Missed Translations - Sopan Deb Page 0,2
difference meant he was separated from our family dynamic during my coming of age. But there was a deep void in the relationship with my parents, a pervasive sense of unhappiness that reigned over the home.
My father, an engineer by trade, was mild-mannered and rigid about planning and finances, while also being quite hapless (something I’ve inherited) and conspicuously distant from my brother and me. My mother, meanwhile, was impulsive (something else I’ve inherited) and stern. She was the disciplinarian. The personality contrasts were stark: My mother was a social creature who loved gabbing on the phone and taking in pop culture. My father was a nerd who once tried to memorize the periodic table.
But more important than mere personality contrasts was the irreparable schism between them that existed long before I did. It was as if there was an invisible hand that had guided the two least compatible people in the world toward each other. And since the marriage was arranged, my parents couldn’t swerve to avoid it. By the time I came along, their distaste for each other was ingrained into the fabric of the household.
The only thing that united them was a genuine pride in being Bengali. It was important to them, but, ironically, it was what I resented most. It was being Bengali that forced these two mismatched souls together, and I looked to escape them at every second. We all tried, in our own way, to make it work, but we were oil, vinegar, and gasoline.
Over time, I learned how to turn my personal trauma into light quips and punchlines. The real stuff, though? That was a little too dark for the Comic Strip.
When I first started exploring comedy seriously, I was working as an assistant producer on an NBC newsmagazine called Rock Center with Brian Williams, soon after graduating from Boston University. If you never watched it, don’t worry, nobody else did either. It was canceled in less than two years. I was bored there, a young journalist who wasn’t given much to do. I also wasn’t particularly liked by my higher-ups. If I was to guess, the bosses thought my gregarious personality meant I didn’t take my job seriously. Read another way: They found me annoying. I don’t blame them. I’ve spent all day with me, and I don’t recommend it.
To make matters worse, I was lonely. My college girlfriend, Michelle, had recently dumped me. She was someone I thought I might marry one day, a woman who was smart and enterprising but, more than anything, showed a degree of selflessness of which many humans aren’t capable. I should’ve realized that she felt differently when she broke up with me over Gchat. If not then, I definitely should’ve taken the hint after the two subsequent breakups, including a final one through an email as she was volunteering at an orphanage in Uganda. It was a brilliant move on her part: She broke up with me in a terrible way and still held the moral high ground.
What do sad people do? Some folks see a therapist. Mine was named Jerome, and he was well into his eighties. He had a deep and solemn baritone voice that sounded like James Earl Jones telling a bedtime story. “Soopppaaann. Many people are uncomfortable being alone because theyyyyy were always alone as chilllldren.”
Jerome meant well. But during one particularly emotional session when I was pouring out the innards of my soul, admitting that I felt isolated and nervous about not being able to find love, I looked up.
He had fallen asleep.
Come on, man. Jerome had one job. The minimum baseline for a therapist is to stay awake while getting paid two hundred dollars an hour. And besides, he was the one with the bedtime voice. I’m the one who should’ve been sleeping. For five minutes, I sat there confused, wallowing in my inability to date coherently and keep my therapist entertained. I had bombed in front of my own therapist!
Yet I didn’t bother finding a new one. I kept seeing Jerome. What does that say about me? (Jerome never could figure it out either.)
You’re still awake, right?
Great.
What do other sad people do? Aside from writing Dashboard Confessional songs, some become comedians. Or try to become comedians, which is what I did. (I should note here: Plenty of happy people become comedians too.)
I started with an improv class at the Magnet Theater in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan and instantly fell in love with it. Improv is about creating