Ganya and Ganesha
My husband Emo and I both belong to the generation for whom Corecom was a shrine – a sort of paradise you weren't worthy to set foot in. Many years have passed since then, but whenever we travel to a "rich Western" country, we always manage to show that we're still in the grip of the "Corecom complex".
We work the complex off in diametrically opposite ways, though.
Me – by paying for everything with dignity and leaving monstrous tips with the last money on my card. Let the Americans we pass in the street and will never see again know that we Bulgarians have our dignity and our standard of living too. I challenge them with a brazen glint in my eye as I leave the tips – never mind that afterwards there'll be nothing left for food. But I'm a true heir of Aleko Konstantinov and it matters to me not to make a fool of myself. Recently I came across his feuilleton "Happy New Year" (I recommend that everyone reads it) – well, I'm its main character. When Aleko was describing himself, he was describing me.
My husband is the opposite. He couldn't care less what some stranger thinks of him. The only thing he cares about is how cheaply we got away with the trip in question. Fine, so it doesn't sound quite so bad, I'll replace "got away cheaply" with "saved".
This thrifty attitude came out especially strongly while we were in Manhattan about 10 years ago. During our two-week stay there we nearly drowned in a daily deluge, even though it was June. The rain came with strong wind, cold and scowling skies. Our tourist goal shifted from having a nice time outdoors to managing to push through each next day somewhere dry, warm and, of course, cheap.
After we'd killed 5-6 days in the cheap electronics shops that America is full of, and another 2-3 days in shops selling marked-down clothes from old collections, places like "Ross", Emo and I start running out of ideas for killing time in Manhattan. We try to get into the MET (the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York), not because we're all that thrilled about art, but because a friend of mine – an Israeli – told me that although the official entrance there is 25 dollars a person, we could tell them we'd decided to pay less and they'd let us in for whatever we paid. He'd read it somewhere.
Since I know Israelis know a thing or two about money, we take my friend's words on blind faith and spend 2 hours rowing with the woman at the ticket desk, who won't let the two of us in for 5 dollars in total (that's what Emo decided) instead of the standard 50, unless we show her proof of address. Blatant discrimination, but just in case I connect to the museum's Wi-Fi to check the terms after all, and I stumble upon the truth https://engage.metmuseum.org/admission. Which is that we can decide how much to pay only if we're residents of New York, New Jersey or Connecticut. Total defeat.
We'll have to sound the retreat and look for another dry spot for the day. Just before we leave, though, Fortune gives us one more chance. A girl hands us some leaflets and invites us to take part in a very interesting game – a raffle. In honour of some day against racial discrimination, we could win a free visit to the African American Museum. All we have to do, after today's museum visit, is prove that we stand in solidarity with Black people by showing that we're equal to them in some respect. Any respect at all – and this equality has to be inspired by some exhibit in the museum – be it a painting from the time of slavery, be it a statue, be it some other artefact. And then we'll get free passes to the African American Museum, where we can kill tomorrow somewhere warm and dry.
Emo and I exchange glances – if we pay 50 dollars now, there's a chance that tomorrow we'll sit somewhere warm all day in the African American museum. We'll still come out ahead – 12.50 a day per person. Right, about turn.
We join the museum queue again. At this unexpected manoeuvre of ours, the security guards, who until now were lazily leaning against the museum walls, straighten up a bit, and one of them openly heads for the ticket desk. In the queue behind us are two Greeks who'd studied in Bulgaria. We work this out because, having overheard our Bulgarian, they strike up a lecherous conversation with me, from which it emerges "that they really like Bulgarian girls, with the 'green eyes'". Emil throws each of them a spiteful look, and throws one at me too. He mutters that he'll "give me a third child so I'll finally sit still on my backside", grabs me by the shoulder and spins me round to face forward. Forward – towards my second meeting with the lady at the ticket desk, who, especially for her second meeting with the two of us troublemakers, has secured herself a strapping young Black man as security.
We disappoint the clerk-plus-guard duo by dutifully paying the whole fee without haggling. Only we know that this is an investment we expect to get back. Despite our impeccable behaviour, the guard seems to have been assigned to us for our entire walk round the museum.
In the moments when we're not arguing (there are some), Emo and I call each other by pet names after animals. With us everything is at max – either 100% war, or 100% soppiness. His pet name at the moment is Little Elephant. I always wondered why I'd given it to him, but on that particular day he lived up to it. In the museum he behaved like an Elephant-in-a-China-Shop. He talks loudly; touches, pushes and photographs exhibits that it's forbidden to touch, push and photograph.
Between two rounds of leaving fingerprints on the glass cases protecting the museum's artefacts from his paws, and evidently still feeling critical of everything Greek and male, my Little Elephant lets out a triumphant call:
"Heyyyyyyyy, these ancient Greeks were in a really bad way!" (We're in the Ancient Greece gallery.) "Forget Ancient Greeks, they should call them Ant-sized Greeks" – Emo's voice booms triumphantly, exactly the way a contented elephant would trumpet with its trunk. Just the right decibels for creatures who are already in security's crosshairs.
"Come here, come here, don't you skive off on me – get over here so I can take a picture of you with 'your darling'."
Only the fact that he was shouting in Bulgarian, and in his punishing tone at that, told me that of all the visitors in the gallery, Emo was addressing me – the woman positioned in the diametrically opposite corner, with her back to him, diligently pretending not to know him. Still, the good thing was that at least he wasn't calling for security. Not yet….
"Stop touching, pushing, shoving and talking loudly like some Bai Ganyo," I hiss at him. I hiss quite sincerely, because I really do think that if Aleko Konstantinov were still alive, he'd use our family as the prototype for a modern Bai Ganyo. Since my name is Nia, we could be the main characters in a cycle of stories called "Ganya and GaNia".
Besides, I was a bit worried, because I didn't know which exact "darling" of mine he wanted me to be photographed with in the gallery. I knew from experience that if Emo is generous enough to "give" me to someone, calling him "my darling", then that someone will definitely be an ugly, short, crooked and underdeveloped Quasimodo. He wouldn't "give" me to some Apollo.
But the algorithm in Emo's head is unpredictable. Because it turned out he'd set me up to be photographed precisely with a statue of Apollo. Legend has it that Apollo was an attractive man in general. This statue partly lived up to the legends, but at one particular dot – the most important dot in the male body – it refuted them. Because I'm using the word dot in the literal sense too.
Emo positions me next to the statue with the dot and takes our picture. Before that he doesn't miss the chance to have a good feel of the statue's dot, which he describes as "tiny". Well, there's no such thing as a big dot in this world, Emo.
Emo takes my picture and sends it to me. Let it be a grim warning to me of the joyless married life that awaits me if I ever get the idea into my head to remarry some Greek! He's still not over the experience in the ticket queue. "Clearly that's their gene," Emil trumpets triumphantly.
Anyway, here we are, My Darling and me, both looking droopy, dot and all.
This whole adventure is pointless to me, because it's only holding us up in the Ancient Greece gallery, where we have no chance of finding an exhibit on the subject of Black history with which to prove equality.
It turned out that Emo isn't Ganya, however much I accuse him of it. Emo is a top-class strategist, a class I didn't even suspect he had. He had a plan in his head and was handling things very delicately. He was improvising a way to prove equality between himself and a Black man. Granted, not a Black exhibit from the museum – but the Black guard who'd been informally assigned to us as security.
To give you an idea of Emo's dexterity, I'll describe his actions by drawing a parallel with the actions of a seasoned MLM salesman. To me these are the worthiest fighters in the world of commerce, specially trained to believe that nothing is too bold or too low. As a 2Unlimited song used to say back in the day – "no valley too deep, no mountain too high".
You know that moment when someone you've barely exchanged a few words with in your life suddenly remembers to invite you for coffee or dinner. Maybe about 6 months after you met at some event and swapped a couple of words in passing. But they get in touch so you can get to know each other better. For the little moments. Because they "sniffed out" straight away that you're "the same breed".
If you're like me, you know full well that they'll try to make you a partner in a multi-level marketing company, and yet you don't turn them down. Because you're only 99.99% sure that they've "sniffed out" a sucker in you, someone to start selling a certain quantity of floor-cleaning products to every month. A sucker who'll pay penalties if they decide to cancel the "subscription". But some 0.01% of you goes on naively believing in the good in people – namely, that distant acquaintances have found you such an irresistibly cool person, and can't stop thinking about you, that they want to spend more time together. That's the first cast of the line, and Emo pulled this trick by starting to grope the statue and take our picture. He knew that this way he'd get the Black guard to come over to him and strike up a conversation by telling him to stop breaking the museum's rules.
The next step in "getting to know each other as cool people" with the marketing pyramid's employee is meeting for dinner. They won't want to scare you off right from the start, and all the way to the middle of the main course you'll make pleasant, non-committal conversation. The painfully stupid 0.01% of you will timidly raise its head in hope – see, there's still room for real human relationships in this fast-paced digital world…see how near-strangers can become friends…..
….And at exactly that moment "your new friend" drops in, quite casually, but with a profound gaze fixed somewhere in the distance, sipping their wine, that "it's nice, after all, for a person to have more than one source of income"……Then they narrow their eyes, as if weighing their words carefully, because they're someone who values precise expression. They take another sip and correct themselves: "not nice – actually, it's essential for a person to rely on more than one source of income"…..
The cards are on the table, the curtain is up! The remaining 0.01% of naivety in you weeps, huddled in a corner of your soul. The cynical 99.99% weeps too, because it knows the show is about to start. You know its script by heart, and yet you're too weak (polite, in your opinion, but the truth is you're simply weak) to stop the performance.
The minute the Black guard came up to Emo intending to reprimand him for his behaviour, Emo shot him down with the unexpected: "This Greek guy is very small down there, isn't he?" If he'd been a multi-level marketing salesman, he'd probably also have added "If he had more than one income, he could at least make up for nature short-changing him with a decent wallet", or "You can tell that in Ancient Greece they didn't use our spirulina and lovage massage serum for enlarging your manhood".
Evidently this is a topic that melts the distance between men, because the Black guy lights up with a happy smile and starts nodding energetically. "This is my wife, she will testify that I'm TIMES bigger," Emo goes on….. "Goatieeee, come here, come here. Come and tell this guy how many times bigger mine is than the Greeks'."
Weeelll look at that, what a crafty one our Emilcho turned out to be. After all, the condition was to establish equality between white and Black in any respect at all, and Emo had worked out that he could finally monetise the size of his own asset too.
And Goatie is my pet name. I'm glad no one in the gallery speaks Bulgarian and knows that I respond to the love call "Goatie". Other women get called kittens, bunnies, chicks as pet names….. me – Goat.
Goatie, however, is an old hand at marital conversations and doesn't fall easily into her other half's traps – I quickly issued a disclaimer that I know nothing about Greeks in general, and in particular about those two from the museum queue a moment ago, so I can't offer an expert opinion.
- "I'm talking about the statue, Nia, for God's sake."
- "Ohhhhh, the statue……." I raise my palm towards the guard with all 5 fingers stretched out like strings. "Five times bigger, my friend, five times!"
The Black guy isn't as savvy as me and falls into the trap all by himself, because he modestly admitted: "Same with me – shame my wife's not here to testify." The two of them give each other a high five. Emo asks whether this counts as equality. After all, there's equality in one respect – their own "assets".
Well, hahahaha, that couldn't be recognised as equality, the guard laughs. But given Emo's creative approach, he'd personally see to it that we got free entry to the African American museum the next day. "So your little wife can finally have her picture taken with a well-built statue," the Black guy winks at me and heads off to the administration to sort out our passes for tomorrow. On our way out he tells us to stop by the gift shop and pick up our vouchers there.
Emo gives me a beautiful smile.
"Now will you stop calling me Ganya?" A warm wave washes over me, oh how I love this man of mine…whether he's Ganya, whether he's Little Elephant, I don't know what he is……actually I do know – after such a perfect performance on his part, he's no ordinary Elephant.
I think in the hierarchy of our internal relations, I'll promote him to Ganesha. Ganesha is the Elephant God – the god of happiness, prosperity and the easy life. After all, according to Indian mythology, Ganesha helps overcome obstacles in life, or places them in the path of someone who needs to be tested. And didn't my personal Ganesha overcome with ease every obstacle on the way to securing one more educational day somewhere warm and dry for our family in Manhattan?
"You're not Ganya any more, I'm promoting you to Ganesha" – I whisper this to him with great love while we're drinking coffee in the museum's gift shop, waiting for our vouchers for tomorrow. At the same time I lean in to kiss him. But to my surprise, Ganesha has pressed his full little lips together and won't offer them to me. He openly turns away and offers me a cold, hostile cheek.
I'm used to such abrupt mood swings, absolutely unprovoked by any objective factors – he is a Cancer, after all. Just in case, I ask what I've done to annoy him this time, but I get the standard answer – "if I myself don't know how badly I've offended him, so much the worse for me – he's even more offended. Yet again I'm proving that after so many years of living together I don't know him one bit".
I frantically scroll through my brain for what the offence might consist of this time – could it be that I said his is only 5 times bigger than the statue's"…..I can't think of anything else….
Soon I manage to wrench from his offended lips that the offence lies in "Ganesha". Unfamiliar with the Indian gods, Emo has decided that "Ganesha" means "the biggest and most boorish Ganya of all the Bai Ganyos in the world. A kind of "the mother of all Ganyas" – something like the classic Bulgarian from the memes of the same name.
This is the real Ganesha:
This is Ganesha according to Emo:
After the promotion at the African American museum, I'd love for us to land a promotion at the museum of Indian culture and art too.
