When I Die

Life : The Smiles

Book One - Incandescence

My birth was not welcome. My birth was not prophetic. My birth was not a celebration.

For one, the doctors hated me. Nobody likes a kid who could die any minute. Nobody likes a kid who could very well have killed his mother. Nobody likes a kid who drops in a good fifty eight days before he's supposed to. Nobody likes a party pooper.

From what Dad told me, I started kicking around in Mom's tummy on a fine day out in rusty New Orleans. I came in uninvited.

For the first twenty four hours after I bumped in, the doctors weren't sure if I'd grow up to be a normal boy, if I'd end up being a vegetable, or if I'd live at all. They weren't sure if I'd have all the nuts and bolts in working order, in other words.

If you asked me, I'd say that those nuts and bolts were out of order before I could get to oil them.

I never wanted to be born. That is the whole truth of it. If Mr Lord God Of The Screw Ups had asked me about being born, I'd have told him to get lost.

What happened before I came in was simple in a complicated way. Dad had come to India with the rest of his crew to shoot a movie. He met Mom. She got her PhD degree that year. My Mom's a real brainy femmie. Funny too, when she wants to be. I think that's what Dad liked the most about her. And that's always been something I've liked. I guess, maybe what they say, "like father, like son," is true.

Mom went to the US, they got married, and then I came. Uninvited.

I spent the first four years of my uncertain life in Hollywood. I don't remember a lot about it--except sitting in the window and watching the cars flashing past below like unicorns on speed; a kaleidoscope of white lights and black metal.

Mom's father died. We came back to India. My granny--that was the first time I met her--she urged Mom to stay some more. So she did. So did I. I missed preschool in the USA, and we stayed in India for three months. Daddy flew back to the USA, he had to shoot a few episodes of his serial.

I was almost 5 years old now, and hadn't started my bloody education yet. Personally I wish I'd never started it at all. There are a lot of stupid things in this world of ours, but studying takes the big one. It's boring, for one. It's repetitive. And it's not even correct.

When my parents asked granny to move in with us to America, granny refused, saying that her husband had died in India, and that's where she wanted to die too. So, mother stayed on in India, and I had to stay here too. I didn't want to. Never did.

I wanted to go with Dad, but he said he couldn't manage a kid along with his work. Sad as it was, it was also true.

I don't remember a lot of my pre-school days. Most of it comes back in a flash and disappears. I remember tasting a pear the first time. Ditto mangoes. I remember sipping coconut water. I remember eating the fleshy white bit inside the coconut. I remember half-walking, half-crawling to the potty the first time.

I remember watching a glorious creature my mom identified as a butterfly. I remember wondering how beautiful it would be to fly. I remember the day when the kid upstairs told me what a fart was.

I remember smelling cookies. I remember vomiting. I remember learning to say, "thank you," when someone did something good. I remember some woman singing, "Four hugs a day," on the stereo. I remember when a girl kissed me (she must've been about five years older than me then) the first time. I remember thinking it'd be great to have a sister like that. I remember telling Mom so. I remember her laughing.

Mom enrolled me in a school in India. It was a lot of trouble; I was an American. Most schools didn't want me, babes. No sir. I sucked the big one. Then Mom went to the American Embassy, and after a long discussion, I got a letter signed by the American Ambassador's chamber, that allowed me to be admitted in the school of my choice.

That's how my education began. The school which the Embassy recommended had a mixed bunch, people from all over the world who'd settled in India sent their children there. There were Indian students too, and we all got along just fine.

I went back to the USA a few more times, but the visits are all so hazy now that I can't remember what I did when I went there. Mourned, maybe.

I'd found my Brotherhood of seven by then. I was comfortable, and happy.

I remember riding the bicycle the first time without any support. This is what happened: Dad tucked me onto the seat, and said he'd not let go. That he was right behind me. He asked me to pedal as fast as I could. I did. Twice I looked behind, twice, Dad was running behind me, one hand clutching the cycle's back. I didn't look back then; just kept on pedalling.

Some time later I called out Dad's name, he didn't answer. I turned around. He was standing in the distance, almost smiling. I fell down. I was hurt, yes. But most of me was far too happy to worry about the pain. I'd learned the bike! Man, oh man! Dad came running. I told him it was okay. I had a little purply patch on my forearm, but mostly it was okay. I pulled the bike up again, sat down. And after a few quirky shakes, Humpty Dumpty rode around town.

I remember shaving my head off. I remember the kind of stupid embarrassment I had to go through for the next three weeks in school.

I remember falling down the school stairs--there were only three, thank heavens. I broke a tooth. One in front.

I had to take an IQ test after three years, when I was eight, the time when the schools in India decide to seperate the intelligent breed from the not-so-intelligent breed.

The test was on a scale of 0-200. I scored 182. And there it was. Suddenly, the kid whom no school would accept was having a ball. "Why," Princey said, "he's practically a prodigy! A honest to goodness genius! Oh my! Oh my! Come here, kid; let me shake your hand. You're going to be someone someday. I hope you'll remember the Principal of your school and what he had said one day back when you were a wee lad."

I'm not bragging here, but yes, few people get an IQ score in the high 180-200 group.

But I was placed in the class for 'slow-learners.' Why? because I'd enrolled late in the school, and had skipped one whole term--I was sick most of the time. I had terrible wounds and broken bones all the time. That's why.

My Brotherhood of seven was seperated from me. They were in a different division now, a different class, a different status. Although we still did meet, and although they never ever changed their attitude towards me, I felt like an outsider, like an alien. I didn't belong.

I was angry. Maybe for the first time in my life. I was angry. It was probably the only time in my life that I thought, "All right, nasty buggers. I'm gonna top your study scales. I'm gonna march into that intelligent classroom of yours; and you're gonna invite me in." The only time I seriously wanted to prove myself.

I studied, and studied, and studied, filling my mind with insane junk, and idiotic equations.

The exam results showed those idiots where I was supposed to be. I scored a 96% average. nobody ever got a 100%. The course was darn easy; I'm not saying it was rocket science. But shit, I wasted most of my playtime studying. That is something. Probably the only thing worth any pride.

They kicked me back with my brotherhood. We were complete once again.

We had some of the greatest times, all of us seven, going camping and fishing and exploring the wonders of growing up. One time, we cycled all the way to the Gateway of Bombay. Steve blew a hole in his tyre. We had stopped and tried to patch it up. We couldn't. The girls teased us to death about that. I dragged the cycle along while I rode; Max gave Steve a lift on his bike. Wally's pop was our "tour guide" that day. He's a jolly fellow. Real jolly.

That was one the few days when I could cycle up all the way. Most of the other times one part of my body was usually bust. No, I wasn't a dumbo; I didn't fall down around every corner and scrape my knees and break my bones. Something else gave me those cracked bones.

India is a good place to live in sometimes. But only sometimes. Mostly, it's when you're fooling around by the lake, sucking mangoes; watching peacocks; having someone smile at you for no reason at all; standing atop small mounds, acting like you've conquered the Everest, a stick appropriately slung on your shoulders.

India is a dark place to live in most of the time. Its death, its misery, its utter defeat, the way everyone here accepts their rules, its impossibility. I used to have big hopes of being a musician. I can't do that here. Maybe it could've been possible in the USA. Here, your dreams die rancid, screaming out for release.

I grew up in all this, and before I knew it, I was eleven years old. I always looked younger than I was, I still do. In fact, If you see me now, I'll bet my last dollar that you'll think I'm not a day older than fourteen.

So I looked younger. And one of the things I wished for hardest in those years was to grow up fast. You know, grow a beard, get some balls, that kinda stuff.

When I was small, they often couldn't make out if I was a boy or a girl. Come to think of it--if I shave off all the hair on my face and grow all the hair on my head, I'd look like a girl right about now. No kidding.

You'd guess I'm a prime candidate for Gayland. I'm not. I may not dream much about love and girls anymore; but that's more because I'm stuck in a place I can't get out of. Not because I've gone down that other road of sexuality.

I remember watching the first nude photo of my life. It was on a discarded condom packet (and people here have absolutely no problem with throwing anything anywhere). I remember wondering how those things on the woman's chest looked so remarkably like two cartoon eyes. Or two coconuts.

I remember making crank calls with Max and Steve. We once fooled Wally into believing he'd won a Michael Jackson autographed CD. Once called up a random number and ended up talking to a bloke about cricket.

I went to the States again that summer, and that's when I saw the real wonders of the States,
Sonya, whom you all know, had come with us too, and the two of us had a great time.

We visited Disneyland, and I remember I'd ruined her dress with my Chocolate Sundae (I have this weird trait of dropping food whenever I'm with a girl. No kidding). We'd won Mickey-Mouse buttons, and pinned them to our Donald-Duck hats. We looked like two monkeys, wearing caps far too large for their size, goofing around in a jungle.

That was the last time I saw the place where I was born. I haven't been back to America again.

I turned thirteen.

My body started to change. My mind started to change. Suddenly Mr pee wee started to grow up in my pants. "Wake up" is a more apt term.

I began to see girls in that special way only a thirteen year old can.


I fell in love. I remember the first time she'd come in our class, I remember how everything seemed to freeze in that moment, how time stopped. She had come from California.

I remember the first time I'd taken her to a movie, I'd been a total jerk, messing up my popcorn, fumbling over the coke, and stuttering while I spoke.

Life, was perfect. I had a great bunch of friends, had a crush, I'd finally realised that I wasn't gay, which had been an awesome relief. Nobody called me a fag. A turd, maybe. But never a fag.

Our greetings changed from "Howdy," and "Morning," to "Eat shit and die!" and "Wakey wakey, fartface."

I remember catching that snake in the ground. I remember the girls running away watching us--Wally holding its tail, me holding its mouth shut. It was a harmless one, but yeah, holding it was something. We felt like superheroes. Garden variety GIJoes.

That reminds me. I had every single GIJoe action figure. I still have all of them stuffed up in a box somewhere. I used to enact these huge sprawling gunfests using those figures as my cast. Rambo. I used to play Rambo. The hero was usually either one, or all of the following: Lady Jane, Snowjob, Mainframe (the geeky computer fellow--I loved geeky fellows even back then! A prelude of years to come, I guess), Chuckles, Torpedo. I used to tie strings from one hook on one wall to another on another (at a lower level). Then, using a bent wire, I'd make the figure clutch one end of the wire, the other bent on the string. Then I'd let them slide down. Exactly like the movie Tango And Cash.

Then I used to play Terminator. Oh, man, that was such good nonsense. I used to do all the voiceovers. Razor used to be the Terminator. And everytime he killed someone, I'd say, "Fuck you, asshole," or "Ah-ll Be Ba-hack!" The Baroness used to be Sarah Connor.

Shit, I loved those days.

Then I got a few He-man figures. As you know, He-man figures were larger than GIJoes. Less mobile, though.

Then I played "Giants Invade Joeland!" He-man and Skeletor and Merman and Teela would bash GIJoes who went sprawling across the room to hit walls and die (complete with my voiceover death screams like--"Aaaaaaaaaah! You... k-k-killed me... you sumabitch! You'll puh-puh-ay!" And our hero, toting his AK47s and whatchumaycallits would shoot the crap out of the Giants. (And the hero was from the future. That's why he had all those guns.)

Man, I was an idiot. A complete lunatic. There were love-angles in those puppet plays too. The Giants usually kidnapped Lady Jane (who changed identity from 'the actress in Goldfinger" to "the lady in Top Gun"). And our hero rescued her. Then we faded into the blue--complete with our hero and heroine locked in embrace and kissing as if their lips were stuck together with superglue.

I even went to the beach with those figures and played in the sand. Operation Sandman. Delta Force. Desert Storm. Oh, man. Oh, man.

Before all this there was the Hot Wheels invasion. Car chases and stuff. Complete with all the background screeching noises--courtesy moi. Our house has tiled floors. White tiles that end up in blue boundaries. The boundaries made excellent streetlines.

My favorite Hot Wheels car was the F1 racer. A yellow colored whackjob with blue bumpers. The reason for this was that sometimes I played Car-crash. Where I rolled two cars in opposite directions toward each other. When they bumped, the one which retreaded less was the winner. And because the F1's shape was like any F1 racer's, it never bumped back. Rather, the other car glided over the F1 and crashed down on its side almost all the time.

Here's something totally pathetic: I used to play with those GIJoes in the bathroom, while having a bath. I was eight or nine then. I used to play "Underwater Massacre". Here, Torpedo was almost always the hero.

Where have those years gone! I miss them. Man, I miss them.

Back to wherever we were before the Action Figure invasion. Where were we? Oh yes:

I'd discovered Rock music, and I sweared by Bryan Adams. My parents were as close a couple as could be, Father had a great job writing and going back and forth to the USA, he was doing what he liked best.
Mom, was happy, she'd become the vice-principal of her college.


I remember my birthday, I remember how the brotherhood had given me the best birthday of my life. I remember that she'd kissed me the first time. It was just a casual 'happy-birthday' kiss on my cheek, but it felt like heaven.

If there was one moment in my life where I could say, "my life changed after this," the kiss was it.

After that day, everything fell apart. I began to die. Slowly.