Basically, birthdays make me feel old and crap, and turning 32 this week is like landing a hangover without ever having been to the party
Basically, birthdays make me feel old and crap, and turning 32 this week is like landing a hangover without ever having been to the party. Since I'm all grumpy and morbid my best friend and her husband take me to an island, and that's where I'm writing this. Maybe this is time to self-reflect but I decide against it as that'd only give me a headache or my narcissism a shot in the arm and so I wade into the ocean and float on my back and think of how everything in the end, you know, works out.
I didn't always feel like this. I mean, the last lousy optimistic bone in my body went out with a big bang last year. So I'm surprised The Grins are coming on. It's like all those nihilistic literary heroes of mine, Roth and Ellis and Celine lost me to an island. I'm sure they'd appreciate that, literature losing out to geography. On the upside, the downside will return as I head home to Bombay but right now I'm just riffing on what Celine wrote in Journey to the End of the Night: "Death is chasing you, you've got to hurry, and while you're looking you've got to eat, and keep away from wars. That's a lot of things to do. It's no picnic." However, this morning I'm thinking, it's a picnic, just bring your own sandwiches, loser.
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So if you find yourself in the same shark-infested stretch of the ocean as me and we jam into each other's snorkel gear and then we get talking and you ask me what I got out of my 32 years on this planet then I'd say: Hurry along. I'd also tell you to go vegetarian. And drink one glass of red wine every evening for good health, and a few more in case your body doesn't get the point. Do yoga. Spend one summer in Rome. Fall in love even if it brings down the walls of your house. The symptoms of love are the same as for extreme fear: breathlessness, a racing pulse, an adrenaline kick. I don't know if I mean that to be encouraging but at least I'm honest.
Because it's unlikely we're going to bump snorkel gear any time soon I might as well tell you what I saw last evening: The big fish eat the little fish. Deal with it. But the nice thing about hanging around for as long as I have is finding that the folks who screw you over will get screwed over. The law of the big fish eating the little fish means the big fish will get eaten by even bigger fish, and the biggest fish will probably just die because of an oil slick or because a methhead decided to throw up in the water, which may have happened here last night, I'm just not totally sure. Remember: piranhas are little fish.
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I also know friends will bail my sorry ass. Because last year I sat on a balcony ledge thinking how nice it would be to not have to take the elevator this one time but my friends got together and saved me. They regret it ever since. I don't. Live. For all the consolations of checking out, there isn't anything more important than having tasted yet another dahi puri. Get your teeth cleaned at least once in six months. Whatever happens, don't get an enema. Read Rilke. Sit on a cliff side in Matheran. Swim. Follow you passion even if it drives your around the bend. Don't make fun of adult diapers, because one day, you may have to wear them and guess what, by then they won't even do them in your size.
You will die.. Your heart will be broken many times, and each time will hurt more than the last. The parallel queue always moves faster. And other people have more sex. Deal with it. I think I see a baby shark heading my way but I'm going to do what my mother told me to in times of danger: recite the Gayatri Mantra. It works every time. I even recited it to bring the Congress back in power. But if the MNS ever rules, no mantra is going to save your douchy face. Pray.
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Life is short. Hurry along. Wait for love. It will come.
And even if you don't make it to the other side, there's always a divey bar on the way down. So trust in God and Alka Seltzer (in that order). Look, I'd love to hang and chat but the water is warm and real swell so I'm headed for the deep end, I'm freewheeling, I'm chasing sharks, I'm coming up for air.
(Shanghvi's bestselling second novel, The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay, was short-listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2008.)
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