Monday blues

Yesterday was a wonderful day in my life. I should admit that I was feeling very happy after my first date "in Bed". Even though I was able to please Mr. Lion (to an extent I think I have), some sort of nervousness hidden in me prevented me from enjoying the reciprocation.

So, feeling wonderful I was; but also feeling rather anxious about not hearing from Mr. Lion. Finally, he responded in the afternoon saying that it was nice experience blah blah. I wanted to chat with him somehow. It didn’t materialize yesterday and not until now. In the back of my mind I was feeling undecided whether to go to Delhi or to join my college as volunteering intern. Plus, I haven’t decided on a date yet to ‘give’ Julie to its new master.

Multitude of reasons made me wish there was someone with me to do something to take my mind off. I set out to see Ray who was actually busy at the hospital relieving someone. I met him in the intensive care unit and learnt something that I have always wanted to learn. How to operate the Ventilator and other monitoring devices. Ray is very good at explaining. He’s patient and answers all your questions with disregard to the actual intelligence involved in putting together the question.

After that bit, I took Ray home to help me out with my website updates. Plans went awry as we found ourselves at the mercy of the games that the Kerala State Electricity Board likes to play. Mind you, it’s not even a week since they have taken off the Load-Shedding bit. The half an hour per day cuts have been generously replaced by outages in the morning which last about 2 hours. Anyway, what this meant that we had to go out and we ended up having a lot of fun.

To the beach we went first and spent a lot of time knowing more about each others’ past lives. It’s alarming that we should have so many similarities. We also tried solving crosswords but ended up feeling like miserable jerks when we couldn’t even find more than 4 answers out of 50. A stroll on the beach is always great for ‘silverfox-spotting’. Even though a drizzle made a decent try at stopping us from enjoying, we beat it to the new park in the cultural capital of the city. It’s an awesome place and things like this should be encouraged. Except for the loud and senseless speech about some kind of harmony between religions blaring over cheap speakers, the park too was a pleasant experience. To top things off, there was this awesome dinner at the “Punjabi Dhaba”. In a matter of a few months, this place is becoming “the” place to have food. I love the “Aloo ka Paratha” at the place.

Did I ever mention to *you*, the reader of my blog, that I’m feeling a bit like ‘living’ Will & Grace? If I haven’t yet, then I’m feeling like that. I have always wanted to lead a life in the way one of these sitcoms portray it. Look I’m gay. I’m seeing someone. I have a friend Ray who is gay. I have someone like Chuck and May who know practically everything about me. Great friends, gay friends and an active sex life; Wait a minute! Isn’t this Will & Grace without all the jokes?

Among the things that me and Ray have been talking about, one thing that I would like to write about is about the relationship with parents. Ray had the opinion that I’m just taking things too seriously at home. I am expecting too much from my parents while not giving what they want. I know that this is true to some extent. But then, I just wish for someone like Chuck’s parents who enjoy dining out, having fun and talk to each other more. Then again Chuck is not gay, he’s religious and does do things that his Mom and Dad want him to. Thinking about what might have been had I not been like what I am now is never going to work, is it?

Anyhow, I would still like to give you an example of what goes on in my house which always seems to irritate me. Today afternoon, I was feeling happy about having worked out properly for the first time after my sprain. I had gone down to have lunch keeping a happy face and feeling good. Mom and Dad are watching the Sun News channel. Mom served me the set. I thought I will watch some TV while I’m eating. I ask my father if I can watch TV for 10 minutes.

Dad said “You can watch TV alright. But if you don’t mind I would like to watch TV for another 10 minutes.” Mom said “Why do you ask? Have we ever prevented you from watching TV?” Both don’t look in the eye. Mom said what she did with the kind of unhappiness which depressed me. Now you might be thinking that this is normal. But when you understand that my father always says things like this without actually meaning it. He actually wanted to see TV for half an hour. If he wanted to say he would like to watch TV for half an hour, why not say that? Why should he be dishonest in this?

Dishonesty is one thing my father always sports. Especially when it comes to saying things like

“I know it’s there somewhere here, but can’t find it now.” - The thing was never there.


“This thing is brand new. I bought it a couple of weeks back.” - It was bought about 10 years back and it looks damn old.


“I have never seen the TV go as dark as it does. It was normal until today.” - The TV has not been working properly for about 4 years now.

The levels of dishonesty creep up to dizzying levels when he speaks to a guest/friend. He tries to praise himself and everyone else to glory. I can’t stand that. Why can’t he be straight-forward and say the truth?

My Mom’s cooking is in such a way that some times the gravy and the pieces in the curries seem like separate. Now this is accentuated when the curry is hot. When she’s at home, she cooks late and at lunch everything is warm. This of course, does more harm to the curry than not because of the problem. I hate this and always ask her to cool everything down before serving. But she never seems to understand and always blames me for complaining too much. The same happened today.

So I’m left eating at the table munching my not-so-delectable lunch. I try to drown with my best effort. This is what goes on around me.

Dad’s picking on his nose. It is ugly to see how he does it. He sort of lunges back after each pick and the whole upper limb motion is very jerky. After each pick he carefully inspects what is between his fingers. If there is something appreciably large, it ends up on the floor by the couch.

Mom’s trying to act interested in what is going on in the TV. She makes strange faces. She has her hand inside her underskirt and she’s also picking somewhere. I can’t see properly where.

Seeing this, I hope to see something pleasant on TV. Surprise, surprise it’s Sun TV. They show ugly Tamilians with weird hairdos, weirder accents and even yuckier things to talk about. At times the guy on the tube talks so loud, I have to plug my ears. And even more surprising, my parents are enjoying it. After all, they aren’t watching TV! They are busy with picking at themselves.

It’s too much for me. I have to stop eating lunch and come up to type this. I feel so bad at not being able to adjust to these apparently trivial things at home. I hope someone finds out that this is not so easy to adjust.