Gangstas' Paradise

Amir and Abed turn stereotypes on their heads. They are Muslim and they are Indian, but they appear as if they would have been content as background dancers on Soul Train circa 1992.

Jenna, Jaime and I first met the pair walking to JM on Saturday for an ATI conference. Amir and Abed buzzed by us on Amir’s motorbike, Abed tucked neatly on the back seat. They smiled and lifted their eyebrows as they passed in a blur. “HEE-ll-oooo!” Abed shouted, his voice dragged away by the Doppler Effect. We saw them turn a corner up ahead and thought nothing more of it until a few moments later when we saw them come back around the same curve and speed back towards us.

Amir slowed and halted by us on the curb. The pair looked as if they were on their way to an Akon video. Amir, who is broad-shouldered with a muscular frame, wore his hair heavily gelled in a faux-hawk, his button-down shirt opened at the neck to reveal his hairless chest. Amir was much slighter than his friend, wispy and lean. His baggy jeans and stylish hoodie sweatshirt hung off his body. His hair fell down to his eyes in wet-looking Jeri curls, reminiscent of Rick James.

“Hello!” Amir said. “Where are you from?”

This type of encounter happens about four or five times everyday in Tirur, so none of us were put out. We happily told them we were from America. They asked us all the typical questions: “What are doing here? How long have you been here? What do you think of Kerala?”

“We teach at JM Higher Secondary. We have been here since October. We love Kerala,” we responded patiently.

Jaime poked at Abed’s ear. He smiled abashedly. He was wearing a giant stud in his ear the color of the Jamaican flag with a prominent pot leaf in the center. This kind of iconography is surprisingly common among Indian youth—pot leaves, Bob Marley’s visage, a smoking joint. These are the typical trappings of youth in revolt, regardless of location. (Another all-too-common logo displayed on men’s clothing in India, for some reason, is the Playboy bunny.)

“Nice earring,” Jaime said. Abed smiled.

“Nice to meet you,” Amir concluded, revved his bike, and turned around sharply in the middle of the road. He kicked the clutch and sped off in the direction they had been going before they saw us. We half-expected them to pop a wheelie as they did so.

Two days later, Amir and Abed found me again.

I was walking along a busy street near Tirur’s main bus stand, looking for a store to sell me refill on my mobile phone’s SIM card. (In India, you don’t pay on a plan schedule. Once your minutes run out, you simply buy a small coupon for however many number of minutes you want, type in the card’s code number into your phone and you are re-stocked.)

As I was doing this, I saw Amir and Abed running across the street. Abed’s Jeri curls bounced behind him.

“Hey! Remember us? Remember us?” Amir said, as he reached me. He stuck out his hand and grasped mine firmly. His forearm muscles twitched as he did so. Today, he was wearing another stylish button-down, once again open at the neck, form-fitting jeans, and a pair of retro-looking high top sneakers the color of a mango. Abed was wearing another hoodie sweatshirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, which was understandable since the temperature must have been in the high 80s.

“Yes, of course,” I said. “The guys on the motorcycle.”

“Yes,” they reintroduced themselves and repeated their names when I did not get them the first time.

“Come…come!” Amir said, grabbing my hand. They led me back across the street from where they had come and took me up a flight of stairs. We entered a sparsely decorated clothing store, polished and new-looking. Stacks of jeans, T-shirts, button-downs, hats, and belts lay on shelves along the walls. Loud club music pumped from the store’s hidden stereo system.

“My store!” Amir said proudly. He lifted his arms and spun around, a latter day Bugsy Segal looking down over his Las Vegas Valley.

Four more young men entered as Amir, Abed, and I talked. The tallest (and most simply dressed one, in nothing more than a blank T-shirt and nondescript jeans) introduced himself as Iqbal.

“Hello! Welcome! We just opened. Would you like to look around? Jeans? Caption shirts?” Iqbal led me to a shelf of T-shirts stacked higher than my head. He began taking some down and spreading them out on the glass countertop. Each shirt had a pithy phrase emblazoned boldly on the chest.

I AM DEFINITELY SURE OF MYSELF!

ARE YOU SURE YOU’RE NOT FREE?

MY NAME IS KHAN…AND I AM NOT A TERRORIST!

Iqbal saw me looking questioningly at this last one. The phrase, in bright red lettering, was captioned on top of an electric blue shirt.

“It is a famous line from a movie,” Iqbal said. “Shah Rukh Khan…famous actor?”

T-shirts with captions, I had noticed, were very popular among boys of a certain age and income level in India. From Kolkata to Kerala, I had noticed teenage males strutting around with these shirts that had odd, funny-sounding English phrases on them, some of them unbelievably vulgar. (A shirt I saw a boy in Kolkata wearing said, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU LOOKING AT?) \

I wondered if the boys wearing the shirts knew exactly what they were saying, what message they were sending, or if the fact that they were wearing a shirt with English lettering on it gave them enough social cachet for their liking.

I tried to be polite, as Iqbal laid out shirt after shirt, each one more cringe-worthy than the last. “I think I might be a little old to wear these. Any with no captions?”

“Ah, of course,” Iqbal said, smiling. He went over to another stack of shelves piled high with button-up shirts. They had no writing, but the selection still had me feigning interest. The shirts, placed side by side, gave off the colors of a candy store—bright pink stripes, thick purple swatches, deep hues of maroon and magenta, teal and tope.

“Anything in just…plain white?” I asked hopefully.

“Of course,” Iqbal, ever the salesman, said. He drew out a plain white shirt with pearl snap buttons. But it was a small, about 30 centimeters too small for my upper body.

“Our stock is low right now,” Iqbal said with a sigh. “We had a shipment coming in from Bombay, but it got stolen off the train on the way here.”

“What?” I said. “That’s awful.

He half-smiled. “This is India. Things do not run as smoothly as they may in America.” The other boys grunted and gave sardonic chuckles.

“I have been all over the world,” Iqbal continued. I was beginning to think this was Iqbal’s store, and Amir who had been so proudly presenting it earlier, just worked in it. As did the other boys milling around. Iqbal gave off an air of maturity and savvy to which the others seemed to be striving but had not quite attained. Maybe it was his simple clothing style, not too bombastic, or the quiet, even way he talked, or the way the others huddled around him as he spoke, but Iqbal appeared to be the boss.

“I used to be an accountant,” he said, the clothes on the countertop still laid out but forgotten. “I worked in Djibouti, Lebanon. Those are bad places. India is better, but still not as good as America.”

His store in Tirur had been open a month. I felt keen to help him out.

“Do you have any vests?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

“Not at the moment,” he said apologetically. “But maybe later in the week. Will you come back?”

“This weekend?” I said.

“Of course,” Iqbal said and stuck out his hand to shake. After he did so, the other boys—including Amir and Abed—did the same. They pumped my hand and gave me broad smiles.

“Come back. We’ll be waiting,” Iqbal said as I left.