Chapter 7
How does a young boy come to terms with the approaching hours of his death?
Is there a feeling of subsiding? Is he sad? Does the feeling of finalisation set in, and does a film of Final Understanding cover everyone and everything? Does tunnel vision set in and things slow down like in Hollywood films? Or is there an overwhelming need for a stuttering summation and prediction on life? Do you end up looking with a forlorn fondness at every child that skips by?
Or does he think about endless, optimally sun-dried marijuana?
And what are the thought processes of four boys who have collectively decided that they were the ones to right the wrongs of the West? Asides from the light sprinkling of anger, there was resentment that had marinated their organs. And that didn’t come from the West. It came from all the countless Browns of Britain who simply paid lip service to their religion and only touted it when it suited them; ultimately weaving their ways in to echelons of Middle England and finally solidifying their place there with a trophy white wife after a token splish-splash of ‘o, but my heritage’ but ended up with white pussy anyway. And there was no need to convert her to Islam no, because happiness is all that matters. (o but my heritage…) and I’ll bring my children up to believe what they want to (but of course I respect my religion…) and they’re living in England and I don’t care if they never learn the language and can’t communicate with their grandparents (but of course I love my parents…) and of course it’s ok to be gay, Allah is all inclusive and has no boundaries for his people (of course I know what I’m talking about…).
Asif placed his hand over his rucksack and felt the outline of his Improvised Explosive Device. The single minded barbarism of the West was one thing, but the hypocrisy of his own was what really pissed him off. There they acted and wrote and spoke in these ostentatious middle-class frenzies letting others like them bask in the warmth of their familiar unfamiliarity; selling them tidbits of culture like street food, skewed and chopped to bitesized oblivion. And suddenly when these types found themselves in a terraced house with sticky floors and half-eaten jalebis lining the mantelpiece, Bengali songs blaring from the lips of a diabetes-ridden grandma, the hypocrite brown would put on a special kind of snobbery they reserved only for their own kind. The kind of resentment that can only be given to something that you understood, a familiar kind of inferiority that the hypocrites narrowly missed out on. Them and their middle class looseness could easily have ended up Just Another Smelly Asian, so the venom directed to those that ended up in this slush pile of life had extra significance. Yet they’d go away and write another project or another article in another paper about the sloping grey rooftops and smell of masala and snot-nosed malnourished children, with some feigned authenticity. What the shit did they know? Shit all, that’s what. They were tourists.
Asif had had once purchased a plastic pistol when he was eight. It was one of those with a revolving magazine, and a small round of red plastic gunpowder filled pods which could be loaded, and made a small but resounding ‘pap’ sound when triggered. He would wrap it up in several socks and have it in the drawer underneath his bed. The gun wasn’t dangerous –a mere toy- but he treated it with so much mystique that in his mind, it was his weapon against the world. When Miss pissed him off at school or humiliated him for not answering some inane useless question about Magnesium or the Theme of Women, he would go to school the next day with the pistol in his pocket. And when she would again try and humiliate him, and the same scene played out again, this time he would remain calm, still not knowing the answers, but content in the knowledge that –even though Miss didn’t know it- he could have scared the shit out of her and gotten his revenge. That was all; so long as in his mind he was in control, it was enough. What was this world if not simply a formation of what was in his head?
But slowly it tiptoed out of his head. The world had stopped lending itself to the scenes contained there. It defied him and went to bed with someone else’s thoughts, leaving him like an ousted lover, its attentions elsewhere with not a care towards him. Gone were the inane days of waiting in line at the cashier in Londis where the shopkeeper sold Mr Govinda a samosa and a lottery ticket but refused to serve Asif a lighter because he was wearing a skull cap; he wasn’t going to stand by and watch some fucking white slut push in the dinner queue and take the last Apple Tango can, and no way was he prepared to watch another bullshit Channel 4 documentary about mosques teaching extremism, or hear about another Imam raping a boy student. What was the world coming to? It was obvious that the signs of The Day of Judgement were upon them and if the world thought he was sticking around to watch it all go to pot, it could go and fuck itself.
Like celebrity obsessions, his attachment to his resentments waxed and waned depending on what was in the papers. He had met these boys and it was easier to fit in to their mould (he thought it was temporary, just to get the resentment out of his system), but then he’d forgotten what he’d done to fit the mould and couldn’t retrace his footsteps. And with the kind of pitiful appeasement he had usually reserved for subjugated Western Women, he himself had begun the process of simply sticking to the sides. It had stopped becoming a survival technique and turned in to Main Attraction.
So, calling it progress, he found himself stepping off the train with the rest of the boys, knowing that they’d never be caught. Ever. An action without one single negative consequence at all. And perhaps it was that idea that was more intoxicating that anything else; perhaps death was the ultimate pleasure because after that, all earthly consequences, flawed and unfair, would never have to be tolerated. Why every atheist didn’t commit suicide was beyond him.
‘You guys all ready yea?’
They all nodded, and with the vague smell of spinach curry and incense about them, The Brotherhood shuffled through the crowds of Euston train station, emerged from underneath the colossal black and orange departure boards that featured in many a news report about delayed trains, and on to the Underground. There was no shuffling of feet or flickering eyes as they stepped on to the crowded carriage; just foreign languages filling the stifled air, bored commuters staring blankly out of the window and hugging the poles, the mysterious looking woman who, void of having a book or a paper or a music player, had her eyes darting around hoping to avoid looking anyone else in the eye, eventually settling to stare at her reflection in the opposing window.
The boys consciously kept their facial expressions flat, feigning boredom; but simmering in their bellies, the adrenaline and nerves mixed in their guts, giving them a feeling of indigestion. The kind of arsehole-burning post-3am-kebab kind of gurgling that threatened to spill down the anal passages in liquid spurts; it made the brotherhood clench their buttocks in tension, only to release them once they’d made it over ground and on to the breezy pavements of Tottenham Court Road, its cavalcade of neon lights and American-style 10 foot dynamic advertisements lighting up the night air. It seemed like a good place to die.
‘Brother Asif, I was watching a YouTube video where Bin Laden was talking. He said that to kill an American was to honour Allah.’
‘Did he Munir?’
Munir stared blankly, struggling to walk alongside Asif amidst the barrage of oncoming shoulders.
Asif casually tucked his hands in to shoulder straps of his rucksack. ‘Do you believe him?
‘Well…yea. American’s are, like, twats ennit? Their government were the ones who support Israel in the war, and kill our lot in Afghanistan and Iraq. They’re the ones waging war on our Muslim brothers and sisters.’
‘Yes. But it was our Muslim brothers and sisters in Saudi Arabia who gave the Americans a base to fight from.’ Asif’s eyes flickered to a billboard sporting the pink London 2012 Olympics logo, which was now infamous for looking like Lisa Simpson giving a blow job, and he wished the best of luck to any brother hoping to attack the Games and wishing he could be around to see if any of them passed security. ‘And you know, Bin Laden and his words a
re all very good and that, but his arguments against Israel are a bit flakey. He said killing an American –any American- was to honour Allah, because they supported Israel. But by that token, you could say killing any taxpayer is honourable cuz our money goes towards the Defence budget, which helps fund soldiers continue murdering brothers and sisters in Israel, Iraq, Pakistan. You can’t go around killing everybody now.’
‘…Yea man. I get it.’ Munir looked satisfied. ‘So this operation,’ he tapped his own rucksack, ‘this is our own idea ennit?’
Asif nodded, half smiling. ‘Now killing every gay on the gay scene is perfect. Cuz that way, you know they’re practicing, and you’re allowed to kill em cuz they actively go against the rules.’
But of course, that wasn’t the point. No; as they walked through the crowds, drizzle beginning to fall from the dead skies, Asif knew that killing gays wasn’t the point. He’d had enough. He was through with this mundane Life on Earth; it was one insult after another. School had failed him, girls weren’t lovable, neighbours didn’t care, playgrounds weren’t fun and food wasn’t halal. He drank from a mug that read ‘I Wish I Were Dead.’ To the world that was a bad thing; to Asif, it was a declaration of success, a paradise of eternal joy. The Eternal Flames of the Hell Fire had already scalded him while he was on earth; he wanted out before he gave them an excuse to engulf him. A black Ferrari whizzed by. He’d be driving that before midnight.
Munir, meanwhile, had a secret. A few weeks ago he had left a comment on a porn clip he’d watched on the internet (he had remained anonymous and begged Allah for forgiveness due to fear of reprisals from the Forces of Righteousness). He hadn’t felt forgiven though, and he was worried for the punishment he would have to suffer before finally being allowed to rest in Ily’een, the Most Gracious of Waiting Rooms for The Good, where the dead basked in pleasance of Heaven’s open door until Judgement Day arrived. He was sure his Brothers would forgive him when they met on The Other Side, but still, the niggling feeling of such a sin weighed him down all the way to Old Compton Street.
Asif floated a cola cube in a pool of saliva contained in his mouth. He was in the mood for a slow and reflective dissolving of the sweet tonight, not the fervent cracking and fast crunching that he usually subjected it to. His mind was grey and brown; colours of the miserable, the misled, the aggrieved. There was nothing else he wanted to with his life. For the first time in his life, he felt sure. He felt sure in that way that adolescent boys usually do; steamrolling through without looking left or right, just hoping to reach some reprieve at the end. That was all he knew; it was all he thought he cared to know. He had subjected his world view to the filter of religion and could see it for its kaleidoscopic deception and he didn’t fall for its bullshit. There was so much floating about, especially in London where people wore sunglasses at night. They were all going nowhere.
They all momentarily stopped when they turned the corner on to Old Compton Street. They looked at one another, eyeing the trickle of punters making their way to the big loud larger than life crowd of barflys gathering outside each of the doorways; laughing, always laughing, with a dead hysteria around their eyes. And the Brotherhood stood there, beginning to recite under their breaths, the testament of faith. There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger.
A man in a blonde wig smacked the bottom of a skinny boy wearing tight white jeans who screeched gleefully.
There is no God but Allah.
Two girls sat caressing each others faces and whispering in to one another’s ears.
And Muhammad is his messenger.
Kulsuma was sat on a bench on Broad Street, on the infamous Slag Stretch, where 13 nightclubs and four burger joints, along with a classy Indian restaurant, stood quivering, awaiting the army of binge drinkers and police who would inevitably descend upon them tonight, as they did every night. It was morning. Grey, bitterly cold, damp, and polluted. All the eye could see was stone, brass, iron, and concrete. The Hyatt Regency looked embarrassed hanging out on the corner.
She pulled her jacket tighter around her. The wind nipped at her cheeks and the grease in her hair conducted the chill and gave her mild scalp-freeze. Her teeth almost began chattering. Shit it was freezing.
She did this every once in a while. When her room became too big, too all encompassing, too mighty a vessel, too stark a gallery of her thoughts, she took refuge outside. It was cosier here. Things made sense, they related to one another; they were contextualised. Cars went on the road. People went on the pavements. Pigeons went on the buildings. Tramps sat in the cracks. Asians sat in Roccoco’s. Whites sat in O’Neills. Everything had its place.
And more importantly, things happened. There was no stifling stasis, as there was in her room. History hadn’t perched itself over the premises and parked its fat arse there.
She was pissed off. Physical pain reverberated through her gums, and the left side of her face was still semi-paralysed. She had had a root canal operation that had hurt so bad, her explosion of expletives left the dentist in fear as he wondered again why he chose to practice in an area where solid gold veneers were more common than fillings.
Ah, how her roots had betrayed her. She had overestimated their strength; for years they had given her a set of gnashers so strong that she sat down yesterday cracking open walnuts while she created another slideshow of Jaya jpegs. And suddenly the pain shot up through her skull. Turns out that those roots that had anchored for so long were rotting away from the inside; festering with infection, teeming with unwelcome bacteria (which annoyingly, apparently, she had invited) and then suddenly one night had caused the most hurtful case of dislodging.
So she sat on the bench welcoming the numbing cold of Birmingham’s polluted winds on her face, letting the cold seep in to her brain. How lonely her lands were today. Usually spilling over themselves, they would haemorrhage like a ruptured ulcer and take grip of her brain, debilitating it, so thoughts of only Jaya and her meteoric social mobility would haunt Kulsuma. Jaya and her subtle cultural references, her appreciation of diced shallots, her consumption of Italian sun-dried tomatoes (not sun-blushed), her dismissal of salted Sprite as a digestive aid, and her disgust at outwardly labelled designer garments.
But at home, Kulsuma festered with her belongings; her history in all it’s itemised indexing that was lined up along her walls, along with their smell which had endured several train journeys through dusty continents. No, it wasn’t festering. Or maybe it was. Can one enjoy festering? She thought she did. She enjoyed her home; there were external things that made her feel like she shouldn’t. That she shouldn’t be happy with her cum-stained pillows and period-marked bed sheets, and the trinkets of other people’s live she had collected that sat on her desk –a clock face here, a key (to god knows what) there. She thought it was bad but she carried on doing it; (not unlike the bacteria in her roots) she invited these bits of other people in, she kept around her these items of the past –granted, they were placed there by her parents for lack of storage space- but now she couldn’t imagine a décor without them.
What was it to be, then? A cluttered existence which she knew was unhealthy, or a clean path that led somewhere, like Jaya? The answer wasn’t black and white. There were shades of grey that hung about tauntingly, the bastards. Did she want Jaya, or want to be Jaya?
Italian sun-dried tomatoes were expensive.
Drops of rain hung off a railing, reflecting the landscape through them, upside down. The rain too had made its journey across continents via glorious skies, and ended up beside her, in this shit hole. And despite the rain and cold, girls were still walking around in stilettos, and skirts as short as belts, and boob tubes, with their hair either plastered to their scalps or layered with hair extensions so high they looked like baby apes. And boys with baseball caps on sideways still kerb-crawled, with that gormless look on their face that some video somewhere had told them was sexy.
Her phone rang.
‘Hey Meera. My face hu
rts, make it quick.’
‘We’ve decided on a plan for London. We’re catchin’ the train at five-ish, and goin’ to a club called Shunt. We’re meeting Jaya there. Then we’re going to G-A-Y bar. I need pussy. I need capital pussy.’
‘Farking sket, ha. Why is Jaya meeting us there?’
‘Cuz she’s going a bit earlier with some kuri she met at Saathi.’
Kulsuma’s blood ran cold.
‘Who?’
‘O you know, her Eleven O Clock from last time. She’s fit tho. Anyway, that’s the plan, go sort out ya face, and I’ll chat to ya tomorrow.’
The Eleven O Clock girl whom Kulsuma was about to stop Jaya from talking to but didn’t have the guts to, was now going to London early with Jaya outside of her usual allocated Lassi Lesbian time? What the fuck was this?
Forced in to the context of the outside, Kulsuma couldn’t whimper as she would have in her room. So what was one to do when forced to adopt and take on the rules of someone else?
She began chain smoking and walked, walked far, past the canal, past the Visa Debit using bar crowds, past the posh fish and chipperies, past the pasta shops and fake Italian creperies, past the supermarkets the radio stations the galleries, past the permanently anchored barge until she reached the head of the canal. The end of the canal, this unassuming calm sea of gravy coloured water that culminated like the crack of an arse.
She smoked and walked. Her eyes were cast down like the permanently pre-occupied water girls she had seen in Indian films, walking miles every day but still finding thoughts to pass their time. Strapped to sidelines, she was a failure. A mute failure, that was letting the one person who made any sense to her slip through her tar-stained fingers. She felt like she was in a game she had watched, some budget demo disc Abba had got in a bundle of 20 from the car boot sale when they’d first bought the Sony Playstation. The game was Kurushi. And with each failing, the edge of the platform would crumble away a few inches, bringing the big fall closer to the character’s toes. But Kulsuma already felt like she’d lost, like something had just shattered, and this time it wasn’t the kebab shop window.
Thoughts of Jaya were pleasurable because they were full of so much potential.
She had one weekend to make Jaya realise; she had to challenge her self-imbibed status quo. And if the dislocating shadows of London’s gay scene weren’t the perfect platform for her misty lustings to be put on display, then the world could go and fuck itself right up its own sister-sleeping arse.
The water in Jaya’s cup had become black from her putting out so many cigarettes in it. Being in a pseudo-relationship was proving to be much more uninspiring than she had initially thought. The smell of curry being reheated wafted up the stairs and crept under her door, the hoarse yells of a single mother carried themselves through her window, berating her tearaway 5 year old son who probably smelt of cabbage for throwing batteries at the neighbours’ barbed wire gates. There were far too many people walking the streets for this to be the kind of area the local council bothered about; it was 3pm, but the great bored and unemployed chased cats down the street and kerb-crawled til their hubcaps cracked, til the endless waves of distorted oversized speakers in various boots just meshed in to a permanent incoherent neighbourhood sound track. Polish vocals, hip hop bass, hindi warblings, pathan guitar and the dhol all clambered for the attention of somebody, anybody.
And to add to the many streams of unending, inconsequential consciousness that lay behind each door in this dragged down area of Coventry, Jaya Chakarbatti smoked and sniffed poppers. Eleven was arriving to see her in two hours. Having the room smell of human detritus wasn’t what Jaya had planned, but something was in the air today. It was a day that lent itself to laziness.
Britain’s Fourth Estate lay in tatters on her bed; magazines, red tops blaring unnamed sources, biased commentaries on Libya and Iraq, neo-conservative pieces on the Japan tsunami thinly masked as tributes from Liberals. It was no longer ‘soldiers invading’, it was ‘boots on the ground’. The English Defence League weren’t racist this year –they were ‘anti-Islamification’. The Tories suddenly weren’t xenophobic; they were pro-Britain. And suddenly radio commentators were jumping on the bandwagon of the great unwashed and saying the protests in Central London this weekend were going to be ‘unheard’ and ‘useless’. Petrol prices had gone up, the budgetary axe seemed to be falling willy nilly on British life with almost as much randomness as Auntie Shamina’s attacks on Hinduism. The pound in the pocket was being squeezed and people were having to change the way they spent their income on crap like novelty lighters and agas and tax. Like the student protests, like the Iraq War protests, the government cuts protest was just going to fuel the egos of the parliamentarians; they were going to fling shit in to the eyes of the public regardless.
But something had to be done to restore the status quo. In Bangladesh, every individual took it upon themselves to shout at the servants and underpay the rickshaw wallah’s lest they set off a chain up upward bound social improvement for the lower layers of the social biryani. There seemed to be no such sense of that kind of social philanthropy in England, so this government, welcomed by a Treasury note telling them there was no money left, decided enough was enough. Cut cut cut. Like so many angry adolescents in bathtubs, cut cut cut.
And so, Jaya Chakarbatti was paying more tax on her cigarettes and valuing each drag just that little bit more. It seemed ok to chain smoke; she was paying for any potential treatment she might need on the NHS via the higher tax, and if statistics were to be believed, Bangladeshi and Pakistani women were still the worst paid people in the country -so she was inevitably going to end up poor, fat and apathetic. Smoking fell neatly in line with the government’s Big Society plans –each to their fucking own.
Pandering to the Great Big Bully -America- the UK had just interfered in Libya (the strangeness of an intertwined history between England and the Middle East struck Jaya as being even weirder than her mother’s penchant for Midsomer Murders) and suddenly the Masses had become stirred to stake their claim in the public budget. ‘How?!’ They cried, ‘How can the government afford to spend on an unwanted interference in Libya, but cut education budgets in their own country?’
O the par-boiled biryani…
She stubbed out the last of her cigarettes and began the long and laborious process of female-for-female grooming: the usual dynamic of the-bitch-and-the-butch didn’t quite take form for Jaya and Eleven; instead, a hyper-femme approach where one always needed to be slightly more feminine that the other took on an exhaustive dimension. Manicure’s had to immaculate, facial hair had to look lasered, cheekbones had to look like they were about to overlap the eyes, and hair had to be razor sharp. It was a game they liked to play: who could look straighter.
It wasn’t extreme then, that Jaya took 5 hours to achieve a kind of understated perfection only seen on the likes of female newsreaders, without the dead look in the area around her eyes. In fact, today her eyeballs themselves were positively twinkling. It was why when Eleven eventually arrived at her house, she didn’t let her parents see her face; a single facial muscle placed even a miniscule amount higher than usual would have attracted suspicion.
‘Are we supposed to have sex while your parents are downstairs?’ Eleven looked at Jaya, trying not to look her in the eye (it was easier this way).
‘You might as well get used to the idea that these things happen. Your kids’ll be doing it too.’
Eleven looked devastated.
‘And anyway, who said we’re going to have sex?’ Jaya raised an eyebrow.
‘O right. I suppose I came all the way here on the bastard motorway to have a cup of tea, did I?’
Jaya feigned shock. ‘Why, Eleven, I feel positively objectified.’
‘I’ll objectify your arse in a minute. Now shut up and fetch me some custard creams.’
The weather was dreary, and soon enough, it began to rain. Spats of it came down
in sheets, small tiny droplets, that darkened the concrete and weighed down the weeds. The sky turned a dark shade of grey. Eleven sat watching the small TV, aware of Jaya’s every movement from the corner of her eye. Being the object of female affection –a university educated one who didn’t pretend to like white people because she actually did like white people- seemed to be natural to Jaya. It was a comfortable one she naturally fit in to. The mould was snug on her; Eleven’s eyes didn’t put her off. For a bored adultering lesbian housewife from Manchester to not constantly be on edge was a high achievement, but as Jaya plopped on the bed next to her, Eleven’s standards were suddenly raised. This was what her body was made for. This comfort, this soothing existence. This annoyingly intelligent bright young thing that wanted nothing but her company and didn’t mind having big chunks of her personality being bitten in to. Jaya, little Jaya who browsed art galleries didn’t feel the need to talk about them. Innocent, funny, hurt Jaya who gifted her a little piece of heaven off Junction 3 on the M46.
She smelt of apple shampoo and her hair was soft like feathers. Time slowed down and both were engulfed in only the sound of a room, and the pinging of droplets on the window.
It was only pain. It had only ever been pain. There was longing, there was struggle, but every day was strenuous and the pain had stagnated in their bodies. Pain and shame was on their faces and in every touch that ensued in that room. They hovered and teetered at the door of Refuge but refused to surrender and walk in because the Refuge was too real and held too many consequences. Outside the Refuge there were both their families, there were angels and there were gods, and there were sisters and sons. There was a gushing river that had a delicate eco system that needed every piece to keep going and to replenish everything around it, by its very nature needing to be nurtured in order to survive.
They lay in silence later on that night, side by side, looking in some distance somewhere. Jaya slowly got up, and walked to the bathroom, the cold biting at her skin, the blue-ish energy saver bulb making even the fluffy bright red toilet mat look clinical. She washed her face and looked in the mirror, hoping to catch any tell tale signs of sex in her face, before walking back in to her room.
Eleven was sat up on the bed, naked, cross legged, cradling the sitar in her lap. Curls of her hair lapped at its strings. The headstock towered above her head. She looked up.
‘I think I get why you keep this,’ she plucked a few strings, ‘it sounds gorgeous.’
Jaya’s heel-toe motion had temporarily stopped (the image in front of her was to haunt her for the rest of her life); Eleven grinned in bemusement with each pluck. ‘Yea man, it’s nice isn’t it?’
‘Have you ever played one before?’ Jaya sat behind her on the bed and leaned against the headrest.
‘Nope.’
But she carried on exploring the instrument, as Jaya’s breaths deepened and she slowly stroked her fingers through Eleven’s dishevelled hair.
‘You’re not very good at this…’ were the last words to leave her lips tonight, as she drifted off in to a long sleep, listening to the clumsy, inexperienced, keen music of a naked married woman insolently playing with her most prized possession.
Nothing could have been as depressing as a British train station. The waves of onion smells hit Jaya and Eleven as soon as they stepped off the clunky train, and on to the platform of Southall, West London, There were rows and rows of terraced houses; narrow one-way roads and cracked pavements; meagrely stocked newsagents with stalls of rotting vegetables outside, cash machines with cracked screens and scratched out buttons; a pool of vomit was splattered on the floor near a dilapidated bus shelter and the pert boobs of the girl on page 3 were soaked with whatever discoloured fluid had oozed out of a discarded condom. The air smelt of wet concrete and frying oil, the iron bars across a shop window where torn out and rubbish bags were ripped open, fish bones, milk bottles and Final Notices strewn about. The only feet that trudged along the street were people over 60 or under 5; everybody in between, the hipandhappening commuters drug dealers social fodder, had deserted this place long ago. Time here had been stifled. Sikh men dragged their sandals along the pavement, hands behind their backs, hunched, looking straight ahead, only ever either coming or going from the Sri Guru Singh Sabha gurdwara. Once they had boasted; boasted that Southall had the biggest Sikh population outside India. But looking around at the deadness of these streets, the hustle bustle deafening Punjab bore no resemblance to this grey vacuum punctuated with blobs of green phlegm and a few unboarded windows. Gates hung off their hinges, peeling paint and rubbish made up half of the ground and abandoned gardens ate away at everything. Crumbling houses hid behind waist height front walls lined with empty lager cans and plastic bags. Everything was cramped, packed tightly like the packets of tamarind collecting dust in the cobwebbed corners of various cash and carrys. Broken trollies lay miserably on their sides in the grey parking lots, filled with dented, battered, rusting cars.
The only sound as they walked along the pavement was that of crunching leaves and the distant thud of bollywood bass; they passed a pile of stacked tyres (a set of which belonged to Tariq Munir who made it his duty to uphold feminine empowerment by kerb crawling unloved teenage daughters) and a mound of discarded toasters (a local meeting point), before turning the corner -where an explosion of noise, smells and people traffic almost brought them to a halt, because sugary syrup from freshly made jalebis stuck to the bottom of their shoes.
The strange grey figures of local media were gathered like confused flies, swarming in and out of the rows of people not even trying to not look at the cameras and mics and self-important metal and plastic devices. One man holding a camera –wearing the skinnyjeansconverseandscarf getup- spoke about creating a montage. The crew nodded.
Inevitably the happy montage set to upbeat Bhangra music would show women in saris and trainers fingering fruit in Southall or eating pakoras in Brick Lane (of course this was a mythical image; Jays’s recent game of ‘Spot The Brown Person’ on Brick Lane ended abruptly after there were no brown persons in the vicinity). There were cameras assaulting people, talking about it being an ‘auspicious’ occasion (always, always auspicous), which they celebrated with ‘zeal’ and ‘yearned’ for every year (words which had become part of their default vocabulary bank after decades of reading quran translations in after-school mosque lessons). The camera person wouldn’t go near the lesbian-looking dungaree’d and mohawk’ed youngster with a nose piercing; nor the stern looking single mother of 3 who had clearly initiated the divorce; or the shifty eyed youngster with bloodshot corneas and hands shoved deep in to his grey kurta; or the young ones with the judgmental eyes and no asian signifier (a gold-edged scarf with the sharp blazer or at least a gold ring to identify yourself, surely!).
The straight-backed sharp-suited shiny-shoed crews were bolting about trying not to look uncomfortable as Mr Singh from the unpronouncable Gurdwara talked in lengthy growling sentences about the history of India and Sikh equality and kindness and craftmanship-in-the-blood when all they asked him for was his favourite mittai.
The greasy haired children with missing front teeth were fiddling with their grandmothers’ beards, the men walked with hands behind their backs, a respectable distance from their wives, and everyone under 25 was trying to hide the fact that they were staring at each other. Women in full niqab and burkha chatted with hushed tones but no no, there were no stares or yells of terrorist or ‘off the bus’; just the age old resentment from turbaned Sikh men which spanned from the Mughal era of the 1700’s, simmering conspiring hatred in his belly of sweet sticky jilebi’s, his scorn rendered silent by the New Generation’s cries of ‘Back Home Politics, be gone!’
Of course, the Emo kids and Goth kids showed signs of being far too integrated to pass as a juicy ‘authentic’ soundbite (but oh! If they knew the torrential war inside), and the well-spoken graduates who were far too informed were going to launch in to a politically correct diatribe of soc
ial cohesion... and the alert, goatee’d checkquered scarf keffiyeh wearers with their South London twang and overly confident Banglish would start rapping about Palestinian liberation and bleat about racism when they didn’t make the edit...
‘That kid over there,’ Jaya pointed to an overweight Indian boy whose mother was shovelling more samosas off her plate on to his, ‘has been brought up to think he’s better than anyone else in the whole world. He clearly gets bullied at school and smells of fried onions. He’s never heard of places like Windsor or Marlow and when he grows up he’ll go to India to find a wife under the pretence that all British Asian girls are slags. But it’s actually because he does, indeed, smell of fried onions,’
‘But he’ll never leave his mother’s side, right?’ Eleven said absentmindedly.
‘Too right. And that girl over there?’ Jaya nodded towards a girl stooped with low self confidence after an undue amount of attention given to her upper anatomy, ‘she’s wearing jeans and her brothers look clean-cut and all modernshodern, yah? In their 30’s yea? Well: she still cleans their bedrooms and gets shouted at if she doesn’t do their washing after them, and isn’t allowed to go to the cornershop without prior permission.’
Eleven laughed. ‘And what does she smell like?’
‘Of washing powder, of course. Her mum’s got a cleaning OCD to escape the fear of Husband chasing after skirt at Raj’s restaurant!’
‘You’re a twat,’
‘It’s true though!’
‘I’d hate you if I didn’t fancy you so much,’
‘O bhen-ji, these are the true words of a one uppity bitch who has a skewed sense of humanity, forgive me my tresspassings,’
‘Screw you.’ Eleven laughed and tugged Jaya’s jacket to bring her closer. The girl was cold; cold and distant with the only warmth coming from her expressive eyebrows which could contort almost vertically across her forehead in cases of extreme disgust. Eleven decided it was best to avoid that circumstance; Jaya’s biting judgement scared the shit out of her and already made her feel inadequate. But that was the risk of playing out of her community-college league (one which paid off in 1972 when the water-carrying Asifa woo’d the Big British Businessman in to making her his third wife..)
Distorted Bollywood, Lollywood and Dallywood skipped out of Poshiba and Harisonic stereos (‘Will you be my lubbly jubbly?’... ‘You are my garam masala’... ‘Why for you leave me, I’m just coming’) and men who seemed to be completely unassociated with the shops sat on stools at the entrance, their legs tucked in, arms folded, thick black hair peeking out from under their wool hats, their eyes opening wide and head tracking anything that went by. A teenage girl, blushing from repressed flattery, arrogantly walked by and looked deflated as an even younger specimen was eyed-up next. The conveyer belt of people leaflets hot corn food steam spices chatter oil contraband two-for-one first class blockbuster haanji no-ji was strangely devoid of the Hare Krishna’s who only ever seemed to appear on High Streets (in any case, here, they would be chased away by the bright orange turban-clad sword-wielding Swami’s of Southall).
A group of Hindu leafleteers advocating the deity of the Cow didn’t notice their younger members slunk off to the McDonald’s on the corner; a stone-cold brother failed to notice the cuts on his sister’s wrists; a fluffy moustachio’d Husband failed to see his soggy-haired wife with her scarf falling off her head, trudging behind with her ripped sandals and polyester salwaar kameez peeking out from beneath her long grey coat, looking pathetically as they passed yet another stall selling odd shoes...in fact, he hadn’t seen her in about 10 years...
The afternoon passed in a flurry of frying and varying shades of orange.
Jaya inwardly celebrated as she handed over 74p for a sheekh kebab; surely Southall was the only place where things weren’t sold in increments of the pound? She attracted glares from a small group of protestors who were protesting against The Cruelty of Halal Meat.
‘I wonder if they know that research actually shows halal slaughter is less painful to animals than stunning?’ She bit in to the kebab and watched as one of the protestors looked away in disgust.
‘They’re making me feel guilty about enjoying this stick of carcass.’ She swallowed and saw one of the news crew go to buy one after seeing the steam from her little stick of meat-poo. She sighed.‘Perhaps the ignorant are better for us than the misinformed.’
‘Yes. I’m sure that’s what terrorist leaders around the world said too.’ Eleven grabbed the remaining half.
‘Salee kutti kebab-stealing bitch tits,’
Eleven laughed through a mouthful of meat. Jaya smiled and looked around as they walked back towards the train station, marvelling at how many people could fit in to one square inch of pavement. Big Mercedes and white vans filled the roads, creeping along slowly, some blasting bhangra, sporting seats full of boys with the Sikh Beard (a think line of hair feigning a jaw line) and crew cuts. Girls would sneak a look through the windows hoping guardians wouldn’t see, the slaggier ones outright staring. Parents looked on oblivious, chomping on street food and squinting to read the myriad of signs and notices and maal.
‘Hmm, after all that curry, I feel like some sushi...’ Eleven smirked.
‘What? O my god, I’ve expanded your pallet beyond fried chicken and chips!’
‘Well, yes. Although this whole business of ‘going out to dinner’ is stupid.’ Eleven’s thick Northern drawl tickled Jaya’s ears, ‘why would you want to just sit around a table talking and getting fat.’ She thought. ‘Unless it’s sushi...’
‘Jesus Christ, you’re turning the world upside down. Look at you, you cultural revolutionary. Soon we’ll be living in a world where India is outsourcing to America. Where parents want their children to study History of Art instead of Medicine. Where Kabaddi has become an Olympic sport.’ She gasped and opened her eyes wide, ‘Where teachers will stop looking with understanding eyes at all Asian students who plead ‘family problems’!’
‘You know what? You’re a dickwad.’ She looked at the Heathrow Express to London Paddington pull up to the platform. ‘I should get going before it gets dark.’ She kissed Jaya’s cheek. ‘The kids needs to be fed.’
Jaya sighed. ‘Ok. I’m-‘ she looked down. ‘I’m far too emotionally constipated to say how much I’ve enjoyed myself.’
‘Then don’t. I’ll see you soon.’
‘Yea.’ They looked at each other, before being seperated by the swelling line of aunts and turbans that passed between them.
Chapter 8