Growing up
Geoff Dyer, one of my favourite writers, recounts his days as a single child:
Next to my school—less than ten minutes’ walk away—there was the Rec, where you could play football or just run around. There was no shortage of companions, but always at some point I would have to go back home, back to being on my own, back to my parents. And some days there was just no one to play with. Bear in mind how huge afternoons were back then. For a child the hours stretch out interminably.
I have a sibling, so I can’t quite relate to all of the things he describes, but I can relate to many of them. As a child, I was so different from the rest of the family that I could have easily passed off as an outsider; living in the same house just for the free shelter and food.
Unlike Dyer, we never faced an acute shortage for money. So books were bought, music was listened to and monthly dinners at Kamat’s and Woody’s were had. But like him, it took me years to understand that poverty was relative. We weren’t poor poor, but we were poor nevertheless. Part of this came from my father’s absolute moralist stand that money was something that was inherently fleeting and that we shouldn’t hanker after it, treasure it. He is still that way. It is one of the few faults I find in the man. And on some difficult days, much to my dismay, I feel it is a fault that I’ve inherited.
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My first real break-up with the rest of the family came when to my mother’s horror, I chose Mein Kampf over Tintin at the Madras Book Fair. She refused to hand over the cash at the billing counter despite my protestations that Hitler’s book was 50 Rs. cheaper than Herge’s bigoted vision of China. It was the first time I realized that for all their exhortations of reading well and learning new things, my parents lacked faith that their son could take an intellectual leap into the relative unknown. So at age 12, I came back home with Tintin and the Blue Lotus, promptly went to the library next day and stole Mein Kampf.
Around the same time, I was also taking a deep interest in sport. I loved Tennis and adored watching Mohd. Azharuddin bat. I cried, protested, tried to run away from home so that they would finally relent and cough up the cash to join a sports camp. No. “Whatever you want to play cricket for? Do you Maths. I want 100 out of 100.”, my mother used to say while waving her chapati belan. So, I ahead and bought a light plastic ball and practiced hitting volleys like Stefan Edberg on the bedroom door. This annoyed everyone in the house. I saved up three weeks of pocket money and bought a heavier bat that I could twirl and twist using my wrist like Azhar.
My brother of course wasn’t interested in any of these. He was mama’s perfect boy. Always reading the books that were approved. Listening to music that everyone liked and not playing much sport. Unlike Dyer, who wished he had a sibling very much like his parents so that the pain of parting would lessen, I had the opposite thoughts. I wanted to have a brother with whom I could share my stuff, my feelings, my fears, my hopes, my laughter.
In a way this made me what I am today: a storyteller. Because I had no one to share, I would invent my audience and talk away. I would invent pauses, invent my audiences’ boredom, invent ways to tackle that, invent ways to terrify, invent ways to soothe and nurture. This was how I discovered very early on the power of feedback, of talking to yourself, of giving yourself a chance to listen to yourself.
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I’d like to think I had an interesting childhood rather than a difficult one. But, honestly I don’t know. I haven’t distanced myself much from my childhood yet. Perhaps in 10 years I’ll have more to say.
