`Sam, you bastard,` he shouted from across the road. The local bully had reacted to seeing me that day. His jaundiced comment and flagrant disregard for my feelings was so lucidly evident in his hostility. The words sledge hammered home, like the proverbial dagger through the heart. I had been called that before when I was growing up, but it never carried as much veracity and brutal realisation as it did on that day. The cut throat malignance and balefulness those few words conveyed, sliced deep into the very bowels of my body. Despite all of his frailties, the truth of the matter was that he was right - I was a true bastard.
Once you have experienced a grief and seen how it resonates around you, piercing through your soul, flickering around you like a burning maelstrom of fire, a halo of hurt and thorns of real tangible pain. The feeling of wishing and yearning to see your loved one’s just once more, to touch their soft cheeks and to hear their dulcet tones. I had loved hard and without compromise, but this only made things worse. I cherished those moments with every single vestige of happiness and fulfilment that I could muster, for those fleeting moments were gone in a whim, never to return.
Over the years, I had come to realise that there are a lot of gullible people out there who sheepishly follow these mystical pundits like they are some kind of demi-Gods. I could appreciate that there were certainly a handful who were genuine and were able to sprinkle their magic into your life, whether this was the feel good placebo factor, the X factor or just having more attuned chakra’s then the average person is anyone’s guess. (The chakra, referred to the third eye on your forehead, rather like a spiritual Cyclops). Then there were the money spinning stage coach robbers, the one’s who would ask you to close your eyes so that you could indulge in that transcendent and meditative state. This would then enable them to rifle through your belongings, nicking your ‘green’ and quickly checking out your personal details so that they could then mystically drop them into conversation when they began their ‘spiritual reading.’
Auntie Myleene was a sadist of Nazi Germany ilk and possessed as much charisma and magnetism as a dead fish. She would have been chief commander in the Gestapo such was her ruthless streak I tell you. I still have the scars to prove that she was definitely a degree holder in accurate striking - when she swung, she scored. She was like the Babe Ruth of newspaper swatting, a national pastime where budding housewives would attempt to crush the fragile skulls of young orphaned adolescents for not tidying up the mess in their bedrooms.
`You need to be taught a lesson, and my boy this is the only way you will learn,` he snarled back at me. He was more than braced to deal me an indiscriminate and savage bite and his obvious venom and evident disdain was bursting out of every facial aperture. My ever burgeoning fear merely adding to his lustre, and at that moment I succumbed to the anguishing tenet that he would remain as evil, unchanged and unrepentant for as long as the blood of the Devil coursed through his veins. With that, he lowered the blade down past the incriminating stain that had now appeared in the crotch of my lightly coloured jeans and flicked it a few times slashing up at my chest in his drunken stupor. I knew that I would be extremely fortunate to survive this encounter without some form of physical abuse, as had been the case for the past few years, well as far back as I could remember. I saw the serrated tip of the butcher’s knife inching its way menacingly towards my eyes, the fierce and brutal realisation that my destiny was being played out before me. I closed my eyes, today was a good day to die. At least now, I would be emancipated from a life of hate and torment. My executioner sized me up, to him I was a waste of skin and sinew, the shit off his shoe and a worm he was just itching to dispirit and crush. Why did he despise me so much? The pallor of death carved on my face did nothing to assuage his determined bullying and forthcoming onslaught of violence. The quivering lip was merely fuel for his burning fire of evil and did nothing to slake his intentions of eviscerating me without compunction or passion.
Dalj had even shown me the light bulb screwing dance, the whisky bottle on the head jive and not forgetting the hoi hoi dance when you thrust your foot in and out of the circle – like the Punjabi hokey cokey - I simply loved them. However, he reserved the best until last - the ‘pendu’ or ‘freshie dance’ as he referred to it. This was when he would stand on the spot doing a double light bulb screwing move with his hands up above him and with one leg up to knee height jumping off the ground continuously, all this with an accompanying grin that would have put the Cheshire Cat out of business.
Well, that was until a few years ago when for some bizarre reason she went bonkers and lost the plot. She was the quintessential March Hare, bells and whistles too. Before then I had noticed an ever burgeoning state of insanity seeping through. One time Dalj and I even caught her standing on a chair in the kitchen one day after school, licking bits of paper and sticking them to her face before trying to blow them off with her mouth. Other times she would come hurtling out of the kitchen armed with the broom chasing imaginary mice from the kitchen and out into the street. She would sometimes even get to the end of the road screaming like a banshee with the broom held above her head like some kind of zulu warrior. It would often take a monumental tussle just to get her back in the confines of the house and convince her that we were not being over run by killer mice.
I popped my mobile in my pocket when suddenly the door flung open with force. Before I could even comprehend what was happening I was grabbed violently by the lapels and thrust into the house by a drunken and psychopathic Terry. I went hurtling in with such ferocity, I felt my teeth rattle in my head. The next few minutes were hazy as blow after excruciating blow landed in my stomach and face. WHAM! SMACK! THUD! Dalj was right he was a killer and finally my number was up… Every crunching strike caused me to whimper like a puppy. I felt trickles streaming from several areas on my face and the taste of blood was patently swirling in my mouth. In-between the violent attack I could hear the ranting expletives and foul mouthed abuse that I had become accustomed to ringing around the walls of the small hallway that was now slowly becoming my tomb.
The first advert we stumbled across in the back of the weekly Asian paper was for the ostentatious Mr Varma Shah, a spiritual God. The advert stated that he had the skills to pay the bills. This virtuoso of the spirit world could while away your troubles with the deft flick of a coconut such was the write up accompanying his photo. His picture in the paper had already amused me and he looked as though he had been dragged through a hedge backwards such was the state of his frazzled hair. We sat in the front room of his house, a terraced brick built place in the heart of Southall. Mr Shah, the high priest of bollockso, the ancient art of pulling the wool over your eyes as he rifled your pockets sat there in his pyjamas and waistcoat. I mean what the hell was that about? I looked on painfully. This bloke looked as though he had just escaped a comic strip. I sensed there were cartoon illustrators scouring the earth looking for him, either that or the fashion police. He never looked at us for the entire time that Dalj and I sat there, but instead examined the rolled up piece of paper he held in his hand and made little notes on the paper with a pen. I looked closely and noticed that he had the property page open and was seemingly putting down the deposit on his next house as the two gullible dummies, namely us, sat before him. `So I will need five hundred pounds to do a prayer for you. Then I will take this blessing to some water and you will receive good luck.` His demand was painful and ludicrous. `Hold on a minute pal. Where do you buy your magic potions from, the bloody estate agents?` I said sarcastically. The master of spin must have thought he had a pair of mugs trussed up like money trees sat cooped up in front of him, two smart as a door knob suckers to fleece for every last dime. The pundit almost fell off his seat and I could see the white’s of his eyes when he realised the net closing in on him, his eyes remained wide with sucker punching shock. Suffice to say that our visit to this pundit was short lived, and I had to be physically restrained from tying him up with cheese wire in the boot of the car and dangling him over a bridge by his nose hairs. I felt insulted and wound up that this wormy vulture and toe sucking cretin preyed on the weak and vulnerable with the dollar signs spinning like an arcade machine in his eyes when he sniffed some business coming his way. Rituals - the only ritual he needed was a good old fashion poker straight up where the sun doesn’t shine, that would have mended his duplicitous ways I thought angrily.
The violent and wayward hood who had snubbed the acting school to pursue a life of crime and dodging bullets. His reputation had preceded him and I knew he was capable of serving me up a Colombian neck tie, where your throat is slit and your tongue is pulled out from the gaping wound in your neck at the mere drop of a hat and without provocation. He was a brooding beast of a guy with a Desperate Dan chin that had patently been no stranger to solvent abuse over the years. He shifted his stocky Popeye type frame over to us with all the smugness of an over confident buffoon. At five feet ten inches he wasn’t particularly imposing in the height stakes but he more than made up for it with his rippling muscles bulging out from his jean jacket, I mean I could actually see his six pack through his clothing.
I woke up the next morning to the aromatic smell of cow dung wafting in through the open window of our hotel room. Prity wrapped her silky legs around mine as she puckered up to kiss me, her perfume from last night still lingering tantalisingly from her soft body. She bought her lips closer to mine, soft, sexy and so kissable had it not been for the sewer type smell seeping from her mouth such was the toe curling stench of morning breath that threatened to eviscerate me where I lay.
The streets were packed with people and in amongst them were a swathe of beggars hobbling around in dishevelled clothing, some carrying sickening injuries, others looking they had been maimed to bolster up their begging revenue. The beggars were dancing with the traffic, risking life and limb, slinking in and out of the shadows of the sun rays beating down on their bony shoulders.
I remembered one such filly a few years back. The monster had somehow slithered into my life when my guard was pulled down. We were manacled together for two grisly weeks and the only lasting memories I had from her were a bout of crabs and VD. Her humongous tattooed jugs gave me my first indications that she was not the kind of girl who you would invite home for a spot of tea. I mean you know something is not right when the girl you are with sprouts more facial hair than you. I gave her the big heave-ho after our relationship hit the skids, and I praised the Lord that her or the tattooed jugs never darkened my hall again. However, my overall favourite creature from the depths of Hell was this buck toothed stunt that I had met at a party several months before Prity came down from the clouds like an angel. She had teeth the size of the white cliffs of Dover and her carrot crunching ways did not improve my self esteem one bit when people would shout out the cruellest things like `Oh look there goes Elma Fudd and Bugs,` when we were seen out together. Our relationship was doomed from the outset and fizzled out accordingly.
I had also been given some curled up shoes called mojaay to wear, not to mention my turban had tilted over to one side therefore covering one ear and not the other. I looked like a sack of shit but I was there to impress them with the thought of my efforts for the girl I love. BIG MISTAKE! As soon as I walked in, I was instantaneously ripped to shreds by everyone. The guests thought that I was some kind of comedian that they had booked to entertain the guests. I looked like a page out of the Arabian knights. The little kids at the party rinsed me for every joke under the sun and the coup de grace for me was when I had to bend down and touch the feet of the head of the house as Prity had showed me beforehand and pay my respects to them in this traditional manner. Well it all went Pete Tong when in the excitement of it all I lunged down at the first auntie I came across and touched her feet. The nauseating stench of cheese, peeling corns, and eau de bunion making me retch. Auntie Balwant’s feet were the answer to curing the foot fetish fever that millions around the globe had harboured. I mean if you sucked on those babies you’d be lying on your back in a coma for a long time to come. I glanced up at her husband standing obediently by her side and immediately solved the riddle of cold sores that were covering his mouth. I felt a shiver run down my spine that had me instantaneously traumatised. I felt myself choking out as I shot back up to my feet, light headed and in need of some much needed air. My turban had now shifted to the other side of my head and was barely hanging on by a thread or two. I did not have time to adjust it as Prity pinched my arm and positioned me in front of the real McCoy and the auntie whose party it actually was. I went down to touch her feet and pay my respects and heard a rip. I looked around anxiously and saw that the tail of my kurta pyjama jacket had got caught in the door behind me and had ripped. From my bent position I felt aunties hand patting my head like I was some kind of dog, either that or she was knighting me. In my petulance I yanked my head up quickly and my turban went flying off of my head and through the living room window and out into the street. Auntie and the rest of the guests looked at me in disgust. Suffice to say that the party was relatively short for me and I was ushered home with my turban under my arm and Prity not seeing the funny side of it.
He smirked naughtily and flashed me a Brokeback mountain glance that was deeply unsettling. Then in a move that would have made any Chippendale proud he whipped off his top and unbuckled his trousers in one foul swoop revealing his custard coloured pants. His face turned into a scowl as he made a desperate lunge for me. Make no bones about it, if he had caught me at that moment I would have been sitting there for the next twenty minutes with an apple in my mouth, wearing a blonde wig and calling myself Suzy, not to mention waddling around with a sore arse for the next couple of weeks of added masala. He had raped me of my dignity in the most appalling manner, but like Sun Tzu said in the Art of War – ‘the wise man retreats and regroups but essentially lives to fight another day.’
Later that evening we arrived at a grandeur mansion on the outskirts of Mumbai. This was a palatial des res with panache, sophistication and pizzazz. I felt my mouth filling with drool at the mere sight of its imposing and baronial beauty. The wide reaching gardens stretching up and out into the backdrop of mountainous peaks merging with lip smacking splendour behind the veritable beauty that towered high above me. The ridge after ridge of spellbinding views stunningly situated and set amid rolling wooded grassland, with rustling palms swinging effortlessly and with aesthetic inspiration, it was a duvet of comforting serenity.
The Indian sanitation left a lot to be desired. I has stepped over dog faeces to enter the restaurant and almost vomited Exorcist style at the humming aroma that the entrance to the gents was wafting in to the main area, or was that the kitchen? I could not tell either way. I noticed that there were a pack of dogs fighting over scraps in the car park and occasionally entering the restaurant to see if they could mug any greenhorn tourists as they sat at the tables risking their own lives as they did so. Any one of the dogs would have been suitable for the lead role in the Cujo film, with there flaky flea bitten skin and accompanying diseased breath panting over the diners as we walked in.
There comes a time in every guy’s life when you can scream and shout as much as you like, but you have to back up what you are saying. So here I was a maggot on a stick for him, all he had to do was blow on my face and I am certain he would have knocked me over like a ten pin. My bravado was a smokescreen to test his mettle. This parasite had shit in my coat pocket one too many times and my fists clenched and unclenched several times with my body urging me to lunge at him and to duke it out once and for all. I knew instantly that if I mistimed my attack it would have been sayonara, au revoir and shalom to my pitiful existence.
I was already on the stake and the flames were just gently licking the sides of my face, moments away from turning me into smouldering ashes.
I caught a blurry glimpse of the crazed animal in full flight and smelt his ferocity pouring out of every god forsaken orifice as he carried on shamelessly raping my dignity as a man.
In life that is sometimes all you need to do when the chips are down, when everything around you is crumbling, you just need to suck it all in and go that one more round, because that is the round that makes all the difference between winning and losing, success and failure.
I was like a boxer on one knee in the heavyweight championship bout and had the referee breathing down my neck with the one to ten count, now reaching six. I just needed my corner to give me the final push, the last strands of encouragement to pull myself up off the ground, to cut through the jungle of fatigue and worthlessness to go another three minutes, that is all I asked for.
