May 16 2009 The Carp Goes Visiting

Numerous times I’ve made mention of my neighbor Mr. Buffalo Ass but only made oblique references to the rest of the family. You may notice that I am calling him Mr. now instead of just Buffalo Ass. Well a while back I encountered him-the first time at close range, face to face since Ive been living here for a year- and he actually looked at me and ventured to give me a weak sort of smile that seemed almost like an apology. He knows I know what he and the Carp say about me but he’d never venture, even when in his usual state of inebriation to say those things to my face.  Any ways I got a sort of human feeling off of him that moment so now I’ll call him Mr. Buffalo Ass.

About the Carp. That’s his wife. From approx. 6:30Am every day until 1:00AM she carps. And not just in any ordinary sort of way. She is loud voiced and spews words at a rate of about 500 per minute and at least at 90 decibels. Non Stop. All Day. She’d make a real fine auctioneer.  You can imagine this gets on one’s nerves after a while.

She always starts with an inventory of all the defects of her drunken husband and the amount he drank on the night previously. Then as he starts work, he cooks in their restaurant, she starts on every single thing he does and tells him it is wrong or too slow or something like that. Then she starts on all the defects of the restaurant, their car, their children and then on to the neighbors. Then she stops for about 10 minutes to do puja (prayers) where she says them as loud and fast as she says everything else done to the ringing of a small bell she shakes. She sounds like she’s railing on Lord Shiva when she chants the mantras and prayers. No doubt even he is hanging his head in shame and going looking for a bottle too by the time she gets done with him.

Then it’s back to the husband. He then starts on the neighbors, I think to deflect her attention, and I am one he likes to pick on. I have said so far we, me and Manoj, are responsible for the water shortage, milk shortage, several power outages, screaming fights all night every night (sorry its them not us!), strange food being cooked in our kitchen, upsetting the balance of nature by not being married, and I forget what else. And he doesn’t care if I write about him in my books-he said so! He’ll say whatever he wants. At least he knows I’m a writer!

Well the Carp has nearly driven me to drink a few times as well. (tho I didn’t go there) I just want to say “Take a breath once in a while.”

Anyways the Carp has been gone for three days now. Oh there’s still arguing between Mr. Buffalo Ass and his son-its loud but it’s short and done with, not spurred on from the sidelines for 2 or 3 hours around midnight. She likes to keep the emotion hot as much as possible.  It doesn’t mean that it’s quiet around here either. They’ve been remodeling the restaurant or preparing for painting or something and a lot of shifting of stuff around. Last night they were doing this shifting and sweeping until about 2AM-but at least they( father and son) weren’t arguing about it constantly.

Anyways this afternoon is real quiet and we even got to sleep in this morning til past 8:30 since the Carp wasn’t yelling at her husband or Lord Shiva at a volume resembling a jet plane taking off. I hope she stays away for a good long time. The old man misses her though I can tell. He’s singing all these forlorn love songs. He sings all the time when she isn’t yelling at him and is probably a nice guy. I mean he takes a hell of a lot of abuse and doesn’t turn around and give her a punch in the face like a lot of guys around here would do. Domestic violence is rampant in these parts. Most of the women sort of cower around the men. And most of the men are angry, arrogant, self-righteous assholes.

So maybe I shouldn’t be too hard on the Carp. She’s making up for all those other silent women in Mussoorie.

Note: About the unwanted visitors in previous posts. They showed up. The deal was made (with a little extra “needed” for the guy at the office) and that should be that. I’ll write more once Manoj actually gets his passport and we stash it someplace. We all got off real lucky-in Delhi it costs over 1oo,000Rs to get your passport usually I hear. Ahh the joys of corruption!