It was 1986. I had arrived in California with straight cropped hair and a moustache to pursue a Bachelors in engineering. When I got to the dorms and looked around I knew I stood out. It had been seven years since I had last lived in the US and it did feel like a bit of a culture shock.
I’d been assigned to share a room with Richard Chapa, we had both declared that we were non-smokers which we weren’t. I walked in and saw Richard smoking a cigarette and felt an instant sense of relief. I had hidden away
a few packets of Wills Navy Cut in my suitcase so my father wouldn’t find them.
The first few months were kind of a blur. As part of my tuition package, I had to work in the accounts department going over their ledgers. I was able to go through them quite quickly without the use of a calculator. Some of the fondest memories I have of my father are walking with him – I think I was eight – or him holding my hand and doing multiplication tables. I still did terribly at my exams but it did come handy at my work-study program. I remember, in October of that year, a group of us did a long trip to Yosemite. We camped, took short hikes, drank a lot and ate tons of barbequed food. Some amazing friendships were formed on this trip.
After this trip, the dorms became a constant source of parties and late-night drives with Iskan and other Asian friends to have Chinese food in Oakland. These jaunts happened after long nights of binging on beer, cheap wine and vodka. Richard had met Terri by then, and they were inseparable and she would even sleep in our room. (I’ve always wondered: how did they manage on those single beds provided to us?) At one of these drunken parties, I got my ear pierced with a thumbtack by my friend Graham Sproat. I wore a stud in that ear for a while before getting the other one pierced too. Graham used to play the guitar and we became close friends. He taught me to drive in his VW Scirocco at a cemetery in Berkeley. I almost tore his gears while using the stick shift.
I remember Kevin, who lived in the dorms, he was into metal and loved Metallica, Black Sabbath and Slayer and I would often find his door open and he’d be playing his guitar shirtless, lip-syncing the lyrics. We didn’t speak much but he was always a permanent part of our party scenes.
There was Hansoo, who had bought a Porsche 944 and refitted it to look like a 924. We would drive around late nights in the Berkeley Hills listening to the Korean pop singer Cho Yong-pil. He’d also bought himself a 1000cc motorcycle and we would drive around the hills and highways, sometimes clocking 120mph. We were young: we wore no helmets and took a lot of risks.
In the first weeks of being here, I was walking out of my dorm room one afternoon to go to class and ran into Mustafa in the hallway on the third floor of Holy Names College. He was dressed entirely in black. His hair had an angle in the back and the sides were shaved. He has large loops in his ears and wore bangles. His cousins Omar and Marcel were not far behind. Marcel was the youngest of the three and almost childlike and had this amazing innocence. He always carried a can of Aqua Net hairspray in his gym bag. It was a constant process of wash, dry and spray. Omar was tall and bulkier and his hair was longer on one side and he’d walk with his head cocked. They all wore Doc Marten boots. We must have said a brief hello but the friendship grew quickly.
I felt that the instant connection with Mustafa maybe because we came from the same geographical region. Or maybe because we were both brown. I’ve also felt that I was really lost then and needed someone to look up to. It’s harder to remember those particular feelings – they occurred more than thirty years ago.
Soon after meeting them, Omar suggested that if I shaved my moustache I would get a girlfriend. I did listen to him and shaved it off, got a haircut from Erie, a Filipino hairstylist at Panache in Berkeley, who sprayed my hair up where I then had bangs. Erie had this beautiful, bleach-blond ponytail that went down to her butt. She continued styling my hair for years and I’d never ask her to do anything specific. It was left up to her. We’re still friends after more than three decades.
From a wardrobe made up of mostly my father’s tweed suits from the ‘70s, I started wearing only black and got rid of every bit of clothing I had taken with me from India to California. A few weeks later, I met Claudia who attended the same college that I did. She’d never really hang out with Mustafa and the gang instead we’d spend a lot of time with my other friends at the dorms. She and I dated for about three months before we broke up. At this time, it felt like I was leading three separate lives. One with the Iskan group, another with Mustafa with his cousins and those friends and then there was the one for my parents, who knew nothing of what was going on.
Within three months of being in college, I ran out of money and I was too embarrassed to ask my parents for more. Mustafa and his cousins worked at Chez Panisse washing dishes. Their uncle Khalil had first started working there and he had hired them, and in turn, they’d got me hired. This world was completely new to me – working long hours. It was December 1986, drugs were everywhere and everyone seemed to be on something or the other. During slow periods, we would assist the cooks in the kitchen, peeling carrots, cleaning shrimps, or shucking peas. Watching these cooks was such a learning experience and it formed the foundation of my knowledge of cooking. I worked as many shifts as I could. There were days when I would do the morning shift, start at 9 in the morning and finish at 6 in the evening, and then start my night shift finishing at 1 am. Mustafa would pick me up in his VW Rabbit and drive us back to the dorms. When I picked up a triple shift, I’d have to go back again the same morning at nine.
A few years later, I started bussing tables at Chez Panisse and I was grateful for not always feeling grimy and sweaty in the dish room as before. At night, Jondy, who worked the floor, would send us down a couple of pitchers of Sierra Nevada pale ale. I remember Madhur Jaffrey came into the kitchen one time – she was a guest chef there – and I was introduced to her. I was completely covered in food and was very embarrassed to meet her. I did see her many more times in New York later in life, and we spoke about the first time we had met. It was heartwarming that she even remembered it.
Mustafa, his cousins and the rest of the gang used to hang out at Berkeley Square, a club that hosted live bands. We’d spend many of our nights there, listening to what were then obscure bands. Everyone was a familiar face over there, Son Tran ran the club and David was behind the bar. He would make us kamikazes and white Russians. And there was always atleast a six-pack of Mickey’s Big Mouth beer in the trunk of Mustafa’s VW Rabbit. It was malty and gave us one hell of a buzz. Once the bands left, Marcel would deejay. He loved Depeche Mode and he’d play their records often. We would help clean up but also pull out the table-tennis table onto the dance floor and hang back. There were nights we would just sleep there – pulling chairs together to make temporary beds. My first big concert was at a stadium in Berkeley, we saw Echo and the Bunnymen, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Gene loves Jezebel.
Eventually, I dropped out of college. I wasn’t attending classes and had lost interest in continuing my engineering degree besides I had been working long hours at my restaurant job. I moved out of the dorms after the first year, found a room in a German lady’s house on Guido Street. She was a photographer who ran a studio in Oakland. Over here, I lived in one of the rooms in the basement of her house and everyone else who lived there had to go through my room to get into theirs. The room was dark with no light coming through – the landlady would always dress my bed with lace sheets – but I was only there to sleep. It was never a place to host friends.
Tanya – Mustafa’s ex-girlfriend who he had dated through High School had joined Holy Names College. She and I became fast friends – I was his replacement. Though her gestures towards me were overt and obvious, it took me a long time to get the hint. I spoke with Mustafa to see if he was okay with Tanya and I dating. He didn’t mind at all.
She would come over to my rented room and stay the night as she had a roommate back at the dorms. I would have to lock my doors as I didn’t want my landlady to know I was having someone stay over and the other tenants could not get in as there was no other entrance. Eventually, the landlady found out but she said nothing. I’d borrow my old roommate Richard’s white Toyota pickup truck and ferry Tanya between her dorm, classes and my room. I’d never let the engine warm up and it would often stall in the middle of the highway and also did a terrible job of parallel parking. I never got a ticket though. There were nights when Mustafa would give me a ride to Tanya’s parents’ place in Richmond where she went over for the weekends. I’d crawl through the window and leave the same way in the morning and walk back to Mustafa’s house. We dated over a year, and she cheated on me with Nestor, who we met at a party.
I broke up with Tanya on returning from a trip to India, and then I was single for many years. Mustafa seemed to always have a girlfriend and I always tagged along with them. I’d feel like a third wheel but they never did anything to make me feel that way. Our group had grown and we’d often make trips to the Russian River Valley and we would camp out there over weekends.
Mustafa and I would spend the first few years of our friendship hanging out every single day. I’d go to his mother’s house to have amazing, home-cooked Afghani food. Sometimes, I’d spend the night – sharing Mustafa’s bed. We’d become like family and his mother and two sisters felt very much like they were my own. The many memories of this time in my life are fleeting on occasion and at other times, they come rushing back vividly.
I moved to New York in 1992 where I formed new friendships. I kept in touch with my friends from the past but many of these faded over time, with distance. And now, I’m okay with that.
