Mrs Funnybones: She's just like You and a lot like Me

by Twinkle Khanna

  11 a.m.: I am sitting at my desk trying to figure out if I can miraculously convert a 2000-square-foot space in Khar into some version of a Venetian villa that my client insists is the only thing that can satisfy his vision of a perfect home. These are the moments when I wish my name was Twinkbaba and I could hypnotize my annoying client into letting me simply do my job.

  1 p.m.: Mrs Irani, my electrical contractor, comes into my cabin. She is a sweet Parsi lady and one of the few women contractors in her field.

  I had spoken to her a few weeks ago when she called to complain that one of our clients had not paid her for her work. I told her that I was unable to help her as he had gypped me of my fees as well.

  Today she is grinning and holding her cheque. She tells me that she got our client followed by a private detective and when she threatened to reveal all his slightly illegal activities, he immediately coughed up our payment.

  I am shocked because I thought all this private investigator stuff happens only in the movies, and as I am wondering how she would even know such a person, she tells me, ‘Bhabhi, this detective was involved in my friend’s divorce and I kept good relations with him. After all, in our business you meet so many types—sanghrelo saap bi koi divas kaam aave (even a snake may be useful someday).

  Wondering if she would make her private detective chase me someday, I hurriedly ask my accountant to clear an outstanding payment we owe her of Rs 250 for a single light bulb. One never knows what can make these people blow their fuse.

  3 p.m.: I ask the site supervisor for the weekly report of completed tasks and this is what I get instead:

  1. The painter was supposed to produce an ash-grey paint sample today but can’t because his bua’s uncle has to move from some Campa Cola building, and of course, the whole clan has to pitch in.

  2. Our wood carver’s mother’s sister’s daughter’s cousin is getting married, so work on my Gothic chairs will not start for another three weeks.

  3. The head plumber is missing two days this week because of Bakri Eid.

  4. The entire carpentry team is absconding for Lakshmi puja because they are all brothers as they live in neighbouring villages (which is apparently as close a mental–physical bond as being conjoined twins).

  4 p.m.: I throw yet another cup of coffee down my throat and get into my Sherlock Holmes mode to discover why we are paying Rs 43 more per kg of wax than required and is it a genuine oversight or does my purchase manager need a few whacks from our good old Mumbai policemen.

  6.30 p.m.: I have come to meet my new clients at their home which even at first glance needs severe redecoration. I am sitting on a rather uncomfortable chair at their hideous dining table and facing the middle-aged couple who are explaining their requirements for the project.

  The husband fetches the architectural plans of the house and comes next to my chair. He bends over trying to unroll the plans on the table, and the motion dislodges the intestinal gas which till this moment has been probably lying dormant inside his posterior (which by the way, is four inches away from my face) and lets out a noisy, flatulent missile. I almost choke on the noxious odour but the couple just continue the conversation as if nothing out of the ordinary has just transpired. It takes all my years of yoga training to maintain a straight face and I hurriedly finish the meeting. Their secretary ushers me to the main door and just as I am leaving, I overhear the mistress of the house screech at her husband, ‘Pintu, not fair, bad manners to behave like this, little control, please!’

  He yells back, ‘Yaar, you say the same line in the bedroom also. Sex and gas even God can’t control.’

  D: Doing the Daughter-in-Law Thing

  Mummyji is what everyone calls my mother-inlaw. She is fierce, formidable and fiery, hence a bit like me in some ways and radically different in others.

  When I was a newly-wed, she sat me down and explained, ‘Two tigers cannot live in the same field.’ I was a bit puzzled as I had no idea that she was an animal conservationist. When I kept asking the man of the house about her work with wildlife welfare groups, he gave me a withering look and said, ‘She means you and she can’t live in the same field.’ I just shrugged my shoulders and said, ‘No sweat off my back, darling, as I live on the first floor, she can have the field all to herself.’

  But gradually, I realized that mummyji was right; we would be sharing the same field, though not as tigers but as the main cheerleaders for the one man out there who technically belongs to both of us; so we might as well shake our pom-poms together. Which is precisely what a good mother-in-law–daughter-in-law relationship truly is.

  All you mummyjis beware! If your daughter-inlaw claims that she loves you like her own mother, then daal mein kuch kaala hai and that little black spot could very well be rat poison.

  One day over lunch with a few girlfriends, we started talking about mothers-in-law and I jotted down a few of their stories.

  Friend No. 1 said that when she was pregnant, her mother-in-law gave her a picture of Lord Krishna to gaze at since this would help produce a bonny boy. When she produced a beautiful, dusky baby girl, mother-in-law was aghast. Friend no. 1 said, ‘Mummy, looking at the picture every day didn’t help in making the baby a boy, but it sure gave her Krishna’s colour.’ Mother-in-law at that point promptly collapsed.

  Friend No. 2 recalled that when she was newly married, she went to have tea with her mother-in-law, who remarked that her beloved son was looking a bit grubby and to send him to mommy so that she can scrub him with her own hands till he shines. (A fine idea when he was six but at thirty-six this was way beyond creepy.)

  Friend No. 3 had a mother-in-law (past tense doesn’t mean she is dead, just that my friend had the sense to divorce both her and her son) who decided that her nine-month pregnant bahu breaking her water bag was not a sign to rush to the hospital. Maji proceeded to have dinner and after leisurely having dessert, announced that it was perhaps now time to leave for the hospital.

  Friend No. 4 is always complaining that her mother-in-law criticizes her, nudges her out of family pictures, grabs the front seat next to her beloved son in the car and keeps repeating how Shonu (some kind of gross childhood nickname, I assume) loves mommy more than anyone else.

  Friend No. 5 is convinced that her mother-in-law has bribed her staff. The moment she locks the bedroom door with her husband, ready for some action, mummyji promptly calls on the intercom asking for her darling son to come visit.

  We spent the afternoon amidst uproarious laughter and I probably would have continued making digs at all the mummyjis for the next decade, but last week I woke up to this:

  8 a.m.: In the midst of stifling a yawn and pulling my dog out from his favourite hiding place, my phone rings. It’s my mother-in-law and she has a complaint, ‘Beta, he came up to the house yesterday, he has become so thin, why are you not feeding him properly?’ I am a bit confused because I have been feeding the dog the same thing for years and he seems to look pretty much the same to me. As I start protesting, she adds, ‘His favourite dish as a child was makki di roti and sarson da saag, I will make it for him today. He is looking very kamzor.’ Ahhh . . . I get it. She is talking about the man of the house.

  A Punjabi mother, her son and food form a triad as sacred as Brahma, Mahesh and Vishnu, and cannot be interfered with as I learnt in the early years of my marriage.

  I want to tell her that the man of the house has deliberately lost eight kilos for his next role as a wiry boxer but it’s just nicer to let her send the makki di roti and the saag, especially since it’s my all-time favourite dish as well.

  3 p.m.: An old friend from my boarding school days is in town and she drops by for coffee. I don’t see her very often, though we catch each other on Facebook occasionally, but that comfort of having known each other our entire lives never seems to go away.

  I giggle and tell her about my morning makki di roti story, and she just starts ranting, ‘Last week on Zee TV, I saw Modi asking everyone to sweep places, all these mov
ie stars and all . . . so exciting, na? I went to Star Bazaar to get the monthly ration and I also bought two new brooms, but mummyji snapped at me, saying that I don’t understand anything—it is only a symbol to clean India. I told her, “Then why are we not using symbol to clean the house? Tell me, Mummyji, why are we using big vacuum cleaner to clean our house if symbol can clean the whole of India?”

  ‘Mummyji always wants to show everyone how we are so modern with all these different machines and all—if we are modern people, we would use only iPhone 6, not all these other cheapo phones. She thinks from my room I can’t see her on the balcony, but I can! Always sitting, drinking coffee and reading Economic Times. At this age, she should be reading Bhagavad Gita or newspaper, you tell me?’

  I am staring at her in shock and horror because . . .

  I have this vision where our son will finally get his wife home. She will place hideous red cushions on my sofas, never polish my silver tea set, will feed my son his favourite fried chicken by actually deep-frying it and not in the Philips (oil-free airfryer) machine like I do, and she will stare at me when I am sitting in the balcony, drinking copious amounts of coffee and reading my Asimovs . . . because one day soon enough I will be a mummyji too.

  One always looks at this age-old mother-inlaw–daughter-in-law battle from the daughter-in-law’s point of view, but I realize it must not be easy to be mummyji as well.

  I hastily whip out my phone and delete the mother-in-law joke that I had made up and posted on Facebook: ‘God could not be everywhere, so He created mothers, and the Devil could not be everywhere, so He created mothers-inlaw.’ And I upload my new motto, ‘Do unto another as you would want the (future) other to do unto you.’

  E: Eureka! Mom, I can Make Anyone Pregnant Now!

  8.15 a.m.: The man of the house is leaving for a shoot to Pune and he appoints the prodigal son as ‘safety officer’ in charge of looking after the baby and me.

  1.30 p.m.: We are all watching the news together when we see our wonderful Parliament erupt in chaos and violence, with our beloved MPs taking out pen knives and pepper sprays.

  1.45 p.m.: The prodigal son has been watching this very keenly and has now decided to take his position as ‘safety officer’ very seriously, and inspired by what we have just seen on screen, goes off looking for an old Swiss knife which was tucked away in the cupboard.

  2 p.m.: The benefits of the Swiss knife have been discussed in depth and he has shown me detailed demonstrations of how it has scissors, a nail file, a saw, a knife and a bottle opener.

  2.30 p.m.: The much-abused daybed in our house has suffered a minor mishap when the scissors from the Swiss knife got stuck in it, thereby not just tearing the fabric but also ripping the stuffing.

  4 p.m.: The staff have come to complain that the great Swiss knife experiment is leading to mounting deaths and injuries among household items:

  1. Mosquito net ripped.

  2. Daybed damaged as mentioned above.

  3. Olive oil bottle broken.

  4. Dog’s hair trimmed only near the right ear.

  5. Our son’s hair trimmed only near his left ear.

  6. The baby’s favourite doll fatally stabbed.

  Not to forget our watchman who has been threatened with the ‘saw’ component of the magnificent Swiss implement to ensure that he does not let unknown visitors into our house.

  I am dismayed and give him a piece of my mind by yelling, ‘There is no difference between you and the members of the Indian Parliament, all that’s left for you to do is to take a can of pepper spray and violently spray it on our neighbour’s face!’ Oops . . .

  4.15 p.m.: Our son has now googled the abovementioned incident on YouTube and after again seeing how effective the pepper spray is when used by a particular MP, has decided to make his own version:

  INGREDIENTS

  1 empty spray bottle

  500 ml of water

  4 tablespoons of lemon juice

  14 spoons of red chilli powder

  8 spoons of salt

  4.50 p.m.: I have now confiscated all potential weapons from his arsenal.

  5 p.m.: I am frantically begging the man of the house to talk to his son and put some sense in his head, but the man of the house firmly denies any responsibility in this particular fiasco and instead points out that if the highest citizens in our country can contribute to violence in the Parliament, then how can our son be blamed for the violence in our house.

  After seeing the validity of his point and realizing that in order to join the Parliament, you don’t need to be a graduate or have any particular qualifications barring eligible age, I have decided that in exactly fourteen years our son can become an MP but perhaps he has to practise a few more parliamentary actions like yelling incoherently, breaking tables, snatching papers and smashing mikes, to really fit in.

  Meanwhile, I need to practise removing stains from furniture, as that seems to be my primary occupation at home. I scrub away, thinking of ways to remove the prodigal son from his position as baby Ganpati standing outside his mom’s house, because if something happens to him, I don’t think I can find an elephant head in time to make him my little Ganesha. Parvati had divine powers to join the head with her son’s body whereas I will have to plonk an orange pumpkin on top of his torso and try my luck with spit and good old Fevicol.

  5.30 p.m.: I hit upon a solution to my Ganpati problem by dragging the prodigal son into the house and forcing him to do some more homework.

  7 p.m.: I am working on a few yoga poses and have finally managed to hoist my body into some version of a headstand when the prodigal son returns and loftily announces, ‘Mom, I can make anyone pregnant now!’ I violently choke, lose my balance and tumble onto the carpet.

  At a loss for words for the first time in fifteen years, I feebly mutter, ‘Uh, I don’t think, er . . . you should do such things; it’s not the right uhm . . . time and uh . . . the girl and you uh . . .’

  ‘Yuck, that’s gross, Mom!’ he shrieks. ‘You always think of such dirty things! I don’t even talk to girls though you keep insisting that soon I will be running after them. I didn’t mean it like that! Eww! I was doing some research for a school project and the youngest boy who has made anyone pregnant is eleven! The Internet says it’s a world record, that’s all. Dad is right! You say gross things all the time!’ And the prodigal son storms off. Yikes!

  F: Fitness Mania Spreads in the Building

  The man of the house, unlike me, can actually cook. You must always find a partner who can do a few mundane chores around the house so that you can relax in your favourite armchair and nourish your brain with books just like these. If you do know how to cook, it is rather useful to pretend otherwise, unless you want to be periodically nagged by snotty children to make their messy and time-consuming favourite dishes right up to the day you get Alzheimer’s and luckily forget the recipe along with your name.

  I would rather take a nap on the balcony in the time that it takes to make complicated things like spaghetti Bolognese but that could just be due to the fact that I am always chronically sleep deprived and my entire day whizzes by running in circles, occasionally running on the treadmill and invariably running into odd situations . . .

  Today

  6.30 a.m.: I am wide awake as the man of the house has switched on all the lights and decided that this is the precise moment that he needs to further perfect his body, by a series of complex exercises that involve carrying his body weight on his right elbow. He cheerfully asks me to join him.

  As much as I admire his zeal for self-inflicted punishment, the debate on whether to partake in his innovative routine or jab my eye three times instead is very short. The latter less-painful option accomplished, I decide to get out of bed and get a head start to my day.

  7 a.m.: My body needs caffeine to lubricate all my joints into some semblance of normal function, but as I walk to the kitchen, the two children that at some mistaken point I deemed necessary for my happiness d
ash into me while playing ‘Catch the mosquito or catch dengue’ (a game unique to Mumbai suburbs).

  10 a.m.: Rushing to the office, I walk to the lift in my building, when I hear loud, crashing sounds come from the stairway. I poke my head forward, curious about the commotion. Lo and behold, it is my neighbours Mrs C and Mrs M (wearing polyester-printed salwar kameez and gleaming white sneakers) rushing up the stairs to the third floor and then back down to the second, again and again.

  Getting dizzy just looking at them, I call out, ‘Mrs C, Mrs M, what are you guys doing?’ Mrs C ignores me (the same way she ignores my monthly messages asking her to make sure her dog doesn’t defecate in the front yard. Last Diwali, I very kindly sent her a beautifully wrapped made-in-Japan poop-scooper but never even got a thank-you note).

  Mrs M answers with a pant, ‘We are doing exercises. You can see, no. Then why asking?’

  Muttering under my breath that no amount of running up and down floors can dislodge the 100 theplas they eat at each meal, I roll my eyes and leave the building.

  2 p.m.: Sitting at my store and going through accounts is a dreary task. Though I feel I may need some sort of injectable drug to get through the day, I settle for some coffee and continue breaking my head with numbers that never seem to add up just right.

  5 p.m.: Back home and with time to spare, I decide to take the baby (fondly referred to as the ‘little beast’) to my mother’s house so that she can harass other members of the family besides me.

  I get there and mother dearest is sitting with her close friend, Honey, and trying to call up their friend, Bubble. Honey! Bubble! Dimple!

  Does anyone still wonder why I have been lumped with a name that rhymes with sprinkle and wrinkle?

  I am then informed by my mother that her weekly task of torturing me by showing me strange sculptures that she excavates from unknown sources and then tries to place in precarious corners of my house, has unfortunately come to a halt because she has been very busy promoting her new movie. And as I am secretly praying that her promotional activities don’t stop for a few more months, she informs me that I must not get very disheartened as she has spoken to an antique shop dealer who is sending a 7-foot statue of a one-armed woman to my house early next week.