I have lots of things to tell you about Chinnu. Weird name isn’t it? Well, we picked him up from Gundiya (Goon-dee-ya), the tribal village just fifty thousand kilometres away from home. He was so black that it took us just about a hundred and eighty days, three hundred litres of milk, two dozens of thick bristled buffalo scrubs, whitewash, honey, bleaching agents and lots of praying, to scrub him clean and get him the “wheat”ish complexion that he sports now.
He developed a glow after those never ending cleaning sessions and that’s when we thought of the name Chinnu. (Chinna in the local language means gold). Hmm, not quite the golden boy, what do you expect when you have scrubbed clean a piece of charcoal.
He still refuses to believe the fact that he was picked up. I can tell you that a few tribal traits are still inherent. He wakes up every morning making a strange noise, I can assure you that I haven’t heard that in the city, maybe it’s “Good Morning” in tribal language.
When he was a kid, he refused to put even an inch of clothing on him. He roamed freely, pee-pee showing and everything. It was alright when he was that small, but a black grown up man parading around the house in his birthday suit and getting his naked butt at the dinner table was not a pretty picture.
We then drew him charts of Buster, our dog, getting him (it actually) if he did not start wearing shorts; Buster loved crotches. So, that’s how we started to put pieces of clothing on the little one.
Mama was concerned that he wouldn’t fit into the family. Fit he did alright, stick rather, like those disgusting fleas on dogs, or leeches when you are stranded in the forest or maybe something really gross like those green slimy thingss that grow on you long after you are dead. But no, he didn’t wait till we were dead.
So, we have tried to welcome him to our family like we would to a good doggy. What my mother actually wanted was a nice little puppy dog, but no, she had to pick up this scrawny black kid from the nearby tribal village. By the way, the scrawny kid is not scrawny anymore. All I can say is, now he is good competition to, err, lets say the 100th fattest man on the planet.
Sometimes, no, most of the time he is really really annoying. Like I said, some tribal qualities he just can’t shake off his black scrubbed tribal butt; oh, we did miss a spot around there (his butt) actually, and if anyone asked we’d just say that it’s a birthmark.
I guess he is getting used to the city life and living around civilised, educated people. Yeah, he goes to school too. We thought we’d send him to a tribal school, but Mama would hear none of it. At least now the neighbours don’t think that we are an extremely maimed family, with all the sign language, dumb talk and tribal sounds. He finally learnt to speak and understand English.
We are just waiting for the day when a Wolf named Simba will enter into our house to meet Chinnu; it’s fine as long as he thinks that we are not dinner.
Oh and the latest news flash, Chinnu seems to have a mysterious girlfriend. I now regret teaching him how to use the mobile phone, mine to be precise. From the corner of my eye I managed to see some strange looking icons in the message window. I do hope that his girlfriend is not a zulu-speaking, hand-gesturing, strange-icon-sending tribal. One tribal in our family is bad enough.
Since we are a big family everyone is expected to help around the house, including Chinnu; I actually thought he would eventually be awarded all of our chores as well, but Mama played plain deaf to the request. And Chinnu is now excused from doing chores involving electric gadgets. One day Mama told him to freeze the chicken and he ever so naturally put it into the microwave and must have set it to a thousand degrees. An hour later we were just short of calling the fire brigade and also having the open kitchen Mama always wanted. That day for lunch we had stuffed chicken, with innards, anus and all the crap.
Chinnu is our brother. Yes, after being reprimanded repeatedly by Mama for calling him the tribal-boy-we-picked, we finally relented and started telling people that he was indeed our brother. I am surprised no one ever noticed that he did not even remotely resemble anyone in the family. On the contrary people would tell Mama or Dad, “Oh, he looks just like you.”
I used to wonder if he ever missed his tribal days and ways. When he was first brought home, Mama used to put him next to her during the night for fear that we might “accidentally” push him off his bed or asphyxiate with him with the pillow; also because he had to get used to a new place. One night he did the Tarzan cry, bit Mama hard on her hand and started turning around in circles on the bed, on all fours. Probably that was his way of asking for a midnight snack. We thought Mama would send him away after that, but no such luck.
I am actually quite getting used to Chinnu and his weird ways. Maybe home wouldn’t be the same without him. He keeps saying to me, “Omba Bamba Assa Shaava”. I guess its something really sweet in his language.
So, I’ve got this book which translates tribal to English and it means, “Shove a bamboo up your ass!”
Wait till I get my hands on that black-spot tribal ass.
- Kavisha Pinto © 02nd April 2006
No comments:
Post a Comment