DesiOz Day

It’s fitting that one of the best test series in a long time is being played over the respective national days of the two opponents, India and Australia. And whilst the series has exposed some raw emotions on both sides there is more than this linking the way both countries view their national day than is at first obvious.

For India, the significance of Republic Day is real and for most of my Indian friends it seems to be quite raw. Of course it is the day that marks the formation of an Indian Constitution and the day Indians decided to govern themselves. However, images of freedom fighters, Marxist style fists thrust in the air, Gandhi in his dhoti still persist….I think the former, that of the freedom fighters is the first palpable link one can make with the way Australians view their own national day. Whilst Anzac Day in Australia is the pre-eminent occasion for remembering the sacrifices of our soldiers there is without doubt a lingering remembrance of them on Australia Day as well. Pride and remembrance of the fallen is growing in both countries (not always a positive thing I believe when it crosses the line into jingoism) and tomorrow will show this in both countries.

The British Empire too, and its impact on the two nations have a strong resonance on our national days. For India I think it can be a painful remembrance, perhaps one of lost opportunities and subservience followed by immense (and justifiable) pride in the final cutting of the colonial link and subsequent building of the largest independent democracy in the world. For Australia, whilst a massive proportion of the population claim British ancestry, there is still a measure of pride to be drawn from the fact that our first citizens were in fact the people England chose to discard, prisoners shipped in rotting hulks to the great southern land.

Sport, and obviously here I’m talking cricket, also plays a big part of the national day. In Australia, it looks like the Indian team will be teaching the Aussies how to lose consistently. But on beaches all over Australia and anywhere in India that a boy can truss up some stumps, make a bat from fence paling and throw down a few out-swingers mini tests will be played. Little Kumble’s and Hayden’s will compete for the ultimate prize – a Frosty Fruit icypole or a Gulab Jamun.

In Australia it’s definitely a day for celebrating our multicultural society. For the first 150 years of our existence (and I aknowledge that Aboriginals lived on the continent for tens of thousands of years without outside interference before ‘we’ arrived – however there was no notion of a ‘nation state’) we were an Anglo-Saxon nation, then Greeks, Italians and other Eastern Europeans flocked there following World War II. After the Vietnam War Vietnamese and Chinese, and more recently immigrants from the subcontinent and Africa have made their home in Oz and enriched our society to a huge extent. For India, whilst not sharing an immigrant past, the diversity of this country is if not celebrated, certainly present in the realization that so many starkly different cultures and backgrounds make up this massive nation state.

Of course there are many things that set us apart, but now’s not the time to dwell on those. Instead just be proud people. True, we both have problems that we’re grappling with, but we also have a lot to look forward to and we share enough commonalities to make a difference together, both in the region and the world.

Happy Republic Day! Happy Australia Day! And get a Kingfisher/Fosters cocktail into ya...yaar!

Harden the f**k up!

Poofters, pansies, soft cocks, fairies, metrosexuals, pantyhosers…these days there are a myriad of terms to describe the iffeminate amongst the male species. With growing acceptance of homosexuality and a slow but unstoppable requirement for men to be more sensitive in relationships we are moving further away from our pillaging, mutton bone chomping ancestors. Not a bad thing of course. I’m only a little fella and the thought of being banged up by my hairy cousins over a vat of pig fat scares me senseless. But there are limits to the march of manlessness surely?

Last week I went into the local hairdressers for a quick shave and cut. Here in India the hairdressers are amazing. You get a head massage, a shave and a good cut for 10 usd in the more expensive places. But it’s what surrounded me that shocked me. Next to me were not a number of young blokes getting their noggins chopped…oh no…instead the scene before me was something akin to my cousins bridal party getting done up before her wedding.

To my right a man with zucchini slices over his eyes smiled contendedly as a foul mixture was plastered over his face with something that looked like it was once used to mix brick mortar. Next to him a fat young bloke cooed as his attentive masseuse knelt before him massaging the gunk out from between his toes. To my left (and I’m not shitting you here) a guy was getting his underarms trimmed! With the benefit of the mirror I could see the other side of the room was no different. Tweezers, oily fingers, weird coloured moisturizers and gels swished and flicked into a gooey nightmare. AARRRRGGGHHHH!

Hyperventilating from the shock I paid up and got the fuck out of there. What had I just witnessed? Had something happened in the past 25 years that I’d missed? I get my hair cut on average 8 times a year and never had I come across such a display of male preening. It was like watching some weird pre production make up set for the stage version of ‘Manoirs of a Geisha’.

There had to be an explanation and in an effort to find out what was happening to my perceptions of masculinity I asked around with a few friends of friends (I’m pretty sure none of my mates have had this done but then again Johnno does have extremely nice skin).

It turns out that I’ve missed the boat completely. Somewhere around 2003 there was a show called ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’ in the U.S where flannelette wearing men with takeaway food stains on their shirts got showered, shaved, manicured and moisturized until they morphed into David Beckham wannabe’s. The poor blokes dutifully underwent their torture at the hands of a bunch of gay blokes and the message was clear – unless you were groomed and well dressed in this brave new century you weren’t worthy of a girlfriend, boyfriend or many friends at all for that matter.

But the conspiracy has worked. (I’m not sure who’s behind it yet, maybe some strange coupling of the moisturizer companies and Al Qaida). A lot of my male mates now openly admit to using moisturizers on a bi-daily basis. One of them even takes a moisturizer pump to work and squirts his way through the day! Another puts so much shit in his hair that I’m not even sure if it’s his hair or a recently recovered sea bird from some oil spill in the North Sea.

Sure a lot of it has to do with the nature of work these days. We no longer slave away in pits all day to find a few kgs of coal returning home to collapse on the bed. Now we’re ‘marketers’ and ‘traders’ and ‘consultants’ who supposedly need to maintain our looks and fresh image for all those bullshit presentations to people we actually despise. Apparently image is still more important than actual content.

Stuff it I say. I’m going to wear my smelly track pants down to the supermarket without worrying about the disapproving looks. I’m going to listen to the horse races on my 1996 make walkman and yell out in the street when I (some day) win a race. I’m going to spill beer on my chin and not even wipe it off. I’m going to get wrinkles and squint all the time to make them more pronounced. I’m going to….

Shit, it’s 11.30am…better run or I’ll miss my appointment for the Brazilian.