Assholes from my Child-hood Part 3 - NT

It is the nature of narrative cinema to expand on the pregnant pauses in life

Many years ago, a cousin, or maybe a cousin of a cousin or whatever decided to get married on our ancestral island of Monkompu. Big Fucking Yay!

To hear my parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents, great- grandparents, grand-uncles, grand-aunts tell it, this was "God's own country". All I heard about during the three day train journey was, how the houses stood on little stilts and the sun's rays danced like fireflies on the water and at night the sound of the Kerala backwaters lapping the support beams directly under you was like being cradled in the palm of Brahma and the milk from coconuts was the sweetest you'll ever taste and the fish and prawn so spicy and playful that your tongue would be plagued by phantom dreams and shit like that.

What my family, caught in the toophan of Proustian nostalgia, forgets is that most of them have never been there. Their memories are entirely inherited from their parents and their parents, all of whom fucking bolted as soon as they were able (or were chased out by the Portuguese, details get a little hazy here).

So that was the train journey, and then the 7 hour bus journey followed by a boat trip to make it to this island for a hardcore South Indian style wedding.

Fuck those guys, I attended a court wedding in Philadelphia last year and it was awesome. Wedding was at 9 am, took 10 minutes and then we all had pancakes! EPIC WIN.

This wedding took three full days, from 3 a.m. till 7 p.m. Because half the ceremonies require fucking dawn to be cracking over the horizon. Needy much, celestial beings?

But this isn't the crux of the story, it really isn't. This is merely the back story, setting the stage as it were.

So I'm in Monkompu bored out of my mind, I can't leave the mandapam and by the time the days' ceremonies are over, I'm too damn tired to anything other than pass out in my hammock. Weddings especially Indian ones really tend to take a toll on the women present and South Indian ones doubly so - every occasion requires a different dress and often they need to co-ordinate with either the jewelry or the Sari the bride is wearing. Hell men don't even need to wear pants. No, really. You want to show up in a vaishti (think sarong only shorter) then you might just be over dressed. Of the 4 suitcases we took with us, my dad and I just needed half a duffel bag for our weeks' clothes, the rest were just my mum and sister.

Right anyway, so nature abounds and stuff but there's only so much to explore and mostly, my other cousins and I are in the way. We're bored, we're noisy, we fight amongst each other, etc… And all grownups are getting pissed and they don't have time for this shit, and OMG it takes 3 women to wrap whatshername in a 12 yard sari (or maybe it was 7, no I think sister's was 7 but we cheated added extra folds so it looked like it was 12 – hmm When is ANTM going to do a Kerala edition, I bet Tyra would lose her shit but hardcore).

Simply put, Monkompu is the kind of town where you either found god or you fucked off.

Right, so we get sent into town and told to watch a movie. Woohoo! But what's this? This town has only ONE movie theater. And it plays only ONE movie and has been for 3 years now. Fuck it, we'll take it. Maybe it's really that stellar a movie – I'd watch Conan every day for three straight years.

We go inside this makeshift tent with wooden benches and sit anywhere you want. It takes us a while to navigate the dynamics of this. The tent is already full, and everyone seems to have a fixed seat that they make a straight bee line for.

We find a place to sit and prepare for the best value that Rs. 3 ($0.0167) can afford us. The movie starts, complete fucking silence descends on us.

Yes, that is what was playing. That, libes kind was the most popular (possibly only) movie on the island. And let me tell you this, everything you see on that poster? Happened before the opening credits even began to roll.

My mind was blown! To this day I shudder to think of the impact on my wee cousins.

And the crowd, mien got!! They had this skinemax reject memorized! They knew when to hold their collective breath, when to talk to each other, even when to have their 'tiffin'. But the truly free-market inspiring, pro-globalization, celluloidal love grafting detail! No one knew what was being said. This movie was broadcast in Punjabi, something I barely grasp and absolutely no one, NO ONE, down south would know.

Yeah, that's right – Art transcends.

Info Dump

Stuff:

Read http://hobotaxi.blogspot.com/ It's angry, sad and unapologetic - like a crusty old man without pants.

OSIAN film festival this week. I can't make them all, so recommend stuff (I'm looking at you, Turk)

I have an essay coming out in next years Silhouette. Email me if you want a copy.

I bullshitted my way onto the Queerfest visual arts panel thanks, John Berger!). Expect rant to follow.