Meesai Machismo

So such a serious blog name doesn't mean I am usually a serious person. Maybe INFPs are the intense kind generally. But maybe being a joker is a defence strategy I've developed over the years to a fine art ;) This preamble simply to say you're going to get no soul-searching outta me tonight. If any of you are reading, and are committed to handlebar meesais, you should probably not read any further! Coming up: one full-blown rant on unfashionable facial hair types.

I call them meesais and not moustaches because they are prolific in the motherland. And I associate them with the oh-so-Tamil man - and woman, for that matter - and self-satisfied smirks of fatal attraction possibilities! Get this for example:

http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=S7C_5NB4bSU&feature=related

Ha! My dad had a pretty big moustache and other people I respect do - and my mum swears that without a moustache every weakness of the mouth shows so that one can only giggle in response to 'hello'. My poor mother. Still I am scarred by encounters with the meesai.

I walked out of school one afternoon, blazing hot 1 pm sun. And I walk circumspectly edged against the wall that lines the long, narrow driveway into the alma mater, knowing every incoming car knows the schoolgirl comes first. I was 11? 12? Anyway, I'm swinging my starched, A-line not-long-enough, not-short-enough skirt, holding my unwieldy lunch basket and shifting 13 kilos from one shoulder to the next (such troopers we were) until I'm nearly certain I don't have any more shoulders. And I'm glad school's done for the day, when who should come along but Biker Dude, in wanna-be black sunglasses and all-black shirt and jeans. He only gets classified dud in retrospect though - so I don't know how coloured my historiography is! At the time, I chose to name it The Curious Incident of the Uncle in the Afternoon. He must have been a little younger than the going rate for uncles generally, with handlebars that vied with his bike's for symmetry and attention. And he tried, from a distance of several yards in a harmless attempt at humour, to block my path. You know it - you go left, they go right, and you do that little dance, so often unintentional. And then he grinned - and oh sorrow, he waggled that meesai at me. I crossed the road. Dance over. No, 'hello, uncle, I'm studying in 3rd standard' opp for you, bud.

Scarred.

Again, switch slides to another after-school journey back home. What do we have here? Policeman combing his badge of honour down either side, twirling it manfully in the face of a police bike's rearview mirror. Guffaws of laughter in the backseat. More tarnishment of the poor meesai.

Not so scarred, but etched for life.

Upward curls on pot-bellied policemen. Tarnishment - check.

Prerequisite for the upswung lungi, symbol of extreme proprietorship, Mallu and Tam landlord images, swaggering but uncreditable machismo. Like, check this out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aCShcWz5XQ&feature=related The moustache is what you get ID-d on. No entry into Kerala's hottest and most exclusive, or TN's for that matter, without.

More tarnishment. From a colonised, conditioned, Peetru. If you don't know what that is, embrace your identity in Madras terms.

Headless Driving ;)

Ever heard that expression '... like a headless chicken'?? Well, I think I know its equivalent now. I've never understood, always thought it was a heartless comparison, and it usually put me off my curry ;)! Now, however, I feel like said chicken. Decisions, decisions.

Someone wisely reminded me a couple of days ago that God has these questions already answered in his perfect plan. It is comforting to remember that... That however much 'headlessness' I encounter in my everyday decisions and interactions, He's got it covered. So tonight I am going to put my goals down on paper. These are my goals. Some of them I know that God put on my heart. Others I can simply trust him with. Much of my wondering boils down to this one question which I wrote down in a blog post, on another blog.

What is it about missions and worship that makes me cry and hurt so much both with happiness and longing?

I sometimes wonder if this decision-making process would be easier if I weren't in India, in Chennai. Some day soon I'll blog more about this - hopefully it'll make you guys laugh! It almost seems as if one is answerable to everyone else but God and oneself here. Suggestions, opinions, ideas - they all become quite categorical, and turn into moral issues. And I have to struggle hard within myself to focus on the One person who must influence all my decisions, to whom all my answers must point, in the final instance. I've taken a pretty major career decision on that one pivotal idea. Now to stick it through! Whether I choose a job in the corporate sector with a fat enough pay-check for those goals, or go the teaching route on this school contract and gain the international corporate management experience in the evenings, or take up a position abroad, I'm hoping pretty hard to choose the shortest way possible to be doing both those things.

D'you know that involuntary cringe when your patient but ever so slightly annoying SatNav lady wheezes: 'Tu-urn missed! Go 2 miles and take the 2nd exit off the roundabout!... Tu-urn missed. Go 1 mile and...' Lol, and everybody in the car groans harmoniously... Uh. I'm switching on my SatNav, cranking up the volume to max. Ecce, dominus.