Return of the King

Onam.

A festival the ignorant think of as a harvest festival but in reality is a yearly reminder of a divine PR stunt that went wrong.

Let me tell you what really happened.

Long long time ago, during the times of constant heavenly interventions, there lived a king called Bali (not related to the other monkey Bali who too was screwed by the gods. They don't seem to like the name).

Our King Bali ruled Kerala. (Come to think of it, if the geographical evidence of Ramayana is to be believed, so did the other Bali. Damn, there could be a divine conspiracy here).

Maha Bali as he came to be known was a great king. He was loved by his people. This in itself is a great thing considering mallus don’t like being ruled. They may put up with it but that's just a tactic until each of them figure out how to become the ruler.

During King Bali's time, there were no locks. Why you ask? Because there were no thieves. Yes, contrary to how it might appear now, there was a time when mallus were honest. We didn't need to covet since we lacked nothing. There were no castes and people were treated equally. You just had to fall into the category of being humans. There was no deceit and men always told their wives that their arse looked fat in that dress.

The mallus were so happy with the abundance of food, toddy and great governance that they did away with the gods and worshipped their king instead. This was rumored to be the Tamil influence.

Being gods, this made them feel a tad bit insecure. If humans started becoming good, what purpose will gods serve? It was and still is a valid point. So all the gods went to the big honcho Vishnu for a solution. Vishnu who had a penchant for intervening in human affairs in disguise was delighted to be consulted. This gave him an opportunity to try out a great disguise he had been thinking about while whiling away couple of thousand god years on his 5 headed serpentine sofa cum bed.

So at the behest of his sidekicks, Vishnu dons yet another disguise which he insists on calling Avatars. This time he goes down as Vaman, a Brahman midget. I know that was politically incorrect, but remember this was the times when we were used to calling a spade a spade.

Maha Bali was at that time doing what all kings do when they had a little time in their hands, which was performing a Yagna. This is basically were we throw all sort of things into a fire and chant unpronounceable sentences. This brought out the inner child in us and of course these were the days before the west started making us feel guilty about the global warming they started.

Since Brahmins get their wishes granted (here the story is confusing because I thought all people were treated equally...hmmm), Vaman gets to present his heart’s desire, which turns out to be 3 step of land. Bali, being a mallu, knows a great deal when he hears it and agrees to grant him his desire. That’s when; true to divine nature, Vishnu aka Vaman reveals the card up his dhoti.

He starts growing. This is symbolic of every short person's wish but I am digressing,

Soon he grows out of the stratosphere, and with his head playing for space with the moon, spoke then, in a thunderous voice, "Bali! In my first step, I traversed all of Earth and the Nether worlds. In my second step, I covered the heavens and all the celestial bodies therein. Thus, I have now covered all realms of your dominion. You promised me three paces of land. Tell me where I should place my foot for the third time."

Upon which Bali realized that he been punked.

So he kneels down and offers his head.

And Vishnu squashes him down the netherworld which is not in any way to be misunderstood as Netherland.

Since Vishnu realized that this act could affect his divine image among the mallus, he decides to do a little damage control. So upon the great kings last wish made from the Netherworld, he gets to vacation in Kerala once every year to watch the deterioration of his kingdom on yearly frame by frame basis.

And mallus for centuries lay out the most amazing welcoming party every year for their king's return. Now of course he will have to distract them from the celebrations in Asianet,

Well, that’s Onam for you.

If it wasn't for the Sadya, mallus would have led a procession to the pearly gates. The toddy didn’t help either.

For the popular version of the story please go here

The short falls of metrosexuality.

The beauty of a short vacation is that you are in and out of the place before everyone gets tired of you.

I am not easy to live with. Hell I am so difficult to be around with that most of the time I am figuring out ways to kill myself.

Thing is I am a very sensitive person.

I take offence very fast. I am of the opinion that everyone out there is some way or the other trying to insult me.

Thing is I am a short, balding, overweight south Indian guy. There is probably something you will say to make me feel bad when you talk to me.

'It's a short walk from here'

'Overhead conditions are clear'

'That's heavy stuff pal'

'Don't sweat the small stuff'

See? It’s better to just keep quite when you are with me but then I might feel you are prejudiced towards me because I am a short, balding , over weight south Indian. That can offend me too.

There’s just no winning when you are dealing with sensitive people. I should know.

Don’t agree with me because I know you are just being patronizing because I am vertically challenged.

Anyhow.

Someone somewhere said that you should do something that scares you at least once in your life. Apart from getting married, I recently went to a unisex saloon in the smog city of Bangalore to get a pedicure and manicure to put that saying to test.

Yeah. Call it my futile attempts in getting in touch with my feminine side. The only thing feminine about me are my man boobs. Sometimes I turn myself on if I happen to catch a sight of myself naked in the mirror after a bath.

I am digressing. Talks of boobs always do that.

Anyway, for moral support I dragged my father in law with me. He is one of the few men who has had whatever feminine side he might have had drained off him by having lived his whole life in a household consisting only of women. His wife and two daughters. He has held onto that masculinity like a drowning person clutches onto to a lifebuoy. Not the soap you moron.

So when attempting something which can scar you emotionally, I deduced that, having such a man by your side was like going to the butchers with Lady Gaga. It’s kind of a win win situation.

There’s something about having a woman marinating your pedis and manis in a bowl of warm water with antiseptic and soap, prior to clipping your talons. It’s embarrassing. It feels nice but it’s still embarrassing. Call me old fashioned but it’s strange having to pay someone to cut your nails. Especially when you have a good wife at home who can do this for you free. Only hurdle will be convincing her to do it. I have heard that compliments works well with women. Maybe I will go with:

That tent you are wearing compliment your figure. Could you cut my nails?

That should work.

Unknown fact: We were the first men in that unisex parlor to have ever done a manicure and a pedicure. So metro sexuality is still a myth in India. I knew it, you lying, cunning bastards.

Once we got our feet and hands to a presentable conditions, the visibly disgusted ladies where requested to give us a facial on a whimsical desire by the pop in law. I totally understood him. All our life we have been hearing about this beauty salon visits by the fairer gender, now was chance to find out what the fuss is all about.

Women, we found out likes choices.

They are the reasons why menus were invented. Think about it, when you walk into a restaurant, a man has only one thing on his mind. Hungry. Must find food. Give him any choices; you have on your hand a confused man. This is why men have affairs and always comes out looking like a bastard. They just don’t know what to do when there are too many choices. When life presents it like that, men like to have everything, including the one he really wants. Bastards. Precisely.

Women on the other hands, likes choices. Ever seen a woman with one handbag, a pair of shoes and 3 sets of clothes? Men can manage it, well, without the handbag but then who am I to judge fashion? For a normal, fully functional woman, she needs choices in her men too. She will need that ex boyfriend who was someone she cared for, she will need that blogger male friend who is the only one who understands her, she will need that college mate who is her best friend and the only one who really knows her and she will need her husband for whatever reasons. Women like having choices. They handle it better.

Men like it too but unlike women they just don’t understand things like right occasions and perspectives.

So when the ladies started listing out the various facials that are available, we were understandly confused.

There was, I swear, something which involved gold. In today’s economy!

We decided on something which involved just putting creams on our face and rubbing it in and then wiping it off. We had seen this on TV. It had looked silly but if Mel Gibson can carry it off, so could we.

We couldn’t.

For one thing, it’s boring. Then there’s this scrapping they do on your nose which is downright painful.

Before my masculine conspirator could suggest waxing for his academic research, we got out of there.

Verdict?

Will definitely do the manicure and pedicure again. It is indulgent and great. We felt like a million dollars for a whole day, while we kept waving our hands and keeping it on top of the table for a change.

Facials?

Probably not. We looked at each other and figured it’s not really worth it. But then they didn’t have much to work to begin with. Pop in law thinks that they charged us a lot because we had more face for them to work on.

Just Friends.

There are questions and then there are questions.

There’s the unanswerable, “Do you think I look fat in this?"

The mind numbing, " Are we there yet?" asked by a 3 year old and her 7 year old brother with 3.5 minutes frequency from the back seat of the car.

The inconsequential ones like “Is there a god?”, “What’s the meaning of life?" which stands proudly alongside other idiotic ones like “What’s your religion?”, “If my god and your god has a pissing contest, which one would win?"

The weird ones, “What do you do?”, "How are you?”, "Does it hurt?", "Are you sleeping?"

The leading ones like, “Have you ever been in love...really?”, “Are you happy?”, " Does he/she understand the real you?”, “Has anyone told you how beautiful you are?"

The 'none of your business' ones like, “How do you plead?”, “What’s your qualification?" “Are you married?" “Which part of India?" “Where are you going?"

Then the stupid one: "Who are you?"

But the one question that generations have been forced to confront, even though the issue probably must have been one ancient one is:

Can a man and woman be just friends?

It all started with that chick flick movie 'When Harry met Sally”. Never has a movie raised such a level of self introspection, except perhaps Blue Lagoon, which gave raise to that often repeated probability question, "if you were stuck in a deserted island who you would like to be with you?"

For me it’s a basket ball. But I am digressing.

So can they be? Just friends?

I believe they can be, under certain conditions. After years of research and several months of banishment to the couch, I have the answers that you seek, thereby putting yet another question to rest among ones like "Does size matter?"

The conditions for a man and a woman to be just friends the below criteria have to be met.

- Both are committed to someone else they still care about.
- One is committed and the other is just plain undesirable.
- No one is committed to anyone else but one is just plain undesirable.
- Both are uncommitted and both are scared of rejection/humiliation.
- Both are uncommitted and one is scared of rejection.
- One is committed and the other is scared of rejection/humiliation/end of friendship/physical harm.
- One of them is gay. (This is same as point 2 and 3)

Okie. Let the lynching start. But before you let your self righteous cloud your judgment, please be honest and decide for yourself, where do you fit in the above criteria.

There's no rule saying that man and woman has to be just friends. No matter how much we like to peg, identify and label relationships, for the sake of yourself, others ,the mysterious society or for that inherited baggage we like to call our culture and heritage, the truth is that it really doesn’t matter, does it?

There is also another set of criteria that seems to work also.

- Both are committed to another, who they may or may not care about but one does not want it to go beyond a good friendship.
- Both are committed to another, who they may or may not care about and both do not want it to go beyond a good friendship.
- Both are not committed to anyone and each does not want for whatever reasons go beyond a god friendship.

What is this good friendship?

Does it mean only no sex?

I was talking to a family friend of mine about this. A woman.She says that eventually there comes a time where the relation reaches a stage where, normally its the man, shows an interest beyond just friendship. She just sleeps with them. According to her most men cannot differentiate between lust and love and this is a phase they have to cross.She has got lots of friends she said with a smile.Just friends?, I asked. She just smiled and said, between a man and woman who are friends, there are only degrees.

I guess that's true of any friendship, irrespective of gender but I doubt I will ever sleep with Dog.

I mean, I fall in love with all my girl friends. I don’t see how I cannot. They are great people, great company, great sense of humor, and they are girls. I love them. Nope. I have not slept with any of them. But I am married to one (brownie point alert!)

Here's my take. Man and woman make great friends. I have not met a single woman who says otherwise. Women like having male friends. They feel they are less complicated and more fun. As long as they are not married to it. Marriage seems to sometime make a friend into a prison warden.

It must be the same with us too. Once we get over our initial very male feelings, we can make great buddies. It’s like having a dog. We just need to be put in our right place and taken for walks. After that it’s just party and great fun. But watch out when we start talking about our doomed marriages and misunderstanding wives, we are probably trying to get into your pants. We can be persistent.

But you knew that when you wanted to be just friends, didn’t you?

That is what friendship truly is. To accept instead of expect. No other relationship has that much freedom. To label it will only cheapen it as we have already done to so many of our relationships.

So, can a man and a woman be just friends? Hell no. But that's probably the beauty of it.

But how many of us will admit to it?

That was a leading question.

Surviving Life's Sucker Punches

I am into survival these days.

It’s my latest addiction.

Don’t even ask me why. I have no logical reasons for the things that I do. It may have something to do with the movie 2012. But thats rubbish. If the world as we know is coming to an end, I would rather sit on the balcony with a drink in my hand, waiting for it.

No.

This latest madness is unexplainable. But if and when I am stuck in the middle of a desert or a jungle or a deserted island, I will be ready.

You see I am prepared.

I have always had this thing for camping and trekking. Both the activities suit my misanthropic nature and my inherent yearning to be independent of the trappings of a society. Of course I will still need the tents, the can foods, the bottled water and the car to get to where I plan to do this getting away.

That’s what I love about being a misanthrope. You need the presence of a society to get away from it. Like the child who has that parent to hate.

Right now, my Ben (my truck who think it’s a car), is stocked with two 3 people tents, a foldable mattress, 2 sleeping bags, 2 lean to shelters, a foldable spade, an axe, 4 survival knives in various parts of the car (yep, I am also taking into consideration a Zombie invasion), a medical kit, a survival kit which consists of thermal blanket, fire starter, hooks and nylon thread for fishing, a compass and a whistle. I also have a SAS Survival handbook, nylon twine for making snares and traps, bungee cords, Velcro straps, 1 torch with batteries, 1 torch that can be powered by Ben, garbage bags, 2 tarpaulin sheets, rope and 2 fleece blankets.

Over the past 2 years, I have been studying up hunting, making bow and arrows, how to put up snares and traps. I have all the theoretical knowledge on where to find water in a desert, how to make a water sill and make potable water from shrubs and sea water. I can make fire with Coke cans and with water in a condom (when you are surviving, unprotected sex is fine).

I can make a dug out shelter, even a lean to if it comes to that. I know better than to ration water if I am stuck in a desert. I know that sooner or later I will need to get myself used to eating insects, but I am willing to postpone that for some time.

Now all I need to do is to get lost.

Thing is I am not a paranoid person. It’s just that I like being prepared.

This is the reason why I always base my lie on a truth.

Prepare.

Now my fear is that I will die of a heart attack or fall off a ladder before I get to try my skills out there in the wilderness.

This is because, like it’s said in that book Black Swan, you can never be prepared because life changing occurrences has the habit of coming at you from a direction you are not expecting it to.

Now that could be true. But me? I am brilliant.

You see, me finding myself in the wilderness with a condom and a flint stone is the unexpected direction. Since I am prepared for it, I think I will now die in my sleep.

This could be my middle finger to destiny.

It’s like learning karate. Until then you are getting your arse whopped by every senior in school and the day you enroll and finish your martial art classes, you find that there's absolutely no fights anymore in your life. It’s like finally finishing and understanding Stephen Hawkins’s book only to find out that the bible was correct; god did bury those dinosaur bones just to test our faith.

It’s what I would like to call, Life's Sucker Punch.

This is what makes a non smoking, teetotaler, jog-5km-a day bloke, keel over and die of a heart attack when he is shaving.

You don't see it coming.

So this is my lesson to you my friends, prepare for your worst case scenario. Chances are that you will never face it. And if at all by chance, fate decides to call your bluff, you will still be prepared.

Told you.

It’s one hell of a middle finger.

Vivir la vida como un tonto

I am a very pro choice guy.

This is why I am all for abortion.

Actually I should not even be giving my 2 bit here since I will never have this happen to me but since the world is mostly run by my gender who seems determined to regulate and lay down laws on things they have no experience of, other than how it effects them, I think, I need to come out right and say this.

I am one of the men who think that the choice of abortion should be with the one who intends to do it.

Yeah Yeah...I know what you are screaming. Female infanticide.

Think.

Why are some women aborting female embryos? Hmmm?

Yep. Precisely. Because we have made living difficult for women. They feel a dead girl is better than a live one. A live woman is costly. Dowry. Marriage. No return on Investment. Anything else?

Why do these reasoning exists? We put it there.

Now how many of these reasons can be solved? Almost every one of them. Hell, it has already started. There will come a time when it won’t matter what gender the child is because both will have the same opportunities or lack of them in life.

Denying a choice is not the answer.

Now the moral questions.

Let me answer this as politely as I can: Your morals are an inward compass. It applies to you. You think something is morally wrong then don’t do it but to apply your morals onto someone else is like rape...keep your morals and allow others to maintain theirs.

Religious reasons.

Damn that. Religion is just politics. It is a frame work build to control people of similar beliefs. In my book it’s like the gang colors. So fuck religion. We really need to keep religion in its proper place. I don’t do religion. You can by all means. Just don’t let it step into my porch uninvited. It works for me not the other way round.

I have heard this respect for life argument. Now this one has me stumped.

When do you think life becomes life?

Is it during conception? Or is it somewhere in the mother’s womb, if so when? Or is it when the child is born?

From what I have seen in The National Geographic Channel, those sperms don’t look dead to me. Man, they seem to have a purpose, a goal and speed. That buddy sure sounds like life to me.

This brings me to my next question.

Can masturbation be a male version of abortion?

Is there an ongoing genocide happening everyday in every man’s life?

I don’t know. I would really like someone to enlighten me about this.

But I really think that people should have the choices. They should be able to choose what they want to wear, who they want to sleep with, who they want to spend a life with or a night with, who they pray to, what they do with their body or even when they want to die.

Small choices that do not in any way interfere or affect someone else’s choices.

Sure some of these will hurt us, make us feel bad, perhaps sad but if we are able to respect the other person's choices and understand the reasons behind it, and then it will be a great world to live in.

It’s not much to ask, is it?

Note about the title: Isn’t Spanish sexy? I mean even the most stupid sentence sounds like a bedroom drawl in Spanish.

Romancing a stone

One of the side effects of being liked for your virtual scribbles in the cyberspace is that you attract attention. Apart from the usual comments like,

'Nice.ROFL.Now visit mine and say the same thing.'

'you &$##**&% , who do you think you are?'

'I named by dog tys and then I kicked him to death. Die motherfucker die.'

, you also tend to get some readers who will mail you and try to get to know you.

This is very flattering.

I am that guy who in college would do the bidding of a girl for a long time, only to be told, while she hooks up with my best friend, how she has always seen me as a brother.

In girl code, that means you are ugly as hell and she won’t be seen dead going around with you.

Why is that no man has ever said to a girl who throws herself at him that he sees her as a sister? If he has ever said that to you, either you really are his sister or you are just plain ugly. I mean really ugly because men, trust me, are not very picky in certain of their requirements.

Or he could possibly be gay.

Either way it doesn’t flatter you, nor does it improve your self esteem.


So having a stray admirer, who is a woman, who thinks that you are worth getting to know does a lot for your deflated ego. You also know that this person has seen your profile picture which looks as I am lighting fire to my beard, and did not report it to BlogSpot.

For a guy who has, perhaps a handful of friends who I can treat like shit and still count on, I seem to have made some good friends through my blogging. I have met some of them and they are not the weirdoes I thought one normally meets in the cyber world. They are, in fact, really nice.

And they all prefer my wife to me, once they meet us.

I have no idea why, but apart from one male blogger, all the rest who have contacted me are women. They later on tell me that their husbands are my biggest fans.

Bastards.

I take the plunge and spend about 90% of my married life sleeping on the sofa and these guys probably download my site and leave it accidently on for the wifeys to 'discover'. Women being women will always sympathize with a man who is probably going through the same things her husband is going through, as long as it’s not her husband.

You don’t believe me? Let me see how you react when your husband says that he think pms is just a monthly get out of jail free card for a woman.

Now, please drop that knife and give the poor man his balls back. And, do call for the ambulance.

It’s easier when there’s a fall guy.

That’s me.

I still don’t get it when women say they like me and my writing. There must be something seriously wrong somewhere. I am a bloke.

But I aint complaining.

It’s not every day; someone contacts you and says that she admires your writing. Who doesn’t like that?

So this must be how Brad Pitt feels.

Wonder if this ever made Angelina Jolie feel insecure?

Now my marriage is based on trust. She trusts me not to do anything to jeopardize our relationship and I trust her not to take me up on that.

But being an idiot, I end up telling her everything.

Word of advice to all men who are on the threshold of marriage. Do not discuss your past with your soon to be wife. When she asks you if you have been with other women, trust me, she’s not asking you to confirm. You pulling out your sexual conquest souvenir book to give her an exact figure is not going to help your case either.


Ask yourself first; if you were in her shoes, would you have liked to know? And now that you know, do you sleep better at night?.Knowing that in today’s world, all the exs can be found in one place, called the face book or the orkut or some such flocking area. Nowadays old flames are like those trick candles, it just keeps lighting up no matter how hard you try to blow it out. So you can’t blame her insecurity.

That’s one of the reason I don’t do face book. It makes life too complicated and crowded.

Now I am one of those possessive kinds. But I am also that kind who doesn’t notice anything until my wife comes and tells me about it.

While we drive home after a party, me drunk and happy, wife, cold and distant, I turn and ask her the question which men asks that takes them down the rabbit hole: What’s wrong?

What’s wrong with you? She will retort

I try to surface my consciousness from the lake of alcoholic lanquidity, where it had been peacefully swimming in, to find a reason for that question or the answer to it (if it really requires one).

The sound that comes out from me while it’s being coaxed ashore is a perplexedly spluttered:

What did I do?

'It’s what you didn't do, you big oaf,' she says, ' you didn't even notice that guy who was hitting on me. What’s wrong with you? Do you even love me?'

Now, folks, this is tricky area.

You didn't notice. That much is true. But if you had and had reacted like a gorilla on a war path, which I had done once, things will not change much for you. The question will still be asked.

What’s wrong with you?

So I continue driving. Quietly. My chin hardened. With a grim look on my face. This is my fierce some look. It also looks a lot like my constipated look. This forces her to ask again.

What’s wrong with you?

So I reply. Each word measured. I had seen this being done with convincing effect in Terminator by the governer who has helped himself to the help.

I.will.kill.him.

I continue looking ahead. I can almost feel that smile on her face.

Yeah. They don't want us to fight for them, but they just like to be told we will, and when the shit does hit the ceiling, most of us actually will.

Trust me on that.

Can somebody tell why the women like that song : Hold a grenade?

" To give me all your love is all I ever asked cause
what you don’t understand, is id catch a grenade for ya.
Throw my hand on the blade for ya,
Id jump in front of a train for ya.
You know I’d do anything for ya.
See I would go through all this pain take a bullet straight through my brain.
Yes I would die for ya baby, but you won’t do the same."


This is not romantic man, its macabre. Not only do you want to kill yourself, you want the poor girl to do that for you. Shes probably right now getting a restraining order against you. Go find a small corner, curl up and die you fool. Let me not hear you giving my girl any more stupid ideas.

Hold a grenade. Really.

Bring it Home

I must be the oldest Indian man staying with his parents now.

Age: 42.

Domicile: With Amma and Achan.

Now, I might as well chop my balls off and feed it to a camel.

As you might have noticed, I have not been very regular here for the last month. I am of course assuming that there are millions around the world, who finds my absence disturbing. There must be a whole bunch of twitters, twitting around desperately asking: whatever happened to tys?

One can dream in a self inflicted delusion of one’s own importance.

Anyhow.

Truth is my wife and children have gone back to India for good.

Now those who have been regulars here, (yep, you two), this is a regular occurrence in my house hold. My wife leaves me once in every 3 years. The reasons are mostly to do with children's education, illness in her family etc...

Truth is , anyone who has had the misfortune to be with me on a continuous basis will understand the desire for a long, really long vacation. Why do you think my parents put me in a boarding school when I was 4?

But I am kind of addictive like a bad habit, so she always comes back.

During the few days that she’s away, I run around like R.K.Laxman's dog. I walk around in my boxer shorts, eating directly from the fridge, peeing in the sink ...well, behaving more or less like a bloke.

3 days later it gets boring. There’s no fun in being undisciplined if there’s no one to thwack you on the head.

But this time she’s really gone for good. To make the point clear we have even shipped off everything from our apartment back to India. This time it’s really about the children's education.

Most Indians like salmons, return to their country of birth for education, marriage and death. Well, not entirely like salmons, since they just come back home to lay their eggs and to perhaps shop for banana chips.

That left me in an empty apartment with a mattress on a pallet, a table lamp, a table for the lamp, 15 books, one bottle of Jack Daniel, 1 glass ,a cat and a turtle called , wait for it, Shelly.

Paradise.

Living in an empty flat is like being a squatter. You occupy a tiny corner in a large place. When the night falls, with the curtain drawn, you feel almost like Robert Neville of I am Legend. Tanked up with enough booze, one can feel truly alone. As if you are the last man on the planet.

I have the flat till the end of the month.

The plan was to move in with my parents after that. Being parents, they couldn’t resist the idea of having their errant middle child back home, even though he now sports grey chin brush and a humongous beer belly. So I was forced to move in earlier than I thought. My lil bachelor pad remained there as a place of refuge if things got outta hand.

Outta hand it did.

You know what’s the scariest thing to happen to you when you are middle aged? No, it’s not waking up to find Angelina Jolie sleeping next to you.

It’s waking up one day to realize that you have turned into your father/mother.

Somewhere between 5 and 14, most parents would have already fallen from their children’s pedestal. From super mums and my daddy the strongest, they tend to become a bothersome necessity, then an embarressment, that slowly evolves into everything wrong the society stands for and finally a liability.

By the time, we reach adulthood and have our own family, our parents become the vacation place, or they in their bid to cling on to the only life they by now know, (you), will become your children’s nanny. This is how it is. It’s not a sad state of affairs; it’s just a kink in the wheel. There was a reason why in ancient times, the old , after having dispensed with their responsibilities as parents , retired to the jungles to spend the last of their days immersed in self enquiry.

Which probably would have been repeatedly asking themselves: Why?

Now, in absence of jungles, we have retirement homes.

Now, in my case, things were different. We never did spend too much time with our parents. My brothers and I lived a major part of our lives in boarding schools and spending most of our vacations shuttling from relatives to relatives. It was by no means a deprived childhood. In fact it was a rich experience. We were loved and parented by so many people. So it was pretty cool. Moreover it gave us a perfect weapon to hurt our parents with our so called abandonment issues. Yeah right.

Spending time with parents was the high light of our lives. For short periods. After having spent a lifetime being independent, there’s only so much one is willing to bear in the name of love. We were probably, that minority, who could not wait for the schools to open after 20 days of being with our parents. It’s not we that we were not enjoying the time we had with them. It’s just that we were not used to it.

So you grow up watching your parents and promising yourself that you will never become like them. It’s not meant in a mean way. It’s like knowing that there are only 26 letters in the English alphabet and you can become a limerick if you want, even if your parents are novels. It’s like you are aware what you are dealt with, by just observing your parents.

And you may be proud of them, you may love them to bits, but whatever happens you do not want to become like them.

I didn’t too.

So my first day in my parents’ house, brought the weirdest news home to me. I am my father's twin.

This is scary. I had spent 42 years consciously trying not to end up like him. He’s a great father, but he looks like a silverback on a good day. He overindulges himself on every habit he has. When he drinks, he drains the bar. When he had a heart attack, he lit up the moment he was out of the ICU. He feels that his life has to be lived according to his own yardstick. He is self centered, arrogant, given to sudden flare ups that can make you run a mile, and can surprise you with great acts of kindness and sacrifices when he’s in the mood for it.

The worst part is he even looks like me.

And to clinch the deal, we can’t spend 15 minutes in the same room together. This man is me. I totally can’t stand me.

That bachelor pad of mine is beginning to look more and more attractive.

Even that stupid cat.

Probably Shelly too.