Potable poison

The customers teeming around the roadside wine shops after dark remind her of flies buzzing around an impaled goat carcass in a butcher shop.

Watching the men from the safe confines of a darkened car, mom wonders at their level of desperation as they hold their money aloft and trip over each other in order to reach the counter and quench their thirst.

The ones who manage to worm their way through the throng emerge triumphant, carefully clutching their sachet of liquid gold. A few patrons huddle silently, squatting under a dim streetlight like peasants, their bellies already sated with drink.

The putrescence of their surroundings do not seem to affect the men; indeed, they contribute to the existing feculence by hurling great gobs of spit around them or nonchalantly using the back wall to relieve themselves.

A group of boys in jeans, barely men yet, support a friend as he doubles over and vomits the venom out of his body. While one offers him water, another encourages him to take a drag, followed by a swig from a dark bottle. The boy obliges and gulps clumsily, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, while his cohorts cheer and slap his back, making him feel like a man.

As the light changes to green and the car pulls away, mom thinks about her housemaid. “You do know her husband’s a drunkard, right?” her former employer informed mom one evening.

“Oh? I thought he was a painter,” replied mom dimly, not wanting to believe that the woman who hums while cleaning our bathrooms leads a troubled home life.

Was the maid's husband at a similar wine shop tonight, relieving himself of his day's wages? Does he go home and beat her? How does she manage her brood of three children on her slim earnings? Did she choose to have children or were they forced on her? Why does she stay with him? Why doesn’t she just leave?

“You know, all these men are drunkards,” the maid's former employer said softly, sweeping her arms to include her own gardener, chauffeur and the night watchman hovering nearby.

In the face of such despondency, don't you think the women should be out drinking instead?

HNY!*

Mom: “How was your dinner last night?”

Dad: “It was OK. I saw Abhishek Bacchan and Aishwarya Rai seated at another table. One of the guys pointed them out. They were having dinner with someone called Shobana.”

Mom: “Oh, Shobana is a Bharatanatyam dancer/actress with traditional Indian looks. She’s so beautiful! Right?

Dad: “I don’t know. I didn’t see her properly.”

Mom: “Oh, OK, never mind. Tell me, tell me … Aishwarya Rai ... Did she take your breath away? I bet she looks as beautiful off-screen as she does on-screen, even without loads of makeup. Tell me, na? Isn’t she drop-dead gorgeous?”

Dad: “Hmm, I don’t know. I didn’t really notice.”

While it’s comforting to note that mom has trained him well, a better response would’ve been to grab mom by the waist and declare, “Yes, Aishwarya Rai’s gorgeous, but then so are you,” followed by some heavy-duty neck nuzzling and nape kissing.

Obviously, mom’s work here is not done yet.

*Happy New Year to you all!

Suffer, you duffer!

Maybe it’s because my humans are the kind of people who keep to themselves, or maybe it’s because of that misleading sign on our gate asking passersby to beware of the dog ... whatever the reason is, the aunty next door usually calls us on the phone instead of shouting messages over the compound wall.

She might, for instance, call and ask, “Are you home now? I’ll drop in for a second to give you some prasadam.” With visions of ghee-dripping chakra pongal dancing in her head, mom will hurriedly stack the day’s newspapers in a corner and shove the half-chewed dog bone under the couch before answering the door.

"I went to the temple to offer prayers," aunty will say, bustling in. Mom will nod politely, even as she notes with a sinking heart the absence of ever-silver containers in the lady's hands. Aunty proffers, instead, a packet of kumkum-viboothi, and as a special treat, might throw in some akshada also.

This morning, instead of offloading sacred ash, neighbor aunty called for a different reason.

“Are you happy with your new maid?” she asked. “My maid of 25 years left me; look at the cheek! I’m desperately looking for a replacement. Can you suggest someone?”

“I would recommend my new maid, aunty,” offered mom brightly. “She’s efficient, polite and smart. You can meet her today if you want to.”

Mom hung up, happy to be of use to somebody, and turned around to see disapproval writ large on her mother’s face.

“Do you know what you just did?” asked grandma. Apparently, mom had violated rule no. 1 in the Indian Housewife Code of Conduct: Never share thy housemaid with thy neighbor.

“But she asked me how the new maid is,” began mom weakly.

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad your maid is,” advised grandma. “If someone asks, it’s best to dither and say your maid has no time to take on another house.”

“But the maid was mentioning she could use some extra income,” argued mom.

Grandma slapped her forehead in dismay. “You know what could happen now? That aunty might offer her more, in which case your maid will leave you high and dry.”

A cold fear gripped mom’s heart.

“You should’ve said you’ll ask your maid to suggest someone else,” continued grandma. “Just see, you’ll be the loser.”

Faced with the gravity of the situation, mom decided to take the high road. “You know what, ma?” she said sniffing. “Let the maid leave if she wants to. Once the aunty starts wringing her dry, she’ll realize what a cushy gig she had here.”

Grandma shook her head in dismay. “Asamanjam!” she muttered, walking away. “Will this girl never learn?”

“What does that mean, mom?” her son wanted to know.

"What?"

"Asa-whatever?"

Mom has no idea, despite hearing the word applied to her often enough. She’s pretty sure, however, that it’s nothing complimentary.

You’re fired!

It’s been more than two months since the maharani was replaced by a younger, more agreeable Mahalakshmi. The new maid nods politely when issued instructions and is unfailingly cheerful where her predecessor was morose. She stays, for now, until she hankers for more money.

The cook, however, to borrow a phrase from Jeffrey Archer, is fast approaching her sell-by date. Oil flows out of her hands like water, and her standards of hygiene are markedly different from mom’s.

For someone who tires easily of people, mom must have really good reasons for her self-imposed, firm moratorium on dad.

It's just that I don't know whether to feel happy or sorry for the man.

Bucket list for survivors

The car wasn’t the only thing that overturned that night on the Mysore-Bandipur highway.

“In the blink of an eye, my whole life turned upside down,” sobbed mom’s friend, choking back tears as she recounted a road accident that claimed her husband’s life and left her a desolate widow with one daughter and another child on the way.

One hears of people passing on nearly every other day, but this tragedy seems to have affected mom a little more than the others. Perhaps it has something to do with losing one's spouse - which is mom's worst nightmare - on par with losing her children.

“You know, one day out of the blue he asked me, ‘What will you do if something happens to me? How will you manage?’ ” recounted the friend, whispering so her five-year-old, who thinks Appa is still in the hospital, wouldn’t overhear. “I told him to stop talking nonsense. ‘Nothing’s going to happen to you,’ I said. ‘Let’s concentrate on our new baby.’ ”

For her friend’s sake, I hope her husband manged to brief her before his life was snuffed out at 35.

For long has mom tried to ask dad what she needs to do in case … (there, she can’t even say it!) “Can you make me a checklist, please? I have no clue what to do,” she said, hoping he’d take her seriously.

Dad shrugged vaguely, dismissing the question by asking her to contact the financial planner, making mom suspect he’s equally clueless.

A long time ago, when she had no business going through her mother’s almirah, mom chanced upon a sealed envelope in her father’s handwriting that said, “To be opened in the event of my death only.” She hastily put the envelope away, as though merely touching it would bring her family ill luck.

Years later, with a family of her own, mom wishes she had a set of bulleted instructions to fall back on in case the need arises. Not being the least bit financially savvy (numbers bore her), she dreads having to deal with paperwork and decision-making in a time of distress.

On her part, mom has never felt the need to ask dad how he’d cope if she were to suddenly kick the bucket. Hypothetical questions would surely cause him to frown and leave the room. Were she to keel over, mom knows with utmost confidence that her children would be in dad’s excellent hands, lacking neither finances nor love.

Her passing would devastate her parents and bring grief to her children. But what effect would it have on the most important man in her life?

On dismal days such as this, when self-pity washes over her like a giant wave and threatens to engulf her in its surge, mom silently wonders if her absence would cause anything more than a mere ripple in her spouse’s pond of emotions.