A letter away from Danger

He’s grown bigger over the years. Today’s he’s about 6 feet 9 and still growing. With burly arms and thick neck, he’s an intimidating figure. I think he even has a tattoo, on his left arm, but I’ve never seen it.

He’s always around; lurking in the corner of every room that I enter. In fact, he’s standing over my shoulder as I write this, smiling smugly over the fact that I brought up the tattoo and the fact that I don’t know for sure if he has it. He only becomes clear when I choose to. And of late I choose to have him prominent a lot more than I would like.

Apparently he runs in the family. My grand mum, my mum and my dad, all of them have had him around as far back as I can remember. One night, when I was five and mum and dad went out, I spent the entire time crying for them and I sat there at the door step with the door open, waiting for them, where I promptly fell off to sleep crying. They returned. The front door had been open the whole night. My father picked me up by the feet and shook me so hard; I thought my brains would fall out. That’s the first time I saw him, standing by the ledge and smiling. Bastard.

I have a love hate relationship with Heidi. She is one of my best friends, but is on more than one occasion, one of the most insensitive and self centered human beings I have ever known. On that day too, she did something. Now, I can’t even remember what it is. But he came straight out. “Well, if she was so sure, then why didn’t she come and ask me, as opposed to talking to thirty different people about it? And where the fuck does she get off doing this to me, yet again?” I railed. When she walked into the room because she heard that I was bringing the house down with my tattooed (or not tattooed) friend yet again, I screamed.

“Get out, get out, get out. I don’t want to look at your face ever again. You’re an absolutely revolting human being, rotten to the core and you don’t deserve friends. Open your disgusting eyes to the world around you and stop looking only at the means that suit your ends.”
It was like an out of body experience. Everyone looked at me, horrified and cowering. I was watching me, or him, take over me completely. I had spots before my eyes. He was the power fueling the volume behind my voice. He was the energy coursing through my veins as my body shook and trembled. He was the poison that spewed out of my mouth.

Heidi looked embarrassed. So did Christa and Emily, who know about him, but had never seen him before. He turned me around and slammed the door behind me as I threw myself on my unmade bed to lick my wounds. And just as quickly as he had appeared, he retreated back to the corner of the room, silently smirking, while I was left there to contemplate the consequences of bringing him to the fore. Most of the time, it is misery and loss of self-respect because of the loss of control I display.

And I grude him. Today, the little love that Heidi and I had in our relationship is over. I don’t acknowledge her presence and to my relief she is too self centered to realize it. And of course he is around, always waiting to make his next appearance, leaving me sad and ashamed after I let him.

It was my 18th birthday. And she was my back up plan. You know, in case plans don’t follow through with Jamshed and the others. Ironically, they did not. So I called her.

“Hey! Jo?”

“Hey birthday girl! How’s it going?”

“What are you doing tonight?”

“I’m heading home right now, I’m thinking of catching up with Sasha and Urvashi later tonight”

“Well, I just wanted to know if you wanted to go out and get some dinner?”

“Sure birthday girl, Independence Café?”

“Cool!”

“Cool! I’ll see you there in twenty”

She got me a neon eyebrow ring, for my newly acquired piercing, it had a little picture of Blossom, my favorite Power Puff girl.

Over salmon and steak, I discovered that college was going well for her and she was seeing someone new. He looked like Harry Potter and talked like Jon Stewart and would never miss an opportunity to make her feel loved. Her father was now the head chef in Chinese Room, and had just appeared in the high society “Upper Crust” food magazine. Her car had been in the shop for two weeks and she was currently getting around in buses and trains. She discovered that she preferred using public transport and that she barely misses it. She was looking for a job, something in the Public Relations field. That’s where her real interest lay.

“Intersting….” I nodded along.

“Et tu Aditi?”

I’m nervous about leaving the country and I’m nervous about this huge responsibility I will have to take on. i.e. of myself. I was finding myself increasingly addicted to the newly lauched Mountain Dew and finding myself using the current Mountain Dew mantra “Do the dew” far too often. I wanted to write, but I was cowardly and lazy. I was thinking of buying a laptop, it had to be a great one at a not great cost and I was scouring the market. And since I did have my car with me, I would give her a ride home that night. I had just been fitted with new contact lenses and don’t I look awesome without glasses?

We stepped out Independence Café a satisfying meal and conversation later.
As we crossed the road I turned into my purse to get my keys. And I remember hearing the horns blaring and turning to my left and being blinded by the headlights. What in real time must have been about three seconds, turned into thirty minutes for me. I knew I was falling; I had been pushed out of the path of the speeding car. I may have momentarily passed out, I know I did. I came to, still lying on the street, with Jo anxiously over me.

“You idiot, what were you thinking?”

I blinked and sat up.

“Come on, now move slowly, move slowly, don’t rush. Does anything hurt?”

Shooing aside the crowd of curious on lookers that had gathered around us, she walked me to the car.From my purse she took out the keys and I sat in the car for two minutes and gathered myself. No, nothing hurt. I was going to be fine.

On the drive home I said very little. I was not tired or hurt; just dazed. She saw that.
“Way to go Mittal, wanted to kill yourself on your birthday?”

Despite myself, I cracked her smile.

“Thank you”

“Don’t mention in kiddo”

And I realized that I really didn’t need to mention it. She was Jo, one of my best friends, but also the one person I took most for granted. She sat in the driver’s seat after literally saving my life and asked me “not to mention it” when I thanked her. With no questions asked about why she had not been invited to do something special on my birthday, she let go of her plans to spend time with me. But these were unsaid things.

When she parked outside my house, I apologized about not being able to drop her home as promised.

“Shut up” she said good naturedly.

And I did.

Locked Out

"Hi Christa! It’s me…Could you...."

"UHHHH! Aditi, you'll have to wait a few minutes though, I just put the sauce on the stove. You better remember to carry your card next time, I'm not going to let you in again!"

"Oh Oh! I'll wait, sorry....thank you"

Summer is on its way out and foolishly ignoring that, I stepped out this morning in a sleeveless dress. I shiver silently turning back to "Slouching toward Bethlehem" that I had been reading on my walk over.

I hear the sound of scraping shoes on the asphalt behind. A pair of black sneakers step into the periphery of my vision. Shoulder length blond hair that off-sets the far-too-orange-to-be-real tanned skin. A grey t-shirt that screams "Penn State Field hockey", sweat pants that reach down to the calf, a black back pack and a set of jangling car keys that hang on navy blue thread which confirms her college.

She looks at me quickly, smiles and looks away. I do the same, though not looking away completely.
“Do you live here?”
“Yes, I forgot my card though, so I can’t really get in”
“Oh!”

It’s a Saturday evening, so it’s very quiet, and I wish someone would come by to let both of us in. The temperature seems to drop even further. She looks out straight into the glass doors, longing to be standing in the warmth of the lobby instead of outside with a weird girl who has a funny accent and seems to be stealing furtive glances at her. Her boyfriend, brother, sister or friend is taking much too long to open the door, and really, she didn’t drive down 6 hours to stand outside in the cold.

She suddenly remembers something, and whips her cell phone out of her pocket, flips it open, presses one of the glossy buttons twice and proceeds to hear someone’s caller tune. I try to tune out; I’m supposed to be observing, not stalking.

She steps back and begins to pace, phone still glued to her ear, and I pretend to turn back to my book. Absent mindedly she plays with the keys. She spins them around, and the thread insidiously wraps itself around her stubby hands, instantly making white lines, blocking off the circulation where it touches them. Once, and then backwards and the color rushes back into the white lines. Repeat as desired. The person she is calling decided to not pick up and she slaps the phone close, too impatient to take advantage of the boon that is voicemail.

I hear a door open and close inside and I look up to Christa walking towards the door. She looks at me, as if about to say something, decides against it, and walks into the now opened door and brushes past Christa without a word. I enter, smiling at Christa sheepishly. She smiles back at me impatiently and indulgently. The object of my observation walks away in a huff into the north wing of the building making me feel like I did something wrong or stupid.

A trade-in for happiness

He did it in rhythm with the smattered applause and laughter in the neighboring tent. Up and down, side to side, discovering crevices and lines in his face that he had forgotten existed. As the sound of clapping faded, his need became urgent. Harder and faster he scrubbed, till the soap stung his eyes and his exposed skin. The red water in the basin matched his raw face, making it look like the make up was still on. He tried to relax the muscles at the edges of his lips; it was not only his make up that he was trying to wash away. Without changing his clothes or looking up at the cracked mirror over the sink he walked outside into the sunlight and stood at the bus stop that took him home everyday.

He had seen it coming. When Mr. Buntam said the words, he burst out into a hollow laugh. It was serious news, news that one would hope was a joke, and so everyone mistook his laugh as the end of the joke, and some even ventured to laugh good naturedly with him. Even after Buntam had managed to convince them that the circus was indeed being shut down, he was the only one still laughing; this time, at the faces of his fellow workers.

One of the earliest memories of his childhood was staring at the mirror at his father who slathered on layer after layer of chalky white grease paint with his thick hairy fingers and painted a large red grin on his face. He would turn his six-year old face away as his daddy dusted on the corn flour to set the make up in. On the days that he was not in school, he would stand at the knee level of a crowd that eagerly awaited the show. The lights shone brightly and it never got old. Every single time, he would ooh and aah with the audience as they trapeze artists swung from rope to rope defying gravity and death, he would gasp in amazement when the Indian tigers and elephants came out and he would clap with glee when the Maravilla, the marvelous mutt cleared the ring of fire.

But a sound that still rang in his ears as he stood at the bus stop that hot Sunday was the sound of laughter; the guffaws, chuckles, snorts, giggles and hisses that would rend the air when Daddy came on stage. And everyone would cheer and clap while daddy tripped on imaginary people’s shoes and got slammed in the face by imaginary doors and fell backwards, flat like an ironing board. On Thursday, one special child in the audience would get to smash a banana cream pie in his face while the audience screamed “IN YOUR FACE”. And then they would laugh uproariously when daddy would pretend to fall over from the impact of a pie thrown by a five year old and they would laugh when he flailed his arms trying to get up. It was a fantastic show.

Much can be said about fate and its strange way of giving things to people who don’t particularly want or deserve them. In second grade, he was doing math at eighth grade level. They wanted to put him in a special scholars program, but the circus moved to Vermont and off he went with Daddy. In fifth grade he was doing math at a college level, they wanted to put him in a special scholars program but the circus moved to Pennsylvania and off he went with daddy. It caused him no distress, that he was not a special scholar. His gift for logic and reasoning was like a vestigial organ. It had no purpose for him, but it did not bother him either. He was in a land where laughter was sold, happiness lay in a few pennies and applause, and that’s all that mattered to him.

It was fate that gave 37 year old daddy a heart attack. A lean man who had never touched a drop of alcohol or smoked a cigarette in his life had an excruciating last few mins. The next day stood in front of the mirror and with two long fingers and slathered on layer after layer of chalky white grease paint, stepped into daddy’s large red clown shoes and painted on a smile that did not come off for thirty, till moments ago.

His skin was beginning to burn from the sun and vicious scrubbing. He must have looked like a sight. With half his face burned by the sun and the other bits still dyed white and red by the paint that he had worn all his life. He slumped against the lone pole that signified the bus stop. The lights did not shine as brightly anymore, the applause was not as loud. Rows of seats lay unclaimed and tired trainers whipped haggard animals in the arena every night. The trapeze artists did not whoop when they shot hundreds of feet in the air. The laughter was gone. The world had traded in happiness for a box with moving images and just like that his art was obsolete. What thrill would you find from seeing a standing man mount a horse, when you could see him step on the moon?

The bus arrived, late as usual, and he got on to that bus for the last time. A few coins in the counter near the driver and he took his seat at the back of the bus. He turned to look outside the window. And a group of youngsters stood there mocking his grotesque get up and face. And they laughed and laughed and laughed. And the bus pulled away.

A funny little thing called....

There is something absurd about it. The sudden throwing back of the head, the widening of lips and baring of teeth, the sharp intake of air and the equally sudden outburst of it and not to forget, the sound; the strange sound that comes in waves, wracking the body leaving the person breathless. It could be a war cry, it could be an angry animal, and it could be pain. And all it is is laughter.

Every action that we perform on the most rudimentary level, has it’s origins in our evolutionary upbringing. We eat because we are hungry and need to nourish ourselves. We are angry because we need to defend ourselves from predators; we preen to attract the opposite sex so we can reproduce and keep the species going. So then what evolutionary purpose does laughter serve?
Why do we do it? What is this funny little thing called laughter?

For something with such an unclear purpose, we sure do it a lot, in fact we do it so often, it’s seems like breathing, it just happens. An adult laughs, on an average about 17 times a day. (Marshall) We must remember that humans laughed much before Seinfeld, Monty Python, Dane Cook and 30 Rock. So why are we still doing it? Social scientist Robert Provine, who has extensively studied the phenomenon, believes that, much like preening, it is a social signal. Laughter is used to signal relief and the passing of danger. Its evolutionary origins also explain the contagious nature of laughter; we have all been in a moment, when one person starts to laugh and before you know it, the entire room is in splits.

Likewise, it is also used to express solidarity in a group. Laughter, according to him came out of man’s gregarious nature and the need to live in groups. In fact so strong is its communicative purpose that it even adheres to the punctuation effect, a phenomenon noted by linguistics over the years(Marshall). It observes that laughter only occurs at the end of natural phrases. This means that even if a person is laughing while saying something, he/she will only laugh at the same point in the sentence that they would have paused to breathe anyway.

For something that has always been associated with humor, we do a lot of it outside of a funny situation. Robert Provine’s offers explanations in his book “Laughter” for the modern use of the ha ha. One of the reasons we laugh, is because we feel superior to people or things. When somebody does something we deem stupid, intentionally or unintentionally, we laugh at them. In fact laughter has often been prescribed as a signifier of confidence; a confidence that rises out of feeling superior to the people around you. The more confident a person is, the more they tend to laugh. Robert Provine has in fact noted in the workplace, that employers tend to laugh more than the employees.

Another reason that has been identified as a cause for laughter, is surprise. If someone sneaks up on you to tickle you, you go into splits, but if you tickle yourself in the same spot, you will never evoke laughter, because the major element of surprise is gone. Similarly, the major component of a joke/ something funny is the surprise ending. For example “Do not follow, for I may not lead. Do not lead, for I may not follow. Just leave me alone will ya?” By taking a line out of conventional knowledge, and twisting it to surprise us, we have managed to evoke laughter.

As for its evolutionary purposes, we laugh when we are relieved. Biologically, when we are tensed, the fight or flight response comes into play and we begin to breathe shallow, but as soon as danger passes, we laugh not only in order to signify the passing of this danger but also to regulate our breathing. Today, in the workplace, the average employee experiences a lot of stress. This has led to the birth of corporate humor and emergence of popular comic strips like Dilbert.

The most amazing thing about laughter is the power it holds. Laughter does not belong to a single language or culture. Like the need for food, clothes and shelter, laughter is not culture specific. It serves as a tool of social cohesion. On some level, laughter is like religion. You don’t have to know English to be able to love Jesus, and similarly you don’t have to be able to speak the same language to all have a laugh at the poor unfortunate soul who got drunk, slipped on a banana peel, tried getting up and banged his head on the edge of the table, fell back down, tried getting up again and banged his head on the edge of the table yet again. Just like a religious holiday, even laughter has its own day. Madan Kataria, of the Laughter Yoga movement has now declared January 11th as “World Laughter Day.”

However, as human beings and social scientists we still understand very little of laughter, and even though we will be doing it (hopefully) everyday for the rest of our lives, we will never fully be able to appreciate the purpose and power of this funny little thing called laughter.

The happiest place in the world

A left from the famous Sitladevi Temple and past one of the only surviving wheat mills in Bombay. Ahead of the hutments and the little stalls that sell vegetables and fruits to housewives who haggle in their nighties for a rupee and beyond the chicken coup that does not smell anymore because I have passed it so many times. Somewhere before the unpainted, concrete wall that separates the newly constructed local railway line from slum dwellers who otherwise would have used it as a place to relieve themselves in the mornings, flashing their bums in the light of the rising sun, lies a stoic gaudy structure; four apartments with high ceilings piled on top of one another. The gate hangs off the hinges and the long abandoned rusty stool of the watchman stares accusingly at anyone who does not belong here. The two foot wide front garden, a testament to the horizontal contraction and vertical expansion of the city, is frayed with weeds, like the crumpled veil of a jilted bride. New layers of paint are peeling off to expose the older layers of paint, sad witness to the attempts at restoration. Welcome to the happiest place in the world.

Six stormy and nomadic years into my life I was introduced to Ferriera Mansion. Under the watchful eye of my mother, I took my first evening stroll. My neighbor was Adrian Aunty; a large Christian lady who smoked and drank incessantly and hosted the endless rummy parties that most of the women in the Mansion were invited to. Her son, Nikhil had her curly hair and I immediately began to call bhaiya or “older brother.” I met Indu, the maid who took care of the paralyzed old lady in the flat above us and her son Deepak, who never grew beyond 4 feet 4 inches. Shashi, my cousin, who already lived there, took me around and introduced me to the kids. There were five cousins who lived in the neighboring building, all of whom had rhyming names; Dicky, Chicky, Vickey, Ricky and Mickey, a curious mix of Indian words that meant random things; the bumper of a car, candy, victory, a bastardization of the name Richard and one Disney character. Then there was Valerie, the Christian girl from across the street who was too snooty to make friends with anybody else except the people who would go to Victoria Church, the one up the road on Sunday with her.

This was not one of the only areas in India to have a church and temple across the street from one another, but it was one of the earliest. Every year, still groggy from its colonial hangover, it would host the May fair. For the May fair I put aside my differences with the snooty Christian kids (Valerie even!) and we put together little stalls to sell things. I would force my mother to make one hundred ‘aloo tikkis’ (potato cutlets) 75 of which my friends and I would eat in the course of the day. But for some reason, I always came back with more money than I would have if I sold 100 tikkis. Hindi music would blare from stalls and some older kids, who would get access to their Papa’s Director’s Special, would dance drunkenly in the center of the hot church grounds.

The sweet melody of the tuneless bell of the local school up the street signaled the end of school and the beginning of playtime every evening. Like ants from a busted sack of sugar we would spill out into the soft muddy compound, initially meant to be a parking lot, that flanked Ferriera Mansion for hide and seek, marbles and to spin tops precariously close to the street. The mothers, ones who were not gambling at Adrian Aunty’s, would stand near the gate, keeping an eye on the kids and gossiping. As the sun set, so did the fun. Being the youngest I was subjected to several cruelties. At this time nearly everyday, I was made to stand in a corner with my eyes closed and count up to a hundred and everybody, instead of hiding would go home to a hot dinner while I stood outside in a concrete dusk and yelled “Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?”

Of course life was not all light hearted and fancy free. We still needed to earn our keep and feed our base desires. Rahila, the bossy ten year old, who would later turn out to be one of the biggest directors in the Indian movie industry would drag my four year brother around and make him dance like a eunuch in various people’s balconies in exchange for Marie biscuits. My cousin and I would run to my grandmother who was a staple at Adrian Aunty’s house and threaten to expose her rummy cards to the other players unless she gave us money. Amid sindhi curses and mutterings from her cigarette pursed lips, she would reach into her coin purse and give us an anna, today 1/8th of a cent, and we would walk away rich and ready to antagonize the peanut vendor.

In later years the boys began to play cricket and the girls fought for space in the compound so that they could set up their badminton nets. The little boys were quickly becoming broad shouldered men and were going to grow up to be cricket champions and the girls whose pigtails were growing into waves were going to be badminton players. The mothers stopped coming out choosing to spend longer hours at the rummy table.

We got involved in school and friends in Ferriera Mansion seemed childish almost. Though the dusty barren compound still seduces the occasional child with the promise of space in the cramped quarters of this concrete jungle, but the charm wears off quickly, or was it ever there?

Three years ago, I was the last one to leave Ferriera Mansion, to come to school in the US. Shashi left for Jamaica the year before; Chicky, Micky, Dicky, Ricky and Vicky are now in various stages of marriage and parenthood. Today, I am far away from the dusty evenings and unwanted sunsets. I am far away from the little boy who was only four feet four inches (my mother tells me he’s grown, but not enough to commend a mention here). Adriane Aunty died of breast cancer, they tell me it was painful, and she said she was glad I was not around to see her.

Last summer, I returned, and the muddy compound had been tarred over, to make the aforementioned parking lot. A few kids eke out a game of cricket with cheap toys, no mothers come out to stand and gossip, the watchful eye is gone, and last year a five year old got run over by a reversing car. The building, under the new landlord Act of 2005 has been renovated and now gleaming pipes run up the exterior, a new layer of paint graces the front, and a smart lilac border lines the jutting out balconies. I turn to Ashleigh, my American room mate and best friend in college, who I brought back home for this trip with me, “Welcome to the happiest place in the world.” She gives me a strange look, fakes a smile and turns away.