father | Bharatwrites

The next guy who tells me about how some experience gave him personal growth is getting something sharp in his cranium. Seriously, blood’s going to pour out of his temporal artery. You know I mean it when I get mad anatomical with my death threats.

Why? Because it never ends there. Given male competitiveness, it turns into an arms race where each one feels the need to one-up the story. And it goes on and on until someone fabricates a coming of age tale where a plucky kid from Mumbai overcame his odds to win a million dollars on a game show in a country where we don’t count money in millions. All I want is to hang out with my friends and discuss guy-stuff. Just your average volleys of double-entendres and nothing too sensitive or soft; nerdy topics are welcome. Instead I get assaulted with this affirmation of adulthood, which often hides a plea for approval.

Most guys I know are comfortable with the ball-busting group dynamic where we pick on one guy and magnify his every imperfection. It’s immature. It’s caveman. It’s our way of sifting the herd for the weak link. So, that’s not four guys ganging up on one at McDonalds; it’s a test for vulnerabilities that we are better off catching here than in the wild—you know, the bar. But it’s familiar. It’s safe. We have come to expect it, maybe even enjoy it. But if well-enough was left alone, life would have been different. We wouldn’t have war and nuclear weapons, and Windows XP would still be the best operating system. (Okay, that last part is true. Not that I care.)

Once you go Mac…
(hslnews.files.wordpress.com)

Then someone goes ahead disrupts the equilibrium by showing us what a man he now is. Oddly, it’s often the same guy who used to turn a quiet evening of beer-drinking and cricket-chatter to a tequila-shot-drowned, vodka-infused, Jack Daniels chugging pukefest. You won’t believe it dude, when that kid grabbed my finger, I felt something. Yeah, you felt his fist. And then you returned the infant to his parents who will feed him at 3 am and hold his hand through rehab someday because grabbing that finger scarred him for life. But you will call this a paradigm shift and promote yourself from Jack Daniels to single malt to suit your current state of refinement. And we must follow along or cut you off like the gangrene that you are.

Half the time this whole personal growth or character-building bullshit is a band-aid for the most recent slight life has dished out. If so, that’s fine. It happens to everyone. Just don’t talk about it. It’s called rationalization because you do it to yourself. Selling yourself this crapola is hard enough. If you spread it around, daring others to refute it, you might just find out how many friends you really have.

Listening? Or staying awake by imagining you hanging on a meathook? (www.gogaminggiant.com)

I understand that when you watch Don Draper, who always had a mistress within Metrocard radius, walking around all mature-like, it’s understandable to regret the water-balloon fights and the time we faked a Harvard acceptance letter to mess with a friend’s head (He was so excited that he didn’t notice the w in Harward. Yes, I’m going to hell. More on that some other time.) In the animal world, prolonged eye contact means aggression, but among guys it’s just a staring contest to decide who will do a beer run. No one washes a dish after using it. We each fish ours out of the sink come dinnertime. That way, no one can shirk dishwashing. We order takeout because there’s no dishwashing before or after. But does that mean we are immature? I doubt it. We are just beta-testing adolescence at an age when we can appreciate it more.

If you ask me, it’s the hat. Without it, he’s a dumbass doctor on 30 Rock.
(hatsrcool.com)

The way I look at it, maturity is paying your bills and having more friends than enemies. Done and done. Saying I mustn’t say or do some things because I’m not a teenager doesn’t resonate with me. Who draws these lines? When your grandfather was your age, he had two children. Yes, but that’s because there wasn’t much to do back then. Procreation was recreation. Let’s see him being all nice and fatherly in his twenties with a House marathon on HDTV and an FiOS internet connection. Do you know what a high-speed internet connection does to guys? It’s like giving us our own set of breasts—a productivity killer. Let’s face it. Most of us are going to live longer than our grandparents did. Why can’t we do things a little slower then? There’s no empirical evidence that playing Medal of Honor Allied Assault reduces your ability to be a father. Well it kinda does, if the laptop gets really warm.

Keep killing ’em Nazis—That’s your only effect on the gene pool.
(4.bp.blogspot.com)

So I’ve decided to stay immature, by society’s definitions, that is. Every now and then, I’ll wear whatever I can lay my hands on. I’m religious about showering and deodorants, so don’t call the CDC just yet. But if someone walks into a joke, I’m not gonna be the bigger person and let it go. Your ass is gonna get ridiculed. It will make you a better person. Or not. I don’t know. It will make me a happier person. That’s for sure.

Whoever decided that 26 is too old for that’s-what-she-said jokes did not check with me. In fact, all those who feel that way should just admit it right now. Admit it so I can un-friend you and cut you off. Or deal with it in silence. And that includes dick jokes, funny rape jokes (NOTE—I did not say rape threats, and no, they’re not the same.), and every other joke conceivable.

Except the Aristocrats. That shit is nasty.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy

1. Sartorial maladies

2. Corona with a twist of lime

3. Café speak

The cab rolled in around 10:30 pm. The driver saw me standing outside the house on the phone, and still went ahead. Oh well, I thought, maybe it’s someone else’s cab. But it wasn’t. The driver was just retarded. He made a grand reverse as he faux parallel-parked into the center of the street. I rolled my eyes and asked N to step out. N and U walked out muttering something under their breaths, both visibly nervous. Some married couples give you a very clear indication of how well they click together. N’s parents were coming to the US, it was their first trip.

I sat in the front seat next to the desi cab driver, yeah that’s a big surprise! A small note to cab drivers: I understand you like the idea of picking up a desi customer, but that doesn’t grant you the privilege to babble away until we reach our destination. Thank you. I speak to N & U in Hindi, unfortunate as it turned out, for every sentence we said was prompted with sage advice from the cabbie. Thanks for telling us what airport trolleys cost when you came to the US dude, now please keep your eyes on the road; getting us killed will affect your tip adversely.

Anyway, he drove competently, made a couple of wrong decisions in avoiding traffic, but eventually got us there. As we had no luggage, he knew we were picking up someone, and started offering to take us back home. You know what, at least he was enterprising. We muttered a quick no and walked into the terminal. Thanks for overcharging us by the way.

We knew the flight number by heart, as we had checked the status every five minutes since 9:30 pm at N’s house. In the cab, and N and I used our respective smartphones with the flight tracker app to confirm that the flight had in fact landed. N, U and I have made over 10 trips to India between us, but somehow seemed to conservatively estimate that getting off the plane plus immigration and customs clearance would take his parents only 5 minutes.

It actually took them about 15 minutes. See paranoia works! U noticed N’s father first, followed by his mom and his nephew. They were beaming with an excitement our faces reserve for the kind of fatigue only a 16 hour flight could generate. Still, parents are always excited to see their son, his wife and his best friend, so what the heck.

I always hated walking out into the airport waiting lounge after a flight simply because of the hordes of people among which you need to find the guys waiting for you. It is one of the highest stress situations in daily life, and should be included in the astronauts’ training course. You’re walking out of a tiny opening in the wall, so everyone can see you, and they’re watching you incompetently scan the crowd. I would worry about not being able to spot my deliriously waving family as I was wheeling out the luggage I had ever so gingerly stacked on the trolley as a challenge to gravity. But, N’s parents strolled out cool as cucumbers, so cheers to them.

There were six checked-in bags plus three carry-ons which meant that we would struggle to fit everything in two cabs. Somehow we managed. U got in one cab with N’s parents, and the rest of us rode in the other one. U had forgotten her phone at home, I mean come on, it’s not like cell phones are used for emergency situations, so N gave her his phone. N and U were communicating between cabs as frequently and with as much poise as I imagined the navy seals who hunted down Osama to have.

There is one thing I simply do not understand, and please correct me if I’m being elitist. I believe, as a cab driver, one should drive capably and be well versed with the city. So why is it that I always find myself giving the cab driver directions from JFK to my area: a fifteen minute journey involving precisely one exit and two right turns?

When we reached the destination, the cabbie sauntered out to pick up the bags. I was impressed, this guy was gunning for a whopper of a tip, and was about to get it. He opened the boot, and took out the smallest, lightest carry on bag at the top. Thanks Schwarzenegger! How does 2 percent sound?

It was well past midnight as we dragged the luggage into N’s house with U nervously walking around, all the time monitoring N’s parents’ reactions to the neatness of the house. Personally, they didn’t have a thing to worry about. U is a conscientious person who doesn’t spill much, and while N is not as smooth as she, once a month he gets down on all fours and scrubs the floors with a gusto that would make the peering butt-crack from his sinking jeans almost bearable.

N’s parents are among the warmest people I know, and sure enough, they brought a lot of food, with the only regret that the damn weight restrictions made them throw out nearly twice of what they were actually gonna bring. As N was scratching his head while isolating all perishable items from the six mammoth sized bags in which they were randomized so well that it seemed planned, U made us some tea.

I said my goodbyes and ambled home in the slight teasing remnant of the New York winter.