Of Insanity, Mutton and Friendship

Ages ago, in a land far far away, surrounded by highly disapproving and fat relatives wearing way too much makeup, two people got married.

A few years later, a hound from the deepest reaches of hell was born.

So begins my story. A story which has insanity in large doses, eccentricity by the boatload and mutton. Lots of mutton.

Why mutton you ask? Why NOT mutton I reply.

The thing is these two people were made for each other. They didn’t know it at the time and happened to meet and fall in love much later. But once they had met, they couldn’t bear to be apart. Not even when he asked her to meet him at Kwality in Ballygunge and she decided he had meant Kwality in Salt Lake.

She was a teacher. He was an engineer. She was a Hardy critic. He was a Tagore fanatic. She liked lipstick. He liked to make things tick. Logically speaking, they had a lot of differences. She had a very short temper. His head was colder than the South Pole in winter.

But, you know what they say-opposites attract.

Once they had seriously got to know one another, that is, on their second date stealing large ice cream portions from each other, they realised they had to get married. It was the only way she would get her hands on his epic tee shirt collection and he would be able to purloin her PG Wodehouse limited editions.

And so the die was cast.

In the presence of aforementioned hideous relatives wearing way too much makeup, a purohit who was in fact given to the simpler pleasures in life- those that you can only find at the bottom of a whiskey bottle, and a pair of highly evil in laws, my mother quoted PG Wodehouse at my father and got it straight back.

Later, I arrived. Naturally, I couldn’t just come out could I? I had to make an entrance. Therefore I sacrificed my mother’s appendix to the Gods as a gesture of goodwill. My mother swore. She screamed. But I did not desist from my noble purpose. All of this took place in the womb.

My mother sees it differently, but as it so happens she owes me for a) me and b) no appendix. I mean buy one get one free anybody?

Let’s talk about my father. His ears are yummy. They are the stuff of dreams. I gnawed them regularly.

When I grew up, my father and I used to go for long drives. In a few more years, I’d be making those drives by myself, while he sat in the passenger seat, praying to his maker that he lived to see the end of the day.

I remember the time we had a dog. I remember the dog peeing on my bed. I remember me waking up every two hours on the hour demanding to be fed in my toddler years. I remember my father dancing with my mother to Daddy Cool, while I looked on.

I remember The Beatles on a Sunday afternoon, followed by an evening of Mozart. I remember singing along to Kishore Kumar with father on the backing vocals. I remember endless discussions on Tagore, over biriyani and Oscar Wilde with the help of a little fish curry.

I remember the time I cooked burnt mutton and these two lapped it up. I remember the time we went to my Uncle’s place and my mother pinched his Christies. I remember father bunking office to go eat at KFC. I also remember him wading into the sea at Mandarmani with a very expensive phone in his pocket, just as I remember my mother setting fire to the bed with a cigarette and blissfully falling asleep next to the smouldering embers.

I remember waking up on my tenth birthday and opening the complete works of JRR Tolkien. I remember going Heyer hunting with father before my mother’s birthday. I remember mother returning home soaked to the skin clutching a PG Wodehouse which she got from a street vendor for 35 rupees.

I remember every day being a party, even when we are sitting silently- me in Kolkata and they in Asansol with nothing but our smartphones connecting us.

Such is my family. We have over the last twenty odd years, fought like alley cats; gotten drunk together and flooded the house with puke. We have taken photos. We have eaten kebabs at Flame and Grill. We have raised our glasses to those not with us and we have relocated to Asansol.

In all this time, one thing hasn’t changed. We haven’t changed. The three of us that is. They aren’t my parents. I’m not their son.

The three of us are the best of friends. We are the worst of foes. And, we are all in this together.

The point of this writeup? It’s my parent’s anniversary tomorrow. There will be mutton.

All hail mutton.

And ice cream.

And mishti doi.

And stomach upsets.

And cholesterol.

Let’s not forget blood sugar (she) and uric acid (he) and asthma (me).

Subho Nababarsha everyone. Remember to have mutton.

PS- DO try this at home.

Atish, Banu and Gutu