I think it's pretty confirmed, I seriously suffer from "specific social phobia". I run out of my house every time I hear my parents have visitors coming over. It's become so bad that my parents stun me half the time by not informing me about the impending arrival of these intruders, leaving me running to the bathroom in my boxers hearing foreign voices saying hello thanks to my faulty calling bell.
I've grown smarter over the months, these days if I wake up to my mom cooking a sudden sumptuous spread or my dad suddenly being dressed in his faded retro white pants (which he thinks is still in), I immediately claim to have appointments.
Okay it's cool to have clowns over for a meal, cause I could just head out and lalala, a call to check if they've left and bang! I can get back into my humble room doing whatever I want, reverting to my boxers. It only gets freaky when you see, these weirdos making international calls from India to inform you of their plans to visit Singapore, in other words, asking if you could put them up in your home. My parents are too nice, my dad in particular, he never says no to them. Sadly.
The Granny
It was all cool when this trend started. It was my granny whom I never got a chance to spend too long with anyway. The only grand dad/mother alive from my dad and moms side. After a while she got irritating, asking if she could take every thingy of mine back to India to present to my cousin, her favorite grandson who sadly had a sickening name "Abijith". When I say she wanted everything, I mean everything; from my pen to my pants. Mind you, the bloke is half my age and size. She even eyed my calculator for a pre schooler. The fact that she was pretty deaf by the time she came down didn't help either, leaving me screaming every reply, bursting several veins and landing in school with a pretty bad sore throat half the time back then.
She stayed in my room when she came down, cause the eldest was yet to move out and the second was hardly home. My granny wore dentures and a pony tail add on during the day, leaving me with a pretty horrendous sight to look at every night, with the dentures spending the night in the toilet and her wig in the cupboard.
I don't remember or rather choose not to remember if I was too nice. These days my interactions with her are confined to a couple of screams over the phone, with a random totally off tangent question or reply in return from her.
Uncle & Aunt 1
Then came my dad's elder sister and her husband from India. Pretty decent couple, forgetting the spoilt volume control nobs that they come along with; screaming away on buses seated beside each other, sending me running up to the upper tier of the bus everytime I was with them.
The uncle was a pretty well to do business man in India, awesome with his math, calculating everything in rupees and refusing to buy anything unless gifted to him. Dressed in a dhoti, giving me a nice sneak at his undies the day he landed in Singapore, stepping on my feet and almost falling at my main gate with the dhoti stuck to my sandals. His recovery and lack of embarrassment shocked me.
He started screaming and lifting his legs at the Omnimax theatre back then, thinking the water on the sceen was real and that he was going to get wet. They left after three months.
Uncle & Aunt 2
About a year later came my dad's step brother and his wife who was my mom's best friend during her university days back in Kerala. Of all the intruders, I love this uncle most and I wouldn't have complained if he permanently moved in, despite his irritating over sized wife.
He was a collector back in India and he wore pants and knew how to dress, spoke profound english and taught me a few worthy facts about India. Someone I really enjoyed having around who has sadly passed on. He cried when he had to return to India at the airport while hugging my brothers and me.
His wife was the total opposite though, with maggi mee for hair, coated with nice funny smelling oil and a laughter which had her wobbling on my couch, she was pretty irritating. My mom has funny besties all the time. Nivi lives to tell the tale of Aunty Malar, aka Radar. Trust me, she's the last person you want calling your house when you're in a rush, dragging her voice asking you questions which she shouldn't even be thinking about.
The Cousin
A pretty intelligent person who gave up everything in India to become an architect here. I had to give up my room to him on the year of my O levels. I think that tells the tale. His intelligence spared him any stunts in front of me so yeah. The only freaky thing he did was, give my home a make over while I was in school in a period of a few hours, wondering if I opened the wrong door when I came back home.
Uncle & Aunt 3
This is the bomb! I swear! They left a couple of months ago. My dad's cousin and his beer belly'd wife. The uncle's a retired veterinarian by trade. Dubbed as "The Animal" by the family and an inside joke runs that he injected a cat which became a dog. Sounds alot funnier in Malayalam. He introduces himself as "DOCTOR prasanan" without fail, and would probably read out his qualifications if given a chance.
Bald as my dad, with funky 70s retro glasses rested on the tip of his nose, covering most of his face and beyond. His wife, yes beer belly'd drinks anything in the name of alcohol. Another one without a volume nob, one who laughs at anything, glued to the tee vee, so much so that it gets freaky seeing her in my hall at three in the morning without any movement with the blue lights reflecting on her face in the darkness. Then again, you wouldn't want her to turn and see you cause she'd start with her trade mark laugh and then force you to sit by her. The biggest mistake I made was, grabbing her a couple of top up SIM cards, she'd drop by my room every now and then asking me to swap cards, charge her phone, increase the volume, (despite the phone warning you that it's already very loud)country codes to funny places like dubai and saudi at 2 in the morning and many many more antics.
My uncle's actually a nice guy, he just does and says funny stuff without knowing, with a very very thick truly Indian accent. I spent a day with him and it was really ultra funny. We went to Mustafa to get some money changed, at the counter, he dug into his underwear to take the money and hand it over to the changer, trust me, it was so tough controlling my laughter in front of him. Then he insisted on having a seat, where Banglas normally sat, just infront of Mustafa.
We started talking when he suddenly popped a question. He asked, "have you heard of the chick sex centre?" I couldn't believe my ears and went "Sorry"? He repeated the same thing and I knew that it wasn't the raging testosterone levels playing tricks on me, then I wondered if it was some Cabaret act or something he heard of and wanted to watch in Singapore.
He finally went on to explain that it was a place where fresh chicks were removed from an incubator and separated according to their gender by checking if they had a penis, and apparently he was doing this for the past 20years of his life in the name of being a veterinarian. It's alot funnier when he said it, explaining my last two sentences really slowly, with the accent of course, trying to make the process look alot more tedious and difficult to do.
He was really nice though, constantly asking about me every time he calls from India, not forgetting the simple acts we did for him.
Uncle & Cousin
Then came my Uncle and Cousin from England. The story's simple, my uncle tried getting him an arranged marriage done without his consent and so dragged him to Singapore, a day before their arrival, the "in laws to be" called the show off, claiming their daughter had a boyfriend. They came down anyway.
My Uncle's a real bad alcoholic, taking every instance to drink, never speaks when sober, blabbers when drunk. My cousin's weird. He hardly spoke to us till a pretty drunk evening with my besties and brother. All that speech ended the next morning when he was sober.
It's pretty funny how he opened up to my brother and me, telling us things we shouldn't have been told, showing the rest of us a tattoo no one knew about, doing and saying funny things, he returns to England and he forgets us totally.
As you can see, my house and spare room since my brothers have started homes of their own, has become pretty much a hotel. It's been nice and quiet for a while. So why the sudden entry?
I got a mail from my mom a few days back and Shalini knows how irritated it made me.
Dear son,
Moli - My Chittappa's daughter & husband (both are lawyers) will be here on 22 Dec.
they are on a package tour -to Malaysia, Thailand etc.
Four days in Singapore - staying at Peninsula Hotel.
Will be leaving on 2 Jan.
All the Best !
Amma
I think it's pretty funny how my mom chose to avoid telling me this in person. Well atleast she informed me this time round.
