A very personal form of resignation

In this, my final blog for 2006, I thought I'd do something a little more personal and emotional, and actually list all the flaws in my character that I would dearly love to change in 2007 but, unfortunately, all I could come up with were, maybe I should drink less water to save the dams, and maybe I'm too old to be using the expression "bust this, homeys, props to ma peeps."

So, because I'm pretty much a near-flawless specimen of magnificence, I've decided instead just to list all the things I've been doing in 2006, that I'll just keep doing next year, it's what I like to call my New Year's Resignations.

1. I will persevere with my loathing of lettuce. It's got nothing to do with the taste or texture, even though it's like eating crunchy Kleenex, but it just takes up too much room in my fridge. It won't fit into the vegetable bin, it won't squeeze into the bottom shelf, so it's got to go on the upper shelf, taking up prime fridge real estate, pushing the margarine and cream cheese so far up the back I have to nudge them out with a continental cucumber.

2. For another year, I will continue to enjoy any live TV interviews using satellite linkups. I love the three-second sound-delay while the person being interviewed waits for the question so, even though they may have just discovered a cure for cancer, they always look slightly stoned and glazed-over, like Courtney Love at a court hearing.

3. Pandas will keep on repulsing me, with their dopey smiles and splotchy faces, WHY DOES ANYONE LIKE A PANDA? They are just boorish bamboo chewing black and white oafs, with sunken junkie-eyes, that heroin-chic look was so '90s.

4. I vow to keep checking every spam email in my junk inbox, just in case, JUST IN CASE, an important email accidentally wound up in there, this happened to me recently, with all the emails I was getting my from my good friend, Penny Stocks. And another time, an email from my mother wound up in my junk inbox, I had to explain to her that it probably wasn't a great idea to entitle her emails "Son, are you having problems with erectile dysfunction?"

5. I don't know why, but Bono and his wonderful heartfelt generous charity work WILL CONTINUE TO REALLY REALLY IRK ME. I know he's just being caring and compassionate, but there's something deeply irky about him ridding the Third World of debt and saving the lives millions of starving children, it might be the indoor sunglasses.

6. I promise to persist with my appalling phone manner: I'm OK at the start of phone conversations, and I'm alright in the middle of phone conversations, but I have NOOOOOO idea how to end a phone conversation. I can't just finish with a normal "goodbye". Instead I usually do a sleazy "seeya, mate", or a dodgy "take care". Recently I was talking to a friend and, at the end of the conversation, I attempted an extremely regrettable "ciaociao for now-now", then I put down the phone, and we never mentioned it again.

7. I will continue to boycott Spiderman movies until Spiderman starts cleaning up after himself. He just sprays his webby-stuff all over New York City, it's a disgrace. Big jerk.

8. And finally, being the radical anti-establishment urban rebel that I am, I will continue to torment big businesses by going onto their websites, heading for their online merchandising page, then making like I'm going to buy something really expensive but, just when I have to type in my credit card details, quickly shutting off my computer, leaving them devastated because they've just lost a sale. Oh, yeah, I am a Menace 2 Society, homeys, props to ma peeps.

The joy of Christmas (alone)

At 11.00am on Christmas morning I awoke in my abode in Waterloo, Sydney. I could look forward to a continental-style breakfast, a few hours reading in my room, many more hanging around in front of the television and, finally, an eight-hour sleep. And all of this I would do alone.

Spending Christmas alone is usually assumed to be a bad thing. Mine may sound to you desperately sad, all too reminiscent of that tragicomic icon of modern male inadequacy, Alan Partridge. But when some charity reported that nearly half a million older people would spend Christmas by themselves, no one asked how large a minority were relieved not to have to bother with it any more. My experience of this ultimate anti-Christmas, and those of the other festive refuseniks I met along the way, suggests that any pity or mockery is displaced. Envy might be more appropriate.

The cabbie who took me to the shops on Christmas Eve was certainly more than happy to be working the next day. Apart from the large number of "wheelchair jobs" resulting from non-emergency ambulance crews taking their holidays, there were lots of people who by early evening were "desperate to get out", he said, making the drive surprisingly easy. After all, what else would he be doing, with no wife or kids to be with? "I'd be down the pub talking a load of old rubbish with my mates," he said.

I got to a pub to find it about two-thirds empty. I walked in and headed for the bar, where I was served by Vazken. He wasn't over the moon to have another shift the next day, but as an Armenian Orthodox Christian, his Christmas is on January 6 anyway, so it was no big deal. According to the last census, rising percentage of Australia's population is not Christian at all. With more than one-quarter of the population with no reason to see the 25th as special, why should it be strange not to celebrate it?

Indeed, I was to meet many more non-Christians, including the Muslim cashier at the Travelex foreign exchange counter, who thought it was "brilliant" to be working on Christmas day because of the extra pay. It was as though, for one day only, the sizeable non-Christian minority got to run the country.

Perhaps what I meant was that by refusing to accepting an invitation to share someone else's, which would never really be mine celebrations, I had defied the expectations of those who think there is only one right way to celebrate, one they may not enjoy, but feel obliged to enact.

There's nothing wrong with a good family gathering at Christmas for those who have a family arrangement that allows it, an opportunity to make it happen and a cultural background that makes Christmas mean something. But if we're honest, there are many people who don't fit this mould. They should not be made to feel like like social pariahs for opting out of the traditional Christmas, or any other widely observed celebration. It is much sadder to attempt to cobble together a traditional Christmas from pieces that don't fit than to throw them all away and do something completely different instead.

On New Year's Eve, another trial of enforced jollity, I will be raising a glass to my fellow Christmas refuseniks who dealt with their situations with honesty and defiance. And I'll be doing it quietly in my bed, avoiding yet another celebration that some see as unmissable. If you feel pity, there's no need. And if you feel envy, there's still time to do something about it.

A tough time of year for singletons

It’s all going off around my new pad at the moment. There have been two of us, boys living among the clutter for the last few weeks and it feels as if we are all jolly young students again. We shouldn't really be living like this as we are definitely the wrong side of 18. It would be far more normal, according to my mother, to be living alone in a nice little flat back home in Bombay.

Bizarrely enough my roomie – found himself a girlfriend just in time for the festive season. Miraculously he has magicked up a divine female who he is spending New Year snuggling up to - well done mate.

This time of year is particularly trying for singletons, we all know that, and my house is full of hormones and drama. I am single and new in Sin Sydney. So am mooching around the place feeling sorry for myself. I seem to burst into tears a lot of the time for no reason and think that maybe I could be medically termed depressed at the moment. I am thinking of toddling down the road to ask the doctor for some seasonal happy pills.

The fact that all my mates in the new city are already off for “our” Christmas and New Year holiday without me riles too. I was supposed to be on a “cheer up” date the other night, but that ended up in me talking about my ex-girlfriend and she about her past. Great night that was. It was hardly surprising that there was no follow-up call. Then a dear friend who has not had good sex since cows were edible in India rings to tell me he has spent the whole of Sunday in the most rapturous lovemaking and tender embraces with a divine new goddess he picked up on a plane. It’s all getting a bit much, with even my neighbour singing carols on the bloody stairs. Lah did dah.

I’ve always believed — that the single most important thing in life is to find a person with whom you can share your life intimately: your other half, your best friend, your lover, a person to whom you can confide all your secrets, the one you go to first with good news and first with bad. We all look for it, and it’s a rarity, a privilege. If you find it, then I believe you’ve won the greatest prize there is. And if love is the greatest prize, I don’t know what comes second, but whatever it is, it’s so far behind, it’s like a runner being lapped by everyone else on the track.

I suppose I feel Miss West's experience ought to be celebrated. She is an exceptional woman. I knew that, and so does everyone who knows her. She had such dignity and selflessness, such compassion, understanding, patience — so many things. Knowing I was loved by somebody as fine as her gave me a strength, a self-confidence that I don't have without her. She validated me. I still grieve over her loss, her absence. I still think: “Oh, if only she were to walk through the door now...” The pain doesn’t go away. Nothing helps; nothing compensates for her not being here. However good life is now or may become, it will never be as good as life before Miss West. It’s too late. But even now, she’s my constant companion. I think about her every day and I dream about her most nights. When it comes to making decisions, I still think: “What would Miss West say?”

I pay the price of my indiscretions. My immaturity and absolute blindness in not realising what I had, failure to treasure it, nurture it, has led to me loosing the most valuable person to ever walk into my life. Sin of breaking a heart was committed by me - repentance not in sight. I suppose it comes back to that old question: is it better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all? There’s a wonderful film called Shadowlands, which tells the story of C S Lewis and his love for this woman, Joy, who becomes terminally ill. When she’s dying she says to him: “We can’t have the happiness of yesterday without the pain of today — that’s the deal.” And I suppose it’s the same with me.

Its not the fall which kills you, its the landing! I kept falling for four years without once realising. Crash landed last year, and trust me it hurts. Where I go from here is any ones guess.

Bridget Bond

Was trying to explain a female friend recently, men are predictable. Their desires are simple: to be unquestionably powerful, acquire the world's most beautiful women and drive the swankiest cars. This not-so-secret male fantasy has fuelled the unparalleled James Bond franchise since its inception. In fact, Bond is to men what Harry Potter is to kids. Both recreate daydreams about either alpha males with guns or boy wizards with magic wands.

But if human fantasies translated into literary and cinematic figures can become such instant hits, where has the secret fantasy of women escaped to? Why is there no franchise detailing the adventures of a goddess every girl wants to be? And what would this goddess be like? Imagine a female character who is stunningly beautiful, filthily rich, insuperably powerful and irresistibly attractive to men.

Would women queue up to watch her escapades many times over? In all likelihood, no. Such a woman has in fact been equated to evil incarnate, as Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada. Then, is the fumbling, pitiful Bridget Jones the heroine of the female race? Women certainly empathise with her but, as we all know, nobody would want to be her. Rachel Green of Friends and Carrie Bradshaw of Sex and the City are possible contenders for the position but neither could command her own franchise or be as undisputed an aspiration as James Bond.

Women have traditionally been conceived as objects of desire, not desiring subjects. Has the modern woman not yet shaken off that blindfold to define her own superwoman? The conventional heroines of women were figures like Jane Austen's Elizabeth Bennet, who is rewarded for her relatively freethinking mind by being married off to a rich man. In India, the culturally enforced ideal is Sita. Every woman should want to be like her, to the point that some women actually do. How unfortunate that the female fantasy isn't the feisty and eminently likeable Draupadi, with her five husbands, unconcealed sexuality and obvious power.

In truth, though, there seems to be something wrong with each of these characters. Maybe a female fantasy hasn't yet been pinned down because she would need to be regulated by ideas of political correctness. Or perhaps this vacuum in popular culture will always exist because women will never settle for being as uncomplicated and predictable as children and men.

BRIEF CASE: Life is Contrary

Gosh, life is way too confusing — first there are the manufacturers and advertisers jumbling up my poor mind with their plethora of choices about which flour (fortified, multigrain, soya-enriched), which bread (white, brown or wholemeal), which soap (with glycerine, moisturiser or exfoliating particles?), which toothpaste (with or without fluoride?), which TV (how many inches? Plasma screen or LCD?) and which washing machine (front loading? Top loading?) to buy. On top of that the stress of trying to decide which caller tune for my mobile. Help! If I don't decide fast they'll sms me 30 more options. Life in earlier times must have been easier, I think blearily, head full of decisions made, not made, to be made. Tea or coffee? With ginger or cardamom?

Decisions, decisions — hang them all — I settle down to read a book of proverbs instead. Proverbs. Where would we be without them — those pithy sentences which sum up the accumulated wisdom of the human race? But very soon it becomes clear that whoever they were who handed us down these proverbs were equally big on choices. No one-size-fits-all wisdom for them — they certainly didn't believe in putting all their eggs in one basket.

Go figure these. Does a stitch in time save nine? Or is it better to go with 'if it ain't broke don't fix it'? Is it more prudent to play safe and thus not land in sorry circumstances or should one go with the nothing ventured, nothing gained philosophy? Do opposites attract or is it birds of a feather that flock together? Should you strike while the iron is hot or would it be wiser to look before you leap? Should I trip through life happily, secure in the belief that the best things in life are free, or should I look suspiciously upon free lunches and other freebies? Is forewarned truly forearmed or is it okay to go with the flow and cross one's bridges once one comes to them? And count those drafted chickens too, only after they are hatched?

And after that, does one call in many hands to make light work of the chickens or will too many cooks spoil the murg tikka masala? The truth ain't no easy answers. Life's contrary, that's what.

Squashed by Brisbane's brainless sandwich-stealers

Being a Pom in Brisbane this week was not a whole lot of fun. Not much fun being an Aussie, either. There were barriers around the Gabba stadium, where the first Ashes Test was played, of the type you might throw across a street in Baghdad to stop a riot. They were there to prevent jay-walking. Everywhere you looked baseball-capped security men, many armed, eyeballed the paying customers suspiciously. They were on guard for offensive items. Beach balls, cool boxes, home-made sandwiches, trumpets, you know the sort of thing. All banned. Welcome to Western democracy, 2006.

You read a lot of sentimental old rubbish about Australia. Sun all day, party all night, one long shrimp-fixated barbie, in which nobody takes life, or themselves, too seriously. Don’t you believe it. “Australians all let us rejoice, for we are young and free,” runs the first line of the national anthem. Except at some time over the past two decades Australia became swamped in rules and regulations, taking its lead from the old country and, of course, America.

What is it about English-speaking democracies that their officers work so hard at mining the meanest, most small-minded elements of human nature? Traffic wardens, the various layers of piddling, incompetent bureaucracy that sap the human spirit just in the act of trying to cross the road. All Englishmen knew the type that barked its orders at the Gabba, just as an Australian in London would recognise our breed of council narks, issuing tickets to those whose wheelie bin etiquette does not conform to the latest directive. There is something about the zeal with which parts of the West have embraced the war against free will that is as terrifying as any dictatorship.

There were so many things you could do to get ejected at the Gabba that when the ground emptied late in the day it was hard to work out if the absentees had gone home for tea or were all being held in an underground dungeon for trying to start a Mexican wave. Banned, apparently. Banned by those in charge of the fastest-growing industry in the West: small-minded, false authority. Jumped-up little twerps telling everybody what to do. A nation of traffic police is what we have created, a nation of sheep unable to cross a clear road unless a little green man tells them to and worse, a nation of glowering baseball caps, who feel empowered by that little green man.

We are losing our ability to stroll to the park while doing nothing wrong. It is hard to do nothing wrong these days. You can break three laws putting your rubbish out. You can get the third degree at the departure gate for the possession of toothpaste. Fly south and see the future. Australia is a fascinating study because it shows what can happen to even the most unpretentious society once this mind-set takes hold.

You know what was great about Australia? Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat. The Sydney Olympic Games in 2000 had three proper mascots, Syd, Ollie and Millie, but nobody gave a monkey’s about them. The figure the nation took to its heart was a large-rumped, stuffed marsupial, the unofficial mascot of an irreverent late-night sports show. At first the Olympic Committee tried to ban Fatso, but sensing a PR disaster, and after he had appeared on the podium with two gold medal winners, it beat a hasty retreat. That is Australia, left to its own devices. How did the country go from there to ejecting people from a stadium for wearing watermelon shells as hats?

The ridiculously overbearing security presence around the Gabba were nicknamed the fun police. They would not let supporters take rucksacks with drinks or sandwiches into the ground, but instead made them remove their rations and place them in a plastic bag. The rucksack could then be carried in, but only if it was in a plastic bag. This raised the bar for global stupidity, but do not expect the new standard to last long.

And we can moan and shake our heads, but there is a deadly serious by-product of this thinking. We deliver to foreign lands the same idiots who decree that our own citizens can’t be trusted to eat a sandwich while watching the cricket. Then when there is a disaster, we wonder why.

Renewed faith in family and marriage

One prime advantage of having no strings attached is that nobody relies on you for anything. I have no one expecting me home at a certain hour and no one relying on me for buying groceries, assistance in cooking dinners , nappies changed or even bedtime stories read. My mother, of course, thinks this is totally tragic, and in one way it could be just that. A sad and unhinged isolated existence in a sprawling lonely city. But living with flatmates shelters me from domestic loneliness, and I often go stir crazy from the lack of lone time.

I had a cappuccino with a gorgeous 30-year-old divorcée last Friday afternoon at SouthBank and she told me, without any prompting, all the bad things about marriage. I warned her not to. I’m already turned off by the whole institution after so many horror stories. This is slightly baffling, as my family’s relationship histories for many generations have produced happy marriages and cheerful healthy offspring. I am the emotional black sheep of the fluffy fleeced flock.

The divorcée further entrenched my fear. She described that dreaded feeling of being “obliged” not to go out, or to come home at certain times. The way she put it sounded pretty awful, and no matter how much you love your family, wife or husband there will always come a time when that obligation niggles a bit too hard.

Being a naturally combative person, I told her it was good to feel obliged to do something for someone else at times, otherwise your existence ends up being completely selfish - and pointless. She roared with laughter and told me to wait and see.

On Saturday morning I was invited by Sean, asking if I wanted to come around for lunch that afternoon. And so, being unencumbered and unobliged to do anything else, I gratefully accepted.

Strangely, unlike most marrieds with kids, their house didn’t hint of tiny people at all. They must have scrubbed hard to remove all traces of toddlers. I glanced around the crowded bookshelves, which were bursting with heavy encyclopaedias and thick volumes on Stalin and Churchill. I searched in vain among the photo frames for cherubic faces smiling from windswept beaches. Not one toy or dummy littered any of the crazily clean surfaces.

I took my self to a self-exploration walk through the house. Everything looked to be emaculate, well planned and designed. Danish art meets Sri Lankan casual elegance in rich teak wood furniture around long sprawling white walls. I returned to the lunch table and got lost in stories from other guests of exciting times spent in Central Asia. The host became obsessed with toasting everyone with indescribably strong vodka – a way of honouring his guests. It was a fantasy of a Borat movie crossed with Casino Royale.

It was a beautiful exerience, tender yet racy. I finally stumbled home, with my faith in the joys of family life repaired and the possibility of a happy married future a real prospect.

Gold Coast Wedding

My Greek myth, not surprisingly, evaporated the moment I was whisked into the grime of the city, courtesy of the Eastern Suburbs trainline. Choking from bus fumes on Oxford Street or blown by wet winds on train platforms I wonder: is this how life is meant to be lived or should I do a Shirley Valentine and leave it all behind? Pressed against some sweating businessman on the Tube in the rush hour, I daydream of my island and the realities of setting up there.

Luckily my normal returning to Sydney funk has been diluted by the balmy spring sunshine after a few rainy days. I am unimpressed with the way I slip back into my routine so quickly. When away I always think I will revolutionize my life - perhaps with a revamp of my non-existent fitness regime. I planned a daily early morning run in Hyde Park, followed by a spot of meditation. I would be calm and Zen and breathe from the depths of my diaphragm and radiate optimism. But the only real trace of my island existence is a regular trip down to Coles to buy tropical juice in an attempt to recreate my healthy breakfasts.

I spun back into Sydney just in time to honor a wedding invite. I had a twelve-hour turnaround, for which I had tried on a few inappropriate suits that no longer fitted and ended up blessing my mother, who recently bought me an age-appropriate suit which made me look mature and sophisticated rather than tacky and eccentric. I flew to Gold Coast, the Guardian Angel Catholic church, realizing that I would barely know anyone - it was my friend’s wedding.

I really didn’t know where or with whom to sit. As I was looking wildly lost, my friend’s sister scooped me up and deposited me in a pew which was obviously for misfits. I discovered later that we were all alone in our particular ways - though most of this lot were widowed or divorced.

I bravely sang out those stirring hymns in an otherwise silent row of Australians. The sermon was full of talk of growing up and the excitement of taking on a new chapter. The vicar talked of life after marriage as the culmination of our individual production lines, where we emerged as “finished products”, and he claimed the institution was so sacred that it defied all mathematical rules. It is, he said, the only time one plus one equals one. It sounded like some kind of Excel spreadsheet to me.

Winter in Bombay, as well as all over India, is the marriage season. Between October and February, it is not unknown for as many as 14,000 weddings to take place in the city on a single day. Getting hitched is a business, with an average ceremony and reception costing $10,000. Wonder, if all saccharine coated candy floss is required to express one's undying love for another. Well, who am I to make a comment - things I own have already ended up owning me. Am myself slave to the Ikea nesting instinct and am pretty much the contents of my wallet, my jeans and my shoes. All style (apparently) definitely no substance.

Bombay High

Like everything else in the country, from the composition of a government to the price of a lemon, our night out would be the subject of extensive and intricate bargaining, among ourselves and even with the authorities. In short, it was to be a typical Indian night out - an expensive, drawn-out ordeal so onerous and complicated that you would never wish to repeat it. The drinking would be simple by comparison. But just when I thought I'd arranged the perfect compromise, the whole thing hit a snag. In India, there is one thing you should never take for granted - India.

Instant Karma

For thousand of years, Hindus have scaled the Himalyas of the soul, and invested the Indian landscape with sacred meaning. In the Rig Veda, the earliest known composition in Sanskrit or any other Indo-European language, all the earth's rivers rise in heaven, and life on earth began with their release. When a Hindu pours water over the stone phallic symbol known as lingam, they are re-enacting that first downpour. If the mountains are home to their gods, their seven sacred rivers receive their prayers and wash away their sins and ashes. Seven towns - Haridwar, Varanasi, Mathura, Ayodhya, Kanchipuram, Ujjain and Dwarka - are honoured as sites where spiritual release, or moksha, is most readily obtained. By their devotions, Hindus lay claim to the land, not always to own or govern it, but certainly to worship it, and no government in Indian history has successfully prevented them from doing so. The land is too big, the faith too deeply embedded in the people's consciousness.

Indian philosophy teaches that the things we perceive as real are actually maya, an illusion concealing the reality that lies behind appearances. Through India's long history of invasions and fighting, and the competition for land and resources stretching back to Aryan times, power derived from the sword and the bow. Long before it was ever a country, India had been colonised and, in the process, enlightened and brutalised, enriched and impoverished. In the dying decades of Muslim rule, and under the British, it became poorer, and by the time freedom came was rich principally in one thing:people. More people, fewer resources. Fewer resources, more intense competion. The struggle was endless. Socail churning, Indians call it.

It is not possible to live justly in an unjust society, unless of course you renounce it. Since the time of the Buddha, India has confornted well-meaning humanists with a dilemma:unless you give away everything you own, you are still better than most people. It is impossible to be at once moral and comfortable. If you enjoy even a modicum of prosperity and security, it means you occupy a priviledged place in a monstrous hierarchy. That man ther lying on the pavement is somebody's son, husband, brother, father. You walk right by him. The same dilemma exists in all societies to an extent - we sleep soundly while other suffer - but in India, the co-existence of wealth and poverty, of glamour and squalor, education and illiteracy is colossal. Imagine being a passenger on a plane that is falling out of the sky when you discover that there simply aren't enough parachutes to go around. It's a high-stakes grabbing game in which most people are losers.

Indian society reserves its highest honours for the renunciates, those who embrace tyag, or sacrifice. It counts among its greatest scoundrels, politicians; the more self-righteous, the more debased. Perversely, hypocrisy on a massive scale also appeals to the Indian psyche, for much the same reasons that the dance and drama spectacles of the Bollywood cinema appeal:it's all a damn good show. The politician who jumps ship from his party and principles more frequently than he changes underwear is acclaimed as a genius; the leader who archly renounces power before it unavidably slips from his grasp is said to have superb timing. Lust for power and a ruthless determination to hold onto it are seen as normal, partly because they reflect the desperation of the vast majority. Everyone except mahatmas (great souls) imagine that they would like to rule India, despity ample evidence that the job destroys all who touch it.

Bharat Versus India

One in every six people on our planet is an Indian, and the nation they inhabit is conducting the world’s largest most important experiment – Democracy. Can a deeply religious society of more than one billion with a large Hindu majority sustain a secular government under which people of all faiths are treated equally? If it can work in a developing country as populous and diverse as India, it can work anywhere.

In just sixty years, the power of ordinary Indians to determine who governs them has revolutionised a once demoralised colony of Britain, breaking down feudalism and caste discrimination, and making enormous strides in reducing poverty and illiteracy, famine and disease. In 1947, the average Indian had a life expectancy of thirty – two years, and only one in five people could read or write; today’s Indian lives twice as long on average, is better off than ever, and two out of every three people are literate. India’s information technology boom has buried its image as a timeless, caste-ridden place teeming with paupers, snake charmers and maharajas (replaced by McMaharaja – Indian Big Mac). The world is doing yoga, wearing pashmina and reading Indian authors, not to mention enjoying spicy Indian cuisine and being entertained by the pulsating output of the Bollywood cinema.

Yet at the very moment of India’s emergence as a force in the world, the secular democracy that made this possible has come under threat from within. As everywhere in the post-Cold War world, politicians have sought to garner votes by appealing to old caste and religious prejudices, exploiting the large pockets of poverty and ignorance that inevitably exist in a developing country. While India’s experience is unique, it should cause us to reflect on the consequences in any society when religion is exploited by vested interest, including politicians and the media. But it also demonstrates how a republic, wisely constituted on the basis of law and equal rights for all citizens regardless of race, region, faith, education, language or poverty, is the best guarantee against appeals of extremism.

India is a work in progress, a painting on a shifting canvas. In Hindi, the word used for yesterday, cul, is the same word used to describe tomorrow. As India changes, it will continue to draw strength from its traditions. Its ancient wisdom and modern ambitions can walk hand in hand towards what I am sure will be a brighter future.

The India I was born into – we didn’t have telephone lines, we got tap water for fiver hours a day. Calling overseas required a trek to the local post and telegraph office and hours of fruitless dialling. Television and radio channels were state-controlled, the only competition coming from a widely distributed news program on video cassette that was delivered door-to-door each week like some clandestine newsletter. In times of national crisis, Indians tuned to foreign shot-wave radio news broadcasts. Forty years after they’d kicked out the British, the BBC was still their most trusted source of broadcast news (They might fail to recognise Tony Blair, but former BBC correspondent – Mark Tully is still a celebrity). Only the newspapers retained the defiant spirit of the Freedom Struggle corrupted today by corporate ownership and unbridled commercialism.

Allez au revoir!

Returning to Australia from what seemed like a long while living in Europe/Sub-continent; I instantly catapulted myself from scabby tenement tenant into the novel and elevated position of “landlord”. I moved into a heritage listed wool store apartment tucked away in a secluded trendy North Brisbane cul de sac and immediately started interviewing for appropriate lodgers. I thought flatmates would add extra spice and fun to a boy’s social life.

Names were tossed my way by word of mouth and, as a result, I have since seen countless tenants move into my minimalist unit and then out again to finer pastures. Some are waved goodbye with relief, followed by a terrible sense of foreboding as large electricity bills plop onto my worn doormat months after they have gone. Then there comes the harsh realization – often far too late – that their forwarding address scrawled on a tiny scrap of paper simply reads “London U.K.”.

Most people I send on their merry way with a nod, a smile and a vague hint of nostalgia. Last week, however, it felt quite a wrench to say adieu to my friends in Brisbane. So as I heartily hug my friends, before I step out of this country, I once again feel like a handy facilitator on the conveyer belt of life. On a sunny day that feels fine and quite useful, but on a rainy one it niggles. As a restless soul, it plays to my yearning to find a home too, and move onto finer places. But instead I only wave from the car-window.

I am sad to go. I had really liked all my friends here, and as fellow students/work colleagues/drinking buddies/soccer team players/acquaintances, we often rattled around the city at similar unorthodox times. This had led to many deep philosophical discussions on life, love and the universe.

As self-confessed optimists and morning whistlers, my friends skipped down the streets to shed some sunlight on issues that I, as a self-confessed cynic, often found difficult to stomach. Mates have led me to corners previously unexplored and dusted off ideas thick with dirt. In fact they invested in me, like a father does a child. They saw me as a new and difficult challenge to win over into their brave new world.

Thank you, - all the people I met in my six years in Brisbane. Somewhere, I lost all my innocence. Became a horrible person, forgot my roots, broke an angel’s heart, changed beyond recognition that even the mirror fails to recognise me. But, from the bottom of my heart – I thank everyone. Merci d'avoir donné du sens à ma vie.

Saturday Nite

Saturday was spend at Gold Coast – Party. The word itself brought to mind noisy, half - naked revellers; it suggested the kind of empty frivolity and moral laxity of which I had been brought up to disapprove. It was my going away; I don’t know when I will see those faces again. Driving back Sunday afternoon, still hung-over and starving couldn’t help but think ‘if only’. Somewhere, in me with the ‘detachment is the key’ formula – kept thinking, if only, I had behaved, if only, I had realised the important things in life before loosing them – maybe, maybe – Miss West would still have been in my life. Excuses for the self-pitying bastard. Heading to Bombay next week – scared, excited, apprehensive, and eager all the emotions possible.

My old French friend – Sebastian, had once mentioned how India helped him become serious. One of the greatest things for him about coming to India had been, knowing about poverty and pain and suffering, and realizing that there is a whole world outside where people don’t even have the basic things in life. I mean, people keep seeing all those things on television, you know, those starving kids in Africa, but somehow one never gets close enough to really feel it. It doesn’t register much. It’s just out there on a map and you never really care as much as one should. And then you see it face to face and, boy, it knocks you out. Not many people get the chance to experience all this. In West, people are kind of trying to forget what pain and suffering are…keep…covers…only…real life…winners and losers…this…machismo…makes…pathetic failures. I mean spiritually, because one doesn’t allow oneself to suffer, experience pain.

In the months and years, since I met Miss West following the first evening, I was to see her in every mood and posture, in every kind of dress and at different times of the day; such rapt gazing as mine would leave a wealth of memorable images in my mind. But it is the picture of her sitting up very straight on her balcony, abstractedly plucking nibbles, the light from the city lights bathing her clear unblemished face in a golden glow that has stayed most vividly with me, and is the central force that illuminates her in my memory.

As I prepare myself to leave this city, a thin crimson – edged mist hangs over the river when I walk out of the house. The alleys leading to the main road is empty, the houses sunk in a blue haze, still untouched by the sun, which had already begun tentatively to probe the facades of the houses lining the river. I found my paradise and despair in this city. Morals, beliefs, principles were formed, tested, broken here. Mates made and lost, with Miss West beside me – I had a sense of serenity. Life, couldn’t touch me – was impregnable. Now I stare at the emptiness, isn’t this the déjà vu I have already experienced when I left Bombay, maybe just a degree more difficult and painful. Am heading back to Bombay, to find peace in all the carnage – oxymoron.

Mon Père

So many tangled roots our personalities have the social and emotional circumstances of our early years, of our parents’ lives, and, if you go back even further, of our ancestors’. In some sense, the emotion I feel these days, although never fully defined, has always been with me. It had cast its shadow upon my childhood, and it came to me then as a fear of being abandoned and unprotected. In later life, the fear lost its rawness; it became part of the larger preoccupations of a solitary adolescence. I had never analysed this fear; there had been no occasion to do so. It is only now as I write, and attempt to link disparate events and emotions, that I see the larger context to which it belongs, the long way it goes back, to a past that has grown dim in all except its broader details.

My ancestors were Khastriya (the title of the princely military order within the caste system. They are the warrior and ruling caste, in the traditional varna hierarchy.), originally from Kashmir. There were no dates for their exodus from Kashmir. We vaguely knew, by way of family lore, that the sixteenth-century Mogul invasion was one the reason for my ancestors’ migration to the foothills of Himalayas. No one, however, had any details. It wasn’t the kind of thing anyone care to document, or even remember, the past was too much a part of the present to be categorized in a strict historical sense.

For centuries, my ancestors had remained wealthy landowners in the flat lands enclosed by the foothills of the eastern Himalayas. During all that time, the turbulent history of medieval India touched them little. My own knowledge of that past went only as far back as my great-great-grandfather, in the last century, but I can’t imagine my his own ancestors deviated much from the well-worn Hindu groves in which he and his own son and grandson spent their own lives: studentship, adulthood and marriage, late-middle-age detachment and then the final renunciation followed by a retreat to the Himalayas.

With India’s independence in 1947, this regulated life was unravelled with bewildering speed. My grandfather and his sons found themselves thrown into the new ruthless go-getting world of independent India with none of their old certainties intact. Successive land reform legislation undermined the family’s assets to the point where ancestral jewellery had to be pawned off to pay for the education of my father and his brothers. There was a time when neither studentship nor marriage seemed a possibility.

My father grew up knowing both a kind of feudal grandeur and shameful penury. From a life of secluded leisure, he was catapulted into the ranks of desperate millions seeking jobs under the new regime. I did not know until after my mother revealed to me how deeply marked he was by that period of difficult transition.

In time, the years of struggle were left behind. He joined Air India; he worked his way to a kind of middle-class security and equilibrium. But he never spoke about his early years. Once, in an uncharacteristic burst of nostalgia, he mentioned the caparisoned elephant he once rode in the village. On another occasion, he spoke of the time he met Jayaprakash Narayan (widely known as JP, was an freedom fighter and political leader, remembered especially for leading the opposition to Indira Gandhi in the 1970s.) in Bombay. These memories alone come to represent for me the life he had known as a child.

The Romantics

Ye Dagh dagh ujala, ye shab-gazida sahar

Vo intizar tha jia ka, ye vo sahar to nahin,

Ye vo sahar to nahin jis ki arzu lekar

Chale the yar ke mil – jaegi kahin na kahin

Falak ke dasht men taron ki akhiri manzil

Kahin to hoga shab-e sust mauj ka sahil

Kahin to jake rukega safine-e-gham-edil.

This leprous daybreak, dawn night’s fangs have mangled –

This is not that long – looked – for break of day,

Not that clear dawn in quest of which those comrades

Set out, believing that in heaven’s wide void

Somewhere must be the stars’ last halting – place

Somewhere the verge of night’s slow – washing tide,

Somewhere an anchorage for the ship of heartache.

Je Ne Regrette Rein

As a boy I, used to be synonymous with a city - raucous, frenetic, and brazenly lively. Recently, however, I feel have became a park and seem determined to lead a quieter, more pensive life.

I captured the ribald vitality of Brisbane in my youth. I was once the embodiment of Brisbane's flaming youth. The permissive city Brisbane, to which the young boy fled from his family home, was the place where he cast off provincial inhibitions.

For the young Shirish, not much was sacred and no taboo went unviolated. Going back home, - will be all about taking stock of the situation: my life, my losses. I never understood death before, it was just another loss. I never really understood regret, guilt, remorse, heartbreak, abandonment, vulnerability. India, hopefully will sooth my professional and personal distresses. Excluding men from the central roles of my life, I have rounded up a sorority of submissive, adoring female mates, confirmation of my belief that women are communal creatures, sponsors of society, while men remain imprisoned in the testosterone-fuelled inferno of the ego. Speaking to people has had a curative effect on me. I shall try to absorb serenity from the townspeople. It will be like being back in my childhood, surrounded by all those people who used to sit on their patios and gossip. There was something almost spiritual about it.

I used to be a cheerful blasphemer, celebrating a convent as a lair of erotic and narcotic delights in dark nightclubs. Now I seem nostalgic for the consolations of faith.

But which camp do I belong to? Although I dote on my mother, my arrogant exercise of power links me with my angry, cold father, who used to be absent. As Wilde put it: 'All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.' Emotionally that may be my tragedy, too, but professionaly it is my good fortune. I ought to be grateful for all those unresolved conflicts, which will go on generating dramas.

I lost my grandfather last year. I lost the person who like Mother Earth, nurtured me, tended me, tried in vain to make me a better person. I came to realise the demon I had become – one with no values, no convictions and above all no honour.

Will I ever find peace? Will I ever be able to forgive myself - redemption is what I seek! Failed and flawed are the words I use to describe myself today.

The fun of being wrong

Have you heard the phrase a little knowledge is a dangerous thing? Well, a little English can lead to a hilarious situation. People unfamiliar with the language often express themselves in strange ways. Their intended meaning may be clear but what they’ve actually said is deliciously and delightfully different.

It seems hotel notices often get their English wrong. For instance, a bar in Tokyo claims: ‘Special cocktails for the ladies with nuts’. On its executive floor, the hotel proclaims: ‘You are invited to take advantage of the chambermaid’. But it’s not just Asiatics who can’t handle the complexities of the Anglo-Saxon tongue. Consider this notice in the lobby of a Moscow hotel: ‘You are welcome to visit the cemetery where famous Russian and Soviet composers, artists and writers are buried daily except Thursday’. Unfortunately, the Swiss are no better. This was found in a hotel in Zurich: ‘Because of the impropriety of entertaining guests of the opposite sex in the bedroom, it is suggested that the lobby be used for this purpose’.

I thought the Scandinavians knew English well but this sign from a cocktail lounge in Norway suggests otherwise: ‘Ladies are requested not to have children in the bar’. However, the English doesn’t improve as you head south. The Budapest Zoo states: ‘Please do not feed the animals — if you have any suitable food, give it to the guard on duty’. In Rome, a doctor’s office states: ‘Specialist in women and other diseases’. A nearby laundry advertises itself as follows: ‘Ladies, leave your clothes here and spend the afternoon having a goodtime’.

Oddly enough, former British colonies fare no better. If you thought British rule ensured a good grasp of English think again. A restaurant in Nairobi says: ‘Customers who find our waitresses rude ought to see the manager’. A dentist in Hong Kong maintains: ‘Teeth extracted by the latest Methodists’. Even in our own dear Bombay you can find a restaurant which claims: ‘Open seven days a week and weekends too’.

My favourites come from two countries where there’s no reason to expect fluency in English. A tourist agency in the Czech Republic offers its services with the following promise: ‘Take one of our horse-driven city tours and we guarantee no miscarriages’. And then there’s this advertisement for donkey rides in Thailand: ‘Would you like to ride on your own ass?’

Now, the only thing that can better a mistake is famous people expressing themselves with a certain twisted pithiness. If the incorrect notices are funny, this is pure wit. Jimmy Carter’s mother, Lillian, once said: “Sometimes, when I look at my children, I say to myself ‘Lillian, you should have remained a virgin’.” Eleanor Roosevelt, FDR’s wife, is credited with the following: “I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: ‘No good in a bed, but fine against a wall’.”

Mark Twain was brilliant at this sort of thing. Try this: “Last week, I stated this woman was the ugliest I had ever seen. I have since been visited by her sister and now wish to withdraw that statement.” Here’s another: “Be careful about reading health books in case you die of a misprint.”

Not surprisingly, some of the wittiest comments have been made by the Brits themselves. For instance, Winston Churchill once said: “Don't worry about avoiding temptation. . as you grow older it will avoid you.” WC Fields: “I never drink water because of the disgusting things fish do in it.” Spike Milligan: “Money can’t buy you happiness, but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.” And, finally, Groucho Marx: “I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.”

This time my favourites are the ones that take something out of context and change its meaning. For instance, Victor Borge : ‘Santa Claus has the right idea. Visit people only once a year’. Or Socrates : ‘By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.’ And Joe Namath : ‘Until I was thirteen, I thought my name was SHUT UP’.

Oh well, have a great day!

Dirty Dick and Co get sanitised

PUBS were traditionally the riotous hubs of British social life; dimly lit and smoky dens that were pretty much a law unto themselves. But life is being squeezed out of them by a growing list of rules and regulations.

Police in Preston, Lancashire, want a ban on “vertical drinking” in the city’s pubs. Drinking elbow-to-elbow in groups, they believe, leads to spilt pints and thrown punches. If punters are sitting quietly and divided by tables, they are more likely to keep their tempers cool. The “alcohol project manager” of the Preston police said that the problem was “the proximity of other people when you are stood up, which is where the problems can start”. One would have thought that the proximity of other people was the whole point to a pub.

These were the places for singing, dancing, fighting, pub games such as dice and backgammon, even animal racing and duck shooting. They were also the places for private affairs, where business was done — both above and below the table.

Although many pub names remain the same, inside they are being transformed into sanitised, smoke-free, brightly lit places, full of lists of cans and can’ts. The imminent smoking ban is only the half of it. The city authorities in Glasgow have banned glasses in clubs and late-night pubs — so pints come in plastic containers and bottles are decanted into plastic glasses — and had plans to enforce this in all the city’s pubs.

Customers are being treated like children, in need of supervision and advice on how much to drink, what to eat, how to get home, and how to date in a correct and responsible manner. Glasgow drinkers are effectively being made to drink out of plastic beakers — that are unpleasant to hold and make the beer taste bad — in case they have a tantrum and throw their glass around. Yet the public house was traditionally that most adult of places, where teenage boys went to try to prove they were men.

One heartening thought is that it’s unlikely that punters will obey all these rules for correct behaviour. Next to a sign warning about door slamming I saw a young couple in what looked like the later stages of foreplay; a quiet journey home was the last thing on their minds.

Postcards from Sydney

Am comin Home!

And so as I sit and write this, after visiting the Waverly Cemetry to look at its view and eat sandwich in the tiny cafe in Surrey Hills. I have been to stay in Sydney a few times over the years but never walked up to the beach in the morning before – the hangovers have been too bad for anything but poolside after the night before’s schlepping from bar to bar and swilling of spirits and the search for sex that keeps you up till the dawn.

But this time on the night before we ate at a superb restaurant and were in bed by 12 o’clock, and even though the thought crossed my mind to go on the search for debauchery before going to bed, we all knew that we would rather sleep and savor the expensive tastes in our mouths and the feeling of contentment rather than sluice it out with tumblers of vodka and the almost inevitable disappointment of finding out once again that girls don’t find drunk boys attractive at all.

And then after landing in Brisbane Airport, I return full of stories of the woman I have just met at the airport. “She was beautiful,” “I’m in love,” “She wore a white sundress,” and “You’d love her.” I have had my reward for putting aside the things of youth to act my age – I have met a woman of beauty instead of a troll in a nightclub, I have seen her in a clear-headed morning instead of through beer goggles and I have engaged her in meaningful conversation instead of the nightclub pidgin Franglias of, “Voulez-vouz coucher avec moi?”

And I think, “You know what? I’ve had enough of sitting here getting all maudlin and nostalgic for the loves that have gone, enjoying the delicious masochism of recherché de la bird perdue. I’m going to look for the new one – but this time I’ll be doing it in daylight and sober instead of drunk like a binge – drinking youth.”

Am trying hard to become a better person – had forgotten the meaning of word “gratitude”. The other night watched an Icelandic movie on SBS. Will never forget a quote in it – sums my current state of mind “In dreams, I sense the merciless assault of reality.” Where did I become this horrible person, I can still remember the times we used to spend on the podium in university, aimlessly talking about everything under the sun.

‘The horse of time is galloping fast: let us see where he halts. Neither is the hand on the reins nor the foot in the stirrup.’

24 Birthday

As winter settles across Sydney a certain wistfulness invades the mind. A longing for other times, a sweet nostalgia both melancholy and pleasurable, like the takes of a biscuit recalled across the decades: a remembrance of things past. Things with me have improved lately. Not positive, but definitely not negative – Neutral I guess. Work is fine and am getting some leads. Luke n I – celebrated my birthday @ yellow in potts point. A few years ago we would have been painting the ville red – or at least a deeper shade of vomit. There would have been dancing and debauchery and the constant, relentless, unrealistic search for available women.

I mentioned my first girlfriend that night, a girl who left me for another man after she got caught, metaphorically, with her knickers down doing the dirty behind my back, but I don’t remember this, I remember first the curve of her waist and the smoothness of her flawless brown skin, the color of a nut, as I run my hand around to pull her close, and then this warmth is replaced as I am filled with regret (why, oh why, did I ever let her go?), and then comes a peace (ah…better to have loved and lost then never to have loved at all). And like my memories of the past, I forget the rows and the infidelities on all sides and the splitting up and the long, slow death of the relationship like a moth being overcome in a jar of chloroform, and get all wistful. Well, not entirely false but rose-tinted through time’s lens because I never liked it that much then.

Like Swann in Proust’s Remembrance Of Things Past, who takes a bite on a Madeleine biscuit and is sent on a seven – volume reverie as the taste and smell take him back to the events and the girl of many years before, we sit – us men who aren’t old and aren’t even middle – aged but also who aren’t young anymore – and we remember the girls who have come and gone and wonder at how age has mellowed us, has changed the way we want to celebrate, who aren’t involved with anyone, look back and ask ourselves, “Have we failed? Do we have regrets? Or is it all like a cycle – the good times come and go, that good women are seduced and abandoned, or abandon us and then we find ourselves sitting at a table remembering the feel of their skin and wondering when we will next know such love and whether when it arrives again, as it surely will, will we let it pass again or this time will we hold it and keep it? To try and pin the butterfly to a board this time, but by the very act of doing that, will we kill it once again?”

We are getting older. And we are starting to think like grown men instead of like the headless chickens we used to be – running from bar to bar and woman to woman, cocky with the availability of love and the ease with which it could be found and discarded – like fat boys in a sweet shop, tasting everything but savoring nothing. We are starting to realize that the sweet shop may not be open forever, that bingeing and women, on bars and clubs) may be young man’s game, that just as we would rather now sit and debate where to have dinner rather than run from town to town searching for a fuck, so maybe next time we find love we might like to sit and enjoy it, instead of always snogging with one eye open, looking over the shoulder of the women we are with to see who else is available.

D Day + 01

Sydney seems as a city created on an architects' day off. Considered at best, bohemian and decadent, at worst, dangerous and depraved, the suburbs immediately east of the CBD - Woolloomooloo, Potts Point and Darlinghurst - have recently been transformed into some of the most happening enclaves of Sydney. They are areas where backpackers rub shoulders with junkies, transvestite prostitutes, sailors, writers and young professionals wanting an apartment.

South of the mammoth Coca-Cola sign over traffic clogged William St. is Darlinghurst, the hippest of the suburbs. Speared by the Horizon apartment building looming over a low-rise warren of Victorian terraces, 'Darlo' is home to movie auteur Baz Luhrmann, actor Hugo Weaving, Tropfest, the biggest short movie festival in the world, and many a struggling artist, several of whom studied at the art college based in the handsome sandstone former jail on Burton St. It also has more than its fair share of latte - serving cafes, prime locations to practise urban trend spotting.

Woke up this morning with massive hangover and an urge to eat. The fact that I had brought the weather with me (sunshine baby) instilled the eagerness in Luke n I too soak in the rays. Rise n Shine apparently - no, not here. All the sunny spots were already taken, all the cafes were bursting with people n their all important pets. After circumnavigating Potts Point, Darlo.....We gave up. Followed a pretty gurl to a cafe for a compromise - decided we could do better....One phone call, jump into a cab and voila - we are in Surrey Hills. In a quiet end of the city - the wickedest, zennist cafe....With our kind of patrons (read drunk n hungover) and also the most disgruntled Korean car owner ever. Sydney's rag trade is clustered around Forveaux Street - Rupert Murdoch's newspapers The Australian and The Daily Telegraph are produced here - and the area seems to have a strong reputation for interior - design and furniture stores.

The huddled Victorian terraces have attracted a spill over of house hunters from Paddington where prices have already escalated. Surry Hills is going the same way, while retaining a grittier, less prettified edge.

The day included a trip to Bondi Junction in chase of illusive jumpers.....the dream continues. Stayed indoors the rest of the day.....Fragile body performed fine for its last day as a 23 year old. Tomorrow I shall be 24 - six years in Aussie....Will this be the year? Will I find happiness? Will I start dreaming n chasing the right things? Will I start caring for the people in my life n atlast learn the true meaning of the word - Gratitude?

Last year has been tumultuous to say the least. Things went oscillating at the extreme ends of the pendulum of life....Weakened resolve, shattered aspirations, cynical n cruel - I dust myself n try again. First u don't succeed!

& da winner is Syderrr....ney!

The Airtrain is not working due to trackwork. Central station looks like something out of the "We don't need no education.." anthem. morbid, depressing, drab, East German....Pot pourri of masses. Kings Cross lives to its reputation....Kiwi bouncer who fails to acknowledge the existence of neighboring suburb. Bangladeshi cabbie who doesn't speak English and insists - West St. is West Ave. "Welcome to Syderrr...ney!

Atlast, Bombay street smart gets smarter 99 - and pulls Luke out of the dark side....Hey, whose his daddy? Bang, we are off for some retail therapy - Oxford Street was scavenged thorough. Got some knick & knacks.

Coffee, with amazing Danish & other desserts (when will Brissi get this)....@ a venue straight out of StyleCity:Sydney. A lot of business seems to be conducted on milk crates and tree stumps in front of Bar Coluzzi, a Victoria Street institution.

Dinner was amazing chit-chat with great fried lamp dumpling....with ladies - ugggggh. The views, views, views.....Only 19 year olds n apparently 35 year olds with disposable incomes.....That's the wide smorgasboard of females on offer. God I love Das Kapitalist.

Drinks @ Hilton to start....N the yeah - u r reading it right - The Wham...With 19 year old central coast gurls...

My hvnz (it sure aint a pickup line down south in Mexico). After 0300, night gets murky, with me reminding every passerby....Queenslander!!!! We have the Origin - Go Lockyer.

No Pizza....Only Crash in the amazing bed. Sleep like a baby...waitin for the AGB (after grog bog session).

The mother of all insults

The suggestion that Marco Materazzi might have insulted Zinédine Zidane's mother during the World Cup final seems justification enough for the head-butt that followed. But why is it that the worst insults in the world are always about your mum?

It was seven minutes before half time. Real Madrid were 2-0 down against already relegated opponents in May 2004, when David Beckham tackled Real Murcia's Luis Garcia. The England captain thought the tackle was clean but the linesman flagged for a foul. Leaping to his feet, the Dagenham-born galáctico unleashed a volley of idiomatic Spanish, calling the official a "hijo de puta" (son of a whore). The referee, Turienzo Alvarez, had no hesitation in producing a red card. But was that the right decision? After all, Beckham's Spanish had been so risible in press conferences hitherto that this sure-footed demonstration of his grasp of Hispanic rudery surely should have won him a round of applause.

The Sun even drew up a list of mother insults that Beckham could deploy if he sought an early bath on future occasions. They included the rather infantile Tu madre tiene un bigote (Your mother has a moustache) and the frankly laborious Anda la puta que te pari (Go back to the prostitute who gave birth to you), but not the one that would surely have got him lynched in the Bernabeu, namely Me cago en la leche que mamaste (I shit in the milk that you suckled from your mother's breast).
In Finland, for example, there is an expression "Äitisi nai poroja!" which means "Your mother copulates with reindeer!" Sweet!

Thus, if indeed Marco Materazzi did impugn Zinédine Zidane's mother as a prostitute or a terrorist or perhaps both (busy woman!) in Sunday's World Cup Final debacle that concluded with Zizou head-butting the Italian's chest, an ancient ritual was being played out.

Right now there is a show on MTV called Yo Momma, popular in the US and the UK, "Yo momma so ugly her mum had to be drunk to breastfeed her", "Yo momma so fat, she's on both sides of the family", "Yo momma so stinky she uses Right Guard and Left Guard".

In Mandarin Chinese, one of the worst insults is Nide muchin shr ega da wukwei (Your mother is a big turtle). It is thought to be particularly insulting to call someone a turtle egg because a turtle does not know its father and turtles are promiscuous. And the disparagement of a rival's mother is a global rhetorical tactic: even in Britain, where one might think such rhetoric lacks force, such terms of abuse as "bastard" (implying that a mother is necessary, but the lack of a known father is shameful) or "son of a bitch" (impugning the rival's mother's sexual integrity) still imply sexist contempt for mothers, even if Britons do not find such terms especially insulting.

Why aren't fathers the butt of insults so much as mothers? Had David Beckham said to the linesman "Tu padre es un gigolo que tiene cópula con una multiplicidad de diversos socios" (Your father is a gigolo who has intercourse with a multitude of different partners), he probably wouldn't have got a red card. Just a baffled look, and applause from those impressed by his command of his second language. "The underlying idea is you're attacking what your rival came out of" . "That's why it's mothers rather than fathers who feature in the more potent insult. Everybody comes from their mother".