Couldn't rise to the occasion

It’s been exactly a month since mom started working and disrupted not one, not two, but four innocent lives. Starting with the youngest member of this household, to the wisest one – moi – our smooth lives have been dramatically altered because the woman feels she can do more in life than cook and pick up after everybody. (Since when is housework not fulfilling enough?)

To mark her one-month work anniversary, mom lunched at a nearby Indonesian restaurant, topping it off with a slice of cake at the Better than Sex Cake Café. Mom’s been intrigued by the name for a while, but could never take her family there, because, how on earth do you explain sex to a seven-year-old?

Anu: “What does ‘sex’ mean?
Mom: “Ask Appa.”
Dad: “Ask Amma.”

At this rate, the poor child might grow up associating sex with cake. Imagine if, at the next birthday party, once the samosas and sandwiches have been consumed, Anu loudly asks, “Is it time for sex, yet?”

Anyway, mom brought some cake home for the kids to share and Kuki helpfully dropped it on the floor, so, for a change, I had my cake and ate it too.

I bet you want to know if the gâteau really lives up to its name. All I can say is, I don’t know who the owner is having sex with, but I’ve definitely had better ... cake, I mean.

In this case, I have to say, abstinence is better than s-excess.

Rock-a-bye, little cribby (and don't come back!)

I have bad news and good news.

The bad news is that Bineet and Sarita are going home.

The good news is that they’re taking our baby crib with them. The humans can finally be rid of a $300 investment that the kids in this household never used, not even once.

I still remember the day dad lugged the honey-oak crib upstairs to the master bedroom, seven years ago, and assembled it one steamy afternoon, while a heavily-pregnant mom hovered over him excitedly. She disinfected the new crib with baby wipes, layetted it in Elmo bedding, hung a baby mobile and stared at it lovingly for the next month or so, willing the baby to be born.

Baby arrived and hated the crib. Mom thought it was the Elmo bedding and replaced it.

Baby still cried.

Mom thought it was the location. She made dad dismantle the crib and reassemble it in the nursery this time.

Baby still cried.

Mom made dad dismantle it again and reassemble it in the master bedroom, this time moving the crib to the other side of the bed.

Baby still cried. Dad refused to dismantle the crib again.

The baby bed stood, empty and unclaimed, in the master bedroom for the next few years, rapidly becoming an eye-sore and a serious toe-stubber in the middle of the night, while the marital bed morphed into a family bed.

For a while, the crib relocated to another friend's house, but was back again when our family expanded. The new baby reacted to the crib in much the same way her brother did - only more vociferously.

The crib relocated to another friend's house a few months later, and finally made its way to Bineet and Sarita’s home, from where it’s about to relocate again – this time across the seven seas - to Bangalore.

I think it’s safe to presume the humans aren’t planning any more family additions. And if they do, this time they’ll bypass the darling crib with the must-have layette at the local baby superstore and wisely invest the money in Kimberly-Clark shares.

Live and let live

For the first time in her life, mom bit into a chicken sandwich today.

By accident, might I hasten to add, lest you do a double take.

Looking forward to a company luncheon, mom skipped post-breakfast, pre-lunch snacking at her desk and sat through long-winded speeches by movers and shakers of the company in the conference room, all the while eyeing the spread from Wildflower Bread Company on the table in the background.

She patiently stood in line, stoically bypassed the bags of potato chips, Coke cans and cheesecake slices and carefully selected a sandwich that certainly looked vegetarian with sprouts and salad leaves sticking out of it. She took one bite and bit into something chewy - almost paneer-like – only tasteless, and definitely lifeless.

Mom reacted as though she had found a finger in a bowl of sambhar at a restaurant. Not knowing where the restroom was located and not wanting to hunt for it with the offending material in her mouth, she threw mealtime etiquette aside and proceeded to dry heave into her paper towel in front of her co-workers.

Back in line again, this time, she did full justice to the potato chips and cheesecake. In fact, she spent the rest of the day ingesting anything she could lay her hands on to remove the meat after-taste in her mouth.

As an impressionable child, mom thought if she ate meat, the animal might somehow mysteriously come to life in her stomach and try to tear out of there. Remember the movie, Aliens?

Older (but not necessarily wiser), she now classifies meat in the same category as coffee, alcohol, cigarettes and karela: Consume at your own risk!

How to Care for a Sick Child 101

Kuki, poor baby, is under the weather.

It started last weekend with a runny nose, high fever and a nasty ear infection, and just when we thought she was better, Kuki is sounding like an Alaskan baby seal this weekend.

The humans had to take time off from work to watch her last week. Mom would leave in the morning before everybody awoke, return at lunchtime, only to have dad dash off to work, often until midnight.

Contact between the caregivers was limited to garage talk: “Temperature's about 103.2. Gave her Motrin an hour ago. She hasn’t eaten anything. Bye, see you later!”

As expected, mom’s now racked with guilt. The woulda, coulda, shoulda kind of person that she is, she blames herself for leaving the kids in the care of virtual strangers in a daycare center, exposing them to germs and goodness know what else. And look at how much weight Kuki's lost in these three weeks - the poor child's starving because her mom's not there to spoon-feed her. And, of course, she's going to get fired if she takes any more time off.

So, how exactly does this woman handle a crisis? She does what any self-respecting, mature, normal, 30-something desi would do - she goes crying to her mom.

"How soon can you get here?" she whines into the phone, knowing fully well that grandma will be torn between leaving grandpa to fend for himself for the next six months (he gets bored here in less than a week,) and lending her daughter a helping hand.

"That's why I keep telling you to move back to India," says grandma. "Or at least move to Singapore/Malaysia if you still want to live abroad."

Not a bad idea.

When mom becomes CEO of the company, she'll seriously consider it.

Aiyo Rama!

Bird flu is coming! Gracious, goodness me, the sky is falling! The sky is falling!

The local newspaper featured the avian pandemic as the lead story a few days ago, so I guess the situation is grim. Usually, our daily rag has its head buried in the sand, like most American media outlets, and prints world news as an afterthought.

But this bird flu is beginning to worry me because I’m a serious bird lover. I especially fancy sparrows. I know, most people like pretty, colorful birds like macaws and toucans, or talking parrots, but I dig puffy, petite sparrows. They’re compact, juicy and the right size for a quick snack.

Mom grosses out when I pick up dead birds from the bushes on my daily walks. She shudders when she hears crunching bones and sees a feather or two sticking out of my mouth.

I feel sorry for this woman. She doesn’t know what she’s missing. I mean, how long can you chew cud without going crazy?

Recently, Ms. High Horse found herself in a tight spot in the deli aisle at Albertsons. Curious Kuki, who’s going through the “Why?” phase, dropped some prepackaged salami into the grocery cart. As mom scurried to put it away, Kuki demanded to know why.

Mom: “Because we don’t need it.”
Kuki: “Why?”
Mom: “We just don’t.”
Kuki: “Why?”
Mom: “We don’t eat meat.”
Kuki: “Why?”
Mom: “Kuki…let’s go!”
Kuki: “Why, Amma? Too yucky?”

Of course, mom didn’t want to launch into an anti-meat diatribe in the deli section of a grocery store, especially in front of a 2-year-old whose immediate follow-up question would’ve been, “Why?”

So, she stood mutely by as Kuki retrieved the salami and walked away, hugging the packet to her chest.

Hey, it could've been a lot worse. At least the scene didn't play out in the birth control aisle - over a box of condoms.

Puppy love

Looks like there's another missing mutt in the neighborhood. The lamp posts and stop signs are plastered with notices about a lost chocolate lab.

Poor thing! It's so easy to get lost among these cookie-cutter houses, even for a dog. For all you know, that poor pooch could be lost in the Indian reservation bordering our community, or worse, he could already be a part of the asphalt.

It's no fun being homeless, take it from me. I'm not sure which is worse - the hungry gnawing in your belly or the fact that nobody gives a rat's patootie about you. It's like being in a roomful of people and knowing that nobody will miss you if you were to walk away.

Now, mom would beg to disagree, but I chose her to spend my life with. She believes it was destiny - the stars aligned and our paths crossed at a time when she was yearning for some unconditional love.

Picture it: A warm sunny day in 1996. I was walking down the street minding my own business and checking pee-mail among the bushes, when along came Animal Control and rudely plucked me off the street. I was unceremoniously dumped in a cold, noisy, smelly kennel, where I languished, unclaimed, for a week.

It was around this time that mom was volunteering at the local animal shelter, instead of staying home and packing on the pounds, as most H-4 brides are wont to do.

OK, who am I kidding? She packed on the pounds, regardless of whether she stayed home and ate potato chips all afternoon in front of the TV or not.

She spotted me one afternoon at the pound, in a reeking cage with another puppy. She bent down to get a closer look at the pup, but I pushed myself between them. Mom didn't stand out like Angelina Jolie in a Third World orphanage, but she sure looked like a sucker for a wagging tail. So, I turned on the charm and tried to look as cute as a seven-month-old-scruffy-pup-badly-in-need-of-a-bath could possibly look. Something must have tugged at her heart strings, because she opened the door to my cage.

I made a leap of faith into her arms, and in that brief moment, as my honey-colored eyes locked into hers, I knew I had her at hello.

She paid the $40 needed to release me, signed on the dotted line and legally became my human.

To this day, mom naively believes that she rescued me to give me a better life.

Little does she know that it's the other way around.