Tuesday Domestic Ramblings

I am not well today.

I woke up to a call from my mother pestering me to fill up the Jamia form. She keeps saying the website’s address wrong and anyway the site is confusing me. I’d rather go there and do it. When I walked out of my room in a daze, scratching my head, Tapan Uncle (who I found out is only a year or so older than my brother, which is not possible) says that Ma told him to tell me to do the bank draft for his daughter’s Open school form. One more responsibility. Ok 1) I hate filling forms on websites because they usually don’t work. I tried 5 times with different cards to make the payment last night and I don’t understand why these places have to be act damn cool and make you do this shit online. 2) I suck with money and banks which is why I told her to do it since some dude at her office was doing it for his daughter as well. But the guy wasn’t there today so now I have to do the job. 3) Today I have to go pick up my ludicrously expensive glasses from the MALL. That bleeding ulcer of urban existence. Haha, I love that that sounded like a grindcore song. 4) Now Rinki wants me to download some videos by some desiboi called Gippy Grewal. AAAAAAHHHHH.

I think my new friend Ignatius J. Reilly would understand my need for utter solitude in my cave, writing most urgent denouncements against responsibility, the education “system” and other people. He would say that Tapan’s daughter’s desire to be enrolled into this decadent century’s pitiful excuse for an educational institution reflects her aspirations to crass bourgeois middle class status. And that the Gippy Grewal videos are hideous obscenities, the maker of which needs to be lashed immediately. But then again, Ignatius isn’t the greatest person to be friends with. 

I’m very primal about my blue and brick cave, though people almost always respect my privacy there’s the problem of the landline and my computer being in here. The cave is an extension of myself, it’s got the things I love the most – my bed, my books, my computer, posters, prayer flags, Prakash the skull (a gift from my brother and his college’s anatomy lab) and all the little things I squirrel away from here and there – Khajuraho playing cards, empty vial of avil, lower jaw of unidentified animal, pebbles, a fossil, matchboxes, things that glow, my diaries from age 8 or 9 onwards, letters, clothes (bought, borrowed, inherited), empty bottles of alcohol, smoking paraphernalia, at least 20 empty cigarette packets full of butts and ash (That I’ve yet to dispose of) etc. People don’t visit the cave, they are invited. And hence I hate the occasional intrusion by other members of the house, they feel the cave is part of the house, rather than part of me, so they walk in and ask me to do things. But all in all, there is pax in the land of the Trips. Because we all keep to our own hours and we keep out of each other’s space (oh, and 2 TVs helps A LOT).

But this peace is being threatened by a momentous event. My father has retired (for the 3^rd time). He didn’t really want to retire, neither did his office, but the larger organization he works under said that there were too many retired folks in their place. I feel bad for him because he loved his job (whatever the fuck it was, we have no idea) So my father who has worked all his life with the government now has to go into what we fauji kids call the “civilian” world, which I know doesn’t make much sense to him . He gets easily frustrated with the lack of order and discipline and hierarchy of command (even in his own family). In his free time in the past few days (apart from eavesdropping on any conversations in the house, nagging and giving unsolicited advice and driving my mother and I up the wall in the morning) he has taken on a full time devotion to his obsession with getting my reluctant brother married (it’s my duty as a father, you don’t understand, you are too young, you’ll know when you have children). It’s a never ending cycle. Son = Good NRI doctor => Prime marriage property (though with increasing age his marketability is declining). But boy, though the whitest sheep of the family, is highly evasive and non committal (a trait he shares with his sister), also possesses added advantage of living on another continent. However, younger sister, forever the notary of her brother’s unarticulated desires (WHYME.WHYSHAADI.SHE’SANOGRE.SHE’SNICEBUTIDON’TWANTTOMARRYHER.Ifeelbadrejectingthesegirls.Idon’tagreewiththiswholesystem) bears the brunt of being secretary and clerk due to being the only one with 21^st century computer skills. So in the past I don’t know how many years I have browsed through a million shaadi.com profiles (caste,occupation,income,dietary habits, hobbies, parents occupation,photographs,gotra) and written more rejection letters than a publisher at Penguin. There are surges and lapses in interest from my parents over the years, corresponding to the kind of response from my brother (feigning ignorance, snapping, brisk dismissal, highly delayed responses, rejection and on his trips home, the Sit Down Confrontation). I don’t fully blame either for their lack of communication, but I don’t like being the typist caught in the crossfire. Now that father has all this free time on his hands, he spends all day on the computer, looking for jobs, bahus and car dealers. The other thing he has taken to is espionage against a car dealer who hasn’t responded after my dad making a booking. So he tracks the guy down, adopts a fake name and when I return home, giggling and pink he tells me conspiratorially that if there’s a call for “Major Tiwari” then I should give him the phone. (EDIT: oh god. He's now asking me to look for tent suppliers online and gave me some wide eyed outline of the Trip takeover of the tourism industry. God help us.)

Yesterday was the beginning of the Vasanta Navratri (the spring ones) and also the Kumaoni New Year (Happy Kumaoni New Year to you), Ma went to the mandir and this is what they gave her to chadhao to the Devi. I thought it was too cute.

             For the goddess - Nailpolish, lipstick, bindi, mehendi, a comb, a tiny rubberband, surma, sindoor, ittar, chudis, a mirror and some dry fruits.

These days I feel like I have something to say, but I don’t know what I want to say and who I’m saying it to. Till next time then...

My eyes hurt.