Take the last month or so. Today is Parsi New Year. Last week was the Maharashtrian New Year and a fortnight before that was the Chinese New Year. So many New Years, so many grand occasions, so many large lavish celebrations that it is abundantly clear India just can’t afford to be poor.
Despite all this pomp and wonder, unbelievably even Hindustan has its inadequacies and shortcomings. For example, in India pedestrians haven’t ever heard of the word “pavement”. Polka dot cloth is more or less extinct, and the Opera House in Marine Lines hasn’t housed an opera of any sort in the last 50 years.
Out of all these there is one shortcoming that is affecting me on a more personal level. By now I’m sure you have guessed it. Kung Fu. Yes Kung Fu or more likely the lack of Kung Fu.
It all started a few days ago when my seven-year-old Mikhaail and my allegedly three-year-old Maya watched Game of Death for the 37th time. As usual, of course, we can only watch the same when the person I’m married to (in some cultures referred to as one’s wife) goes out of town. She, for some inexplicable, irrational, reasoning doesn’t approve of movies which have the word “death” in their title. Apparently she conveniently missed the little fact that the same title also had the word “game” in it as well. I mean, if your going to give footage to “death”, you must also give equal footage to “game”. The wife furthermore is against violence or so she says. Keep in mind this is the same woman who routinely punches, throws ashtrays and kicks me in the groin. A month ago she let the kids watch Bambi. Bambi, folks, is a movie where the protagonist dies in the end. I repeat, dies in the end. In other words, there is death in the film and on the other hand, the word “game” is not present to offset this. When I tried to explain that Kung Fu was a way of life, she wanted me to put the boy in a karate class.
When will the world wake upto the realisation that Kung Fu and karate have nothing to do with one another. They are not friends. Not even acquaintances.
Karate has men in oversized white bathrobes breathing in and out loudly. Kung Fu has Bruce Lee. And therein lies the difference. There is only one Bruce Lee. Though the Australian speedster Brett Lee may be a distant nephew.
My children and I realise the importance of Bruce Lee to civilisation in general. We collectively rank him above the pyramids of Egypt, and on par with the Taj Mahal. Unfortunately, my wife does not. One day in the great Shaolin Temple in the sky she will have a lot of answering to do. Meanwhile, India’s, and more specifically Mumbai’s, inadequacies in Kung Fu operations has rendered me helpless.
The kids are bursting with questions such as “Who was Bruce Lee’s father?” “How far is the closest Shaolin Temple and do they have air-conditioning?” “Do we have a family nunchaku?” “When can we learn the one-inch punch?” And the all important, “Did Bruce Lee ever eat a veg thali?”
Sadly, folks, I am unable to cope with these questions and am soliciting help from you, the reader, and more importantly you the reader’s influential friend who doesn’t read.
If you know where the three of us can do a Kung Fu course (when the person I’m married to is out of town, of course), please don’t hesitate to write to us, please.
Till then let’s keep quiet about our great country’s inadequacies and wishing all, both Parsis and non-Parsis, Happy Parsi New Year.
Or, as Bruce Lee would have put it, “Waang chou oooheyaahaa”.
By Cyrus Broacha
Links:
[1] http://archive.asianage.com/content/cyrus-broacha
