Appa comes into my room this morning to tell me he’s found me a potential match. Next week we’re going to Triplicane to see her, he says. Bring a couple of friends if you like.
He doesn’t wait for my reply so I don’t get the chance to say to him, no Appa I can’t marry some random girl you found on some tacky online matrimony site.
Why not? Appa would ask.
Why not…
I think back to when this happened to Cheenu, my elder brother and branch manager at Infosys. The golden child with the newly earned status of family breadwinner, freeing Appa from his job as a high school chemistry teacher to instead while away his days reading The Hindu with a filter coffee & varieties of idli, dosa or sappaadu for breakfast and lunch and dinner everyday. Back then, I was in the second year of my MBBS and one Sunday morning, just like today, Appa walked in to tell Cheenu he’d found him a potential match and to be ready to go to Nanganallur to see her next weekend. Cheenu’s face took on an expressionless, deadpan gaze, kind of like a grazing cow, and taking this for approval, Appa left the room.
The thing is, Appa isn’t a tyrant or anything like that. He’s sweet, real funny at times. But he expects too much. Because he worked so hard to provide for Cheenu and I, apparently this means we must do exactly as he says – in every single matter.
Case in point: I once started growing a moustache to give my soft, childish face some brute masculinity, but Appa told me no, that our sort shouldn’t wear moustaches and hence I remain clean shaven. The same thing happened to Cheenu, who once sat down for dinner with a new lungi on. We don’t wear lungis, Appa said, and I never saw a lungi clad Cheenu ever again.
Anyway, that morning, Cheenu broke down to me and explained that he had a lover from college called Kamala, that they’d been lovers since first year itself, that they wanted to get married. And that very morning itself, I hid around the corner and watched as Cheenu walked to Appa sat with his filter coffee and The Hindu and bravely told him everything until Appa calmly turned around and said:
Is she an Iyengar?
That was it…
And now Kamala lives with us here in our Mambalam flat, & Appa loves her, and her cooking is splendid, & they even have a kid, Niranjan, to whom I am a proud and loving Chitapa.
So often I dreamt that when the day comes, and Appa walks in to say he’s found me a potential match, that I’d swiftly be able to turn to him as Cheenu did and say: Dad, I too have a lover from college and I want to marry him.
There is a problem though. I’m not quite sure Appa will accept Prakash in the same way he accepts Kamala. For starters, Prakash can’t cook. His coffee, though drinkable, is substandard. And oh yeah, the glaring issue – he’s a dude.
Therein lies my dilemma, my ‘why not’. I can’t go to Triplicane next weekend to see that girl. I can’t go anywhere to see any girl.
I peak around the corner and Appa is sat with his filter coffee and The Hindu. All those years growing up we were told these were the times we were not to disturb him, his one rare moment of relaxation, and I’m about to drop this bombshell on the poor old man.
I walk over and stand by him and he doesn’t even look up and I’m despising myself as soon as I start letting it all out, that I’m not straight, that I’ve never liked girls, that I’m in love with a boy from college called Prakash, that when we used to go to the cinema and Cheenu asked which actress was my favourite and I said Jyothika I was lying and I always secretly liked Suriya more, especially in Ayan when he first got his six-pack, and it pains me so much to know how you’ll feel Appa but I’m sorry I’m so so sorry but we can’t go to Triplicane to see that girl, we can’t go anywhere to see any girl, because I don’t like girls and I want to marry Prakash.
And then Appa turns to me:
Is he an Iyengar?
Krish is a film-writer & film-maker working across shorts, music vids & docs. He lives in a Hackney warehouse & can often be found straining his eyes in one of London’s many world-class cinemas.
Featured photo by Walid Ahmad (Pexels)
