The Official Website of Laremy Lee (李庭辉)
What’s the worst thing you can do to a man?
It’s not to fight him; to break him; to defeat him – we expect that.
“Hail Caesar; those who are about to die salute you!”
It’s to see him as other than he is: as a man with a heart when he only has a body; as a man with only a body when all that he is is a heart – contracting and expanding, year upon year.
To see him as noble when he is base; to see him as false when he is true.
— Huzir Sulaiman, The Weight of Silk on Skin.
So my grandmother turned 83 yesterday. She is a total angry bird.
She looks like an angry bird because she’s not smiling, and she’s not smiling because she seldom smiles.
Why doesn’t she smile often? Because she doesn’t have a full set of teeth.
Now, why she doesn’t get dentures is beyond me, but hey – if she’s happy without false teeth, so am I.
That is: I’m happy for her too. Not that I’m happy without false teeth – but that’s another story for another day.
BECAUSE! The story I wanted to share with everyone is this:
My grandmother celebrated her 83rd birthday yesterday so we all went over to her place for dinner.
Not all of us, mind you – my useless sibling and cousins are either injured, overseas or gainfully employed.
So I had no choice but to sacrifice what little time and freedom I had being unemployed to represent the grandchildren at dinner.
During dinner, my aunts (and possibly, my mother) were yet again proselytising in an attempt to get me to join the weird-ass spiritual/religious thingamajigs they participate in.
I, of course, wasn’t having any of that, so I just carried on eating the carb-fest on my plate a.k.a. Sindhi food.
Upon noticing how I was being harassed unnecessarily, my very awesome angry bird grandmother then started relating a story to the dinner party about how ‘Kamal’ once told everyone at Sindhu House that he didn’t believe in any other god/teacher because the only god/teacher he believed in was his mother.
(OK – perhaps to understand the significance of this statement, you need to read this story.
It may or may not have been the context that was being referred to, but it’ll help to contextualise the role of the mother in Indian [Asian?] culture.)
For the record, I don’t understand Sindhi very well and I needed some translation too – so my grandmother may have been misquoted.
Nevertheless, right after my angry bird grandmother uttered that statement in her angry bird voice, a hush befell the table.
I was, like, “Oh my gosh, Nani – you’re awesome!” and stood up to give her a hug while muttering “Hug for you but none for the aunties.”
She gave a toothy chuckle, and said in Sindhi, right after I sat down, “Pass the papad.”
This is the benchmark. All other heights will be measured from it.
You have known the reference point all along.
You will accept nothing less.