Seven Things I Do Not Understand About South Asian Men (You know men of the Pakistani/Indian ethnic persuasion)

Things I do not understand about South Asian Men 

(You know men of the Pakistani/Indian ethnic persuasion) Dedicated to Ms Valani Rod! 

1. The weird attraction to escalators.                

I've never understood why Asian men feel the need to congregate around escalators in shopping centres. No matter where you go - which Westfield you haunt - you will always, without fail find a gaggle of Asian men gathered at the top end of escalators like buffaloes in the Serengeti huddling round a watering hole. Why? What is the fascination with stairs that go up and down?! THEY GO UP AND DOWN - that's pretty much it! It's not even as if looking at girls' scalps as they ascend is even remotely exciting (unless you have some weird fetish!). Surely, if you're checking girls out the bottom end of an escalator is more ahem, interesting anyway! They don't even have to be single for the weird escalator attraction to work - I've often seen a pram or two shoved behind them as the men stare gormlessly at the magical moving stairs, whilst carrying babies like potato sacks! Mutlitasking at its best - not. 

2. The need to shave strange tribal patterns into their facial hair. 

Forget the tracks of your tears, with Asian men it's all about the tracks of their beards. Why??? It must take them hours to shave - that's probably why they only shave every three days or so and spend the other four with green faces, looking as if a weird fungus has attacked them. How is a green face attractive? Bruce Banner never pulled as the Hulk! Fact.

3. The drenching of oneself in perfume. 

You can always tell when an Asian man has entered the room - usually because you are choking on the fumes of his perfume!! PULSE POINTS ONLY - a concept alien to them all. Why wear so much? What weird smells are you trying to drown out? Alcohol? Weed? Curry? Baby powder?

4. The insane, incessant shaking hands with each other.  

Regardless of age Asian men greet each other not with smiles or the regular head nodding and grunting but actual shaking hands, like business men or contract killers! It's like a secret Asian man ritual - even 6 year old's are at it -  it's weird, makes them look shady and not in an ooohh 50 shades kinda way, but rather as if they're about to sell you a dodgy used car, which they probably are!  

5. The need for two mobile phones.

Why? Why? Why? Are you trying to hide your girlfriend from your wife? Or your wife from your girlfriend? Both of them from your mother? Or your boyfriend from the WORLD?! Why does anyone need two phones unless they're a drug dealer, a secret spy or a pimp? Why? I just don't get it. 

6. Gel Excess

Why put so much on your head that you either look like a seal or bald, with the glare of your scalp shinning through your spiked hair to blind everyone?? Is the glare supposed to mesmerise the opposite sex, drawing them towards you in the false hope that diamonds are sprouting out of your head?! Unattractive and incomprehensible - double whammy! 

7. The Constant Gyming! 

Why do they all constantly go gym - and leave out the "to" in that sentence - but never get any thinner or buffer?!! The buff ones are the most unattractive - who wants a man with no neck? Or worse a man who's 5'6" tall and five feet wide - there's a reason why Sponge Bob Square Pants doesn't have a girlfriend! Salman Khan is only attractive BECAUSE THEY MAKE HIM STAND ON A BOX WHILE FILMING!! 

Asian men are strange, incomprehensible creatures, but at least, to a man, they don't wear skinny jeans! 

Thank God for small mercies!! 

A Dumbass' Thoughts On Being Fatherless.

So my father died when I was young, not so young that I don’t remember him, but young enough that it’s made a difference to my whole life. Before that my parents were divorced and in the 80/90’s when international travel wasn’t so common place I would see him once every two years. In fact, when he died I hadn’t seen him for 4 years; my brother and sister, older and at the time traveling backwards and forwards from Pakistan were much luckier, having visited him a few months previously.

I remember the phone call when it came, it was my aunt from Lahore, she spoke to my brother and I remember the colour leeching out of his face and he only said two words ‘Daddy’s dead’ – there wasn’t any preamble or preparation – the truth was as stark as that. It was a Saturday I was home from school. My aunt still called my mother Bhabhi (sister in law) even though my parents had been divorced for 10 years; my mother started crying and arranging the practicalities of sending my brother back to bury my father, reassuring my aunt he’d be there as soon as humanly possible, to not bury my father till his son arrived.

Forgotten, I walked up to my bedroom hid under the duvet and cried for hours, days, maybe it was years. At the time I cried for him – daddy – who died alone because I left him. I was the one of my siblings who was much more attached to our father than our mother – I lived with him at his house and merely visited my mother, but when my mother left Pakistan with my step-father I had gone with her. Didn’t matter I was only small – all I knew was that even at the time in my tiny head leaving him had seemed wrong. I had planned ALWAYS, from the age of 7, to do my A ‘Levels and go back to him. But that never happened, so every year since 1993 on the 23^rd of January I cry for myself; for all that I lost that one Saturday.

I never saw my father through the eyes of an adult. Maybe if I had I wouldn’t have this daddy-shaped hole in my soul. He didn’t survive to that age when one day in early adulthood we realise our parents are flawed human beings and not perfect, that though they may do their best it’s not always the right thing. Only my mother has that distinction. My father remains that big, incredible man who used to carry me around to his business meetings, to his film office, to oversee his cinemas, I was constantly with him. He even took me to India when I must’ve been about 2; I have vague memories of shapes and colours of walking around the Taj Mahal with him.

My father owned Mehfil Cinema in Lahore and I spent more time there as a 3/4 year old than I did even in school. I used to go to school to sleep!! Which earned me the distinction of being the only child ever (probably) to fail kindergarten! But I was a queen amongst my peers – my father would give me 100 Rs. a day spending money in a time when that was a poor man’s salary. I had an account with every popcorn, ice cream/sweet stall in and outside his cinema – I used to walk around with my own entourage of poor kids from the local area, feeding them sweets, having daddy settle the accounts! I have no memories of my mother from that time; my father dominates them, the smell of brylcreem still makes me weep.

I remember when I had moved to London and the first time my father came to visit, I was just home from school and my brother told me there’s someone outside to meet me. I walked out the front door and my father stepped out of the car. It was like that first breath you take after being suffocated.

My two favourite memories of my father’s trips to London are going to see the Tom Hanks film “Big” with him and my brother, where daddy and I sat together and my brother sat behind us, interjecting now and again. Leaning between us and whispering.  And the time when I had got my sister to wax a part of my leg as a lark when she was doing her own waxing – I was so impressed by the results that when went to see daddy where he was staying, I pulled up my skirt and asked, “Daddy, see doesn’t my leg look sexy? It looks sexy doesn’t it?” I still remember him laughing and hugging me close and saying, “Yes, very sexy!” I was 8.

I am not an envious person by nature, thank God. But I envy people who have fathers who love them. It’s like someone always has your back no matter what. I haven’t felt safe since the day my father died. I think mother’s make us feel loved – and boy do I feel loved, but it’s our father’s that make us feel safe – against the big bad world, like someone is there fighting our battles with us. It’s hard to fight on your own. Sometimes I’ll see my brother hug one of his sons a certain way, or smile at one of them in a particular manner and I’m hit by a flash of memory and a pain so acute it’s almost physical.

Being fatherless is hard. Being motherless would probably be harder – so I am luckier than many but not as lucky as some.

Like Philip Larkin says,

“They f@ck you up, your mum and dad,

They may not mean to, but they do.”

Even when they’re great and love us, they f@ck us up, if we are lucky enough not to cry because of them, we’re doomed to cry for them.

A Dumbass' Guide to Happiness

Happiness is NOT other people. 

Every man is an island, every woman too. Mostly because other people are REALLY annoying!! They never do what you want them to, when you want them to do it. They hardly ever mean what they say or say what they mean. And most frustrating of all - they change their minds all the time - sometimes in all the time it takes to drink a venti caramel latte.

Even people you love are irritating. Most of the time I want to decapitate my own mother, in an overly ostentatious ceremony presided over by six bald eunuchs in white robes and kohl lined eyes, just to shut her the hell up!! And I really love my mother; she's life and breath to me. My sister, the person I love most in the whole, entire world, without whom my life would be meaningless, is SUPER annoying too. She hardly ever just admits that I am right - ABOUT EVERYTHING. Has the audacity to have different opinions about stuff even though she knows I AM ALWAYS RIGHT!!  Gives really stupid romantic advice, I mean really stupid; and is generally a cantankerous shrew, who is always insane beautiful, making me look like an over-ample assed specimen of 'bovinity' next to her, especially in photos. *Sigh* It's a hard life. 

Other people do not make us happy, they make us miserable. The more you care about someone, the more likely they are to make you freaking hate your life. To hurt you, sometimes out of carelessness or ignorance, sometimes deliberately but most times for no comprehensible reason at all! Regardless you're still the one getting sucker-punched in the face. HARD. Thus, every man - and woman -  should be an island, afloat in a sea of self-reliance, or else be ready to have your face smashed in. Me? I'm beginning to resemble Stallone as Rocky in the climax of the original movie, after he's gone 12 rounds with the big scary Russian dude, and is about to be beaten to a big, bruised, Italian pulp!! Adrrriiiiaaannn!!!!  

No, other people definitely do not make us happy - that's a myth, they just make us miserable in varying degrees. Therefore, dear Dumbass, do not put all your happy eggs in anyone else's basket. They WILL make an omelet out of them and make you watch as they lightly sprinkle pink Himalayan salt over it and then scoff it down as you weep in despair. 

Happiness is not a state of constant being, it's moments, no one is ever constantly happy. Well apart from kids TV presenters, but lets not talk about Rolf Harris *shudder shudder*. All we ever are, at best, is mostly happy. Sometimes the stupidest things make us happy; walking bare foot in Hyde Park over slightly damp grass, a bumble bee buzzing around in a lilac flowered bush, Harrods all lit up in a London twilight, laughing hysterically over a letter addressed to some guy with a funny name, carrying a giant pizza box up a set of impossibly narrow stairs, smelling a jack fruit, sharing a bench in a green surrounded by urban decay, all things that made me happy in the moment, but now make me sad, because like the moment in which they happened, they too were fleeting. 

How does the average dumbass remain happy then? 

By doing the things that make you happy as often as you can, indeed, all the time if you can. Maybe that is the secret to happiness.

They say - whoever "they" may be - the sages of our time, Dr. Phil, Ophra, Phillip Schofield on 'This Morning', the Loose Women - that being content with yourself makes you happy, well check that. I think I'm freaking awesome. Really. Job satisfaction makes one happy apparently, well I love my job, and more importantly, I enjoy and love working with the people I work with, so check, check that. Having friends and family who care about you is supposed to make you happy, mostly a big check for that. So am I happy then? 

Mostly I think I'm just bruised in the face. 

But the problem with islands is, they're pretty lonely places. 

5 Things Not To Do On the London Underground - A Guide for Dumbasses!

The following are 5 things one must not do on the London Underground, ever. 

1. Be Foreign 

I hate tourists on the tube - really I do. They're just loud and annoying - the worst sort are the Americans - why do they have to be sooo fricking loud?!! If all you knew about America came from your experience of American tourists on the London Underground, you'd think it was a country of deaf people, with a pathological inability to read any sort of sign, a propensity for wearing fugly shoes and khaki, regardless of weather or appropriateness.

The other sorts of tourists with an inability to navigate the tube are the Pakistani upper classes - socially, if no longer economically, I may belong to the same social stratosphere, but that doesn't mean that they piss me off any less.  There's the aunties lagging 30 steps behind their husbands, shawls and Chanel handbags trailing, not because of any old fashioned notion of subservience to the hubbie but because auntie is too used to her driver driving her EVERYWHERE and parking right outside the various shops'/malls' doors!! This walking and keeping her possessions away from rapidly closing tube doors or the feet of hapless commuters is an alien concept. Thus, she's like a walking impediment to tube safety, a danger to herself & those around her. The husbands always look surprised to find there's a woman trailing after them whenever something does happen! And don't even get me started on the Japanese with their excessive use of flash photography despite the signs EVERYWHERE that say no flash to be used!! They're like a mobile epileptic fit trigger! And the South American/Spanish who insist on sitting miles apart and shouting at each other across the carriage with their ridiculously long, tanned limbs sprawled hither and dither. No, just don't be foreign on the tube. 

2. Carry Huge Rucksacks 

Why is it that people who carrying ginormous rucksacks on their backs on the underground have no spatial awareness at all. I do not want to be knocked over and/or squashed by your giant bag, carrying which only makes you look smaller, and more of a pin-head than you already are. They bang into everyone and everything, back up right into you if you have the misfortune of standing behind them - NO my face does NOT want to touch your manky bag! Get away from me!! - They hold up the trains by getting the manky bag caught in the doors. THEY ARE A MENACE AND SHOULD BE BANNED. BANNED, I TELL YOU! BANNED!! 

3. Disobey Escalator Protocol. 

There are rules to using the escalators - if you cannot follow them, walk up the bloody stairs, you idiot. Firstly, stand ON THE FRICKING RIGHT!! And if you are walking on the left keep your limbs and your possessions tucked in. Do not knock the Prada/Juicey Couture (etc.) bags of innocent bystanders cause I swear to God if THE BAG gets marked or scratched I am gonna hurt you. If you run away I will hunt you down like a rabid dog and then hurt you in the carriage. Just saying. Tuck your shit in! Secondly, when getting on an escalator you must ALWAYS leave at least a one step gap between you and the person in front. Don't be getting all up in the bum - it's just rude. I hate it when men ( and it's always men!) try to walk up really long escalators (Tottenham Court Road station being a prime example) get tired half way up and then jam their sorry selves into the vacant step in front or behind you. NO! IT'S AGAINST PROTOCOL YOU DUNDERHEAD!! I do not want you  pressed up so close to me unless we're at least engaged and I'm wearing a diamond you bought ! 

4. Make Eye Contact 

Just don't do it - it's fricking weird. I do not want you looking into my eyes when we are standing squashed together like sardines in a can or worse if you are sitting across from me in the carriage. It's weird. DON'T LOOK AT ME!! If we do accidentally look at each other at the same time just look away and for the love of all that's holy, do not smile!! The only people who smile on the tubes are the senile, and serial killers. 

5. Not give up your seat for the elderly or pregnant. 

Especially - and screw feminism, I'm a post-feminst anyway - if you are a man, it's your moral duty to give up your seat for the old and the pregnant. Hopefully not an old pregnant woman cause that would be freaky in the extreme. But really if we make old people and pregnant women stand up in crowded trains how can we call ourselves a civilised society. It's just decent, and surely the point of life is to try and be decent human beings. If we are so self absorbed that we can't even do that then shame on us! Just don't mistake a fat woman for a pregnant woman because er... bare awks!! 

There are other things one should do like control one's elbows/knees, not engage in excessive pda's - ass grabbing or tit fondling is NEVER ok, wait your turn to board the train or not run down the platform - really why are you running you imbecile, there will be another train in like oh, 3 mins!! But the above 5 are the biggies!! The ones that really irritate. So just don't do them! Don't aggravate the natives - you have been warned! 

Dedicated to Miss Valani Rod.

Woe-man Flu: a definition for the dumbassed.

I HATE  being sick - yes I know,  that's not news, EVERYONE hates being sick. Everyone, except maybe neglected Asian women of a certain age who use hypercondria as a currency to get attention and think they have every ailment going, like the SARS virus and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy! Hey, it breaks up their morning - half cook the handi, do the washing, gossip with the relatives in Birmingham and have a little light flirtation with the doctor, while he convinces you, you don't have BSE! It's a system. It works for them. Don't judge.  

Point is, unlike the Aunties, I hate being sick and even more than that I hate going to the doctor!!! Really. Unless something is bleeding and it won't stop or is in imminent danger of falling off, I won't go to the doctor. And the only doctor I will see when something is about to fall off is the big man himself! No, not God, if I was seeing Him it would be a bit too late for any kind of treatment! No, the guy whose name is on the plaque at the entrance of the surgery, who has been my GP for 25 years and still gives me a lollipop whenever I visit. He may be on the shady side of, like, 80 and may only work 2 hours every six months, but he's the only doctor I can stand; he's jargon and bullshit free, he doesn't make feel either patronised nor uncomfortable being in the same room as his giant ego, and best of all he's not empathyless or dumbassed! Like EVERY other GP I've ever met. 

I kid you not. Last time I went to the doctor they made me see some WOMAN - who decided I had high blood pressure. I don't have high blood pressure. 

Woman GP: Oh yes, the machine is showing high blood pressure, just as I suspected.

Me:You took it wrong. I don't have high blood pressure. Do it again. 

Woman GP: (Nonplussed) Ok. 

She takes it again -Pause. She takes it for a third time. Longer pause. 

Woman GP: Oh. Yes, no it was incorrect, you don't have high blood pressure. 

Me: I know. 

Twat. The time before that I got to see doctor misery guts, he looked so miserable the whole time he was talking to me that I was tempted to ask him who had died! Misery guts also turned out to be a sadist - dude, put a steroid injection in my foot WITHOUT telling me that a) it would hurt like a bastard as he was doing it - hurt to the point of screaming and b) it would incapacitate me for three whole, entire days!!! Bigger twat! 

Yeah, I don't trust GP's (or male gynaecologists - ewwww what's up with that??!!) and on top of that , to add to my illness woes, I CANNOT SUFFER IN SILENCE!! I pretty much can't do ANYTHING in silence, leave alone suffer! Except read, I read in silence but then while I'm reading my brain is being loud so it cancels the silence out, internally at least!! 

Suffering in silence is just sooo 17th Century! No stoic leave me be-ness for me, I'm afraid, when ill I'm one of those peeps who need to be asked how they are at regular intervals, and if you don't ask you're in big trouble!! I want someone to smooth my fevered brow and feed me chicken soup. I'm one of those annoying sick people who actually want other people to visit them, lots of other people preferably bearing flowers, gifts,  and kittens.

My third problem apart the from doctor-hate & loud suffering is that I have a VERY low threshold for pain, like low LOW!! Super low. I cannot take pain, really. There is no concept of gritting my teeth and bearing it, I can't bear it, at all. I scream like a girl - mostly cause I am a girl - even at a paper cut! Contrary to outward appearances, I'm really quite delicate - I bruise really easily and it fricking hurts!! Think my mother and sister got all the bearing pain genes in the family. They could chop a finger off go oohpsy daisy and carry on chopping the onions. HARD as NAILS. Not me, can't be dealing with no pain, unless it's waxing or threading - pain for beauty purposes doesn't count - that's pain with a purpose. 

Thus, if I am sick I moan about it and feel very sorry for myself. Especially if there aren't any flowers or gifts or kittens forthcoming which, lets face it, unless one was gonna loose a vital  organ, isn't gonna happen, not for something as unromantic as the flu! When I am ill, I don't wanna go to the fricking doctor and I certainly don't want to be left alone. I wanna be treated like Marianne from Austen's "Sense & Sensibility" - someone - preferably the sister, though I would make do with the mother,  keeping a constant vigil at my bedside telling me how much I am loved, and preferably, a handsome slightly world weary Captain waiting outside the door praying for my recovery.  Anything else is just underwhelming. 

It's  all very sad, being sick sucks. Consequently, I've decided to name my special brand of gift free sickness Woe-man Flu, the female equivalent of Man Flu! And it's just as real.

A Plague of Frogs or Where the Bloody Hell is Prince Charming?

I've been a good girl all my life - patiently waiting for Prince Charming to show up and claim me as his. I've believed in the fairytale - that one day I will meet my Prince Charming; he'll love me and I will love him - more importantly, his parents will think I'm fricking awesome - we'll get married in a lavish ceremony lasting at least 3 days, with 3 different colour schemes and live happily ever after, producing a trio of gorgeous girls named, Fifi, Gogo & Lulu!!

The wait appears to be a long one. I don't really get it. Aren't nice things supposed to happen to nice people? I'm a nice person; moral, helpful, I always do the right thing even if it’s detrimental to my own interests. I try my best not to hurt anyone, to treat people well. Sounds all pompous but it’s true - really... And it's not as if people don't love me, they do!! I feel the love. I'm not hideous either, I have no pretensions of thinking that I look like a young (or even old,) Sophia Loren but I'm not ugly. Fat yes, ugly no. And yes, you size zero loving secret necrophiliacs, there is a difference: I may be fat but I'm fat with style!! I dress for the size I am and not the size I wish I were!! I'm a little over educated but really that's hardly a crime.. I’m not self-obsessed (contarary to how this is all sounding!) , I’m intuitive, especially about people – I’m honest to goodness, actually nice... So really, WHERE THE HELL IS PRINCE CHARMING?!! I mean seriously, dude, at this rate I'm totally dying a virgin!!

It's also not as if I'm unrealistically fussy; the height, weight, complexion of Prince Charming is totally negotiable. I'm not looking for a 6 foot 4, golden skinned, Adonis - one would be nice, but I'm not too fussed! The one proviso - apart from the fact that I have to be attracted to him, and really I'm attracted to the weirdest things - is that he has to be intelligent. Oh yeah and Asian - preferably Pakistani!! 

That, gentle reader, is the Achilles' heel of the fairytale. There just aren't any Paki Prince Charmings around - either white or Sikh girls at university stole the few that exist or their parents arranged their marriages at 22 to a hook nosed cousin in some backwater village in the Punjab!! So now, ten years and two sons later, they're mostly divorced, bitter, atheist and very unprince like!

My family is no help. They couldn't even arrange a vase of flowers leave alone my marriage - I mean seriously, if they were proper Pakistanis I'd've had my marriage arranged eons ago, popped out at least Fifi and Gogo by now, and all this angst would be behind me. But they're all just too fricking liberal - love marriages are the way to go - we don't mind as long as you're happy - Woop Woop!! Bunch of fake Asians!! What good are they to me? All my mother does is look at me lamentfully - I can all but see the reflection of my biological clock ticking away in her teary eyes.  When really she should be getting onto the Aunty network or seeing a marriage broker. People with uglier, stupider, even fatter children are just so much more efficient, learn and emulate WOMAN! Damn her liberal eyes. 

The bad girls had it right really, they're all married to their boyfriends and pretty much happy little harpies now! They secretly dated, drank, slept with a legion, their mother in laws hate them but they don't care, they call her an old bat, bitch to her son about her interfering ways and how victimised they feel by her and the sad sap believes them!! Now, my mother-in-law would fricking love me  - so I repeat, where the hell is Prince Charming?! Does he not care about his mother at all? I repeat my mother in law will LOVE ME. Really.

I mean men – what do they want? They say one thing, do another, and think something entirely different – I have met nary a one I can stand to be around for longer than two hours without wanting to slap him round the ear!! That includes my brother – actually especially my brother. The Y chromosome is definitely defective – there’s something wrong with the male of the species. With us Pakistanis, I blame all the interbreeding – all this cousins marrying cousins equals defective Y-chromosomes.  

Oh dear, perhaps the appearance of Prince Charming will only complicate my life – I mean for one thing I may have to share my Playstation3! Oh the horror.