Brown Baby

by Nikesh Shukla

  My hunger, meanwhile, is driving me crazy. I cannot wait until you and your mum and your sister are in bed because I have two chocolate bars in my bag. I can wash them down with a beer. I can then, if the feeling is right, sneak out to the shop and get some crisps. Or I could just make some toast. I know how to angle the appliance out of the window so it doesn’t make the house smell.

  But then a cursory scan of the cupboards while I’m making you dinner brings me to your pea snacks; salt and vinegar but they’ll have to do. My stomach cannot be sated. My mood, altered momentarily by the food, requires more. That feeling of never feeling full. My stomach may feel full but something else within me is empty.

  I stare at myself in the mirror. I download apps to lie to on days when I wash down dinner with two chocolate bars and then make some toast and then eat my children’s snacks. I weigh myself the morning after a good day. Everything is designed to let me slip. I stare at my stomach. It stomachs out more than my boobs. I look at my shape in profile, the back rounding of my bottom, the front rounding of my stomach and the stabbing peaks of my boobs. I look at how my T-shirts now plateau off the protusion of my nipples, forming a slope outwards towards the curve of my stomach. I look at how the increasing grey in my beard traces the contours of my second chin. I look at new skin tags appearing on my neck. I stare at the dark circles under my eyes.

  Every day I wake up, I sit up in bed and face myself in the mirror. Hunched and in my pants, I look up at my boobs and then how my stomach looks like a pillow. The huge plucked turkeys that are my thighs. I look at the bags under my eyes. And slowly I stand up, to go and get you and face the day.

  Your mum repeats a story a nursery worker told her. You and your friend talking about me.

  ‘My daddy is very big,’ you say.

  ‘I think your daddy is handsome,’ your friend tells you.

  ‘My daddy is too big,’ you reply, laughing. ‘His tummy is my pillow.’

  ‘Your daddy’s tummy is your pillow,’ your friend chants back.

  Fat-shamed by you, Ganga, my own daughter.

  But I know the truth. I can measure my depression by what goes into my mouth. I can measure the inertia and boredom and drudgery of being a parent by how many snacks I am sneaking. I can see how happy I am currently in the usage of my apps.

  On mornings where I’m the proverbial man in the mirror asking himself to make a change, I’m all over my weight management apps, right down to the measurement of portions, and the timings entered and not choosing the ‘homemade’ option with the fewest calories.

  By the afternoon, if I’ve managed to stave off hunger, I’ll put in my lunch, and hey, I didn’t chase the morning with a doughnut, I can get what I want.

  By the time I’m making dinner while your mum does bedtime, I’m eating as I go, making myself a sandwich to eat while I make a curry, or eating oat cakes with cheese while I cook up fajitas.

  By then, I’ve given up on the calorie counter.

  These days, the food plasters over the depression. The days I am the happiest are the days I’m not hungry. I have to ensure I’m never hungry.

  It’s not even a question of how my body looks. It’s more about me addressing the unhappiness that has caused it. How my body looks is in direct correlation. I can’t fix the outside until my insides are okay. How do you fix your insides? When you’ve replaced loss with something else?

  Parenting is boring most of the time. Establishing a routine is critical to your success. It’s also so fucking dull, mate. Sure, the things I will take with me into the next life are those special moments I’ve spent with you, Ganga, like when you nailed cycling on a two-wheeler or that amazing holiday where you picked up a crab and popped it into the sea because you were worried about someone stepping on it or your birthday at the city farm or lazy Sundays in the garden. That’s the trick of memory. It’s more than just what we do when we grieve. It’s how we move forward. We retain the good stuff. Because otherwise we would be undone constantly by the reality of our boredom. How there’s only so much Netflix I can watch before I want to scream, run out of the house barefoot, and go feral in the park. Parenting is like sitting incredibly still on a long car journey knowing you can’t ask ‘are we nearly there yet?’ because the person driving will lose their shit at you. Because, in the grand scheme of children’s lives, you only left the house five minutes ago.

  I wish I treated my body with kindness in these dark moments of inertia. I wish I was better at using the evenings to do yoga, weights, play board games, computer games, have incredible conversations, but by the time you’ve gone to bed, all I want to do is eat.

  We’re walking down the street one day when we stop for empanadas. We step into the shop to buy some. The man behind the counter knows me well and puts two in a bag for me, ready, they are my secret ‘popping to the shops’ snack. We buy enough for the whole family, and an extra one for me later. On leaving, I hand you one and you bite into it, making the overly dramatic mmmmm sound we’ve taught you to when something is delicious.

  ‘Do empanadas have sugar in them?’ you ask when you’ve finished yours and clapped away finger-crumbs.

  ‘Yes, probably,’ I say, unsure. ‘A little bit in the pastry.’

  ‘Oh,’ you say. Dejected. Like you’d just found a suitable delicious replacement for chocolate cake and were immediately told it was laced with arsenic.

  ‘Only a little bit,’ I tell you.

  ‘Sugar is bad for you.’

  I bend down and lean my back against a shop front. I put a hand on your shoulder and finish eating my empanada. You have finished yours.

  I get the extra one I bought for myself for much later when I need fuel and I break it in half, handing it to you.

  ‘If it was bad, I wouldn’t give it to you, my love,’ I say. ‘Food is one of the biggest pleasures our lives can give us. Because things will come and go, friends will come and go, but food will always be there. And we have to enjoy it. Now, some food we have to enjoy every now and then, like cake and empanadas. As a treat. And some food we eat every day and we think is delicious, like rotlis and shaak and pasta and toast and vegetables and sausages and broccoli, right?’

  You nod.

  ‘Food can make us feel like we’re at home,’ I tell you. ‘Food is home. I don’t want you to worry about sugar. I don’t want you to worry about food at all. We will make sure that everything you eat is good for you or a treat or delicious. Sometimes we will make you try new things. Sometimes you won’t like it. That’s okay. As long as you try. Okay?’

  You nod and bite into the empanada.

  ‘I don’t like the meat one,’ you say. ‘I like cheese.’

  ‘Well done for trying it,’ I say. I hold my hand out, expecting you to give me back the half of my extra secret empanada. But you carry on eating it.

  ‘I thought you didn’t like it,’ I say.

  ‘I changed my mind,’ you reply. ‘I do like it.’

  We start walking again. I finish my half of the secret empanada and grip your hand tightly. I catch sight of myself in the window of a shop as we pass.

  My body shape may not be what it was. I may not ever look like my nineteen-year-old self and I certainly may feel unhappy and sad and that may be causing me to overeat in secret, but I know that it’ll pass because you’re sitting right next to me, now, and with our bellies full of good food we can do anything.

  Overeating in secret may be responsible for fleeting moments of being free of grief, happy, home, settled, okay with everything, but maybe I too need to moderate myself. Because eating won’t bring my mum back.

  I bend down and kiss the top of your head.

  ‘Can we have an ice cream?’ you ask. ‘Please,’ you add hastily.

  I smile and shake my head and we keep walking. I really want one. It’s best that we don’t.

  ‘It’ll spoil your lunch,’ I say, knowing that my food grief will ebb and flow my entire life. All I can do with you is help you to make healthy
choices, not be a fussy eater and find pleasure in food, and not only comfort.

  ‘Did you always want to have children?’ you ask me.

  I’m not sure how to answer the question. I never planned to have children. I never was particularly bothered about having children. I wasn’t opposed to the idea. I just couldn’t think of any reasons why I would want to introduce an element into my life that would mean I couldn’t go to the pub when I wanted, go to any gig I wanted, pursue any career I wanted, regardless of the salary, eat what I wanted and when, smoke fags openly, listen to Kano really fucking loudly, wake up late, sleep erratically, sometimes not wash my hands after a wee (don’t judge me; you’re also guilty), pick and choose family events I wanted to engage with, drink irresponsibly, be reckless, give myself to a higher purpose and that higher purpose be my happiness.

  Why on earth would I want to ruin that idyllic lifestyle?

  I was hardly hedonistic, but I liked having the option.

  I ensured I ate my five-a-day, but so what if Hula Hoops and a Lucozade was the hangover cure of choice?

  And then you came along and disrupted everything.

  There are compelling reasons right now, especially, not to have children. There’s the failing government and its inability to care for those in society not already privileged and wealthy, from birth until death. There’s the personal cost, both emotional and financial. There’s also the environmental impact of contributing to overpopulation. There’s the years of consuming wet wipes and nappies, consigning them to landfill, the endless piles of discarded food, the milk. So much cows’ milk. I’ve never seen so much milk. At current rates of growth we’re going to get to almost 10 billion by 2050, according to the UN. That’s unsustainable for the planet in so many ways. But as George Monbiot says, it’s misleading to think about the population crisis in simplistic human numbers. We have to think about our expanding population in terms of the current resources they will need, and radically rethink what resources our human numbers need, rather than what we grossly overproduce for them. He says, ‘Human numbers are rising at roughly 1.2% a year, while livestock numbers are rising at around 2.4% a year. By 2050 the world’s living systems will have to support about 120m tonnes of extra humans, and 400m tonnes of extra farm animals.’

  So to bring you into a world pitted against you, through the environment, through big businesses’ stranglehold on our consumption, through the reality of our inability to coexist in acknowledgement of the things that unite us and the things that make us different, it may seem like a stupid or cruel thing I’ve done to bring you into this world.

  I remember walking into the green room of the South Bank Centre, about to do a panel for young people about how they can change the world and one person can make a difference. I really wanted to impart to everyone a sense of playing their part in our collective responsibility to make the world a much better place than it is. A friend of ours, Josie, phoned me, in tears.

  She had recently had her baby and was in the throes of sleep deprivation and worry that I knew so well. I wondered if she was calling to say hi or have a fellow parent to moan at because sometimes you need problem solvers and sometimes you just need someone to shut the fuck up and listen and go, ‘yeah, fucking hell, that sucks, you’re right, my god, yeah . . . no, you’re right . . . you shouldn’t feel bad, not at all . . .’ or whatever.

  ‘I’m feeling so guilty today,’ Josie said. ‘I feel so awful and guilty and selfish for bringing a child into the world knowing that we’re heading for absolute climate crisis soon. I don’t know what to do or how to feel about it. Why did we do this? We’re ruining the planet. For them. And we could have saved the planet for others by not having them.’

  I faltered. I didn’t know how to do either thing. I didn’t know how to troubleshoot this macro problem and I didn’t feel like saying ‘yeah, fucking hell, that sucks, you’re right, my god, yeah . . . no, you’re right . . . you shouldn’t feel bad, not at all . . .’

  I was swiftly ushered onto the stage, and I sat there, next to your auntie Bridget and a couple of other writers, panicking, haunted by Josie’s freak-out about the world. What had I done? How on earth could I prepare you for the state we’re leaving the planet in? How could I ensure that those who deny this is even happening don’t prevail? What could I do to ensure that your futures are secured and that you don’t feel like you shouldn’t have been brought into this world in the first place.

  ‘Nikesh,’ Bridget asked. ‘This book deals with themes that are very now. How do you ensure you’re communicating these big ideas to the intended audience?’

  I snapped out of my panic, focusing on Bridget, and the packed house in front of us.

  ‘I . . .’ I stuttered.

  There’s always that moment in a television show, when the writers really like to ram the symbolism home: one of the main characters is having a tense relationship moment. It’s complicated. Maybe they’ve just broken up but the main character hasn’t accepted it. Maybe they’ve only just broken up. The character ends up in a diner. A salt of the earth place where they can reconnect with themselves. They sit at a table. In a daze. What is my next move? they’re thinking. Who am I? What happened to us?

  The waiter or waitress approaches and pours them coffee.

  ‘Are you alone?’ they ask.

  Snap back to me, onstage, at the Royal Festival Hall, being asked a question that pricks at my internal monologue.

  ‘I don’t know . . . the world’s fucked. Can I swear?’

  I talked about how one person can make a difference and we all have a collective responsibility, and there’s a part to play for each of us. I wanted the audience, largely young people, to leave feeling inspired and motivated to keep making the world better, keep remoulding it to better fit their generation. But I didn’t believe any of it. I was mentally making a list of what to pack, what to stock up on and where to seek refuge when the climate change wars happen.

  Your mum and I have often played this game. Where would we go to wait for the end of the world? Playing glib games sometimes feels like the only way to deal with such a serious subject that makes you feel utterly powerless.

  Obviously, she and I discuss, we can’t pick a beach, because the rising sea levels will wipe us out pretty soon. But we need somewhere water-based. Because as a family we love playing in the water, and can while away the days waiting for the apocalypse lounging by a body of the wet stuff. Maybe a mountain reservoir. But I’m terrified of heights. Is there a mountain that I can be blindfolded for our journey up into the clouds, only to have unveiled a hidden idyll, a reservoir with an idyllic beach, hundreds of metres in the sky, free from the perils of coastal erosion.

  We’ll need carpentry skills. Maybe a log cabin. Would a log cabin be useful in increasingly inclement weather? Is inclement being kind to catastrophic rain storms? Is rain storm increase on the cards with climate change? Won’t it be drought? Endless drought? If it’s constantly raining, do we want to live in a house of wood? I’m only really going off of the cinematic universe of Mad Max. A log cabin would be fine in Mad Max conditions.

  I’d need to stock up on the spice tin. Ensure we have plenty of salt, cumin, coriander, garam masala and chilli powder. Maybe the ability to grow them. And mooli seeds? Will we all be eating mooli and jackfruit now? Well, now that hipsters are passing off a Gujarati vegetarian diet as hipster food and adequate meat replacement, we’ll have lots of jackfruit and mooli at our disposal.

  And friends around us. Which of our friends and their children do I not mind staring down the end of humanity with? What books will I take? I wish I hadn’t got rid of all my outdated media like CDs and DVDs because the internet won’t work anymore and so streaming films and music to while away the time won’t be an option.

  Will it be a miserable time? Or will we boss it Swiss Family Robinson style? And is all of this, designed to preserve the family in time of crisis, the right thing to do? Will that be how we rebuild the world? By becomin
g outdoorsy survivalists? Living off pulled jackfruit and cans of refried beans?

  Recently I was thinking about the Italian film Life Is Beautiful, where a father and son, separated from their wife/mother, are sent to a concentration camp, as Nazis arrive in Italy. In the camp, the father, Guido, hides their true situation from his son. Guido explains to his son, Giosué, that the camp is a complicated game in which he must perform the tasks Guido gives him. Each of the tasks will earn them points and whoever gets to one thousand points first will win a tank. He tells him that if he cries, complains that he wants his mother, or says that he is hungry, he will lose points, while quiet boys who hide from the camp guards earn extra points. He maintains the game for a large part of the film and we, as the viewer, are drawn into a tense and anxious, and woefully sad, film about a father doing everything he can to shield his child from the horrors of war. We watch as he goes to increasingly desperate lengths to keep his child in the dark, all the while dealing with camp officers and other inmates and his own sense of doom, depression and anxiety for his wife.

  I try to imagine myself in that situation. I don’t know if it takes more strength to tell the truth or to keep up a pretence.

  I’m not for one second comparing life in a concentration camp to climate change. I guess, all I’m doing is interrogating what I would do in similar situations, faced with the utter depths of human evil, whether I would tell you the truth or not. Whether I should prepare you or shield you. Are both achievable? It keeps me up at night. It catches me unawares as I walk around, as I go to the toilet, make a coffee, sit quietly in meetings that are longer than thirty minutes or let my mind drift while watching the news.

  There is a school of thought that insists you must tell your children the truth. The more I navigate life, the more I realize that the majority of our day-to-day frustrations with each other and our situations and things around us are to do with poor expectation management. Either how we manage our own expectations or how those who wield more power than us manage our expectations.