Life, Laughter and Everything Else

“But I don’t feel the sparks”, she said. “That will come later once we start making out”, I replied. Or more like that is what I wanted to reply, but the wannabe-dignified, in-reality-ball-less me held my tongue and just strolled along in rejection, knowing I had pretty much talked the past 3 hours into the friendzone. What was I thinking? Here was a woman from back home who had tasted the holy grail, the white man, one of the best of the human specimen in all his glory. And once you drank wine, there was no way you were going back to chocolate milk (#subtlereferencetomyself). With the number of suitable candidates in close proximity reducing by a drastic 100%, it was time to put out the ad again. “Lonely and poor student, seeking warmth, security and comfort in the cuddle of a stunning, Snow-White-like Fraulein, if not, worse case, remotely better than average-looking woman, so my mother will not marry me off to a woman whom I barely know and all my relatives won

For the whole day, I had been pervaded by a certain restlessness, a restlessness that drove me more and more into social media and the internet without end. Expectedly, the temporary distraction only made things worse. Then I went to look for him in his room and told him to hang out with me over some beer in the balcony. He joined a while later and we sat there and chitchatted over the next couple of hours. As we sat there and talked while the Berlin skies darkened into a beautiful blue black gradient, it reminded me of earlier times, when around two decades ago, my family had moved to Singapore. Every evening, my mother, my sisters and me would sit and chat on the balcony of our apartment on the 24 th story while staring out into vast urban landscape that lay in front of us.  Somehow, it felt like these were the real highlights of life. There was something so soothing about sharing a quiet evening like this with a good friend, reminiscing about little events that held s

“Gayyst du?” It seemed to have been directed at me. I slowed down to take a note of where it was coming from. There on the side sat a young German lady with her bag, looking directly at me. “Huh?” “Gehst du?”. I had never seen her before and I was convinced that I was not in the league which convinced a woman that she should start a conversation with me. If then, the only possibility was that she probably knows me. I desperately tried to recall when while trying to make sense of connecting what she was saying with some distant memory. “Wie bitte?”. “GEHST DU?” “Are you going?”. Yes that was it! But to where? And why? Fuck, did I know her? The confusion spread all over my face. “Are you leaving?”, she stammered seeing that her attempts were going nowhere. Oh, leaving. Not going. that was it. She just wanted to know if I was leaving so that she could take the locker that I was going to empty. Half embarrassed, I directed her towards my locker that I

Save for the acne covered cheeks, he was a fairly good-looking guy. Fair with think jet black hair, he exuded a certain charm that his compatriots did not possess. This was the third time I was seeing him and the second time I would utter something to him. “Are you making pancakes?”, he inquired in an accent that was manifestly not natural to him. It was reminiscent of my own efforts to sound American by tonguing the words. What resulted were words that sounded like they required great, deliberate effort. “I first made pancakes when I was four”, he carried on when I nodded in agreement. The accent had already made the alarm bells in me ring. This made the wail a little louder. I laughed, faking surprise. He returned to conversing with his friends in Hindi. I caught a few words here and there. It appeared to revolve around lesbians, nudity and some indecent acts. “Sex in public. Is that common?”, he exclaimed. There was silence. The sudden turn from Hindi to Englis

He was the typical American. He was the atypical American. Beyond sports, the weather and his dog, he was able to narrate the story of how he journeyed out of the greatest country on Earth into a small town in Germany to learn German. Confident and cocksure, he was a refreshing change from the earlier conversation I had struggled to maintain with the nerdy German lady. Despite our common interests, a chemistry was missing, something despite both our best intentions, punctuated the conversation with awkward silences. While she excused herself to escape the tedium that was me, he came over and sat at her chair. I mentioned to him that the book that I had bought to the book swap event was a prized catch. ‘The Subtle Art of Not giving a F***’, the black bold and capitalised characters screamed against the bright orange background. The colour accentuated the vulgarity of the title, which was now covered with the yellow sticky notes with the names of the four or five people who wan

It was my third nap of the day. As I wearily got out of bed, it came to me like a euphemism, that maybe, I just had to accept it like it was. That there was nothing much really going on and it was best to not force myself into any kind of productiveness. Once I used to fiddle with the idea of monasticism. Then, there was nothing more alluring than leaving all the hubris of the world to retire into a world of self-examination. In the exploration of this idea, I had thrown myself into a 10 day meditation retreat and came out wondering how was it that these monks could pass whole days and lifetimes doing literally nothing. The alternative was to be busy, to immerse oneself in the myriad of everyday distractions, until one approaches death, and then look back and wonder what had happened. Unfortunately, the little island where I came from, this was often taken to the extreme. One was always busy, for one’s friends and one’s family, and I realised I had to get out before it was to

It usually starts off well. What is your name? Where are you from What are you doing here? How long have you been here? Why did you choose to come here? And then it hits a brick wall. The awkward silence. Everyone reaches for their drink and takes a long gulp of beer, hoping alcohol will provide some inspiration for the next question. OR they take out their handphone and check their messages, because you know, they are people of significance and nothing justifies physical absence better than busyness. These silences seem to become more apparent and increase in frequency as I grow older. I cannot seem to put a finger to why this happens. One thing that I have noticed though is a complete lack of curiosity in people, an unwillingness or even a shyness to pose questions.  For example, there was once a female friend whom I used to converse via email when she was overseas, conversation where we allowed us to openly speak our minds about everything in life. By the time she got back

“I was not allowed to fly, so I had to cancel the trip back home”, she said with a tinge of disappointment in her voice. “Why were you not allowed to fly?”, I asked, though I half knew the truth. It would be better to hear it straight from her before I jumped to any conclusions. She smiled and did not reply, and me being me, felt the urge to remove the elephant from the room. “Is it coz of this?”, I questioned while using my hands to carve out a belly bump in the air, though on hindsight it was perhaps not necessary given pointing to my beer belly would have been enough. She quietly acknowledged. Then there was no stopping me. I dug around to find out more details. Here was a woman who was not married and not in a serious relationship who was about to have a kid (not mine). A week earlier I had came across an article about single mothers in Korea who were discriminated against and shunted by the whole family, a situation I would quite associate with all Asian coun

“Most people I hate. The rest I tolerate”.                                                                                                                    – Everybody Loves Raymond I walked into the kitchen and he was washing his plates at the sink. I nodded a polite Good Morning and waited for him to finish. Feeling something hot behind me, I turned to see the stove turned to the maximum without any dish placed on it. He noticed my annoyance at having seen this, for the second time in a week, and rushed to defend himself. “Its very cold so I turned it on”. Not that I am a staunch environmentalist, but his statement just triggered me. Instead of increasing the heater temperature or just wearing a jacket, he took the energy wasting alternative of turning on the kitchen stove to the full to heat up the kitchen. His sheer ignorance irritated me, just like how a month earlier I had caught my neighbor leaving the shared shower turned on while she returned to her room, sin

“Dude. He was a total hypocrite….” “He slept with naked young women to test his sexuality…” “He was racist against Africans. He served to protect the interest of high caste Indians and Whites…” “The Indian Independence movement was slowed down by years because of him…” The accusations came like wildfire. I sat there stunned. I had heard some before, but now it was negative after negative. A man who had inspired peaceful, non-violent uprising throughout the world was lambasted as the biggest, most overhyped hypocrite in human history. What made it more interesting was that it came from an Indian. I asked him for sources and he was happy to give me plenty. Some were dubious self-made videos, others were more credible, acknowledging the failings of the man. Though in one such (presumably dubious) videos in a Youtube channel by a guy called Stefan Molyneux, I saw on the right other recommended videos, all stating ‘The Truth” about every other great men in history. Mand

It would happen in a moment. A conversation that was going fluently would come to an abrupt end and be replaced by another that was familiar yet foreign. I would feel totally lost, unsure how to reinsert myself into the conversation, how to pick it up again. Meanwhile they would continue blabbering away in their mother tongue, effectively excommunicating me from the liveliness. The sense of loss would turn towards anger against the newcomer. Though I should have been used to it by now. In Singapore, experiences like this was quite common. Being a minority, one tended to be forgotten as colleagues and friends would switch to Chinese and I would sit there at a loss for words. Some friends would sympathise and ‘switch to Channel 5’ (an English speaking television channel and the term used to refer to a request to speak English). Sometimes it worked, sometimes it did not, for all needed to agree to this. Interestingly, it was not just Indian friends who would complain about being lost