Lapses of lingy…

Attending a chorale music concert by a German group, today.

Will give the update post the performance.

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The folks have departed.

When I first left home in 92′, little did I imagine that I would never stay with them for more than a month at a time (and this is rare), ever again.

A week for Christmas, a few stolen 24-hour days, phone conversations every other day, that’s how much time I spend with them in a year. On the other hand, maybe our proximity to each other is more than what many families who live together, share.

I miss them and the luxury of having a houseful of people to return too post a day watching squiggles on my computer screen, umpteen conversations with various people, haggling with writers for the right price.

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When my cousin’s baby was born, they took him to visit his great gandmother (my grandmother).

The old dear who is in the 90s, slightly senile, yet always in high spirits, prepared a little speech to welcome the new-born into her heart. She promptly forgot her rehearsed ode when she set eyes on the cherub.

They placed the baby in her arms. After a bit, she started peering rather queerly at him.

Then she said in Konkani, ” Poppot disponha” which means, ”I can’t see his penis.”

 Isn’t she a riot?

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If I had the chance to meet a deceased relative, it would have to be my granduncle Constancio.

My dad speaks of him with a great deal of admiration and fondness.

This person was an artist, in those days when no one was an artist in Goa. He held exhibitions and sold paintings and sculpted busts of prominent personalities. There is a mammoth sized one of Mahatma Gandhi, outside his home. It is now covered in dust as the people who live there don’t really appreciate art or have much regard for the deceased. His paintings too lie stashed away under thick layers of dust in his old ancestral home, though I did see a few hung up the last time I visited. The few that I saw oil piantings of the local kundbis in Goa, a tribe of farmers.

He also worked with the Times of India as a photographer, eons back. He was fairly well-to-do and a generous man, slipping a handful of notes to my father, every now and then. He was an intellectual, creative and generous. But he was also moody and very mule-headed about his art. He detested those who viewed art purely with a commercial bent of mind and didn’t take too kindly to random criticism, unless he came from constructive quarters. I beleive he actually threw out some unfortunate people who visted his exhibits.

He was married once to a beautiful women, who left him for another man. He did have a child too, but we do not know where she is today, though she possibly resides somewhere in Mumbai. I supposed he was a difficult person to live with.

My father was greatly influenced by this man. He opened the cockles of his mind, taught him to see beyond the immediate horizon — however, my father was in a way interested in seeing, unlike his other siblings and cousins.

Tragically, T-Constancio passed away in 1977, the very year in which I was born.

If only I could have met him.

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Last night the firecracker bombs were louder than ever. Even my sister who is partially deaf complained of the noise.

I poked my head outside the front door and yelled at the kids in the neighbourhood. Was I being a spoilt sport?, I thought to myself, but only for about 5 seconds.  

“Diwali is the festival of lights not noise,” I said. They glared at me. I glared back.

“Why don’t you fire them away from my window?,” I said.

“The cars are lined up on the other side,” a little girl yelled.

” Er…there are human beings lined up in here,” I said.

The noise died and then the kids only played with flashes of light.

Did I have to tell these kids what their parents ought to have told them?

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Last night every time a cracker bomb went off, I swore under my breath.

Vinky’s doggie Kevin lay crouched between Vinky’s and my feet, his head trying hard to burrow into a tiled floor. The poor thing was trembling, scared to death.

A thought suddenly struck me. What if these were real bombs going off?

I shuddered.

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