I am staring at her aghast. What a daft excuse! Who gives anyone acupuncture needles for Diwali! Even Dr Luv looks shocked, but she thrusts the needles and her chest towards him, and it’s a done deal.
7 p.m.: The treatment is over and I now have the answer to two mystical questions that I wouldn’t even have thought of in the first place. What will happen to a human being who manages to fall
in between two porcupines trying to mate? And why do they say that acupuncture is a treatment done by pricks? Hmm . . . A bad pun hurts, but Luv definitely hurts more.
V: Victory Lies in Cutting Your Losses and not Your Wrists
Tuesday
6 a.m.: The prodigal son is leaving for a school trip and, as usual, the weary, bleary-eyed parents are called to school at 8 a.m. to get a final briefing before the much-awaited trip, and that is the sole reason that I am all ready in jeans, a comfortable kurta and my flip-flops.
6.15 a.m.: My son looks at me in alarm and says, ‘No way, Mom, you always wear this same kurta, you can’t come to school like this! Wear that nice dress you wore to that birthday party!’
My son, unfortunately, like all men, has a vision of the perfect woman and since I am the only woman in his life right now, this vision is periodically foisted on me.
Comments from the recent past:
1. Your hair doesn’t look nice, do that thing with that roller thing you have.
2. Can you wear a belt with that dress, you look pregnant.
3. Open your ponytail and bring your hair in front (this while playing badminton).
4. Why have you put so much lipstick? Red doesn’t suit you, Mom.
5. Fix that button, Mom! You can’t go out like this.
Sighing deeply, I ignore his comments and focus on thrusting vegetable juice down his throat, and we get into the car.
8 a.m.: The fifty-odd people in this room (including me) look like we are trying out for a part in the next season of The Walking Dead, but thankfully before we all start snoring in our chairs, the presentation starts.
The first slide comes on and as I am peering over the top of some freakishly tall father’s head, I notice that the first line on the slide states that we have to drop our kids off on the 12th of January and pick them up on the 14th of November. Can the school really be kind enough to take our children off our hands for over ten months? Another parent who cannot resist the temptation to throw egg on the teacher’s face, puts his hands up and points out the obvious, ‘Oh, Miss, see in the board, it says 14th November. You make mistake like this?’
The poor teacher doesn’t point out the grammatical mistakes in his statement, but simply reassures us that they are, in fact, taking our children for only five days, and gives us a long list of items to be packed.
Thursday
4 p.m.
Me: ‘Have you packed your Vicks thermometer?’
Him: ‘Mom, leave me alone, why are you obsessed with that thing!’
6 p.m.
Him: ‘Mom, can I pack my pepper spray?’
Me: ‘I don’t think you will need it, the teachers are around you 24/7!’
Him: ‘That’s why I need it!’
8 p.m.
Him: ‘Mom, I have packed my Swiss Army knife.’
Me: ‘Why? Are you going on a school trip or trying to attack Afghanistan?’
Him: ‘Mom, your jokes suck.’
Sunday
6.45 a.m.: We are driving to his football match. I start giving him tips on safety during the trip. Everything from ‘If you fall off the canoe and see a shark, don’t panic’ to ‘Shake your shoes and clothes before wearing them in case an insect has crawled inside.’
Perhaps it’s the morning air or the fact that we are driving alone on deserted roads, but the conversation takes its own route and I start telling him that when we were growing up, all we were told was, ‘Try and try harder till you die’ and today life is different, there is bravery in quitting, in not staying in one place for the sake of it. I ask him, ‘What will you do if something doesn’t work out?’ He says, ‘I will keep trying and never give up!’ and I tell him, ‘No, remember, the only person you can ever change is yourself; after you have done that and you are the best you that you can be, let go. There is always another job, another woman, another best friend. Each day that you persist in a situation where you are miserable is a day wasted on the path that would lead you to happiness.’
He looks at me and says, ‘So you are saying I should take the easy way out?’
And I say, ‘No, I want you to know the difference between trying and holding on.’
Monday
4.20 a.m.: The man of the house and I put his things in the car and we drive to the airport.
4.45 a.m.: The prodigal son sees his friends standing outside the airport, grabs his things and runs in excitement to his group. They start going inside and just before he goes in, he turns around and gives me a quick wave.
One day he will be in my place and what he will learn then is that trying and holding on are complicated and challenging things, but the most difficult thing in life is to love fiercely and then let go.
I muster a smile and blow him a kiss.
Godspeed.
W: Where are the Homing Pigeons When You Need Them?
7 a.m.: My phone makes a strangled sound and I stumble out of bed, groaning and holding my head. Last night, I had to brave the most fearsome animal of all: the quintessential Bollywood party, and in order to stand still in the eye of this hurricane, I took a two-pronged approach to retain my sanity.
1. A five-minute yoga session before leaving for the party to align my body, soul and mind.
2. Five drinks down my throat after reaching the party to delude myself into thinking that I am funnier and smarter than I truly am.
7.05 a.m.: My phone pings again and I see eight WhatsApp forwards about love and kindness. I wonder if on a Sunday morning all these enthusiastic do-gooders could send out truly helpful things like ‘11 cures for a hangover’ or ‘How to clean puke stains from your dress’. I have no such luck; all I get are strange messages like ‘Little memories can last for years’. Very useful when you are trying hard to forget all the embarrassing things you did the night before.
Do I really need messages saying, ‘A little hug can wipe out a big tear’ or ‘Friendship is a rainbow’?
There is also a message saying, ‘God blues you’, which I am trying to guess could mean that either God wants to bless me, rule me or make a blue movie with me.
Has it ever happened that a murderer just before committing his crime gets a message stating, ‘Life is about loving’, and stops in his tracks, or a banker reads ‘No greater sin than cheating’, and quits his job?
So, what do these messages really do? I think they allow lazy people to think that they are doing a good deed in the easiest possible manner by sending these daft bits of information out into the universe.
Go out there! Sweep a pavement, plant a tree, feed a stray dog. Do something, anything; rather than just using your fingers to tap three keys and destroy 600 people’s brain cells in one shot.
11 a.m.: This is turning out to be a hectic day. The work that I have to accomplish seems to range from begging the dentist to see our son who has managed to break part of his braces on a Sunday morning (why can’t these children choose a Tuesday or Thursday to mangle themselves is beyond me) to getting the baby ready for her friend’s birthday party.
I spend half an hour wrapping the present artistically with contrasting bows, because I am obsessed with silly things like gift wrapping rather than serious matters like ‘Did Kiran Bedi really tow the PM’s car?’
1 p.m.: I am peering at grocery bills written half in Hindi, with a few gibberish English words, and the rest in what could be Swahili, when I start seeing messages on my iPhone like, ‘Oh, t she is so cute, I just saw on Facebook.’ Wondering if my friend has seen the picture I posted of a French coffee cup and has decided to forgo the rules of grammar, I ignore
it and go back to my bills.
Ping! Another message, ‘She looks just like you ringlets and all.’
Time to investigate . . .
I go to my Facebook page and in sheer horror discover that there is a video of the baby and me posted on my page.
FLASHBACK: 9 a.m.: The baby is running around in her grandmother’s house, she is snatching my lime juice, she is throwing peanuts at my mother-inlaw, she is rattling the TV remote, she is climbing on our dog—in other words, she is driving me crazy, and in order to calm her down I give her my phone.
END RESULT: She has randomly jabbed a few buttons, managed to hit bull’s eye and posted this video on Facebook where I am in my eleven-year-old nightgown with toothpaste in my hair, holding the saintly looking (Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde) baby, pointing at the camera, and saying, ‘Show me your belly button . . . Show me your belly button’ again and again.
If the man of the house ever wants sole custody of the children, he can produce this video in court to prove that I am unstable, on drugs, and undisputedly deranged.
I quickly delete the video, but not before 720 people have seen it on my (so far only work related) ‘The White Window’ page.
4 p.m.: I am driving by Juhu and I see a beautiful peacock perching on a rusty building gate. I frantically point him out to the baby, bring my car to a screeching halt and whip out my phone to take a sublime photo of this extremely unusual moment, only to find that my memory is full as I have just received twenty-eight WhatsApp images from my cousin Kamalnath (Sweetie) Khanna.
5 p.m.: I have now formulated my own WhatsApp forward message which I am going to send to my entire contact list, and it goes like this: ‘Dear Sir/Madam, I have recently been diagnosed with Systematic Psychotic Urge Disorder (SPUD), and random forwards seem to worsen my condition. Please help me save the planet one person at a time. God blues you.’
7 p.m.: I am in the gym frantically trying to undo last week’s cupcake damage when I get an SMS from the man of the house, stating, ‘I am on my way home.’
I quickly call him because he left for Nepal this morning and am pretty sure he was supposed to be there for a week. He answers the phone, snorts and says, ‘I sent you that message yesterday!’
7.04 p.m.: I finish my phone call only to realize that while I was talking, my iPhone has managed to dial and redial Inspector Bapat at Juhu police station 44 times for no rhyme or reason, and before I get arrested for harassing the police, I quickly switch my phone off.
9 p.m.: After in-depth analysis I have come to the conclusion that God was right when he told Adam to leave the apple alone, and I, too, decide to give up apples, blackberries and any other new fruits of technology, and from now on communicate only through homing pigeons.
X: Xerox Copy of Mom Required
A few years ago, at the ripe old age of seven, the prodigal son brought home a girl. She was a bit plump, a bit bossy and a bit aggressive, and reminded me of someone, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
She would drop by for play dates twice a week, and things were going along splendidly till one fine day, while I was washing the prodigal son’s hair, with soap suds all over his eyes, he decided to enlighten me with the fact that he is in love.
A few seconds later, I was flat on my back on the bathroom floor. Since this is not a black-and-white Hindi movie, I had not, in fact, suffered a heart attack, but had merely slipped on the bar of soap which had fallen out of my hand in shock at this pronouncement.
Meanwhile, he continued chattering away. ‘She is very nice, Mom, and she is just like you. She also talks to me the way you talk to dad—“Come here right now! Do this just now!”’
I feebly muttered, ‘I don’t really talk like this and uh . . . I do yoga and stuff, so . . . I am not bossy any more.’
Visions of having a mini-me daughter-in-law started swimming in my brain, and I hurriedly continued, ‘I think you should find girls like granny; she is so kind and nice, no?’
He paused for a moment, gave me a fierce glare and continued, ‘I don’t like girls like granny, and I like Mina because she is just like you.’
A few days passed and just like any grown-up relationship, a few problems started creeping up between them as well.
Like . . .
1. She doesn’t like his cousin and has told him not to bring her to any of the birthday parties that they attend.
2. She doesn’t like the fact that when they were playing together, his grandmother came to visit and he jumped up, hugged his granny and said how happy he was to see her.
3. She doesn’t like his mother and has questioned him as to why he was sitting next to his mother and sucking on a lollipop when he should have been on the swing with her.
4. She doesn’t like him playing with his camera and has nagged him so much about it that he promptly took his camera and locked himself in the bathroom and refused to come out till she left.
Though this would have been enough to push married people to seek divorce courts, in their world of bubble gum and candyfloss, these were just minor hiccups.
Their love story came to an abrupt end when my pudgy seven-year-old nemesis had to leave Mumbai with her family for greener pastures.
As she packed her bags and he made her a goodbye card, I opened a bottle of champagne and heaved a sigh of relief.
So, if you find your son in love with a little Hitler in pigtails, there is not much you can do except step out of the way, go to holy places, fast on alternate Fridays and desperately pray that by some cosmic force, her father is immediately transferred to a destination so remote that even Google Maps is bewildered as to its whereabouts.
Y: Young Underdogs
At the start of 1989, we lived in a bursting-atthe-seams joint-family-style house with eleven loosely related members of the family and one big dog. This tribe was lorded over by my formidable grandmother. She threw dollops of love and food our way and kept trying to drive the dog, Caesar, away.
She disliked the dog severely because he never got toilet trained and walked around our house as if it were one giant commode. Monthly arguments between my sister—a true lover of all sorts of hairy creatures—and granny—a probable hater of all sorts of hairy creatures— ensued about the fate of the dog, which only led to her hating the dog even more and being unable to do anything about it.
A year later, my aunt separated from her Sardar husband and came back to live with us. She did not come back alone and thus Jimmy was introduced into our lives.
Jimmy’s parents were related to my aunt’s ex-husband and though they lived in Jalandhar, they felt that little Jimmy would have a better life in Mumbai with his distant relatives. My aunt developed a great fondness for him and soon he became part of her household, and when she left her marital home, in a bizarre chain of events, Jimmy was the only alimony she brought along.
He was a spritely six-year-old turbaned wonder and just another odd creature added to our strange cauldron, and because I was in junior college (which is the time of one’s life when one does absolutely nothing), certain responsibilities were foisted on me. Namely, looking after Jimmy’s homework and taking him swimming twice a week to the local club.
He taught me Punjabi, I taught him some English, and life went on. I vaguely remember making him and my sister coat our neighbour’s car with such a thick layer of wet mud that not a speck of its original gleaming metal was visible.
And then there were our swimming sessions— getting him lessons at the club and then forcing him to do laps, finally chasing him out of the pool, a quick shower and a rickshaw ride back home.
One fine afternoon, we were both in the ladies shower room, bathing with our swimsuits on, as part of our daily routine. I scrubbed his Rapunzel-like hair in the shower cubicle and, as he was rinsing off, I started shampooing my own. In less than a minute, I heard two piercing shrieks. I opened my eyes and looked around frantically, only to realize that Jimmy had slid in the gaps between cubicles and had emerged three cubicles to
the left, where a Parsi lady was showering in the buff. A wizened-looking boy with waist-length hair semi-plastered on his face, popping up suddenly while you are scrubbing your armpits would scare even the bravest of us.
An angry complaint was duly filed against Jimmy and his neglectful guardian, and we were both barred from the club for a month.
All was well except my granny had a slight aversion to this hairy creature as well. She was fed up of cleaning his sandwich crumbs from her bedside table, of weekly combing through his long, stringy hair looking for lice and of making sure he was suitably fed during the hours my aunt was working.
She never voiced her disapproval, but all the muttering under her breath made her feelings about the Jimmy situation loud and clear. As was inevitable, the two underdogs in the family, one of the canine variety and the other of the Sardar variety, trudged a remarkable alliance and my sister was part of this strange group as well.
Time went by. Jimmy lost a few milk teeth and grew a few others back.
He would sit on the porch on weekends and take out Caesar’s ticks and my granny would be reluctantly combing through his hair, looking for blood suckers of another variety. Not much would have changed this equation, till her beloved niece Masooma, all the way from Texas, came to attend a funeral, but ended up staying with us for a fortnight.
Masooma would grab her Cadbury, a Mills & Boon and a pillow, and head straight to the hammock tied between two trees in our garden, every evening at 4, and tumble out of her reading nook only two hours later.
One day as she was lying in the hammock on a rather windy day, Caesar went up to her and started barking, and would not stop. Hearing the din, Jimmy and my sister came out to the garden. I scrambled out of my room as well to join my granny who was standing on the porch; she was livid at what she perceived as yet another annoyance caused by this motley crew that were now disturbing her precious NRI relative.
Mrs Funnybones: She's just like You and a lot like Me Page 7