Lung cancer and stuff

If anyone’s wondering why an idiot like me is part of a nationwide lung cancer awareness campaign with Ricky Gervais, I lost my mum to it in 2012. And I’m a token ethnic. Here’s a thing I wrote for Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation:

Nothing prepares you for that moment when the doctor delivers those words. Absolutely nothing. You can see in their downturned reassuring smile that much as they’ve delivered this news their entire career, they’re not immune to its power. And if you’re from a big Indian family like I am, chances are you’re going to be in the room when the patient is told, ‘It’s cancer.’

I was there.

A month later I’d lost my mum and had my first novel out in the same two days. It was strange trying to come to terms with your biggest dream and worst nightmare going hand in hand. Mum wasn’t there to live it with me. Because she just wasn’t there anymore.

In a way, that it happened so quickly meant that my memories of her are more of when she was at her best. As time goes on, these memories make it easier. Those fragments of feeding her as her head lolled about, helping her go to the toilet, picking her up when she couldn’t stand, they’re blurs. The overriding memory is of pre-cancer smiling mum sat around with our family, its epicentre, its nucleus and its tie. My mum made everything in our family happen. She cooked for us (even when I no longer lived there, she ensured I was well fed), she made sure we knew each other’s news, she picked us up, dropped us off. What do you do when the instrumental part of your life isn’t there. How do you even begin to compute a new status quo?

That month we lived with mum’s cancer, our overriding question, both internal and external, was ‘why?’ She wasn’t a smoker, she hadn’t worked in asbestos removal, she didn’t live near a toxic waste factory – how could she possibly get lung cancer? Lung cancer?! WTF? It should have been me. I partook in social smoking at university, I didn’t exercise as much as I should – why wasn’t it me, not mum? But it was. And we rallied round her. The blessing and curse of a large family is that everyone knows your business instantly and is desperate to help. We drew up a rota of care, cooking and ensuring dad was sent off to work every day and as soon as it was bedding in, she was gone.

Still, the overriding question is ‘why?’

But as time goes on, the memories get stronger as you work harder to remember everything you possibly can. And that’s the most you can do. It could be any of us. It could be your mum who still had half a lifetime in her. It could be you. It could be. That’s the scary thing. And your first question will be… ‘why?’

This Must Be The Place #1: Freedom

There’s a place that can reduce her to tears. The mere mention of its existence is a reminder of all the emotional baggage that goes with it for her. She has been going there with her family since she was born. She has grown up there as much as she has her own family home. It is in itself a family home. School holidays signalled relocating there for the Easter and for the Summer. It became the subject of weekends away. It became the subject of every anecdote that told me about her when we started dating.

There, she would tell me, she would be free. This place, this seaside caravan park stuck in the 1950s, perched precariously on a head, would be her manner for weeks on end. She made friends here, she required no parental supervision, she had her habits, her tropes, her wild abandon. There was nothing that could take her breath away in the same way.

Now, it makes her cry. That I don’t get the same feeling in my entire body as her makes her cry. That she can’t go makes her cry. That it’s 5 days away, 4 days away, tomorrow, today…. makes her cry.

I have never felt this about a place. Not even my family home. We moved into my family home when I was 3 years old and I lived there till I was 20, and then 21 till 23 and then 26 till 26 and a half and I have never felt the purity adoration and affection for it that she does for this seaside village. This is where she truly feels at home. I yearn for such a powerful all-encompassing feeling.

Sleeping Outside

There are rules, I have learnt, for sleeping in a coach station.

1) How old are you? No seriously, are you of the age and disposable income to be able to afford a budget hotel? No? Or just skint? Fair enough, okay… do you have friends? Do you have their numbers? Maybe call them.

2) Have you had alcohol tonight? No? Really? Why are you making questionable decisions about sleeping in a coach station. I know it’s 4 hours until the first coach leaves and you’re booked on the one two hours after that. Do you think that smelling of alcohol and sleeping in a coach station will get you on that coach any quicker? Really? You’ve been drinking. I do not trust your judgement in this matter.

3) You have your laptop with you and have got it out to watch series 7 of ‘How I Met Your Mother’ but you’re too sleepy to focus on things so put it away? Okay, seriously now… you’ve been drinking, you’ve decided to wait for your coach in the coach station at stupid o’clock. You’re too tired to watch things on your laptop. You’re paranoid everyone knows you have your laptop with you. Maybe it should just stay in your bag.

4) Wrap that bag around both your legs and clutch the zip with all your might. Even if you pass out from fatigue and the drinking, you’re clutching that sucker into a cocoon no one is breaking into.

5) Dubstep will get you up in the morning. Try this song next time you wake up in a bus shelter and need a helping hand to pull you through all the memories of how you got there in the first place:

Here’s the kicker… you made a questionable decision. Do not ever sleep in the coach station. Because pigeons… they have no mercy when it comes to a passed out man in his mid-thirties wearing a fashionable denim shirt for warmth in March.

I’m an idiot so you don’t have to be.

A talk I did on being an ethnic author

Recorded at the Decibel Performing Arts Showcase last year

Wearing My Das Racist t-shirt: a story in three parts

When you’re wearing a t-shirt that says ‘Das Racist’ on it, you’re making a statement. The people who see you wearing it have something to say about the thing you have to say. This Pardon My Hindi-designed t-shirt for the band is incendiary.

Here are three stories of wearing the t-shirt out and about.

One. London, publishing event

They bring round the canapes and the refills of champagne and you feel like a fraud. People are sartorial here. You’re rain-sodden and wishing you could go home. Everyone around you is in a button-down shirt. They look at your t-shirt and try to decipher the coded capital letters. Eventually your host for the evening, the editor of a newly-released book, an old man in tweed, hands in his pockets, approaches you. ‘Nice t-shirt,’ he says. You thank him. ‘What does it mean though?’ You laugh and tell him it’s the name of a band. ‘Are they German?’ he asks. You shake my head. He points to behind him. ‘Someone over there,’ he says, conspiratorially. ‘Said it was the most offensive t-shirt they’d ever seen and I had to come and take a look for myself. It’s quite breath-taking. I love it.’ You thank him and he goes to leave, before stopping and turning, almost absent-mindedly using you as a sounding board for an idea. ‘I must remember to put dress codes on these blasted email invitations.’ He salutes you with a drink.

Two. Bristol, high street

He’s crossing the road. He hears loud shouts and calls from a white van stopped at the traffic lights. He ignores the men in the van, knowing that whatever they’re shouting, historically, is not what he wants to hear. One of the men runs out of the white van and grabs him by the shoulder, shaking him from his Radio 4 podcast he’s listening to. The white van man stares at his t-shirt. ‘What does that say?’ The white van man asks. ‘Das Racist,’ he replies, tired of people unfamiliar with fonts. ‘What’s racist? You calling me a racist?’ The white van man asks. ‘No. It’s the name of a band,’ comes the even wearier reply. ‘Seriously, mate, walking around with a t-shirt like that… you’re lucky you don’t get lynched…’ ‘But that’s racist,’ you reply. ‘Hey, it’s your t-shirt, not mine. Goodbye racist.’ The white van man runs back to his white van and drives off, flicking a V sign to the cars behind him beeping notification of the green light. You walk home in silence.

Three. Paris, airport

I hate going through border patrol. They eye me up. They make me feel like I’m hiding something. They treat my things with disrespect, my passport with contempt. I always walk through with a screwface, hoping someone challenges me, leading us into the confrontation I’m destined to have.

This time, though, something feels different. I go through the motions of removing my laptop, shoes and belt before asked and walking through with my hands up like someone’s pointing a gun, my passport in my left. As I pass the guy scanning my bag he signals to his colleague and they both turn to me. In French accents they bellow, ‘Michael Jackson… a million dollars… you feel me?’ and I reply, ‘Holla’. We’re all grinning. They tell me they love the band and saw them in concert. I tell them I’m a fan too. They say they love my t-shirt and I smile and go through the gates, unmolested.

www.dasracist.net

www.pardonmyhindi.com

Dynamic Karate

The loft at my parent’s house used to carry a benevolent majesty to me. I could happily spend hours there. And I did. Mostly on weekends. Every Saturday and Sunday, my mum and dad would trundle off to their warehouse to run the family business, and if I was canny, I would get to stay home and look after my sister under the guise of homework. As soon as they’d left, I’d let my sister take control of the television and I’d head upstairs, and into the loft. Because the loft was a treasure trove of 70s porn and martial arts.

The origins of both in our household is still a mystery to me so I’m obliged to blame the previous tenants of our family home.

In a bag in a box labelled teapots and china, was a handful of 70s porn magazines. I’d stare at them with the appropriate curiosity of a pre-teen for a long time trying to work out what was going on. I had my favourites. I occasionally wondered what they’d be doing that day and how much older they’d be. I even smuggled a couple down to my room, choosing an elaborate hiding place for them. I’d prised open a panel in an unwanted briefcase (who in their right mind accepted their parent’s insistance at taking a briefcase to school?) and placed them in there for emergencies. The guilt, the prospect of being found out, everything usually exploded in a crescendo of panic and I’d eventually dispose of them.

Along the back wall of the attic, though, was two bookshelves of books. The books were either about finance, economics and money in the 1970s or instructional martial arts books. One of them look special because it was orange, had its own cardboard box for the hardback cover and was black’n'white (ergo classy) with lots of stop-motion photographs of the moves. No one seemed to be using the book so I moved Dynamic Karate down to my room and gave it pride of place on my bookshelf alongside football annuals, fantasy novels and Crime and Punishment by Fyjodor Dostoevsky, something my pre-teen self could relate to when reference in a teen book about American summer campers but had no clue what it was about.

Dynamic Karate became my after-school totem. Using the stop-motion photographs, I practised various punches, kicks and combos. I learnt how to block punches and counter-attack with a variety of moves. I didn’t know if I was doing the moves right. I didn’t even know if they were the moves I was supposed to be doing. All I knew was ‘jump, left knee raised, snap right leg outwards from knee, connect with opponent using heel of foot’. My mum would demand to know what the thumping and banging on the floor and the bed represented as I threw myself around the room, practising the photographs of the moves to perfection before incorporating them into imagined scenarios. She probably would have preferred me wanking to all the loft porn than snapping myself to injury learning karate moves I had no context or instruction for.

While the kids at school boasted of porn, pirated videos and female attention, I walked the corridors knowing how to defend myself. The kids whose parents indulged their whims, who went to martial arts classes whilst mine said they cost too much money and took me away from my studies, may know the moves, I’d think, but they hadn’t taught themselves. I could do roundhouse kicks, punching combinations, sweeps, defence of punches to the chest, punches to the chest. I could defend, I could take the offensive. But I never would because that was the opposite of self-defence.

I took Dynamic Karate to school one day. I left it on my desk for various lessons. I sought to be seen with it during breaktime. I held it under my arm. I showed it to my people. It only illicited one communal reaction. That of the offensive ‘Hooooi’ sound that people make when they’re referencing the noises in kung-fu films the chop socky hai ya. They called ‘hooooooooi ka-rat-ey.’ They asked what belt I was. And I nodded, like I was internalising all the aggression, building up to the big gun explosion. It never came.

I was never able to use the moves I’d learnt in Dynamic Karate. Instead, quickly painfully, I learned that you couldn’t learn everything in books. Sometimes, life required conventional teaching, learning and practising. All I had was a book, the will and a bedroom that housed my every whim.

The following year, the porn mags seemed a lot more alluring.

The Subaltern Podcast episode 9: Teju Cole

Download The Subaltern Podcast episode 9: Teju Cole now (iTunes)

Nah, bruv, I need a non-Apple link…

All nice and decent crew… follow me now.

Teju Cole yes you’re running hip hop.
Subaltern Podcast yes you’re running hip-hop.

Hello people. This week, I go international again with a Skype interview with the majestic, the funny, the satirical, the amazing Teju Cole, author of Open City. Which was my favourite book of last year.

We talk about the country of Africa, the monetary worth of critical acclaim, our love of Das Racist and Mos Def’s namechange.

This is the penultimate episode of this series of The Subaltern podcast. So if you’re digging it, let people know, do the whole iTunes review, do the blog, the tumblr, the tweet – anything to show me you love me so I know whether you love me enough to demand a second series.

The Subaltern Podcast – Author Nikesh Shukla talks to other writers and authors and novelists about stuff, from writing to r’n'b. It’s the anti-panel discussion.

Credits:

Logo designed by Sanjai Dave
Location provided by the internet.
Music provided by Vee Kay (Three Kings High)

Follow me on Twitter: @nikeshshukla
Follow Teju on Twitter: @tejucole

‘Open City’ is out now on Faber.

The Subaltern podcast

Yo dudes, go and download my talking podcast from iTunes…

It’s a talking podcast where I do the talking with other writers. It’s called The Subaltern and it’s the anti-panel discussion.

So far, I’ve interviewed David Whitehouse, Evie Wyld, Joe Dunthorne, Gavin James Bower and Rebecca Hunt.

Upcoming I have Jon McGregor, Etgar Keret, Colson Whitehead and more.

Go seek.

The barber

I’ve always wondered what it takes to get a barber to talk to me. There’s something about me that clams a barber up. I sit there in the plastic waiting throne and watch the barbers all talk to their customers, chatting about weekends and about hairstyles and about their lives. It feels intimate and fun at the same time. Both pass the awkward time and leave the premises with enriched lives. I sit down on the cutting throne and the barber asks what I want. I tell them and away they go. In silence.

Why won’t they talk to me?

I wondered if I was the one meant to initiate the conversation. I’ve been to a lot of barbers in my time and felt the same thing happen. Recently, I’ve moved to a place which has a barber’s on the corner. They wave at me every time I walk past now. This means I can change the pattern.

Except, today, I went into the barber’s, thinking, I am Mr Banter – I am the guy. I am going to make this happen. The barber pointed at the chair and I went to sit down. He said he was going to the toilet. Thinking I could lead with something funny to show what a guy I am, I said, ‘Remember to wash your hands,’ and smiled. He looked at me like I was an idiot, a disgusting idiothole for even pretending to suggest he was anything other than hygienic in work-based toilet situations. I smiled and when he returned from the toilet, he washed his hands in front of me a bit vigorously, as if to say, LOOK, I AM WASHING MY HANDS. OK DICKHEAD?

I let him drape me in the cutting cloth and rubber cutting weight, informed him of my style of choice, watched his face in the mirror to see if he thought I could pull it off or not and let him get on with it. I then asked, ‘So… good weekend?’

He stopped and looked at me, sizing up the banter cloud that was before him – could I deliver? would I be funny? Do I know anything about football? He said, ‘Yeah it was great, except Sunday when we scattered my girlfriend’s dad’s ashes.’ Oh, I thought, that’s a downer. How do I lead on from that? He’s presented me with a quandary? Do I rise to the challenge? Do I say, hey man, I’m so sorry – or something like way-hey, shoulda snorted the guy or something like that. No, you’re sensitive in those situations. Even if all these years you’ve been trying to break the glass ceiling of barber silence by initiating conversation and that’s what you’re given, so I replied with… ‘Well, we scattered my mum’s ashes in India last year. Bet it was a bit warmer…’

The rest of my haircut was in silence.

I bought some clippers on the way home. Maybe I’ll do my own hair from now on.

Smile for London

From Monday, poets like Salena Godden, Inua Ellams, Polarbear, Kate Tempest, Musa Okwonga, Josh Idehen and loads more have short 40 word poems animated on video screens on 30-40 London Underground platforms. So does Jarvis Cocker, Benjamin Zephaniah, Scroobius Pip and Ray Davies.

And me.

I did a video about fried chicken. With the dudes from Trunk.

More info here

Can you spot mine?

 

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