When I was in my mid-twenties, I first met my longtime friend, Suman Bhatia….who, at the time, was a divorcee/”single parent” (just for the record?…she WAS married when she became pregant with Petite Monsieur Vivek) who was raising her son, Vivek, along with establishing her reputation (i.e…working her ass off) as the best Indian cook in our area (which is chock-a-block with high-tech & high-demands Indians, by the way). I spent many happy days working & playing with her and Vivek (who was about ten when I first met him). We spent a lot of jolly times together over those years.
When I was in my late thirties, I had an unexpected argument with Vivek (who was in college at UNC at the time), and we somehow fell into that stupid, endless (unless someone DOES something about the matter) business of not knowing each other anymore.
When I was in my early fifties (which is to say, last night), I had an email from Vivek….who seems to be able to do what I hadn’t done…which is to simply CONTACT the other person. He’s a wise boy (sorry…but I’ll probably never think of him as anything but a boy, which I hope comes as a compliment). We haven’t spoken to each other in twelve years.
He’s been married a long while…has served in Afghanistan for years, has a poodle he doesn’t seem to know how to housetrain (THAT I can help him with, although I can’t do much about Afghanistan)…..and I hope that he won’t my mind replying publicly, so to speak.
In any case,his email forcefully reminded me, last night, that this isn’t a practice-life….which you get to “do over” once or IF you get around to dealing with some supposed rift or argument.
I took the photograph from which this painting is derived LATE one afternoon…..when Suman had gotten up at 4 am to package food she’d cooked throughout the previous day and night (Indian food is not exactly “simple”), laboriously set up the “food-booth” at Duke, swathed herself in “Exotic” cloths, shoved her son and me and herself into her beat-up cadillac……and drove off to spend the day providing/selling food and “atmosphere” for folks who were actually hungry. Welcome to the life of single-moms who have a restaurant and “do” catering.
I should emphasize that, at that age, I thought it was all incredibly fun. I don’t, however, think any of us (including Vivek) is quite young enough, these days, to regard that sort of work (or at least that MUCH work) as “fun”.
I finished the painting about an hour ago, having started it last night.
For Vivek (advice from Uncle David), go to: