’Cunha’s hunting rifle (the mongoose, not Granny). Butch had good aim despite the tears running down his face, albeit by that time the creature was more or less stationary, seizing on the floor, her eyes rolled back in her head, froth foaming out her slender pointed mouth. Anyway, the rest of us were alright, after the bum shots, except Granny who was convinced for almost an entire month that she had developed hydrophobia and damn near stopped taking baths, smelly old thing.

The old man comes running out and scoops up the dog.

“What the bloody hell? You’ve gone blind or what?” He says.

“If she’s thulping it like this must be good for her,” I say about the dog whose mouth is covered in mud as she winces in my father’s arms.

“Should’ve used that strategy when you were a young ‘un. Don’t know how much different you’d turn out though, still regurgitating absolute shit.”

That’s more like it. Father is probably two tetra packs down, else he wouldn’t be making jokes. I laugh, he laughs too, then he nuzzles into the dogs head apologising for my behaviour and turns on the outside tap to clean her face. He’s a small bugger himself, petite even, never put on an ounce of weight no matter how much they fed him, and he can eat. But it’s as if even his body never wants to take up more space than necessary, he just squeezes himself into wherever he can fit and makes do. That’s the bloody problem isn’t it? I see him bent over now, the knobs of his spine sticking out of his thin banyan and my chest tightens. I don’t know why he has started wearing these bloody banyans in the first place. It’s as if the entire house—except Granny, thank god for her sometimes (and of course Ms Kundalini rising with latte in hand)—just wants to dress as if we’re perpetually in the interim.

Father’s blue veins are bulging through his spindly brown calves, his skin is getting more translucent by the minute. I worry that one day he’ll stretch to pick up another tetra pack and tear open completely, but nothing much will spill out. He isn’t packed tight like that, it will all be anticlimactic, an unobtrusive trickling. My father will ultimately pool into a sticky puddle of concentrated Old Monk, that, if you get close enough to, will echo in a frail whisper, “What nonsense you up to today, chile?”

I want to grab my father, and the dog (might as well), and scale the building next door and then detonate it, burn it to the ground, crumble the ash in my hands, wait for the rains, wait for the sun, resurrect Mrs D’Cunha’s house that she was ousted from one Sunday morning, just when Butch was on his way, “Tenant’s rights have changed”, Some thugs semi disguised in all white had said, “Ma’am, your time has come, and development is the solution to all problems, and we don’t care that you don’t have any problems but we’re dying for some soy milk lattes, so sayonara sister, and asta la vista baby cakes and kick it to the curb you old crippled cunt.” Or something like that. I want to then knock on the door, father and dog still in hand. My father’s legs by this time have become sturdy and opaque, thank goodness, and the dog has been cured of whatever ailment she is currently suffering and Mrs D’Cunha lets us in and we send over for the rest, saying, “Drop by for some sweets and tea,” and Butch enters and we all lose our breath and are once again within spitting distance of feeling like nothing alive.

Next thing I know Em is slapping me across the face, screaming,

“Wake up!”

“What?” I say

Mum is spritzing water all over me.

“What did I do this time?”

“What happened?” Em is saying, a look of shock plastered across her face.

“How the bloody hell should I know?”

Granny is also outside (an event in itself), crouching over me and fanning her frock at my forehead. Please Granny, best that thing is kept plastered firmly to your knees. Brother and his clan stand at a distance, looking somewhat concerned, but I can’t help notice sailor boy’s gut hanging like jelly over his tight jeans. Eh fatty why don’t you strap the belt around next time, save us from the flubber, stud maccha. I smile to myself.

“Don’t bloody smile, Cliff. What the hell happened?” Em is at it again. It is remarkable, her commitment to my vilification.

“Well, I’m losing weight and turnin’ mighty pale. Looks like I’ve got a tiger by the tail.” I hum it.

“Can you stop playing the fool for one minute, why are you on the ground? You’ve nearly killed your mother.”

I look at my mother, she is fluttering her eyes, spritzing me with water all over. I want to say, ‘I’m feeling quite chilly actually, mother and I’d rather not die of hypothermia as a consequence of collapsing and that too at the hands of my very own mother,’ but she is thumbing her rosary like there’s no tomorrow. “Take it easy… it was just stifling claustrophobia and an imbalanced dismount.” From what? I’m not sure.

Father is looking guilty, thinks I’ve hit the bottle too, tears in his eyes. Brother’s wife is googling something. Granny’s frock is rising higher and higher.

“I’m fine!” I say, moving my limbs to start getting up, but my arms sting and I can feel something warm trickling down my pants so I stay still so as not to cause any more alarm.

“But who collapses out of the blue like that? What happened?” Em’s voice is shaking, please don’t start the water works again, Em.

“Everyone needs a fall from grace every now and then, don’t they?”

“What bloody grace you idiot?” Brother butts in. “Stop mucking around or we’ll have to call for the sirens.”

“Must be exhaustion,” I say, “The sleep hitting me hard. High time, don’t you think?”

“No one falls asleep standing,” Em says.

“Oh lord, please remind my son in his lunacy that you have hope in him and for him,” my mother says.

Granny gasps.

The dog starts scoffing the mud again.

Father leaves, returns with a tetra pack and pisses up through a plastic straw—for the first time in two weeks, before noon.

“Let’s take a road trip,” I say to Em, trying to find only her.

“You’ve just fainted, Cliff.”

“Oh lord, please remind my son in his delusion that you have hope in him and for him.”

Granny gasps.

“See, I told you it’s nothing to be worried about,” Brother says. “Bugger is making bad jokes already.” He laughs, pats his children on the back so they know they don’t have to look terrified anymore. Emotionless scum = rats <= bandicoots.

Father sips, slurps, burps.

“Come with me, Em.”

“Where should we go, hmm?” She is upset, her hand placed somewhere in the vicinity of where her hip should be.

“The hills,” I say.

“Ooty? Everest?”

“Just bloody Savandurga, chile. Round the corner. You and me, get some air and some coconut water, what say?”

For a brief moment I can see her blush. Years ago she had worn blue jeans and tied a scarf around her head like a movie star. She had gasped when I told her about Isadora Duncan and taken it off on the car ride there out of respect; we’d borrowed a run down Morris Minor with a tarpaulin roof. She had packed mint chutney sandwiches and grasshopper cakes.

We’d fought off the monkeys at the bottom, then the peddlers in the middle and finally the fiendish finches at the summit where we stared down at the acres of forest below and the gushing river that rushed through it, and our fingers briefly traced their ways across each others palms, mapping out our life lines, wobbling towards the dizzying dips of love that sit at the very top, and I felt, after what seemed like an eternity, like nothing alive.

“Let’s get you checked out by a doctor first, you idiot.” Em starts to help me up, I can see she’s charmed by my laughing in the face of death. Brother comes and offers a hand, he doesn’t have remarkable muscles, but his tight shirt sleeves make his arms seem larger than they are.

“I’m fine,” I say, trying to swat him off and holding onto Em while I have her.

“Really?” Brother says, chuckling.

“Of course,” I say, indignant.

“Because it looks like you’ve just done susu in your pants.” He bursts out fully guffawing and points at my crotch.

It seems my pants have resigned themselves to the sticky dampness that spreads across the top. Father joins in the laughter, spitting and slurring, brother’s wife covers the children’s eyes, mother prays to god to cure my incontinence, Granny gasps, and Em disappears into that bloody housecoat once again.