Cricket

R #3
Growing up in India is difficult if you’re a boy and have no interest in cricket, or football, or any of the other sports involving running after balls. I would read a novel when others played cricket at school, or sit and chat with one of the goalkeepers when they played football. Despite trying to keep away from it, the cricket ball has always had an affinity for my face for some reason. Of course my own clumsiness with the ball, bad reflexes, bad hand-eye coordination, and the associated nervousness of demonstrating all these when a ball comes flying at me, would have together contributed to the predicament. In fact I still tremble when I pass by kids playing with a ball. It might come towards me, and even if it isn’t flying at my face, I might have to pick it, throw it or kick it.

Despite, my distaste for the game, I’d read the sports section of the newspaper, just to be able to participate in conversations. My family knew I had zero interest, so did my classmates, and the kids in the neighbourhood, but one does come across other people and doesn’t need to be the focus of this-boy-doesn’t-like-cricket amazement. Particularly when one is an introvert.

When I moved to Germany, people often would tell me, “Ah, you’re from India; please explain to me why you find cricket interesting—nothing happens there, and the game goes on for days and are yet called ‘tests’.”

Initially, I would defend the game, but then I asked myself, the big question: why? Why in Germany of all places, far away from my cricket-crazy nation? So I’d just agree with them and get rid of the topic itself. Yes, I did have to watch football a bit. It at least involves watching fit sweaty men in shorts running around the field. And sausages and alcohol.

And yes, one has come a full circle from childhood. While my straight contemporaries are content watching other people running after a ball on television. I do run after balls these days, the human kind.

28 Jun 2016

Break

FF #15
The doorbell rang. I was extremely busy cooking that afternoon; I was hosting a dinner for my colleagues later that evening. My kitchenette was right at the entrance, so between stirrings, I turned and opened the door. There was a lady in her 30s, with three little kids.

“Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Do you speak German, or should we speak in English?”

I said my German was almost non-existent, so I would certainly prefer English.

“I would like to take a few minutes of your time to ask a few questions, if you don’t mind” she said, with a German accent.

I was quite new in Germany, so naïvely, I suggested they all come in, since I was cooking, and had to continue, or at least continue to stir. She seemed rather pleasantly surprised, and they all entered the flat.

“It smells very nice!” The eldest two children, probably seven and five, nodded in agreement with their mother.

“Okay, so my first question is, where do you think the world is headed,” she continued.

I was surprised. But remember, I was new to the country; I was already combating culture shock, so nothing was really surprising now. And I was just about 25, and rather naïve.

I told her that I thought things were progressing well in the world; there was scientific, technological and social progress, poverty was gradually getting reduced. I have always been an optimist anyway.

She disagreed. There were wars, she said. But your EU has totally got rid wars of Europe, for example, I countered. The Iraq war was an anomaly, and had all kinds of reasons.

She brought out a small book. I recognized it; I had seen it with a trainee in the lab and had turned its pages. It was anti-science propaganda literature of Jehovah’s Witnesses, a rather crazy sect of Christianity. No wonder she was surprised that I’d let her in. She made her biggest mistake now; showing me the book, she claimed that science cannot explain everything.

I’d finished the dish I was cooking, and could take a break. I gave her a two and a half hour lecture on Newtonian Mechanics, Relativity, Quantum Physics, Genetics and Evolution.

“I think I have taken a lot of your time; thank you for the discussion,” she said. She looked rather exhausted as she opened the door, the kids in tow.

Back to cooking, I’m sure I had a huge grin on my face.  

27 Jun 2016

A Love Story

R #2

Agustin and Thomas had taught me rollerblading. Every Sunday for a month, we would meet at the Danube Island and they would hold my hands from either side and we’d rollerblade down several kilometres. I would joke that they were like my parents, teaching me to “walk” on wheels.

Agustin was one of my earliest gay friends in Vienna. Very soon after we’d met, he met Thomas and they clicked immediately. After three dates, they decided to give each other a serious try. Agustin was my age, 29, while Thomas a bit older. The two were very different in most respects. Agustin is Columbian, and had come to Vienna for his PhD. Moving continents, he decided to change himself—he was fully out, right from when he landed in the Austrian capital. Thomas, on the other hand, was from Salzburg; he had been in denial about his sexuality until recently. His friends, his parents, siblings had no clue that he was gay, and he was determined to keep it that way. Agustin is a vegetarian, who dotes on desserts—I’d once made gajar ka halwa for him, and it quickly became a regular in his own kitchen. He loves cartoon films. Thomas loves his sausages and schnitzel and is into SciFi and Horror. There were other mismatches too, and the first two years of their courtship was rather bumpy. Agustin used to call me up and want to go for a walk, and I would know from his tone what I was in for—it would be his resolutions not to see Thomas ever again, because this simply wasn’t working. After the walk, I’m happy to say, he would go back resolved to give it just one more try. Easter and Christmas in Europe are family affairs, and these would be hard for Agustin, as Thomas would be in Salzburg. So Agustin and I would spend these together, and we’d alternate between dinners at his place and mine. But that also meant that I’d to be a vegetarian on these days.

Once Agustin was staying over at Thomas’, when the latter’s brother was ringing the bell from downstairs; he to collect something. Agustin didn’t quite have to hide in the bathroom or the closet, but just had enough time to dress and go up the stairs to the floor above. He was curious about the brother and peeped down to see Thomas’ brother looking up at him. Agustin put his foot down. There has to be a coming out timeline, he insisted, this hide and seek cannot last forever. So Thomas invited his brother and his girlfriend for dinner and introduced Agustin. He also came out to his sister.

The episode of his parents was funny. His father had come to Vienna on some work and dropped by. A friend of Thomas was visiting at that time. A few days later, Thomas’ brother called to say that their father had met their mother in the grocery store (they are divorced but live in the same village) and had confided to her that Thomas might be gay—he had never had a girlfriend, and there was a guy staying over. Thomas’ mother had agreed to find out and had asked his brother, who denied knowing anything about it. Thomas made a trip to Salzburg to come out before his mother confronted him herself. I had to find other things to do during Easter and Christmas from then on.

They moved in together soon afterwards, and got married in 2010, soon after Austria legalized gay marriages. I felt they were a bit too much into each other, and were neglecting the rest of the world, and have been completely out of the gay community for years. Once during a dinner at their place, I had tried to suggest that they should go out more often otherwise they might end up suffocating themselves.

Two years ago, when I emailed Agustin to wish him for his birthday, he hinted that things weren’t going all that well anymore. There were suspicions, trust deficits, terrible rows and lots of tears. Agustin had discovered that he had a fetish, which Thomas wasn’t into, and although the latter had agreed to indulge his fetish, Agustin admitted that he felt a lacuna in his sexual life. He left it at that, it irked Thomas to no end and he started doubting his fidelity. Thomas himself reached out to me during the email exchanges for my birthday. I Skyped with both of them, separately, suggested trying to open up their relationship, having threesomes, trying to do everything to save their marriage. They went to marriage counsellors, but the rows continued. Once during a row, Thomas had said that they should separate, and Agustin said okay. Thomas hadn’t meant it seriously, neither was Agustin’s acquiescence serious. But the avalanche had stared; they applied for divorce with mutual consent, and after the requisite six month period of separation, it was granted a year ago.

The guys who held my hands to teach me to walk on wheels, ask me if their former other half has started dating yet. No, but they do show signs of recovery.

26 Jun 2016

Litchis

R #1
Every summer, we two kids and my mother would visit my maternal grandparents for a month. Their house was traditionally built in four separate sections surrounding a large dirt courtyard. The toilets and the bathrooms were outside this core area. There was no running water; buckets of water would be drawn from the well next to the bathrooms. Despite our entreaties we were forbidden to draw water from the well, in fact we weren’t even allowed to go near it without adult supervision. There was a large unmaintained garden around the house. There were bushes of aparajita and sandhyamalati all around, with blue, red, pink, white and yellow flowers. I remember a large cage-like trellis for ridge gourd, a vegetable my grandfather was particularly fond of. There were pumpkin and bottle gourd patches as well. And there were huge fruit trees. The fruit from the mango trees weren’t all that good, we were told, so the mangoes were plucked unripe and sour for making pickles, chutneys and panna, or to be eaten with salt, chilli powder and a bit of mustard oil. In addition there were a couple of jackfruit and guava trees and a rather messy jamun tree.

But to us the most memorable were the litchi trees. There were four of them, old and majestic. The litchis ripened during summer, coinciding with our visit; there must have been a few hundred kilos of litchis harvested from these trees. Each year, a few months before the season, the produce would be sold to a fruit supplier—he would be responsible for taking care of the fruits and their harvesting, and most of the produce would belong to him. The man, in a vest and chequered lungi, would arrive with a couple boys in tow. They would set up elaborate but crude contraptions of metal drums, pulleys and ropes on the branches of each litchi tree, and these ropes would connect to their cots. We would watch mesmerized. Pulling on the ropes from their cots would make clanging noises on the branches. They would clang away all night for a couple of weeks to drive away the hordes of greedy fruit bats swarming around the ripening litchis. A few more men, women and children would arrive on harvest day. They worked in an impressive streamline: men or older boys would climb up on the branches with sickles and pluck bunches of fruit that would be passed on to folks below, loaded on to baskets and heaped. Others would sort the fruit, throwing excess twigs, leaves or other debris into another pile, to be burnt later. This exercise would last an entire day.

My grandparents would get a small share of the harvest, large enough to have with breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks in between for weeks, as well as to give away to their neighbours. We would be excited about peeling the beautiful pimply reddish skin off the fleshy fruit, examining near the stalk for worms, and popping them into the mouth. After a week we would have had enough, and the litchis would have to be coaxed on us. A large bag of the fruit would also accompany us back.

My maternal grandparents died three decades ago within a few months of each other. Their house and garden was sold off soon after, as four or five different plots. I guess the litchi trees might have been cut down by now. Litchis seem rare and quite pricey these days. I try to pick up a bunch whenever I see them with vendors, but I’m always disappointed. I guess it is difficult to bring back childhood, other than in memories and stories.

20 Jun 2016