In the last couple of days at sleepy old Thiruvananthapuram during my coming out visit, I tried to spend to catch up with the near, dear and not-so-dear ones from my past. It was not really a ritual, something that you would have wished to avoid but rather, something that was agreeable but was necessitated because of the my absence with my parents for prolonged periods of time. Yes, here I was selfish and selfless at the same time – I depend on my friends and relatives for taking care of my Mom and Dad.
On the third evening, I spent time catching up with my set of paternal cousins (with whom I had a tendency to bond better from childhood) having dinner at one of the quaint restaurant which I used to frequent in the last few years of my life at the town. Four of my cousins, all male offspring of the siblings of my father had met earlier in the day and spent some time listening to the Noise Market songs that I was carrying with me on my mp3 player.
About this – they are very excited about my alter-career. It's not often that fame and glamour embraces our family and when its served in the fashionable form of alternative rock, it is exciting even for me. The point is, very clearly, I was excited to. I played them the tracks which would be coming up in the album on their stereo system and later on in the car-stereo and was explaining to them what the lyric is about in a very cunt-sy way.
We had a great bonding moment when the youngest of them all, the 8 year old bag of naughtiness, decided to pose in front of the restaurant as munnabhai while the fag one, quite deservedly, acted as his make up artist. Inside the restaurant, we talked about each others lives and careers and stuff. The three older ones were all either working or poised to land a job so lucrative that anyone, forget myself, would be ashamed of themselves.
Unlike the last time, however, the conversation seemed to religiously avoid the topic of my marriage and it seemed to me that at least my cousins would have come to know about my sexuality through my web presence. That was a pleasant surprise and I felt the cushion of honesty enveloping becoming fatter and fatter thus avoiding the discomfort of having to live/sit with a bony arse a tad less.
The youngest of them all, the one that I really feel fond of, is an adopted child and I have somehow felt more than his 'big' brother since he arrived in my life. I think it's the father inside me that is being gently thawed out. I sat next to him the entire evening and spent some time teaching him how to eat with a fork and spoon and how to be courteous to a waiter etc.
I'm sure that this young man would not have the faintest clue that I did all this. But this would be treasured with me for the rest of my life. Is it just me or am I getting more romantic and/or archaic these days?
2 comments:
Romantic. archaic I dont think so.
Perhaps you are allowing yourself to blossom as a real person. Real people have many different aspects to thier lives and allow many different people to touch thier lives in interesting ways. You are maturing into what you will be :)
@ AKiNYC: Maybe yes! Maybe I am becoming a real person! Thanks for the comments! :)
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