Monday: Striding through the airport with my sister in tow, I am very excited about our trip. Five days without demanding husbands, screeching children and questions about food, bowel movements and homework.
I inhale freedom with every breath and exhale domestic politics, baniya bills and keeping track of the increasing amount of banned items that are piling up on Bharat Mata.
Tuesday: 50 Shades Of Grey is playing at Odeon Cinema and I go off to see it, since back home I don’t know if it will ever get released. I disliked the book but now that the movie has become forbidden fruit, I am compelled to buy a ticket. I leave in 15 minutes after the female lead looks up at the sky and says, ‘ Holy cow!’
I have enough holy cows to deal with back home, thank you very much.
Wednesday: My sister wants to see the banned India’s Daughter documentary and we can legally see it online here. We watch it together and are horrified by what we see; the brutal extermination of a girl with a bright future, her devastated parents, the cold-hearted rapist and the demented lawyers.
If the quote attributed to Leslee Udwin — that India is a sick society — is indeed true; it is unfortunate that she feels this way or is expressing her disappointment at the banning of the documentary in this manner, but it still doesn’t take away from the story that is clearly depicted.
How does stopping people from seeing this, help? To be moved at the plight of another, isn’t that one of the greatest of all human emotions?
Thursday: Walking down the road, muffler wrapped snugly around my throat, monkey cap on my head and a bottle of cough syrup in my bag, I feel like an AAP member though I am not battling any dissenters, just the blistering cold.
Everyone has been urging me to write a Bollywood script, so I sit on a bench and try my hand at it.
Scene 1: Mala says, ‘ My aunt in Bombay wants me to find a boy for her daughter, but she is a lesbian and would..’ Before she can finish her sentence a stranger bangs into her and she yells, ‘Harami dekh ke chal!’ She then turns back to her conversation with Richard saying, ‘Hey Dick, let’s go to that hardware store, I need to buy a micrometer screw gauge. ‘
I suddenly realise that I have to throw out this entire scene; as much for the bad writing as for using five words that are on the Censor Board’s banned list and that I have inadvertently included in this scene. So it would start with a bleep at Bombay, lesbian, harami and keep bleeping till the very end.
Friday: The last hurrah before we go back home; sister dear and I go out to dinner. We share an avocado appetizer, enjoy a roast ham sandwich and sinfully indulge in a mango parfait.
Saturday: Our plane lands and as we are going through customs, my sister gets irritated with me and says, ‘ I have a beef with you and…’ Suddenly the customs officer screeches, ‘ Madam you are under arrest.’ I stammer, ‘For what, officer?’ He snorts, ‘For possession of beef!’ and starts laughing in a manic way.
I try telling him that ‘having a beef ‘is just a phrase and he replies, ‘Madam, meet Pappu, our new sniffer dog, earlier he was trained to detect explosives and drugs but now we have trained him to sniff out beef as well. We also have a new hand-held beef detector made last week by Steve Jobs that we have used on you and confirmed the presence of beef inside your stomach which means technically you are in possession of beef.’?
I scream, ‘ Steve Jobs is dead you moron, you have some fake Made In China defective machine, I had a roast ham sandwich not roast beef! ‘
But my protests go unheeded and I am led away in handcuffs by a big-built policeman and not some handsome Christian Grey.
It’s still Friday: My sister hits me with her pillow, apparently I have been having a nightmare about our return trip tomorrow and have been screaming, ‘Pappu! Pappu!’ at 250 decibels .
I wipe the sweat off my brow and try to go back to sleep, but keep having recurring dreams where what’s in my stomach and what’s filtered through my eyes and ears to my brain, seems to be everyone else’s business but mine. Yikes!
