A Life Tied to Joe

All that I knew was that I had to leave that hopeless chaotic place where my teenage life ended at five. It was with bitter disdain I left the place. And for those who were leaving the place with me were the people to be pitied and people who thought almost like me. In the expensive potholed and dreadful city of the democracy I had come for the promised best education. How many of us would ever think of getting into such a college named after a western holy man, and what was distinct was that I was the only one from the entire region. It gave me this sense of superiority that made me feel that I had better and bigger things to achieve in life.

I actually wanted something big, or something which was placed close where others’ was placed.And when I thought about that my kind were out of the scene. Our men were always cliquish and all that they cared for was food and cheap drinks, and the women were had nothing ambitious; they appeared as though they had come out to advance their submissiveness with a city degree or perhaps with an ordinary job.

Over the years what I wanted had grown bigger, I wanted something bigger now. But, like my people, I knew my limits and my wish had to be tied to someone, someone better, someone who knew what ours didn’t know. Who wouldn’t wish for this African safari, or sunbathing on a white sandy beach, or kicking the Alpine snows in, my what my people would call, ‘foreign boots.’You know, at times you get easily get carried away; GUCCI, high-rise buildings and the talks of Joe could be mesmerizing. But Joe’s talks always made me know my place. Joe is Joe, he belonged to what we had fantasised. Our association had heightened my status. But Joe is Joe, he wouldn’t know my people, he wouldn’t look at my people, and I am tied to Joe.

This consciousness that I am tied, and Joe could easily shake me off anytime made me look for my root, something which was always there for me, and at the same time I couldn’t disassociate myself with him. Joe is Joe, and you know what Joe and his kind can do.

Between this belittled me and the little idea of my root something like jealousy has developed or perhaps it is the consciousness that I was flawed.And it is self-contempt. All those years I was attempting to write my history like Joe would, like comparing Joe’s huge Pumpkins with our little ones in my parents’ kitchen garden, or Joe’s tall and Viking-like men with our tiny pot-bellied men who could hardly speak Joe’s language.

In my failure or in my self-contempt I criticize my kind, I laugh at the muddy roads, mock the condition I had left behind, I ridicule the politics of the place. I know not how to reclaim my lost pride, nor I have the answers to all the questions I often ask like thousand others. Joe has made my life barren, and now he has no tales for me.