Of Men And Motorcycles

I finally gave up on ‘Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance.’ I think that, at least in my case, the author (Robert M. Pirsig) achieved his probable objective – he proved that he’s smarter than the reader. This is, in my opinion, a questionable objective to harbor when one is a recovering schizophrenic, as Pirsig claims to be. It seems to me that he’s merely hoping to drive home to the reader just how very SANE he has now become.

Maybe nobody has told Pirsig that a surfeit of facts, figures and philosophy is virtually indistinguishable from insanity… but never mind. I couldn’t finish it. I’d hoped for a book on the very special and personal romance of owning and riding a motorcycle – what I got was a treatise on what could be quantum physics, but may equally be the manifestation of too much research laced with an overdose of mind-befuddling antipsychotics.

Motorcycling is not rocket science, and the experience should not be reduced to research. Motorcycling is, in fact, one of the last bastions of personal male freedom in a world rapidly being drowned by the Female Prerogative. Not that women don’t ride bikes too – they do, and I salute them for it. However, I don’t think they can derive much more joy and fulfillment from it than a man could from embroidery or cooking. Certain activities simply mean more to one gender than to the other. (This is not the right place and time to make too strong a case against the horrendous epitome of mutated natural inclinations and drives called the ‘metrosexual’, but I hope you know what I mean…)

When I got married the first time around, my grandmother placed a certain sum of money at my disposal for a wedding gift. I find it significant that my mother insisted on me buying a ‘real’ bike with it (and it was a beauty for its time – a Hero Honda Sleek, God bless its now busted steel heart). Why did my mother insist on this? I didn’t exactly need transport – I mean, I still had a very serviceable moped that could shimmy my ass from Point A to Point B without much problems. Nor had I ever expressed a burning desire to own a powerful bike (at that particular point in time, the only thing I really had a burning desire for was to get laid – repeatedly, and in as many ways as possible. I was getting MARRIED, not baptized, okay?!?)

I have a theory about why my mom pitched so hard for me getting that bike back then. It seems to me that she was unconsciously performing the last rite of passage into manhood for her son. She knew what marriage means. Moreover, she is a woman and knows what a woman does to a man after marriage. Dare we breathe the word ‘emasculation’ here? No, we dare not. Shhh, here there be dragons.

Let’s just say that my mother knew that, after marriage, her son would need to underline his essential masculinity with something more substantial and convincing that a series of sexual acrobatics. He would eventually find the vital line that distinguishes the male from the female eroding. He would eventually begin to doubt that he ever WAS a natural male to begin with. He would need someone else to hang on to during this process – and I say ‘someone’ because a man’s motorcycle quickly assumes a persona of its own in his life.

I’ll concede that a bike can mean different things to different men. To many, it may even be little more than the mode of transport it was originally meant to be. Diplomat that I am (I didn’t say anything nasty about metrosexuals either, remember?) I will not say such men have missed the point. I will simply say that such men have missed the entire fucking BALLPARK.

If his horse is nothing more to the redskin than a means to ferry him, his squaw and his papoose around, that redskin certainly does not belong on the warfront or the hunting ground. That redskin essentially belongs back in camp, where he should help other squaws mind papooses, clean poop and make soup. Such a redskin is a disgrace to his horse, and not worthy of owning one. Let us all shed a reverend tear for the poor horse that falls in the hands of such a loser – can death be anything but blessed release for such a luckless nag? It will spend its lifetime un-cherished, dishonored and neglected. It will never be able to raise its head high among other horses. “My owner is a wimp,” I can hear it whinny disconsolately. “Please shoot me – I can’t stand the disgrace.”

I don’t want to talk of such a pathetic creature here. I’d rather talk about the man who honors his horse and gives it its rightful place of pride in his life. That horse is his loyal and invaluable companion, and the fact that they both knows it reflects in all the man’s other relationships. A man who cannot honor and take care of his horse cannot take care of anyone else, either.

This brings me back to Pirsig’s book, if only to briefly disagree with him. A redskin does not need to know every intricacy of how his horse functions. He does not need to tote a detailed anatomical manual on equestrian physiology around. Of course, it helps if he DOES know how sinew connects to bone, as it were, but a LACK of such knowledge is not a significant handicap. In fact, too deep a knowledge of such matters can prove to be a serious hindrance. I mean, how helpful would it be if I constantly carried with me a detailed mental picture of how my lovely wife looks under her skin? How conducive would such imagery be in an amorous moment? Would it not suffice if I just knew her moods and needs and responded to those in instinctive love and concern, rather than from a platform of detailed knowledge? Blessed are the ignorant, for they shall know reverence…

Fine. Let’s talk about bikes now.

My first bike was often my only escape from the tacky feeling of domestication that began manifesting itself around four months after my first marriage. It accepted wordlessly the love that my wife would or could not receive from me. It thrummed when I stroked it right. It roared exultantly when I gave it all I had. It also grumbled when I ignored a jammed sprocket or neglected to take it for servicing. However, when I did my part, it was a perfect give-and-take relationship, and it took me precisely where I wanted to go – at my chosen speed. Moreover, my wife did not see it as a malicious contender for her rightful place in my life. It was steel and chrome to her, after all, and did not seem to have any qualities or traits that I seemed to respond to with possibly suspicious fervor.

My second bike was a glitzy fluffball that should never have left the glossy magazine page I’d first seen her on. Sure, she sported the low-waisted look with style. Sure, she winked alluringly in the midday sun. Sure, she purred like a contented cat as long as I didn’t push her too hard. And sure (gulp) all my friends wanted to ride her. But that bike had no power, no endurance and no character - and therefore lacked all relationship-building properties. She guzzled fuel like there was no tomorrow and gave nothing in return by ways of mileage. She squealed whenever I tried to take her beyond her 60 kmph comfort-zone. I don’t recall feeling so much as a twinge of regret when I let her go.

A couple of years ago, I bought a second-hand CBZ because it was all I could afford at that time. Man, how I loved that bike – and how she loved me. She never let me down, even when I pushed her far beyond her limits on intercity rides in the peak of summer or the dead of winter. She was nothing much to look at, but she gave me all she had – and she never complained. In return, I attended to every creak, every suspicious shimmy, every sign of possible trouble in the engine. I never fed her anything but the best gasoline money can buy. However, I finally outgrew her, and we both knew when that time came that she’d have to make way for someone new.

This time I cried. As I left her there at the dealer’s, a mere part-payment exchange for the 225 cc, jet-black, drop-dead beautiful Karizma I bought a month ago, I cried hard. I couldn’t bear to look back at her standing there, soon to be ridden by someone else or maybe even taken to pieces for spare parts. She didn’t say anything, but in that last silent space of communication we had before I rode off on my new black steed, I knew she understood and wished me well.

A final word on my new Karizma. This is the first new bike I’ve owned in years, and I’m quite paranoid about doing right by her. Folks around me say I should lighten up, but it’s hard to do - it’s just so awesome to have such a formidable campaigner by my side. She is almost painfully new… but when I ride her, I feel an ancient, unplumbed power working beneath me. This is a tidal wave of primordial, pulsating, bristling gristle to be unleashed on the Mumbai-Pune highway, and on the long, looping mountain roads of Lonavala’s hinterlands. As I let her fly, I know the true, shrieking resonance of man merging with machine.

At its best, a man’s relationship with his bike must – at the time of actual relating – transcend and surpass all his other relationships. It cannot be otherwise. At 140 kmph, you are no longer on edge - you ARE the edge. If you hit a mountain wall at such a speed, they will be picking what’s left of you off with tweezers. If you go for a skid, the tarmac you slide along for a few hundred feet will sharpen you like a pencil until there’s nothing left to sharpen. At 140 kmph, you do not think about the electricity bill or the fact that the filling in your molar needs replacement. You do not wonder why you never got that promotion or why your wife doesn’t understand you. You are completely focused on pushing you luck in the Sheer Survival sweepstakes. You stroke that throttle sensuously , get the rise, feel the friction of your passage, plunge into the landscape on your way to the peak and finally climax to top speed.

You do not hit such speeds because you feel invulnerable - you do so because you know you can depend on your bike to come through for you. You have a relationship based on trust with it, and it’s a pretty focused one. You do what you must to keep it thrumming. You pay heed to every odd sound in the engine, tighten every nut and bolt that works loose, and keep it well-fed with good oil and gasoline. In return, you have the assurance that it can handle the rough spots on the road ahead. You know it won’t give up on you when you need it the most. You test each other constantly to renew that assurance, but there is nothing but a shit-eating grin of joy on you face all the way. This is the essence of motorcycle riding.

After years of dithering on the surface of all that such a relationship can be, I see in my Karizma a gleaming promise breaking free into a crescendo of fulfillment – and as I ride her, tasting the unleashing, metallic flavor of that promise, I forget everything that has been occupying my mind till then. One with my bike, one with the elements around me, unthinkable power at my disposal - above and beyond everything else.

This, at last, is pure freedom…

The light of sheer beauty appears before you
Before your eyes adjust, it vanishes…

No science can capture it glow
For it was not meant to be harnessed

This beauty’s light is not a candle flame
That you could trap in a lantern to dispel your soul’s shadows

This beauty’s light is a firefly
That owes its glow to a larger landscape than yours…

Ah, but who will teach man to accept
The limitations of his fate…

Will he not always strive to capture
Beauty as though it existed for him alone?

Deep in the most thickly populated part of a metropolitan suburb, the police break down the front door of an old single-bedroom apartment. The neighbors had reported an increasingly fetid odor coming from it – an odor that now hits the cops like an olfactory tsunami.

We’ve all smelled it to different degrees while driving down anonymous country roads and highways. It is the smell that announces that organic life of some kind or the other has recently reached the end of the cycle and is shaking hands with Mother Nature again. There is no antiseptically sanitized version of this process in nature – decomposition is decomposition, period. It stinks, it’s messy and it does NOT make for good dinner-table conversation.

They find the source of the stink lying on an old metal cot, dead as the dodo but alive with a rather energetic colony of maggots. We will not talk about maggots here right now – they have their place in the larger scheme of things, and there is a time and place to talk of maggots, but this isn’t it. I’m trying to make a point about the guy UNDER the maggots here – the guy whom everyone in the apartment block knew as “that strange recluse in 3C”. He had lived in his seedy little flat for something like fifteen years, but may as well have not existed for all the impact he had on the neighborhood. Let’s call him Bill.

Bill was not an antisocial sort, but he mostly kept to himself. He would greet those who greeted him, help search for a lost dog when required, contribute to the small charity drives that the building’s unrealistic idealists undertook from time to time… but he kept to himself. Nobody knew where he came from, if he had ever been married, what his life was all about – nothing. He asked for no information and sure as hell never gave any.

Now he was dead, and they’d have to fumigate the entire second floor because he hadn’t been considerate enough to inform the building superintendent well in time of his intention to kick the bucket.

Never mind how Bill died - suicide, stroke, what does it matter? He was dead, and there was no foul play involved. My point here is that he died alone, and it seems fairly certain that this is exactly how he would have preferred it to happen.

Sounds familiar? It should. You read about such stuff in the tabloid almost every day. Some poor old (and sometimes not-so-old) blighter or blightress is found moldering away in his or her home, and the neighbors have something nice to talk about for a while. I’ve only been around for a bit over four decades, but I’m pretty sure that folks had been dying alone long before my dad first noticed that my mom had some pretty appealing curves to her.

So why does it happen? Why are some people alone enough to DIE alone? Don’t we have a population problem? Aren’t there more people around than there should ideally be? Is there any shortage of company if we really WANT it? No, there isn’t – and that may be the key reason why certain folks prefer their own company over that of others.

Many call me negative about people, but I’d like to state here that I’m not, really. I firmly believe that we were designed flawlessly in every respect. We all started out as perfect players in the piece called Human Life – it’s just that we hopelessly buggered up the stage. We added stuff where nothing should ever have been added, subtracted where there was simply no scope for subtraction, fixed what wasn’t broken and wound up as fallen angels cooking in a Hell of our own making.

Yes, we were designed as social animals, but then we discovered ‘individualism’ – that celebrated concept which states that the best of the species do NOT conform. Right from the start, we toe the line only to the extent required to get all the goodies of social life – but then strive to ‘be different from the rest’.

Since it is not really feasible to be REALLY different in this massive cauldron of human life we’ve launched, we find the most puerile ways of differentiating ourselves. We become MCPs, feminists, Christians, Muslims, Hindus and what have you and start barking at everyone else, or we simply draw a febrile line around ourselves and call it our ‘space’. We state our personal ‘rules of engagement’ and make as big a deal of them as possible. We require our friends, spouses and associates to change enough in our presence to conform to our personal image of ourselves as a unique human being – much as they would have to in the presence of a ‘child with special needs’.

That’s all very nice and charming – sort of like kids playing ‘House’, kidding themselves that they really own a physical or metaphysical corner of this teeming planet. The fact, however, is that we’re ALL at odds with the planet to begin with, and we lost our ability to live on it with true dignity long ago. I genuinely feel that the last time anyone at all lived a perfectly normal life – in the way it was meant to be – was around the time when we still lived in caves.

So here we are today, touting our ‘unique’ differentiators and – paradoxically – pitying the folks that die alone in their bachelor/spinster apartments. With the staggering loads of attitude, baggage, traumas and ambitions that we expect everyone else to dance attendance to, aren’t we ALL actually working real hard to be as alone as possible?

I try to see it from the urban hermit’s point of view, and must say I see rather clearly. Out there is nothing but a huge mess of humans waiting to tell you why what you’re thinking, doing and eating is wrong and why you should change your ways. They will not miss a chance to tell you why you must pay court to their painstakingly attained individual peculiarities if you want to befriend, marry or employ them. They drag a formidable machine bristling with rules of engagement behind them, and the urban hermit has very likely tried to operate that machine many times in the past, getting mangled each time.

However, he has an alternative – unlock that single-bedroom apartment, walk in and close the door behind him. No people, so no rules of engagement. Behind that closed door, he feels the pressures of this artificially embellished world drop off his shoulders. He is free to be what he truly is – sloppy and ill-mannered, his face bereft of false smiles, his soul free from the bondage of pretended regret over some misdemeanor or the other. He is NOT relating to ANYONE – and therefore he is free.

And if he dies that way, would it be more appropriate to pity him for his pathetic solitude, or to envy him for having the courage to face the final fact of 21st human life – that we have modified and individualized ourselves beyond all hope of relating to each other anyway? At least he was not pretending that there is any hope at all for any of us.

There are days when my family and I are don’t see eye to eye on certain things – like the validity of my life. On such days, I generally do something spiritually uplifting. The guilt-trip scene has limited entertainment value and fails to fascinate me after the first three rounds.

Anyway, I had such a day a couple of weeks ago, so I went to a local church and lent my ear to the priest’s message. Yes, I do that sometimes. It’s not a religious thing – I go to any place of worship where I can possibly learn something of value to me – or at least get a couple of hours of quality time with someone other than me and mine. I’ve attended Muslim discourses, Hindu satsangs and Christian sermons in equal measure.

Well, this evening I was startled to see a rather prominent local Hindu octogenarian sitting in the meager congregation. I usually meet him only when I visit the local park, where he’s something of a permanent evening fixture. He’s a fascinating old man, full of the kind justly acquired wisdom we spend our lives trying to find shortcuts to. I nodded at him with a weary smile and sat down to listen to the sermon.

Not surprisingly, it was on sin. Sin is a very marketable commodity – the more painfully aware you are of yours, the more money some people seem to make. Sin never goes out of style. It keeps us in line, the awareness of sin does.

Anyway, the good priest quoted extensively from the Bible’s Old Testament and generally served up a generous helping of fire and brimstone. In particular, he belabored the various transgressions for which God flash-fried his people before society invented the judiciary, the Income Tax department and organized religion to do the job. I peered over to the old party to see how he was taking it. It was my guess that he did not go much for such stuff. He’s old enough to have outgrown religion and found God instead.

He was looking thoughtful and even nodded geriatrically at some points of the sermon. At other points he grinned toothlessly, the way a grandfather does when his grandson makes a foolish but cute juvenile statement.

After the sermon, I gathered my flayed senses and left the church, one virtual eye peeled for lightning bolts from heaven. My people back at home make it very clear that I will pay for my maddening non-conformism eventually, but they never mention a specific timeframe….

“So what did you think of the sermon?” I asked him as we stopped for tea outside the church gates. He also untied his fleabag Alsatian, who is at least as old as he is in doggie years.

“Oh, very nice,” he replied. I kept a good two feet between us as we talked - he tends to spray people with whatever he’s ingesting if they’re too close while he does sibilants. He doesn’t believe in dentures.

“I mean, did the priest have a point?” I pressed on. “I don’t think about it much, but my family and I have been discussing my failings over the last two days. If they’re right about them, I’ll be out of the reckoning soon. The Man Upstairs has me in His sights.”

He looked out at the thronging crowd on the main road long enough to convince me that he hadn’t heard me. I was about to repeat the question when he turned to me again.

“I agree with him that sin is what distances us from God,” he said. “What we perceive as our sin fills us with guilt. What we perceive as others’ sin fills us with self-righteous pride. In either case, God is kept at bay.”

I listened carefully, knowing that this was a very important moment in my life.

“The priest also says that God can save us from sin. All we need to do is turn to Him and call on him as a friend. Is it that simple?”

He laughed so hard he almost choked on his last sip of tea. His dog looked up at him worriedly.

“I’m sure it is. But then, how many of us consider God our friend? Sin leads to trouble for sure. When we’re in trouble, we turn to our friends, right?”

“Uh… yes, of course,” I replied.

“Well, who do we turn to first when we are in trouble? First to ourselves - we all consider ourselves our best friends. In our hearts of hearts, each of us believes that he or she is the ultimate standard of human virtue and excellence, and that our own resources are the best. When no solution is available within us, we turn to others – starting with our next-closest friend. When finally not even the last person we consider a friend can help, we do what our pride has prevented us from doing until then. We go to last person we’d ever consider approaching. Who is such a person?

“Hmmm, our enemy?”

He nodded sadly. “Yes, the one we obviously consider our enemy – as a last-ditch solution.”

“Who is that?”

He smiled affectionately at me.

“You tell me, my friend – but didn’t you come looking for Him in church today….?”

Shootout At “I’m O.K. – You’re Not O.K.” Corral

My valued friend, I am complete
Don’t add to me, or take away
You, who sit in judgment’s seat
On behalf of the moral elite
And think you know a better way.

There’ve been a thousand instances
I’ve faced the Critic’s Crew
I’ve heard each kind of remonstrance
And faced each disapproving glance
Now show me something new…

Don’t ask me what I think of you
I’d only spoil your day
It’s sad, of course - your hot wind blew
When I was trying to stay cool
But hot wind finally blows away.

Hell is full of folks like you
Each one has cursed and died
Go on and curse - there’re blessings too
Maybe you should learn a few
Invest a bit on Heaven’s side……

Let’s thank God for each point of view
This world would be a bore
If we resolved our differences
And united in our nothingness
To agree for evermore…

The Tacky World Of Full-time Victims

There is a certain class of people who have jinxed all possibilities of a fruitful and satisfying love life. There is no hope for them in terms of full-fledged relationships – they lack the necessary equipment and are limited to bouncing from one futile rebound caper to another – and to a series of breakups and one-night stands.

They are the victims – the ones whose loves lives are little more than self-fulfilling prophesies of doom. At a subconscious level, they have judged themselves to be flawed. For whatever reason, they do not see themselves as anything worth relating to, falling in love with and cherishing.

It may be because their parents told them they are useless; it may be because they have chronic sexual performance anxiety; it may be because they are the ignored younger siblings of a sexpot sister or hunky brother; it may be because they simply have no life. Whatever the reason is, they do not see a love relationship as a desirable destination – the only thing that fascinates them is the dubious pleasure of a perilous journey down a thorn-raddled road.

Such as state of self is, of course, an untenable thing to allow to percolate into complete awareness. One likes to believe, after all, that one is basically better than everyone else, only misunderstood – a gem consistently mistaken to be an ugly piece of rock. We can’t have ourselves owning up to the fact that we are somehow at FAULT, now can we? After all, we have to live with ourselves even if nobody else wants to. We have to look in that mirror and see someone we can respect, don’t we?

No, we can’t. And even though we know for a fact (deep down there where there’s no escape from the truth) that our current outlook on life has rendered us mangled goods, we got to go through the motions of getting into a relationship, now don’t we? After all, all life’s a stage, we’re all actors on it and EVERYONE’S WATCHING TO SEE HOW WE PERFORM, right? Nobody has anything better to do, right?

Also, there’s this yammering little aspect down there below the belt that won’t shut up no matter HOW much we tell it that it’s no use, that it’s just gonna have to starve to death ‘cause Daddy/Mommy doesn’t have what it takes to provide. Yessir, it’s the good old human sex drive – and no, it won’t shut up. The sex drive is a brainless thing and doesn’t care about any conflicts between what you are, your self-perception and the way people actually react to you. It just says “GIMME” and sure enough, there you go… looking for a relationship you have already condemned to death even before it is born.

When a victim gets into a relationship, everything seems fine and dandy in the beginning. The unsuspecting partner often does sense something sinister squirming below the surface, but usually passes it off as a very understandable nervous reaction to his/her patented sex appeal (my dad used to tell me of the perfect business model – buy someone for what he’s worth and sell him for what he THINKS he’s worth, and you’ll ALWAYS make a profit.)

Two months down the line, both the victim and the victim’s victim have a situation. The victim has his/her true act onstage by then – the act of a self-perceived loser trying to justify yet another loss by putting the blame of the rapidly unraveling situation on the other. The victim’s victim is spending a large chunk off time fending of inexplicable arrows dispatched from inexplicable positions in true guerilla style. The victim’s victim has probably gone through a period of serious self-doubt by then – “Am I really such a bastard / bitch?”, “Were those really my intentions?”

More often than not, the victim’s victim has a better perception of himself/herself than the victim, and eventually tells the victim to take his/her pitiful martyr act and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine. Bingo, alone again. “The prophecy has been fulfilled once more, Lawd – how could I ever doubt you? I will NEVER question your will for me again – and I know your will is that I spend my life miserable and alone.”

For such people, repeatedly generated abstinence from everything that makes life worth living, finally becomes not only a necessity, but a virtue of some kind. “Here I am on my cross, crucified for the sins of than sonofabitch / bitch who doesn’t know how to treat a woman / man right. This is my purpose in life. This is what I born for. Look upon me, all you sinners – see how you made the innocent, blameless suffer.”

I am reminded of a phenomenon that the media have observed here in India – that of professional refugees. India is a largish piece of real estate that is prone to all sorts of natural disasters. In fact, because political greed eats into a large chunk of funds allotted to technological safeguards, it is prone to man-made disasters as well. Fairly spectacular shit hits the fan every now and then – tsunamis, earthquakes, gas leaks, communal riots, you name it, we have it on our calendar this year. Of course, whatever Government happens to be top dog at these times announces that it is dispensing relief to the victims.

Well, certain reporters have noted the fact that the many familiar faces seem to turn up at each disaster site, just in time to lap up the Government goodies. These are professional refugees who keep track of such events and make sure they’re there to stand up and be counted.

What has that got to do with our relationship victims, you ask? Plenty. There’s a payoff for being a doomed love martyr – you get to wallow in loads of self-pity, can absolve yourself of many of the activities of daily living because you are ‘depressed’, and have a ready catchment of like-minded wet ends who will gladly sit down to wail with you that all men are bastards / all women are bitches.

“Ashutosh, please change Smiti’s diaper. Ashutosh? Ashutosh? Oh, there you are. Get out from under that bed and be a man.”

“That’s precisely what I’m trying to me, dear. Men don’t change diapers. That is completely the woman’s domain.”

“Oh, really? And what do men do once they’ve had their fun and the result hollers for attention a few months later?”

“I’m glad you asked, dear. Men are hunter-gatherers. They go out and kill bison to bring meat on the table, and fight off barbarian intruders into the territory who want to ravish their women and steal their offspring. They prowl the steppes and prairie in times of famine and forage for water and food so that the family does not starve. They do NOT change diapers.”

Brief silence, rudely broken by another outburst of squalling from the cradle.

“That is a real eye-opener”

“It should be.”

“I’m trying to see my own husband in this light.”

“You should. It is the order that Nature has designed. You can’t fight it.”

“I’m trying to see my accountant husband as a hunter-gatherer.”

“Now you’re getting personal. It’s not my fault that my father insisted that I…”

“I’m trying to equate his being picked up by an air conditioned company car, and going to his air conditioned office to pore over registers, with hitting the hunting grounds and killing bison to feed his family.”

“You have a very poor sense of metaphor, dear. Rather than my exact words, you should focus on the SPIRIT of…. “

“I’m trying to equate his calling up the credit card and pleading for more time, so that the debt collector, who’s bothering his wife every morning after he leaves, doesn’t repossess the fridge, with fighting off barbarian intruders.”

“As I said…”

“I’m trying to equate his disgruntled face as he trudges off to replenish our exhausted milk supply at the corner store, with the valorous demeanor of the primeval provider who leaves the cave determined to find water for his parched mate and brood in time of drought.”

“You are missing the point here, dear. The details of the mandate have obviously been modified in the modern context, but the essential role is still the same.”

“Do tell.”

“Anyway, men do more than hunt, provide and protect. They also sit in councils that meet to confer on how to keep the community safe. THAT is definitely a man’s job – no man would expect his woman to assume such a weighty responsibility.”

“They do, do they?”

“Yes, they do. Can you imagine the burden of having to stand up and giving voice to words that can impact the well-being of the entire community? What if his judgment fails him? He would be at least partly responsible for plunging countless families into penury.”

“God forbid that he fails at this momentous task, then.”

“Absolutely! Imagine the focus it calls for. The sharpness of wit. The steeliness of nerves. The determination to prevail…”

“For some reason, I’m tempted to mention the fact that you haven’t shown up at any of the building society meetings ever since we took this flat.”

“Oh. Er…”

“I go each time, but the all-male panel refuses to acknowledge anyone but the legal flat owner – you.”

“Dear, you know how it has been at the office. All those accounts we inherited from Mr. Mehta, when he had a stroke two years ago have….”

“Had you shown up for at least the last two, you may have been able to prevent them from turning our legally allotted parking space into a gymnasium.”

“They did WHAT?!?”

“Turned it into a gymnasium.”

“How could they do that?”

“Oh, with about ten bags of cement, another ten of sand, twenty gallons of water and some workers – in two days flat. Some goondas from Grant Road supervised the process to make sure that the woman screaming her protests – me – doesn’t prove to be too much of a disruption.”

Silence. Renewed squalling from the cradle.

“But we were going to buy a car this year….”

No response.

“A Maruti 800 AC.”

Stony silence.

“Okay, where are the diapers?”

“In the cupboard next to Smiti’s cradle.”

Finally, I could see the sheer cliff-wall give way to thunderous skies above me.

There was no doubt that I was an intruder here - the elements had made no bones about it ever since I had begun this climb. The wind had now redoubled its howling, freezing reproach, lashing at me with frost-laden whips as I dug in my gloved fingers and spiked boots to tackle the last ten meters to the top of the mountain.

x x x

How far will a parent go to find the answers that plague us every step of father/motherhood? Is the yen to be the perfect parent not a quest that beggars that of the Knights of the Round Table for the Holy Grail?

Back in my hometown on the other side of the globe, the surface of my study table had long since succumbed to the avalanche of ‘be-a-better-parent’ books. Instructional CDs on how to become the perfect dad/mom had ousted Chopin, Mozart and John Lennon from their rightful places of honor on our music rack, relegating them to dusty lower shelves.

Linda, always a die-hard seeker for new self-improvement avenues, had blown the budget for our Mauritius vacation on parenting workshops (bringing home more even printed research material) and long, rambling telephonic discussions with the other confounded parents she met there.

My bachelor friends had marked off my home on their weekend-visit maps in red Gothic letters that read ‘Here There Be Dragons’. This was definitely no place to drop in on if you wanted to discuss anything but advanced diaper management, the fine art of bonding with your kid and parent-induced trauma syndromes. Unsuspecting visitors to 10/4, Mapleville Drive were subjected to inquisitional inquiries into their parenting styles, berated for their lack of awareness of the latest techniques of wholesome child-rearing, and forced to look at every single photo in a three-foot stack of baby albums (with a running commentary on genesis and circumstantial background).

We had lost a lot of friends since little Brian had arrived four months ago.

However, there were some positive outcomes too. Watching Linda and me tackle our new roles as parents the way that Oxford toppers tackle their final exams, my parents had disengaged their stranglehold on our affairs, removed themselves from the landscape and begun serious work on their own marriage. They seemed to be having a lot of fun for the first time in thirty years…

x x x

“How’s little Brian?” asked my boss on that fateful day last week. Little had I suspected that this seemingly innocuous question would have me clinging to the sleet-covered side of a mountain three hundred and fifty feet above the Tibetan plains five days later.

My boss was one of the few people who could ask me the above question without endangering the next two hours of his life with a new father’s agonized monologue on the pitfalls of effective parenting. After all, he had asked it while I was on company time – and company (which he heads) takes a jaundiced view of employees frittering away potentially productive hours on such stuff.

“Fine, sir,” I replied, stifling the usual avalanche of angsty moaning about how I’m certain my uninformed Daddying approach is turning the four-month old blighter into a mass murderer or, even worse, condemning him to a call centre career.

“And how are you and Linda managing?” he asked. I was getting worried about this unprecedented level of interest. Had word gone round in the office about how ineptly we were bringing up our kid?

“Uh… we’re on top of it, sir,” I answered with an egg-sucking grin. My faux confidence wouldn’t have fooled a retarded donkey with Alzheimer’s.

He nodded good-naturedly, indicating that he had either not heard me, or that he had but was not swallowing it.

“You know, I met up with my brother the other day – he’d just returned from Tibet. He told me of a wise man who sits on some godforsaken mountaintop over there.”

I wondered what this had to do with Dr. Seuss, parenting-oriented rational emotive therapy, or the ‘quality time’ school of thought.

“This wise man has apparently got the Ultimate Handle on parenting,” he said. “My brother was a physical, emotional and mental wreck after his daughter was born… you know, he wanted to get everything right on the parenting front. He says that this wise dude had to say to him pulled him back from the brink of suicide.”

“I see you’ve lost about twenty pounds since Brian was born. Your efficiency levels have also dropped – I attribute this to loss of sleep and appetite.”

My heart sank – here came the pink slip.

“I’ve also heard that you and Linda are buying every parenting book and DVD in sight at the local bookstore. I want to you to go see this wise man in Tibet and see what he has to say. The company will pay for this. I hate to see a good employee kill himself this young.”

x x x

At last I reached the top of the mountain. The wind screamed its protest and tried to yank me over the edge again, but I was here to ask The Question and get The Answer and wasn’t about to let it do that.

I looked around, wondering how anyone could survive the numbing cold up here. At last I spotted him.

He was a shriveled, ancient and extremely weathered specimen, sitting cross-legged on a tacky prayer mat under a sturdy bamboo-thatch roof that did nothing to keep the elements out. The old party was bundled up in one of those fancy Nepali coats that they try to sell to you at every street-corner in Khatmandu. He was about eighty years old and maybe five feet in height, with a few stray wisps of hair still sticking to his otherwise wind-bleached scalp. He was reading something and paid no attention at all to me.

I stumbled across to where he sat and fell to my knees on the cold mountain rock before him.

“Master! I have come to seek The Answer.” I cried abjectly.

He looked up from what I was startled to see was a fairly dated copy of Playboy.

“Another one,” he said, sounding quite disgruntled. “What’s wrong with you people anyway?”

“Master, I am the father of a four-month-old boy,” I continued. “He’s…”

“… the sweetest, smartest, most promising child in the whole, wide world,” he finished for me. I was amazed. This man was truly gifted – he had read my mind!!

“Yes!!” I said, “Yes!! And I…”

“… want to be the perfect father to him, and your wife wants to be the perfect mother. You do not want to take a single wrong step, because you will get only one chance at bringing him up right and you don’t want to goof up. Goofing up will mean traumatizing him, and that would mean a warped child, and it would all be your fault,” he finished for me, perusing the Playboy’s centerfold with a gleam of approval in his eyes. “So, we go on to The Question that haunts every new father and mother – How Can I Be The Perfect Parent?”

I fell silent. There was nothing more to be said. Playboy or not, this dried-up relic had just said it all.

He put the magazine aside and looked at me through the weary eyes of aged wisdom. It was a compassionate look, but there was also impatience in it.

“Here’s the answer, son,” he said. “Get a life and LEAVE YOUR KID ALONE.”

x x x

“WHAT?!?” I gasped. “Leave… leave him alone? But he depends on us for nurturing, for guidance, for the right values in life. We have to show him how much we love him by….”

“… giving him what he really needs, not what your guilt makes you BELIEVE he needs,” he finished for me. “What he needs from you is the basic essentialities of life – food, shelter, education and undemanding affection. Damn it, every animal knows better than to follow their offspring around, catering to every imagined need and being a pain in the neck. Why can’t humans learn to do the same?”

“Because… because humans are DEEP!” I said. “We are intelligent. Our offspring has a broader spectrum of needs, and…”

“You, my dear misguided friend, are just another victim of so-called progressive thought,” he said disdainfully. “You can’t leave good enough alone. You HAVE to fix what isn’t broken. No – you have to BREAK what isn’t broken and then try to put it together in a way that your insane feelings of inadequacy tell you is the RIGHT way! Your son is doomed.”

I was beginning to have enough of his primitive outlook on life’s realities.

“Listen, Monk Man – children aren’t animals. They are extremely sensitive beings,” I said.

“You mean animals aren’t?” he spat at me. “Fellow, beasts don’t write book on parenting, have all-night discussion sessions on the subject or tear themselves up over a wrong move here or there – but they do a really fine job of bringing up their offspring. They are there for their little ones when they are needed – not when they need to be there. They feed them, protect them from predators, house them till they’re old enough to strike out on their own, and let them go. It works!! Have you ever heard of a yak, cockatoo or antelope traumatized by anything other than human mischief?”

I shut up.

“Have you ever heard of an Australian aborigine child who felt he didn’t get enough approval from Dad? Or of a maladjusted Sioux papoose turned juvenile delinquent because Mommy didn’t spend enough quality time with him?” he asked me, a bit more kindly now. “Have you ever heard of an Eskimo child who can’t take the peer pressure? Fellow – in Nature, everything finds its own perfect level. It is when you screw around with the natural order of things that you have problems.”

He got up and handed me the Playboy. I accepted it with cold-numbed hands, not really knowing what I was doing.

“Go home,” he said. “You and your wife must have fun in your lives, and you must let your son have it too. There are only so many years each of us has to experience the gift of life. How many of them do you want to waste on trying to find some mythical Right Equation? The Right Equation is whatever existed before humans decided they are smarter, more compassionate or more innovative than the very Nature according to whose rules they were born in the first place.”

Resentfully, I realized that I had nothing further to ask him. In less than ten minutes, this man had reduced the whole issue from exquisite complexity to grassroots simplicity. If what he said was true, then Linda and I had to excuse left for twisting ourselves into worried, frustrated wrecks. There would be no further expeditions to the Non Fiction section of the local bookstore to get our next fix of parenting acumen.

Then I realized I had one last ace in the hole to play! One last question that would surely flummox him and cause him to dissolve into a helpless pile of confused grey cells – just like it did everybody else on earth!!

x x x

“Before I go, please answer one last question,” I said with forced humility.

He grunted dustily, rummaged under his prayer mat and produced a fairly recent issue of Penthouse.

“Ask your question,” he said, going straight for the centerfold.

I drew in a trembling breath, stunned as always by the magnitude and sheer magnificence of The Final Parenting Question as I geared up to utter it.

“What is Quality Time?” I asked, my eyes filling up with tears of awed reverence. Never mind dumb animals – only intelligent humans were capable of asking such a profound question. In fact, our ability to ask it literally PROVED the existence of God…

He guffawed toothlessly. “Quality time, you dolt, is the time you spend with your child in which you:

• DON’T tweak your own or your child’s sensibilities
• DON’T try to find meaning in every nuance of body language
• DON’T adjust to the moment while nevertheless praying that you’ll somehow get it right
• DON’T anticipate favourable or unfavourable present or future reactions
• DON’T either compensate for or further build on your own or your own parents’ inadequacies

Quality Time is time you spend with your child without any kind of agenda, forgetting that you’re a parent. You throw away the rule book. You become human, not superhuman. You let your hair down, relax and let your child do the same. Quality time is whenever you don’t try to be the Perfect Parent.”

He pointed to the edge of the cliff and waved me to it.

“Now get out of here,” he said. “I have more interesting stuff than this to occupy myself with. Mind your step on the way down – there’s sleet on the slope at this time of the day….”

It’s amazing – and frightening – how many relationships break over clashes of relating ‘styles’. You don’t have a style, you say? Think again.

If you have a father and mother or an overbearing or underdog brother or sister, you have a relationship style based on your family baggage. By that, I mean that your entire LIFE - including your relationships – is likely to be modeled on trying to either extend or negate those influences.

If you have either a highly successful career or a record for getting consistently kicked off jobs, you probably have a style based on either an unrealistically high self-image, or the typical frustration of a loser. And a style in relationships is always bad news, because it’s also a rut.

The Rise And Fall Of A Relationship

That’s sort of sad, because most relationships start of well. Let’s take the man-woman angle, for instance. The initial attraction in such a relationship is based entirely on visual attraction and a corresponding sexual response. I’m here to say that this is probably the purest state, and that the relationship world would be in much better shape if the whole ballgame stayed there from beginning to end.

It doesn’t, of course. The relationship ascends from the genitals to the heart after that. Beside the fact that this ascension is necessary if the relationship is to be worth more than a few weeks of wrestling in the hay, this is basically where the trouble begins.

Hearts connect, and the partners start connecting their futures and emotional well-being to each others’. The initial rush of mush is thick enough to camouflage most other considerations.

Would relationships survive if everything stayed at this stage? Probably. Don’t take my word for it, but it’s possible. Mush takes two, just like the tango – one to shovel it out and another to swallow it. If both partners are your basic imbeciles, this sticky transaction can continue indefinitely. I know of some pretty resilient low IQ/EQ marriages that are based completely on treacle.

But it doesn’t end there either, of course. Once the relationship has devoured the heart, it rises further to the brain. The problem here is that the brain is the seat of the mind, and the human mind is at best a society-mangled doggie that sees the little street corner it does its business on as something worthy of fierce and uncompromising protection. And the mind, like the doggie, has teeth to do this with. The teeth are the Ego.

Ego – The Haunted Monkey On Your Back

What has love got to do with the ego? Everything. We wouldn’t fall in love if we didn’t need the egoistical gratification of being in love. We pursue (and allow ourselves to be pursued) because the ego wants to either conquer or prove to itself and the world at large that it figures pretty high in the market demand sweepstakes.

The ego DOES figure in the initial sexual yammerings that bring men and women together in the first place, but only marginally. Getting laid without anyone knowing of it is still better than not getting laid at all, but being in a (drum-roll and fanfare, please) RELATIONSHIP can never be something we want to keep off Page 3 – and the bargaining table - altogether.

What has all this to do with styles? Everything.

The ego is the home of all relationship styles. Our ego is the mutilated bastard child of our past experiences. It spends its entire shelf life either dragging gathered impressions along with it or running away from them. The result? A style.

This style dictates how we relate to our lovers, kids, bosses, friends, the beggar on the street and the doggie baring its fangs at us over its rightful garbage can. Nature being what it is, our style will first attract others who share that particular can of worms, and then repel them when they start seeing too much of themselves in it. The result? A nuked relationship.

Kiaiiii!!

Is there a way out of this? I think there is. I’m reminded of Bruce Lee’s last movie – The Game of Death. It was a pathetic effort, but it did have a neat message hidden in the mess. Lee finds himself in a building where every floor is dominated by a master of one particular martial art style. You have your fundamental judo master, then your karate master, then your Tae-kwon-do master and happy stuff like that… all the way to the top.

Lee takes a brief moment to figure out each master’s chosen style before proceeding to turn them into chop suey. It’s just a matter of identifying the style in question, finding its loopholes (EVERY style has a slew of those) and wading in there. His problems begin when he reaches the top floor. This one is presided over the Man With No Styles (for some strange reason played by yesteryear basketball champ, Abdul Kareem Jabbar). This man keeps Lee at bay easily, because the fact that he has no style offers no loopholes. Old Lee is soon at his wits’ end, but finally does manage to get some key kicks and punches in, to cut Jabbar down to size.

The point is – if you have a style, you’re vulnerable (not to mention predictable). If you base your relationships on a style, those relationships are as screwed as the hides of two equally hungry and savage doggies, who have decided that they’re going to lunch off the same heap of offal. They’re going to jib, jab, feint and attack, and finally one will find the fatal flaw in the others’ style and lay his guts out for general inspection on the pavement.

Ridding Yourself Of Relationship Styles

If you know your fatal relationship style, sit down with pen and paper one weekend and figure out how you got it. Your ego will scream and whimper in protest. Put it in the garbage can where it belongs, sit on the lid and keep working.

Once you’ve figured out whom in your past you’re getting back at when you tell your boyfriend that he should stop invading your space, or your daughter that she should stop trying to manipulate you, you can drag your style out of its lair and beat it to the death.

How do you relate to others without a style? By the seat of your pants – and that’s always the best way. You take each moment and situation as it comes, tell your natural reactions to take a long hike and instead react in a matter that is appropriate to the moment and the situation.

For instance, your girlfriend will eventually tell you that you aren’t attentive enough to her (they all do at some point in time). When you hear her say the words, something will crawl out from the baggage room where you store your past experiences and impressions.

It may be your long-dead father, reiterating his axiom that women should always be reminded of their humble place in the scheme of things. It may be your sister, reminding you of how she’s always said that you’re a self-centered dork – need any more proof? It may be your childhood buddy, telling you that not paying attention to your girl is the only way of keeping her interested in you – worked fine for him back then. It may be your first flame, telling you that you’re incapable of caring for a woman, and that you’re a pathetic excuse for a man.

Well, your girlfriend doesn’t know you’ve had all those inputs along the way. All she’s said is that you’re being inattentive to her. But there you go, rising up in righteous wrath against the whispering ghosts of your past. You turn on your GF and let fly at her every arrow that you’ve ever wanted to shoot your dad, sister or first flame. Or you reach back and shake the hand of your childhood buddy (who’s probably all alone in the world right now, thanks to his exemplary attitude towards women) and say, “Thanks for the advice, Sam – here’s where I use it.”

You shove all those ghosts right back down there and listen to what your girl is saying. And you react from the present moment. YOU react, not some shyster specter from the past. You, without a style based on past impressions, are a fresh, new man… and you will surprise yourself with unsuspected depths of maturity, empathy and genuine caring when you’ve managed to become that.

Because this process takes a while, a person without relationship styles must necessarily wait a long moment before opening his or her mouth before responding to dicey relationship situations. But the end result is pretty good. The mouth doesn’t fly off the handle so easily. Pride doesn’t yelp like a kicked cur every time the partner criticizes. The hand doesn’t jump as easily to the wallet in an automatic reflex of past guilt or ongoing approval-seeking issues.

Believe me, it’s worth trying out…