Pass the Dutchie // Radha S. Menon
One of my best tales that never fails to impress is about my 21st birthday when I met Stevie Wonder. I was one of two background vocalists to singer Dennis Seaton (previously of Musical Youth), whose single was being produced by Wonder at what used to be the old Central Television (Central TV) studio, in a state-of-the-art recording studio, just across the road from the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. It’s the story where Wonder’s young bodyguard played with a small wind-up penis toy, much to the amusement and derision of all, including his boss; and where Wonder’s curly-haired engineer made nice to me, asking me to move to L.A. and be his girlfriend. It was a day that still brings on the warm glow of times gone by. After the day’s work, we hopped on a train to the NEC (National Exhibition Centre) and occupied front row seats at Wonder’s concert. He played a glossy baby grand, sometimes stooping down, his long fingers gliding, pounding or tickling the keys while he balanced upright on his piano bench and starting each song a cappella, without a reference note to guide him; his pitch was perfect and profound. He blew me away. I knew there and then that I was merely a background vocalist. Over the years, I have told this story many times, but I tell it in isolation. I conveniently forget all its fortifications and curtail all context of my life back then. I omit that I had walked two kilometers that day to Central TV from my room at the YWCA at Five Ways, where I had lived for just under a year, unable to pay the deposit required for renting a flat or bedsit. Much of that time remains blank. I was alone and on the brink of dissolution. I went about my daily business, nose to the ground, got three wisdom teeth pulled out, and walked back home along Stratford Road alone, welcoming physical pain and then medication to dull anguish. After three years of fog, ducking and jiving with my black dog, I became focused on planning my death and resolution steadied my shoulders. Hour upon hour, alone, I contemplated the pros and counting the cons: 50 ways to leave your Jaguar—I had a fine body back then, if only I was aware of my power. I immediately ruled out an obvious nightlife cocktail, you never can be sure how strongly a body and/or spirit may resist self-destruction, and always risk a chance of waking up with a tube down your gob, half-naked, looking like shit, smelling like shit and most likely, incubating a superbug from hospital properties. The mode of self-obliteration had to be swift and sure, like the inevitable death of desire in long-term relationships. After much rumination, it was a toss-up: should I leap in the path of a roaring cross-country train? Or jump from a tall tower? I chose the latter because it was less messy. I didn’t want my body parts used as a jigsaw puzzle for identification. And what gardener wants a severed hand sprouting from their prize-winning rose bush? I’m was a considerate sod, but I certainly didn’t want to crawl off somewhere secluded to die, like our non-human animal friends do; I didn’t want to be found a dirty rotten carcass, like some crime show at prime time. No, I would jump to my death. It was settled, and I began to fine-tune my plan.I was a sick puppy, but I had no clue. It was another time, another place. Mental health or grief counselling? Not where I’m from. I had lost my mother, my brothers, and my home just three days before my 20th birthday. My place at university was never claimed, I couch surfed for a month trying to evade an obsessive ex-boyfriend, it was a downward spiral until I hit rock bottom. Lying in the dark, on the floor of my housing co-op flat, red light from the window of the girl above, flooding floorboards I had painted black, I considered every detail and as all the pieces slotted into place: a deathly calm descended. I was ready. Needless to say, I didn’t jump from the Rotunda back then or at any other time, nor am I likely to go that way again. But I didn’t get away clear and clean. Hopelessness clings like a tick on a shaggy dog and sometimes that black dog wags his tail at me, wanting to cavort and play within mostly erased banks of memory. He’s a familiar friend and having always been more in tune with non-human animals, it’s easy to succumb to his comfortable lure. Over the years, I developed strategies to combat depression. I begin with telling myself it’s all an illusion—all of it, one great big, painful illusion. Time doesn’t separate us, nor does sickness rend us apart; we are all connected. At times, the yogi in me struggles to breathe, I crack and crumble, an ugly mess, regurgitated dog food on a tile floor. That’s when I bring out the big guns: Bob Marley tunes and weekly religious ceremonies on the dance floor: shaking my brown bootie like there’s no tomorrow, like going to the mandir. I am released, re-grounded and free … for now.When I was a girl, my mum and I drank chai together and she would stir up a kettle of longing. Lovingly rebuilding her ideal childhood in Tanzania, even the hard times when her father died young and her mother was swindled out of house and home, their perfect lives suddenly crumpling. Mum’s older sisters had to forgo medical school in Delhi, after working so hard to get places, they found jobs while my mum took care of six younger siblings. It was a joyous childhood that Mum conjured over chai and samosas. What need did this weekly sojourn fulfill? Why do we yearn for days gone by? I am certain that if asked confidentially, my mother would have said that life in Dodoma with her parents and 11 siblings, despite the tragedy and turmoil, were the happiest days of her life. It seems we forget pain in favour of solace, as easily as we erase the pain of childbirth and continue birthing babies. As we build our own narratives, nostalgia can feed it, at times indulgently and leave us free to cherry pick or “pass de dutchie ’pon the lef’ hand side.” Nostalgia is a bittersweet drink beside a tepid pool; Fats Navarro’s muted horn brings it best.
Recipient of Hamilton City Theatre Award 2016, animal fanatic Radha S. Menon began performing in British theatre and television in her youth. Her plays have been produced for many theatre festivals in Canada and the U.K. Winner of Toronto Fringe New Play Contest 2015 Rukmini’s Gold also scooped the Hamilton Fringe Critics Choice Award and opens at MT Space Theatre in their 2018/19 season. Radha continues her love affair with film as production designer for art house and indie films such as multiple award winner, Nayan & the Evil Eye directed by Shaleen Sangha, for which Radha received the Design Award at Here Be Dragons Int. Film Festival (2015). In addition, Menon is an arts educator, founder of Red Betty Theatre and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from University of Guelph. After a long gestation, her play Ganga’s Ganja, finalist of Herman Voaden Playwriting contest 2013 headlined Storefront Theatre’s inaugural Feminist Fuck It Festival this spring with rave reviews.
