Archives for posts with tag: Culture

THE DELICATE BALANCE

May 7, 2015 //
0

Flying Free Like A Hawk

Haresh Shah

ballance
“You’re doing a good job if you manage to piss us off fifty percent of the time, and piss our partners off another fifty.” Our boss Bill Stokkan would often tell his managers, usually during one of his pontification sessions. More true of his international divisional heads who had not only to deal with the products but also with the cultural nuances of the people from several countries. In my case, it also worked to my advantage that I was not an American born American. Especially the people I worked with from the non-European and Asian countries felt that I understood them better just because I was born and grew up in India. That I brought a different sensitivity to our working together. Equally so with my American management, because by then I had spent as many years in the West. As difficult as it could be sometimes, I had developed a close rapport with the people on both ends and had earned their confidence and the respect.

Even more so for our Yastaka Sasaki, who handled Playboy account for our Tokyo rep Ray Falk. Not only was his job to interpret the language portion of our communications with the editors and executives at our Japanese partners Shueisha, but also of making sure that what one of us said or wanted didn’t upset the sensitive cultural differences. Sasaki, as everyone called him, spoke fluent English. Almost instantly, he had earned my respect and if not exactly having become close friends, us two had established a certain honesty and trust into each other that went beyond simply working together. Those five days we spent together crisscrossing Japan sealed our bond which never weakened till the very end.

The last I saw of Sasaki was at my home in Evanston, October of 1993. Officially, I had already departed Playboy, but had invited for one last hurrah the group that had come to Chicago to partake in that year’s International Publishing conference. Turned out to be so much fun that it had to be repeated at the tail end of the conference. No more cigars, bemoaned Jeremy Gordin, the editor-in-chief of about to be launched South African edition. I had cooked Indian food and had caterers supply the rest. Everyone was spread out across several rooms of my house. I remember Sasaki and I, along with the Japanese editor-in-chief, the suave Suzuhito Imai sitting around the glass topped breakfast table in the corner, Jan (Heemskerk) standing by the kitchen counter and looking on. As Jan remembers it, placed in the middle of the table is a bowl full of fire red and deep green ultra dynamite Thai chili peppers. Sasaki picks up the red one and is about to take a bite.

‘Be careful, it will kill you!’ I warn.

‘I don’t think so. I am used to eating hot food.’

‘Yeah, but this is not hot food. This is the killer Thai pepper.’

‘Don’t worry, I can handle it.’

Our hands on our chests and our breathing momentarily suspended, we watch him bite off a chunk bigger than even I ever would dare. As if pierced by a sharp arrow, suddenly his face turns red and then contorted shriveled up fig. Tears begin to roll down his eyes. He runs to the sink, but it’s too late. Like three sadists, Jan and Imai and I laugh our butts off. I told you so. I want to say, but I spare him that bit of insult to his injury.

Beyond that, we may have stayed in touch for a while, but nothing in particular that I remember. Six years later I am living in Prague and am now editor-in-chief of successful Serial magazine, which as the name suggests, is focused on the popular television series. Suddenly, not the prime time, but the Sunday morning cartoon series Pokémon is all the rage on the Czech television. We decide to do cover story on the show. But as with other shows, the information and the images available through the local television network is limited to the press material, which everyone else too has. But I want to do an in-depth, but entertaining and informative feature on the show. I am specifically interested in the character’s creator, the elusive, Satoshi Tajiri. There is not much known about him and there isn’t a single photo of him available to accompany the text. Sasaki somehow manages to send me an old black and white shot of the man. We have a local artist do a color illustration of him.

Sasaki is pleased and amused at us re-connecting: and I thought you had faded away in the sunset after Playboy! And here you are, well and alive and no less than are editor-in-chief of a successful magazine in beautiful Prague! I can’t help but sense a certain amount of pride he must have felt at my well being post-Playboy. I obviously feel flattered and pleased at the fact that how pleased he sounds at his Shah-san not having disappeared behind the clouds of the past.

Barely little over a year has passed when I receive a mail from Mary (Nastos) in Chicago. It brings the sad news of Sasaki’s passing on March 20th, 2002. A shock to say the least. I immediately write to his wife Miki and to Ray Falk. Even though I remembered having briefly met Miki once, her husbands’ death prompts long email correspondence between us two. In the correspondence, she describes in poignant details the last days and the last moments of his life and death. In-between the lines I could see how much love there must have been between the two. And yet, their relationship could not have been without ups and downs, in which unbeknown to me, they must have been divorced. The response that came from Ray Falk reporting on the funeral service for the man who had joined him right out of college and worked for him practically till the end, ends with: Mr. Sasaki’s wife who used to work in our office remarried her former husband before his death—-to ease his days—-a wonderful gesture.

As I re-read Miki’s e-mails sent to me soon following his death, there is more than just a wonderful gesture. There is genuine love and an enviable closeness.

In January of 2001, Sasaki is diagnosed with the cancer of esophagus. He is subjected to six weeks long chemo and radio therapies, which helps kill the bad cells along his esophagus. He goes on camping and fishing trips over the Golden Week in April-May holidays. Miki and him take another trip to the mountain lake in June. He suffers a relapse in July. The cancer has metastasized to his liver in multiple areas.

The real battle begins. He submits himself to a new drug in its first phase of the clinical trial. He continues to work and manages his day-to-day life. Going out to eat, going to the movies. And most importantly continues indulging in his passion of fly fishing. With some hopeful moments here and there, on February 28th, 2002, he is told he only has a month left to live. The decision is made to admit him to St. Luka’s International Hospital to receive palliative care to ease his pain instead of seeking a cure. He is moved to the hospice ward on March 7th. The last days of his life ticking off. And yet he fights tooth and nail. When not sedated, he is able to eat soft food, drink juices and water, suck on the ice cubes and go to the bathroom on his own. No needles or tubes sticking in or out of his body.

Flanking his bed are Miki and his childhood friend Ted Teshima, with whom he went to the elementary school in his hometown of Kobe. Only thirty minutes to go, he asks Ted to give him a back rub. Sensing that the end is very near, Ted calls Sasaki’s younger brother Yasuhiro in Kobe. And also calls a close colleague Mike Dauer, while Miki and Ted hold his hands on the either side of the bed and thank him for all he has given them and to wishing him the peaceful journey, his brother and Mike fill his ears with their soothing voices. Tears are rolling down Sasaki’s eyes as he slowly and peacefully retreats in the beyond. It’s Wednesday, March 20th, 2002, the time 19:15. His earthly journey has lasted for 45 years, 3 months and 1 day.

The funeral follows. He is cremated and he came back home in a small box in my arms, writes Miki. Months later in August, Miki along with her uncle and Yastaka’s friend Mike travel to  lake Nikko, where Yastaka and Miki used to go fishing. They scatter some of his ashes around one of his favorite spots in the river. At other time, Miki and Mike spend hours fishing at a smaller lake nearby, and sprinkle more of his ashes. They don’t catch any fish. They begin to raw back to the shore. There is a hawk hovering up above their heads. Just as they are about to reach the shore, they watch the bird dive down to the surface of the water very close to them and snatch up a big fish in its claw and fly away. Stunned, Mike and Miki decide the hawk is a better fisherman.

On a different stretch the next day when Miki is fishing alone, she notices another hawk lingering up above and then suddenly diving into the river in front of her, passing just above her head, the bird catches a brook trout and off flies up, up and away. It must have been Yastaka. Thinks Miki. The thought of him turning into a hawk and flying freely in the skies of Nikko from the mountain to mountain and to the lake to the river is really soothing and nice to me.

Fittingly, Ray Falk wrote to his friends in his brief report about Sasaki’s funeral. The picture of Sasaki at the funeral featured a big fish—-Lake fish were his favorite. There was a fishing rod near the coffin and a guitar at the other end.

Shah-san, I remember my husband talked about you sometimes. Very recently (like early February). The episode that I remember well that he told me was the trip that you and my husband went to Kanazawa city in northern Japan many years ago. You two had no interest what-so-ever to the touristic spots like the very famous historic Japanese garden which most tourists usually visit when they go to Kanazawa, but you two headed straight to the local market where they sell all the fish and vegies and interesting stuff. Shah-san loves market hopping anywhere he goes, that’s what he said, if I remember correctly, reminisces Miki.

In response to my mail to Ray Falk, he writes back:

Dear Haresh,

Thanks for your interest in Y. Sasaki!

If you had not left PLAYBOY, this might not have happened. He was a great Haresh Shah fan and would have listened to your advice on life and living.

That’s a heavy cross to bear, but flattering nevertheless.

© Haresh Shah 2015

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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On Friday, May 22, 2015

TO HELL AND BACK

When I was fired for the second and the last time from Playboy, included in my severance package was a stint with one of the most expensive outplacement firms. Not knowing exactly what the hell they did for you, I plunged into it head first, to the extent that I must have been the only executive to have a unique distinction of being fired by an outplacement firm. And the rage that erupted. Thinking of it still gives me shivers 🙂

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Categories Friendship, Japan, Memoire, Playboy, Profile, Yastaka Sasaki

THE STRANDED BRIDE

March 27, 2014 //
1

Lost In The Labyrinth

Haresh Shah

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I am at Rome’s Fiumicino International Airport, temporarily delayed because of the cancellation of Alitalia to Frankfurt, which is where I was to connect with Lufthansa’s overnight Frankfurt-Johannesburg flight. They have re-routed me on British Airways to London and then connecting there to onward journey to South Africa. Suddenly I have a couple of hours to kill. I avail myself of the first class lounge, leave my belongings there and venture outside to check out the renovated expanse of the airport. As I am walking down the glass walled passage bridging two wings of the terminal, I hear a timid female voice trailing me.

‘Uncle, uncle. Please! Please!’

I turn around and see that striding behind me hurriedly is a skinny young Indian woman – sort of pretty and petite, probably weighing no more than 90 pounds (41 kg.). In her early twenties, she is dressed in the traditional sari. She is almost limping, trying to keep balance between what seems like a heavy carry on bag on one shoulder and her purse dangling down from the other. Both of them are precariously close to slipping off her shoulders and thump on the ground. She is wearing a pair of red chappals – the light weight Indian sandals. I notice the orange-red outlining the bottom of her feet and intricate mehandi motif applied to the top of them. Her hands too are mehandi covered on both sides. Climbing up her hands almost up to her elbow are clanging multi-colored glass bangles intermingled with thin gold bracelets. Her forehead is daubed with overlapping multiple vermilion tikas, to which a few grains of rice still adhere.

I stop and respond ‘Yes?’

‘Help me uncle, please!’ she looks scared and disoriented, giving me a confused look. Sensing the question what? on my face, she somehow manages to put down her carry on and fishes out of her purse a crumpled little booklet of the old fashioned hand written on flimsy sheets of the paper flight ticket and hands it to me.

‘See, please see!!’ It becomes apparent to me that she doesn’t speak much of English, so I switch to Hindi. She seems to understand it a bit better, but not quite. From her darker skin and the features, I place her somewhere in the country in Maharashtra, outside of Mumbai. She is from Pune. I switch to my limited fluency of Marathi to which she responds with a sigh of relief. I glean from her itinerary that she boarded the Air India flight from Bombay bound for Rome, and from here she is to continue on to Montreal. I look at the departure time on the ticket and realize that her scheduled flight has long left. I quickly glance at the flipping departure board, it’s already close to five in the afternoon and there are no more north America bound flights scheduled that day. Actually, there aren’t many flights scheduled to go anywhere for a while. Other than a lone passenger walking past here and there, it’s just the two of us standing in the middle of the wide passage.

‘You know that your flight has already left?’

‘Has it? No, it can’t be.’ And then I see the expressions on her face change from disbelief to dismay to I don’t know what to do helplessness.

‘Uncle, uncle, please help me.’ She urges. Her face contorted on the verge of breaking down in a cry. She obviously has no clue as how to negotiate her situation and/or what to do next.

‘It’s alright. Don’t worry. We’ll figure something out.’ I try to comfort her. I still don’t know what though! But as we stand there for a couple of undecided and uncomfortable minutes, the whole scenario unfolds in the front of my eyes.

She is newly married. Probably plucked hastily from a bevy of eligible suitable young candidates by a newly graduated and a year or so in his well paying job as an engineer in one of the western countries. The usual routine would be: a brilliant young man graduates from prestigious school in India, enrolls and is admitted for the post-graduate studies abroad, most probably in America. Alternately in England, Germany or Canada. Earns his Master’s degree, probably with honors and is offered a job. It takes him a year or two to feel settled, acquire his Green Card or an equivalent thereof from the respective country, and has saved up enough money to take a month long trip back home in quest of finding a mate. His family has lined up several prospective brides from other compatible families for him to see and to consider.

I imagine him making rounds of their homes in company of a close friend and couple of his own family members. I imagine one of them being the home of the young woman, standing in front of me, whose name I know from her ticket is Kajal. Sitting in her parent’s living room is the man she may or may not marry, depending on how they like each other, and if from a conservative family, whether or not their astrological charts concur.

Even though it’s a hundred degrees outside, he is dressed up in his suit and a tie. His brother and his friend accompanying him not so. Only slight comfort from the heat comes from the ceiling fan whirring up above. They are surrounded by the male members of the girl’s family, involved in animated chit-chat about the way of living between the east and the west. The young man, let’s call him Manoj, is, if not exactly nervous, is a bit fidgety. After all, this is one of the most important moments of his life that would define the rest of it.

Waiting in the inner room and in the kitchen are the females of her family. Kajal is dolled up in her best sari and the glittery jewelry like a Bollywood starlet. When an appropriate amount of time has passed, as if on a stage managed prompt, she walks slowly towards the living room with other women following. Her hands slightly shake as she tries to balance a snack tray with cups of tea already poured in, and little dishes and bowls filled with Monaco crackers, Glucose biscuits, home made chivda and sev, penda and other sweetmeats bought from the best Punjabi halwai.

Anxious, her heart is filled with the fear of unknown and yet she feels incredibly excited as she walks across the hall and places the tray on a low table next to the man who could become her husband. Her head is partially covered by the end of her sari. Her eyes are lowered. She raises them as discreetly as she could to get a closer look at the young man she has already seen photos of and glanced at from the slight opening of the door from the inner room. He is allowed to be a bit more obvious in raising his eyes and taking her face in and whatever else he is able to discern of the rest of her torso covered by her sari.

Whatever the outcome, this has got to be one of the most thrilling moments of their lives. They may choose to meet once again and sit face-to-face in a café for small talk, mostly accompanied by a friend or two, who may discreetly excuse themselves for a short while, giving the two some private moments.

Let’s suppose that everything goes well and both families pop a rock of sugar in their mouths to celebrate forging of this new lifelong union. Now there are only a couple of weeks left for Manoj to hurry through the rest. First of all, to get married. As importantly, to apply for the papers for now his wife to come and join him in Canada. Both of the families switch to the whirlwind gears. The wedding is arranged, hundreds of friends and relatives have blessed the couple. The days filled with lots of laughters and happiness. And then they see him off Mumbai’s Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport. His face smeared with vermilion, flower garlands hanging around his neck and a coconut in his hands, which he must discard before landing at his destination. Go back to his job and wait for the immigration formalities to clear and wait for his bride to join him.

‘Come with me and let’s see what we can do.’ I say and pick up her shoulder bag and return to the lounge with Kajal in tow. The receptionist is hesitant to allow her in but seeing that I am Lufthansa’s gold status Senator, she reluctantly allows me to bring her in as my guest. Settling her on a couch and getting her some chips, nuts and Coke, I let her tell her story.

I have guessed it right. She is indeed a newly married bride on her way to join her husband in Montreal where he works for a large multinational corporation as one of its engineers. She has landed in Rome several hours earlier and has managed to get lost in that vast labyrinth of an international airport. It is because of her limited knowledge of English and sheer timidity – afraid to ask anybody and confused about the time difference and finding herself in an environment totally alien to her, she is totally disoriented. Scared, she looks helpless like a wounded bird fallen to the ground, its wings fluttering, but disabled, not able to rise even an inch off from where it has fallen. Soon as she sees me walk past, a face familiar to her and someone recognizably from her country, does she dare open her mouth. In the meanwhile, not realizing how much time has elapsed and that the plane that would take her to her husband has already left without her.

When I explain all this to the receptionist, she softens and even tries to see if there is any way she could help her get on her way.

‘I’m afraid nothing today. The best option for her is to spend overnight in Rome and catch the same Air Canada flight tomorrow afternoon.’ Easier said then done. Whereas she has failed to even make it on her own from one gate to another within the confines of an airport, how would this woman ever manage to go outside, find a hotel, stay there by herself and come back tomorrow? To further complicate the matter, even if it were manageable with some help, that’s not an option for her. She has no Italian visa to even venture out of the airport.

It takes me back to that chilly late August early morning when I was on my way to London to begin my studies, when the Swiss immigration officer yanks me off the train in Basel. Basel is uniquely complicated tri-border town where Switzerland, France and Germany meet. I have arrived on a German train that slides along the German platform. I will connect to London train from the platform that is in France. To get there, I must walk through the Swiss platform, for which I do not have a visa. But that’s yet another story. Only the receptionist notices my momentarily frozen face.

Her gaze pointed at me, she continues: ‘I don’t know if they would let her stay here overnight. They probably shut down the airport after the arrival and the departure of the last flights.’ I tell Kajal all of that. She is beside herself and understandably so, because where is she going to go? In the meanwhile the time is ticking and soon I should be walking to the gate to make my flight to London.

‘Don’t leave me here by myself uncle. Please, please.’ Her pleas are heart breaking and as torn as I am I really don’t know what else to do.

‘I doubt it, but perhaps someone from Air India or Air Canada is still around the terminal. After all, she is their passenger!’ I hear receptionist say. When she notices the hopelessness on my face, she taps on her computer. ‘You still have thirty five minutes.’

So I take Kajal practically by the hand. ‘Let’s go see if we can find someone.’ The banks of the service counters that are within the international departure areas are all absolutely empty and deserted. No one in sight. Won’t hurt to try the other wing. So I walk with her through the passage where she had first stopped me. We cross the passage, and I notice a lone young man, curly black hair, chiseled dark face. An Indian!! He is going some place, his gait is harried and swift.

‘Excuse me!’ I scream. I have managed to stop him in his tracks. He turns around to look at us. His breast tag identifies him as an Air India personnel. He rushes towards us.

‘Here you’re. Kajal Kamat. We’ve been looking for you for hours now!’ I don’t even wonder how he recognizes her right away. Who else could she be? When he looks at me, I give him a quick rundown on how she happened to be with me.

‘They waited for her and even delayed the flight for about fifteen minutes calling her several times on the PA system.’ But then he realizes that she couldn’t have understood a word of it. As lost and distracted as she is; she couldn’t have recognized even the sound of her own name. Seeing that I am looking at my watch; ‘You go ahead sir. We don’t want you to miss your flight as well. Thanks for helping her. I’ll take her from here.’ Before darting out, I put my hands over Kajal’s shoulders and wish her luck. She doesn’t say thank you, instead she brings her palms together and bows her head.

‘Bless me please, uncle.’

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, April 4, 2014

QUICK CASH

During my hiatus in Santa Barbara, I meet up with Playboy Germany’s first editor-in-chief Raimund Le Viseur in Los Angeles. He is there following the promotional trail of then the First Lady, Betty Ford and wants to get together one evening. He is accompanied by the photographers from the news agencies Sygma and UPI. We together go out looking for the Stars.

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Categories Culture, India, Love Story, Marriage, Memoire, Travel, Women

PLAYBOY ON THE COFFEE TABLE

March 14, 2013 //
3

Haresh Shah

How Do An Indian Grandma And Her American Grand Daughter View Playboy?

kidandnannyd

‘And I can no longer see Playboy calendar hanging in my home.’ I could see Gina was riled up about my last ditch attempt at saving our relationship by offering to sell my house and us together buying a condo. But it was too late to make any difference. We both knew it was over. And even though her  outburst was no longer meaningful, any more than a rubber bullet, nothing that would kill me, but boy did it sting!! And the irony is: there were never any Playboy calendars hanging in my house.  What she probably meant was all those monthly issues lying all around. Especially after I left the magazine. Because for months after my departure, my assistant Mary (Nastos) still kept sending me all the international editions, eighteen in all, every month. They were piling up and at some point could be found strewn all over my house.

Or most likely, the three nude studies by my artist friend Deven (Mehta) hanging in the guest washroom by the kitchen that had triggered her ire.  In any case, not until after she said it did I ever give any thought to the placement of Playboy in my house.  I had never seen any need to tuck them away some place out of sight. Gina’s disdainful words took me back to my Time & Life years, when we had a sort of an exchange program set up with messengers from various printing companies around Chicago area that printed a part or all of one of our publications and some also printed Playboy and Penthouse. We got them in exchange for our magazines.

When the new issues of Playboy and Penthouse arrived, we would page through them and comment on that month’s Playmates and the Pets. And then rest of the guys would slough their copies into their desk drawers, I would slip mine into my briefcase and take them home to look and  read at leisure.

‘We don’t want our old ladies to get all worked up about them!’ Big Larry (Howard) would say with a knowing smile on his face. Up until Jeff (Anderson) joined us a year or so later, I was the only single guy in the department.  At the time I didn’t give it much of a thought, except that I was single and didn’t have to worry about hiding them from my wife and kids. I must have felt a bit strange though, considering that growing up in India, my image of America came from Hollywood movies. A country that was free and liberal. That for us meant mostly the social freedom such as falling in love and getting married instead of arranged unions, kissing in public, making out and having sex before marriage. And even though bikinis hadn’t made big inroads yet, we found the American women in the fashion magazines and in the movies wearing revealing single piece swimsuits titillating.

I had only known American political history of the unilateral declaration of the independence, the Boston Tea Party and the Constitution proclaiming life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I had no idea of the puritan heritage that was weaved into the every thread of the American fabric. I had not yet had a serious relationship with an American woman. One could say that Playboy changed it all for me, but actually most of my ideas and the character have been molded by  Germany and Europe, probably facilitated by Playboy. The conclusion I had come to at the time and after Gina’s outburst, that the problem with having to hide magazines and calendars had to do with only one thing: the nudity. And that majority of the people who have strong negative opinion of Playboy, had never actually read the magazine.

Something I would have understood in my early days in the West, because in India or in my home, we wouldn’t  even remove all of our clothes even to take a shower. We soaped and sprinkled ourselves by lifting layers of  clothing.  It was when living in Munich that I began to see the absurdity of it all. The Johannclanzestrasse complex where I lived, we had coed sauna. And no one sat around in it with towels wrapped around. It made sense. The whole purpose of taking sauna is to let your pores open up and sweat out the toxins. The only way to reap full benefit of subjecting yourself to the extreme heat is to let your clothes and inhibitions drop. And the Europeans certainly don’t have any qualms about that. One of my coolest images of the sauna is that of the three generations of women together walking into the steam filled room – seven or eight year old grand daughter, her young mother, perhaps in her early thirties and the grandma in her sixties. A perfect study in evolution.

And living in Munich in itself was liberating in that sense. Our offices were downtown, not far from Englischer Garten, right in the heart of the city. When the spring came and soon as the temps climbed upwards of around 25 degrees Celsius (about 77 Fahrenheit), it wouldn’t be too unusual to see young office workers on their lunch breaks to cross their arms and lift their tops over their heads and their hands reaching backwards to undo their bra straps, becoming a part of the landscape dotted with the female anatomy surrendered to the warm sunrays. Even the nudist beach on Isar river that ran through the city, wasn’t far from the center. You would walk through some shrubbery and suddenly be standing in the middle of hundreds of people clustered au naturell, drinking beer, barbecuing, lounging just like here in Chicago at the North Street Beach. So when I returned to America, I experienced a big cultural shock, more so than the one I must have felt several years earlier when I had just gotten off the boat.

I had come back with the definite opinion and the attitude about the nudity. Though I have never been married, my partner Carolyn and I lived together for thirteen years and are proud parents of now thirty four year old daughter Anjuli. In our household, the nudity itself never was an issue. Not that we ran around in the nude all the time, but we never necessarily reached for a cover during our normal day-to-day living.

The display of the magazine I worked for and loved, was never a problem in our home. But in some people it could conjure up all sorts of weird ideas, as should be apparent from the comment by my dear friend Karen (Abbott) posted about my announced blog entry of this week: “That’s nothing. I worked for Playboy and, of course, had PB mags all over my living room tables and stuff. Some of the cute male phone techs or workman thought I was a lesbian. So what do you have that matches that? Pretty funny!”

Not exactly, mainly because of our genders. Why would anyone think of me a gay man because they found in my house magazines with naked women? In fact, once they found out I worked for Playboy, it lead to some wishful conversations, nothing more. But once I found myself in an eerie situation. A refrigerator technician was in my house fixing the compressor. He must have noticed copies of Playboy in my living room. As he was diligently fixing my fridge, I stood not too far from him making small talk.

‘Do you read them magazines lying in your living room?’ I didn’t notice it quite then, but in retrospect I remember the tone of his voice changing from friendly to critical.

‘I sure do. I work for them.’

‘You do?’ Now I sensed a certain amount of disdain in his voice, sounding almost menacing. The kind that comes from someone all too self-righteous: I  have found the way, and you ain’t. You are doomed to go to hell kind. Earlier in the conversation he had mentioned that he was “born again”. That explained.

“Well, good for you!!!” He said. But his sarcasm and self-righteousness didn’t escape me. I was never as relieved to see a workman leave my house than when he did.

The time when I had gone home to Bombay to visit my family soon after I had started working for Playboy and had “smuggled” in several copies of the magazine, my parent’s bedroom seemed to have turned into a curious little gathering containing of male family and friends.  Everyone practically waiting their turns to be able to page through one of the issues. It would of course begin with me showing them my name listed in the masthead, which certainly was a pride factor for everyone. But how could my name by itself compete with those beautiful and bare breasted  fräulines? Once the mob thinned out, my Dad sat down and gave one or two issues serious look and then exited leaving us four brothers alone. My brothers obviously asked me questions. We joked about some figures and the poses. Soon they each took a copy or two with them to show to their friends, leaving on the living room table only one issue. Which neither I, nor anyone else felt necessary to remove from there.

Must have been a couple of hours later, when everyone had dispersed or taking their afternoon naps, I found my mother sitting on the floor by the table and slowly turning the pages of that lone issue. She couldn’t read English, let alone German, so she was obviously checking out the women. At the time I was thirty-four, so my mother was barely fifty, still in good shape and quite good looking, despite her having had nine of us. When younger, she was actually a very pretty woman.  As she scanned those near perfect female bodies, I couldn’t help but wonder whether she were comparing her younger self with any of them. Wasn’t beyond the scope for a wife of the Rasa Manjari reading husband.  Hearing me come and sit down, she didn’t flinch or shut the magazine close or slough it away. She took her time before slapping it shut.

‘So this is what you do?’

‘Yup!’ And I could see her smile slightly.  Not looking at me, but just staring at the empty space in front of her.

On my next trip, I had brought along some Playboy calendars, that went like freshly roasted hot  corn-on-the-cobs.  And since then, my brother Suresh would remind me several times not to forget to bring along some calendars, because he had the Saheb – the income tax officer hooked on them and brought them along with a bottle of Royal Salute. I am sure his auditing went ever so smoothly!!

Fast forward several years to Chicago. Anjuli must have been two or three years old. She was just getting to be able to stand up if she found something within the reach of her hands to hold onto and prop herself up on her feet. Once I walked into the living room and found her standing behind the cast iron bar and methodically unloading one liquor bottle at a time from the shelf putting it down to the floor. Then at another time she propped herself up by my expensive turn table placed on a low table and yanked at the tone arm, destroying the diamond stylus – mightily upsetting her daddy. The next time,  I found her standing at the edge of the coffee table, one of her hands resting on the table, and another on an open page of Playboy. Hearing my footsteps, she must have thought it was her mother coming, I see her poking her fingers at an open page,

Mama, Boobooj… Mama, Boobooj.  She was pointing at the ample pair of  breasts on a close-up of one of the women.

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Jordan Rutherford

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Next Friday, March 22, 2013

LIVIN’ LA VIDA LOCA

When I look back and think of the whirlwind life I lived crossing from one country to another and hopping across oceans to different continents, it all seems a little surreal and things and the people I used to pack in within short few days. Here is the story of eleven days in the life of Haresh Shah. The days that were normal for me, but somehow they weren’t.                                                                                                                                                               

 

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