(Not) Growing Up With MJ

There are some of us who spend most of their lives in an alternative world. I’m 26, I play the piano for sustenance and work as a doctor for pocket money. And today I feel an essential loss from this ‘real’ world and my own ideal one. 

When I was 12, I fell in love for the first time, it started when I nicked my Dad’s Off the Wall cassette and played it in re-run over and over. Then I bought what was probably my first tapeever (with money saved from choc bar fasting), Thriller. It was a monkey-ride thereafter, my brother and I,11 and 12, respectively, we played Michael’s music during monopoly and table tennis; we spent hours deciphering what he actually said (it’s almost as tricky as working out Beethoven sonatas sometimes, trying to figure out what Michael’s saying) and singing his songs. 

Then I was Joint Head of our little MJJGCF (Michael Joseph Jackson Greatest Crazy Fans… for like anything more fanciful!) Club, six silly girls, we’d have sleepovers, and pretend to go to sleep when parents turned out the lights, only we’d giggle and tickle and then when we decided the time was right (Yes, Dr. Vohra you always knew when we hit the fridge and finished all the leftover chocolate cake and ice cream, just go along with me here please), we’d pull out our MJ videotapes with screaming girls and the unreal dancing and the childlike voice and the black trousers that always seemed like his housekeeper had shrunken them in the wash (needless to say we all had similar pairs). 

We had an enormous collection of newspaper articles, magazine photos, interviews, and all kinds of memorabilia. It was about this time that Michael was supposed to have come to Delhi (of course the venue was later changed toMumbai), I remember losing my appetite entirely, for days, in sheer excitement at the prospect of going for one of his concerts.

Subsequently my father in his usual, incredibly subtle fashion quashed all my hopes with a thunderingdissonance: "A music concert is a collection of drug addicts, molesters and the general waste products of society, there is no way I will take you or let you go with anyone else!" I saw Babyshambles in concert a while back, from the moshpit, with my hundred pound body mashed between hundreds of perspiring enormous drunken British boys, where breathing was an entire achievement in itself…. I think I’m even with my Dadnow!

It was a strange time in my life, that hem where childhood and puberty are inclined to mingle. As I began by saying, there’s only a very very tiny part of me that visibly walks through the day, drives her car, goes to work, says the appropriate things,while the rest of me -- my true self? -- is usually lost in space, dreams and fairytales, and so ‘twas thentoo. Back then I retreated into a fantasy world where I was in Michael’s Neverland sharing ice cream and kisses and songs and love. 

I have never outgrown this childlike love, it may not always be the same world on top of the Faraway Tree, but there’s always some world waiting for me, and I feel a very strong kinship with Michael who defiantly never did grow up. Over the years there has been so much dirt and media gossip and so much has been said and declared, yet this is not the Michael I know or am connected with. To me Michael and his music were there when I was sad, when my parents fought, when growing up seemed like a pain (at some point I think I stopped trying!), mellowing with me, understanding me and never doubting or questioning me. 

I ache most terribly when I think that there must be hundreds and thousands like me and that perhaps Michael himself was all alone when his time called. It’s palpably odd how people you’ve never met, never even shared a cup of coffee with,can sometimes be so utterly a part of you that you don’t even think about it till the cord in this life is severed. 

I’ve put Man in the Mirror on replay. 

I think we all should.

I'm starting with the man in the mirror
I'm asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make a change

Dr. Rachana Deb is Senior Research Fellow & Editorial Assistant (TropicalGastroenterology), Department of Gastroenterology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences