I hate the environment I grew up in. The very first memory I can recollect is smuggling my knickers and a vest into my nursery school bag, with a wish to escape the stifling cheeriness of my home. Apart from pretending Vedant and I were equals—which we were not, the family then was dealing with another obsession.

A fat, dimpled and forever gurgling nuisance who lulled my parents, grandparents and brother into believing our family couldn’t get more perfect. Even the cries induced by my sneaky pinches faded away within seconds of Vedant cooing into her ears.

The perennially upbeat attitude of my odd family drove me crazy. Stray dogs were fed, the evil cat always had a ready saucer of milk, relatives wandered in demanding food and bode, friends dropped in to spend hours discussing politics and academia.

So, from the instant I could make a choice, I chose friends with a more realistic view of the world. We stoned strays, flattened tyres, plagiarised school projects (a supreme sin in my parents’ eyes), and at 12, started jerking-off during recess . We smoked pot and travelled ticketless. And as far as possible I included Vedant in my growing-up.

Why should my brother suffer the unbearable impracticality of my family?

Tyres, strays, and pot didn’t appeal to Vedant. Public transport was a no-no. But jerking-off he embraced wholeheartedly.

It sickens me that 18 years later, that’s all the opportunity he gets, still. My blighted family! They have stretched their middleclass incomes to pamper him: got him an iPad to read books, a large screen PC to run his transcription jig, and even fly him business class. But sex, which would have come for much less, they have rudely blocked from their sight.

In case you wonder, my twin falls somewhere in the autistic spectrum. I really don’t care for the details. He is what used to be called simply as mentally retarded some years ago. The lexicon has been cleaned up since, but little practical development has been made in understanding his (or his like) needs. That’s far more insulting than the various labels we pick and reject.

Vedant is lucky. He has a slightly droopy mouth, eyes that don’t stay focussed for too long, and a rather deep, infectious laugh. With that combination, when he blatantly ogles women, especially those with big boobs (out fetish), it does not come across as creepy as when I do.

I sit planning our 30^th birthday, as my menopausal girlfriend—between hot flashes and mood swings—is planning life without contraceptives and fear of pregnancy. There is a bipolar reason why I chose to hook up with an older woman. The chances of her getting pregnant or wanting to are low—which thrills me; and if she does, the chances of a child with a disability is high, which depresses me to suicidal depths.

Back to THE gift. I don’t trust Delhi women. I have to look outside of our hometown. Bombay girls are too commercial, and scouting Calcutta for a gift for a 30-year-old virgin.

If I go south my mother’s jingoist feelings might be hurt (Malayalam film history notwithstanding). I have for long had the suspicion that my mother blames my father’s dubious Parsi gene pool for the soup one of her twins landed in. My father truly believes that it is about being different not abnormal.

Vidi, the sister, has been secondhand pot smoking (thank you, you are welcome!) for too long to know the difference.

I don’t have a particular feeling towards or about my brother.

I am my brother.

I know what Vedant needs.

On the big 3-0 my brother and parents will be visiting the still fat, dimpled and forever gurgling sister of mine in the US of A. She is now out of diapers and doing her doctorate in—save me from my family—autism and theatre. They have all made a living and a virtue out of my brother’s disability.

At 25, she has already graduated into a sex goddess thanks to a horny Punju (uh, Haryanvi, she never fails to correct me) boyfriend. Maybe she could find a suitable GIFT in Louisiana.

For all their equality play, my professorial parents played ostrich. When I turned 15, they gave me a couple of books on sex and puberty… two years too late. That was also the first time they got something for me alone. It made me feel both strangely special and indignant for Vedant. When we were 15, in their head at least, my parents neutered my brother.

Some years ago I tried raising the subject of Vedant, autism and sex, and how all three will have to co-exist harmoniously.

My grandmother, otherwise quite open-minded (she even greets my girlfriend on her birthday), had a bout of pretend palpitations. I know she was thinking, unfavourably, of the rather convincing play by Radhika and Prathap Pothen in Meendum Oru Kaadal Kathai.

But what I had in mind for Vedant was more Kamal Hassan in Chippikul Muthu, except it should be Vidya Balan not Vijaya Shanthi. As a professional film critic, I find both my reference and my solace in films. I also find my realism in it. Which is why, what I really want (for him as well) is Mickey Rourke meets Kim Bassinger moments.

My brother is a composite of interesting sparks—photographic memory, ability to identify the make of a car from its key, superb medical transcription ability, no regard for social mores, and what’s on his mind will be expressed no matter what the occasion or location. At 29, he will still throw a tantrum if his Sprite is too cold, and fling the bowl of sambhar across the table if his dosai is not crisp enough. He will scratch his balls to relieve an itch, no matter whose company he is in.

But masturbation he pretends he neither indulges in nor knows of.  The porn on his computer is skilfully hidden. Secrets only I know.

I see longing when he smiles at the many ‘happy’ couples—students, alumni—who wander in and out of my parents’ home, arm-in-arm with barely hidden lust. I see him hurry to his room after watching the young bai on all fours, mopping the drawing-room floor.

I also understand the violent tantrums that neither my grandmother’s music nor my father’s soothing voice can control.

I can feel the physical pain of his celibacy.

Which is why I have decided that I will gift him a hooker.

After spending the Eid break doing little else but devour the biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, I can’t quite get the characters in the book out of my head.

Yes, it’s Jobs bio first and last, and though Isaacson has been brutally honest in the protagonist’s portrayal, traces of Jobs’s control do surface. There are some obvious names that have been left out, and the ‘bozos’ in Jobs’s opinion are portrayed as just that!

Very often in the book, the tone is more of an autobiography than a biography. He is listening to what people have to say about Jobs, from Jobs’s perspective. The more than subtle empathy with his main character continues to such an extent, the closing remarks of the book are that of Jobs, not of Isaacson.

Having said that, Isaacson’s writing is magically lucid–the beauty of the prose’s simplicity is all his own, not even Jobs could have engineered that.

Next on my reading list his biography of Einstein. If anyone can make physics readable for me, it must be Isaacson.

I love biographies, but the reason I picked up the book is because I love Apple(=Jobs as I used to think), and am an obsessed consumer of its goods. I read the book on my iPad, experiencing and living everything Jobs wanted to and managed to achieve–adjusting the brightness of page, size of text, the orientation of the screen, making my reading experience as much about the physical product as of Isaacson’s skill. I love Apple even more now, even as I bristle a bit under its need for control.

The rationale behind why the products are the way they are is revealed in this book, and also revealed are the people and brains behind the products and applications that make Apple so beautiful. Ive, Atkinson, Rubenstein, Fadell… names that the non-techy consumer may not be aware of. It was their brilliant designs, ideas, engineering that Steve Jobs recognised, approved, fine-tuned and marketed–like no one else could. His A-Players.

Jobs is controlled in what he wishes to talk openly about and what he prefers to brush off or simplify. The reason I think he pushed for this book is in part to tell his story, but also as importantly to tell the stories of the A-Players. The guys who achieved the sleek, seamless beauty and superior engineering of Apple products that we enjoy today. This book is probably his way of finally recognising those A-Players, sharing the literary centre stage with them, even if they were not on stage with him in any of the MacWorld events.

But as is his wont, Jobs holds back. You know that wonderful interface that Apple products have, when you run the cursor over the dock, icons magnify?  A feature that helps you fit in more icons on the dock, the feature that also appears in the keyboards of iphone/ipad/ipod, and in the address book of these products. That amazing feature was by a young coder who was recruited on the spot when he showed it to Jobs. But who is he? That name is never revealed… that awesome feature helps us fit in more into small screens! What did that unknown person do to piss of Jobs, or is he so valuable that Jobs is guarding his name (as he has done with others)?

I am not going into his parenting skills and lack of it, his psychedelic tripping, food fetish and how he time and again proved to be a crappy friend–all that has to be read, understood and enjoyed.

That brings me to the other Steve. Wozniak–he invented the universal remote outside of the Apple umbrella, because of which he attracted Jobs’s wrath–who was one of Jobs’s oldest friends. The teddy-like gentleman-hacker co-founded Apple, and was the BRAIN behind it, none of which is really news.

Of the hundreds of characters that inhabit the book, Woz is the one who really touched me. He worked as a middle-level engineer in Apple, even though he founded it; Even after stepping out of Apple, he was so pure in his excitement over Apple products and so rancour-free. He still lines up outside Apple stores (along with other Apple faithfuls) on the eve of a product launch. He shared his stock options with founding employees who were screwed over by Jobs. His is not the generosity of a person who has no other option to shine or be liked. After all the man single-handedly designed Apple I and II hardware and circuit boards.

His is a generosity that is simple, genuine and childlike. He more than willingly gives Jobs the credit for making Apple what it is. The brand was founded by two geniuses. One who is self-effacing and the other who was not. No prize for guessing who was who.

The book was a great read, and it also gave me a better understanding of a lot of things in my life at the moment.

There are two interesting things that resonated with me. His Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and his Reality Distortion Field. These two mental facets (NPD and RDF) in Jobs’s case helped create a brand that is ‘insanely great’–because his focus was on ‘the brand’. He probably could have achieved the same with a little less ‘assholishness’.

Unfortunately, I have seen both of these traits in action in lesser mortals whose focus is their own growth over that of others; their greed over the needs of the rest. For a few years now I have been highly disturbed and at a loss on how to handle the situation and the person(s), and it was a rather sad realisation that I really can’t. I can temper its effect on me, but not totally be immune to it.

I worry over a couple of things now, when this book becomes widely and frequently read/quoted:

1. Parents might end up thinking it is ok for their child(ren) to be a brat or badly behaved, in the hope or assumption that it could be a sign of later genius.

2. In the hands of evil corporate leaders, NPD and DRF could be a ruthless tool for uninhibited corruption, and they could well take refuge in Jobs’s success, forgetting Jobs’s success is because his focus was not his ego, but the idea of perfection.

Here is my wish list of people I want Isaacson to write about, immediately:

1. Oprah Winfrey

2. Osama bin Laden

3. Charles Dickens

4. Prabhakaran (LTTE)

ETA:Embarassing errors & typos (haste makes waste!) have been edited before re-publishing post. No more bloopers, I hope.

I have FOUR stories to tell. And every tragic incident was blamed on alcohol. Every bleeding limp, kicked-on stomach, twisted arm… every single assault was the fault of whisky, beer and arrack.

Oh, ever so often, the blame fell on the woman for provoking him when he was drunk. “Why couldn’t she wait till he was sober to reason with him?”

I was about 11 when my next door neighbour turned from a much-respected teacher in a leading school in Madras, to our colony’s resident drunk and wife-basher. My first exposure the violence against women, and the impotency of society. A well-educated, religious, until-recently delightful father of two turning to bottle and fists? Must be bad company, a wife with a loose tongue, demanding in-laws… anything and anyone but the man himself was to be blamed. The cycle of drinks, violence, apologies continued till the man OD-ed on cheap liquour and dropped dead at the local ‘wine’ shop.

**

Somewhere during those 7-8 years of violence, another neighbour married a well-placed, mild-mannered, youngster who didn’t waste time building up a reputation, and made no bones about his nightcaps. Only thing, nightcaps sometimes started at dawn and continue till he crashed out. Of course, he was not violent by nature. Only when his wife refused to follow him home in the evenings, and insisted on staying with her family.

If only she took him home and settled him in, he wouldn’t turn violent. But who is to speak sense into that woman’s head? His sons are now young adults, he has lost his job, drunk away his pension fund, and worries his wife for spending money–after all, what’s the point of holding down two jobs, if you can’t support your husband?

Whenever I look at him with disgust, at least one person will talk about what a lovely person he is when he is sober. Hopefully in time, he will have a bottle of illegal and lethal arrack, and then this story will end well.

**

Someone in my family recently lost her husband. She was shy of 50, he just over. He had a stroke, was bedridden for a couple of years–during those months when the whole family reminisced about what a humorous friendly fellow he was. It was a mystery though, why he was in debt when he had a well-paying bank job.

The stroke we later realise was the result of stress, high BP, and… shhh… excessive alcohol. But what a wonderful father. He was a friend to his two kids. And even when he was drunk and tended to get aggressive, it was never ever directed at his children, just his wife. He would never lay a finger on his children, no sir. He would sober up, and apologise, and stay up late into the night recounting stories from Indian mythology. Am sure, some of those stories were about patriarchs above reproach. Months after his death, his life as a father, even husband, is still romanticised.

**

Few months ago I got a call late in the evening. “Hello, this is Mrs X,” the caller identified herself. Our maids were friends, and she was trying to get in touch with hers through mine. Hesitantly, I asked her if she needed help, because I knew she was wrapping up her affairs and going back home, having lost her husband. And also because I knew her story, was at one point a ‘friend’, and was very annoyed about the proud stress she placed on being Mrs S.

I met her at an office party about 12 years ago, when I was still new to Doha. Her husband worked at the same place R and I did. She was warm and friendly, and extremely chatty. And in no time, over several phone calls and a few visits, I came to know about her life. That she was expected to stay up well into the night to ‘receive’ her husband in her sunday best when he returned from work (late shift). Or bear the brunt of his wrath.

She came home early one morning with scars on her face and arms, his finger ring had made deep ridges on her cheeks. We tried getting her out of the country, but she decided that she didn’t have enough support back home and continued to stay with him. She miscarried a baby–”I’ve impregnated my wife,” he said, puffed chest and all, by way of announcement; “I will get back at him,” she said, ignoring the doctor’s orders of rest–and then went on to have another. I wished her and her new baby luck, and terminated by the then feeble friendship.

Then last summer we hear that Mr X had booked himself into a hotel room during his visit back home. He was found dead in that room one evening. Alcohol and diabetes make fatal bed partners, apparently.

**

Why isn’t there sustained fury?  How come there is no dearth of advocates for the violent and the drunk? And how come there are people who manage to see something positive and hopeful in the dreariness of domestic violence?

As a society, we’d probably help someone with a flat tyre, a bowl of sugar, even a kitchen fire. But when it comes to being bashed up, we’d rather stand by our window, in our balconies, by the gate, and enjoy a ringside view of what we wish would never happen to us and ours. 

Will we walk up and hold back the angry fist? Will we dial the cops and call for help? Will we walk up to the woman and give her refuge in our homes? 

Could we at least do this, if the girl in question is our daughter or sister or cousin?

Educated, economically secure families will allow their girls to be ‘victims’ of violence, rather than be a ‘failed’ wife. 

I naively argued against it. Ideas are to be shared, how else do you evolve, and all that open-source defense that I love to spout. However, soon after I started dwelling deeper into that thought, into that argument—in my mind.

I am all for helping people along, linking up contacts, helping others network, and I seek help ever so often too.

What I don’t do however is ‘pick’ someone brains to monetise their ideas.  Or pick the brains of someone who gives the advice out on a professional basis. You know what I mean? Ask a doctor to for free diagnosis, or an editor for free rewrites (unless I am married to him), or a recruitment agent for free placement tips, or a trainer for a free session…

This post might draw a lot of ‘is she talking about me?’, ‘oh what a *****’ etc. Well if you think it’s about you, it could well be. Or not.

You must draw the line; differentiate between exchange of ideas and poaching them; differentiate between help and consultation.

I’ve learnt to be evasive: ‘I am busy now… I don’t have that information’;  but am unable to tell someone: “Sure. And this is how I bill for my services.’

I earn my keep at work for my ideas, concepts and content. I am paid to share and enhance ideas with my colleagues. But I see increasingly that I am asked by people I hardly know to extend that service to them, because we are ‘friendly’. Ok I am no Jobs or Zuckerberg, but that doesn’t mean I value my brains any less.

I still have no objection to being a networking conduit, but am definitely no longer pleased to have my brains picked. Especially since I’ve realised that good ideas or inputs that are given for free may have value, but the person who gives it is taken for an idiot.

It is only of late that I appreciate what I bring to the table–I no longer treat it as ‘what’s the big deal’, because it is. For me. And only by putting a value on those inputs can I make that clear.

PS:  My friends can pick my brains all they want. Fortunately, my circle is small and tight.

http://backpakker.blogspot.com/2011/08/madras-special-lovehate-relationship.html