Chapter XXI: '13's out

Whoever said imperfections make you beautiful is a liar. I instantly understand that you say it because your own imperfections are FUBAR. I get it well that you are one of those betel-chewing uncles who sit by the hallway discussing AAP versus Congress versus BJP day in and day out. Because you got no cares, you got no worries. You are so content with your own self that I’m jealous.

Now tell me, wouldn’t meeting someone after long and having them tell you that the first thing they notice about you is your ridiculously rounder tummy set off a panic alarm in your head too? There goes my love of medu-vadas out of the window. Blame me? Rethink! I blame my stupid job that requires me to keep my arse glued 10-12 hours daily. This duration includes frequent trips to the food-court where I tend to indulge in fried offerings. Every morning I pledge myself from having a certain “unhealthy” dish, but the moment it’s my turn at the counter I just subconsciously blurt out what I shouldn’t have. Then I spend the next two hours whining. [I am such a girl!] And joining gym would only be an option if the world was ending tomorrow! Gym is for the insecure, my sole argument.

More hard-hitting was the revelation that I had long been condoning. It was the appearance of a slight patch of my hairless scalp near the crown area. After posting an attention-seeking picture on Facebook, I was flooded with ideas, some as comments and other personal messages suggesting how to nip it. It’s like asking Kim Kardashian to pick a black dude she had the most fun sleeping with! Won’t anybody be confused with so many options? So I’m back to square one. I dump blame, for this one, on Soni genes! Reading about it is how I spent my birthday evening. Science calls it “Alopecia“. One of the reasons listed is Stress. But stress can’t cause hair loss, brothers. And why would I be stressed? I ain’t no sole witness of some murder on a highway. It’s in my genes. Yes, some chromosomes playing bad. Born in a khandaan that loses its tresses by age 35, I was never really aspiring to audition for an advertisement for Fructis at 40, but at least let my twenties go by safe! Wow, I have aging issues worse than Donatella Versace, don’t I?

So now with two panic alarms ticking off and about to implode my mind, I shrugged thinking to myself, “Give the inner drama queen a rest and just enjoy the meal!” Having just settled in our seats, (me in a deep-sinking couch that made me weigh chances of my BMI surpassing the overweight limit) I was struck by proverbial lightning again, another blow that I withstood with a smile. Apparently, I had started to look much older than my age. At 23, I somehow could pass as a 30 year old with ultimate ease, an opinion that evokes a rather ambivalent reaction from me. While I like to be seen as a mature, charming, decent guy that girls go gaga over but I am fully aware of the lethargic laid-back impression I leave does portray me as a tired half-dead prick. Pre-birthday realizations, I say.

Now this is something utterly silly: Born on the 13^th day of December, I was naturally drawn towards number 13 and the preposterous stigma of ill-luck it holds. I tend to thirteen-ify everything around me. Summoning simple calculation logic and taking care of the leap years that lay between 1990 and 20THIRTHEEN, I turned 8401 days old on my 23^rd birthday, which coincidentally sums up to 13. What an utterly rubbish realization! Don’t frown, I’d be retreating to my burrow soon!

The end of ’12 whispered in my ear that ’13 will be good. I had always had an inkling because 13 is my number. And with ’13 almost about to finish, I am certainly not complaining. It indeed was good. Birth of my nephew, good riddance from a rotting relationship, a few goodbyes to friends who left in chase of their dreams, some self-discoveries, a more mature outlook towards life, and lastly, blessings aplenty from my parents.

In the village I live in, although I had less number of lonesome late-night meanderings this year, and was majorly as thoughtless and messed-up as Paris Hilton would be at an aptitude test, I did discover a slew of things about myself. It also included coming to terms with some of them that I would usually eschew as jokes. Confrontations, people. Growing up is a trap, take it from me kids! Never give in. *coughs a dry cough* So lately, I have learnt the art of gauging people’s intentions, interest and all that jazz. No, I didn’t attend any mind-reading classes or practise clairvoyance, it’s just that I may have grown up a little. There I said it! Ha! [The reason I am typing it out here says that I really haven’t learnt anything at all] It has helped me see beyond what they say and reason out why do they actually say it. It’s like a quest to unveil some ulterior motive, I feel like an undercover agent giving them a wicked smile thinking “I see through you, mate!”

This “growing up” brings about similar feelings that you feel when you read your Facebook Wall from last year. Yes, the one that makes you hit yourself with a brick till you bleed. “Man, was I drunk?” “I couldn’t have acted that way!” “Why would anyone write that unless they were on class-A drugs!” “No wonder everyone thinks I suck donkey balls!” “Hell No!” “Ouch, that must have hurt.” “How insensitive and foolish! Thank God I don’t do that anymore” But we will do it all again, and repent over it the following year.

I also realized that I have hyderhidrosis, for it wouldn’t be for no reason that my hands start leaking holding a mouse. I tell my hands “Relax there girl, the mouse ain’t no Ron Jeremy you getting all worked up and wet for!” And if, by chance, I get a little nervous or excited or perplexed (that I always am), my palms indulge in their very own Niagra Falls that leaves me red-faced when someone suddenly turns up for a handshake. I wonder, if for them, my handshakes usually result in handwipes too!

Why just hands, no matter if it’s cloudy, rainy or cold, there’s no way I can avoid getting those unwanted wet-patches on my shirts. It’s as if some water balloons in my armpits somehow exploded. I always feel hot! My passport should read my middle name as Swine. Thank god I only work with douchebags, otherwise entering office with those patches would embarrass me as much as Tom Daley’s ex-girlfriends would have been after they found out he swings the other way. And believe me you, these anti-perspirants are a ploy to mint money from helpless people like me. Nothing seems to work on those glands of mine. Why this awkward abundance and not more hair on my scalp instead, or perhaps a bigger piece of sound mind!

Also, I undertook a couple of color-blindness tests online. And I’m afraid it does not look good. I may not be able to pin-point about what type of color-blindness I have but I can certainly not recognize brown, green and some shade of red. I think it’s called Deuteranopia, a type of Dichromancy. Yes, I know the consequences. My friends have voiced them a million times. Isn’t it sad that I call all the candies in Candy Crush Saga by their shape and not color! If there were no multi-shaped candies in Candy Crush Saga, my addiction would not have become so maniac. Also, walk a mile in my shoes to discover the near-impossibility of me now ever becoming a pilot or an astronaut (which after watching Gravity I’m sure all girls would want to become, hoping that when they are all stranded and in distress their Mr. Clooney will appear and give them hope. Hallucinations, ladies!). For my state: Damn you, cone cells!

With enough revelations for girls to rethink my case (read: toss out in the trash), I’d end this long long post with things I am grateful for. I’m grateful to be able to spend my Diwali at home with my parents and my sister with her baby Neil.  Without further endlessly prating and making a big deal of all the little things, I come down to my November. I call it November with Neil, like a redolent episode of Rendezvous with Simi Grewal. The youngest in family have a charm about them. No matter what they do, it has to get reciprocated with a smile, be it breaking your favourite vase or flitting the TV remote up in the air like it’s a fricking balloon.

My father would jump clapping around in order for Neil to notice and imitate him, like that cymbal-banging monkey toy only without the cymbals. How Neil would forget everything and rush to my mother whenever he catches sight of her talking over the phone. It’s impossible to not call out his name to get his attention and ask him repeatedly to say “Mama” in that irritating baby-talk language. The stress that’s making my hairline recede and hair fall like lovers just evaporates when he nibbles on my forehead trying to show he’s mad. I wonder why he gets tired at all. He wakes up, poops, eats, sleeps and repeats. To see him crawl from room to room, walk with the support of table edges or bed-rests, circling around our maid like paparazzi to Lady Gaga, to hear the high-itched laughter that echoes in the hall, his speeding walker in the verandah, that restlessness to reach things higher than him when I held him, the impatience at the delay in his next spoon of oatmeal to arrive to his mouth…

You know there are things like puppies that always demand love, Neil is one of those things that you wish you could sleep next to, see him breathing with his tiny hand folded as if holding an invisible unicorn horn and dreaming of floating in clouds with white-garbed angels fanning him with huge feathers in slo-mo. He’s the Hugh Hefner and the angels his Playboy bunnies. He’s the man!

It’ll be at least 5 years that I’ll see him again. Skype doesn’t count as “seeing” someone. I hope our lives change and become grander, bigger in these years and the next time I meet him he is big enough to pull my hair and kick me in the crotch saying ,“Is that all you got, uncle?“

Until then, much love.