Beware of the dog

How do you like my summer cut?
I hate it; but I'm still having a hard time deciding who's cuter in this picture.

If only parents were as grand ...

It’s been an exciting month. No, not because it was my birthday - we all know how that went.

After a long time, I got to spend time with not one, but both sets of grandmas.

Earlier this month, dad’s mom spent a week with us and kept me company. A superlative cook, she indulged the humans with finger-licking food, entertained the kids all day and filled the freezer with goodies before she left.

This week, mom’s parents arrived to spend the entire summer with us. The lure of grandchildren proved too strong for grandpa to resist this time, and despite being the sort who gets bored even before he drops his suitcases, grandpa has decided to grin and bear two months of virtual house arrest.

With the arrival of grandparents, my lazy humans just got lazier.

Mom’s happy to cede her entire household, kids and all, to grandma. Which explains why the beds are made, the laundry’s folded, the toys put away and the plants watered. The telephone rings off the hook, but most of the calls are for the grandparents. Mom is now forced to “just say hello, c’mon!” to a few near, but-not-so-dear ones.

Grandma: “You really need to be more social and stay in touch with your family. For goodness sakes, you grew up with these people. They’ve know you since you were this high.”
Grandpa: “If you behave like this, how will your children grow up to be?”
Grandma: “Look at your cousin. She’s so warm and hospitable. Sometimes, it’s hard to believe you came from my womb.”

Mom was also duly interrogated on the status of her misplaced magalsutra, which is still, irrevocably, lost.

Grandma: “I just don’t understand how you can take it off. Do you have any idea what the price of gold is, these days?”
Mom: “But, but … I didn’t lose it on purpose.”
Grandma (in a hushed whisper): “Does your mother-in-law know about this?”

Despite pleas from their children to travel lightly, grandma and grandpa arrived like the Magi bearing masalas, pickles, sweets, dried fruit, clothes, savories and a Carrom Board.

Upon arrival, grandma discovered that the FAA had tampered with her suitcase. “Those rascals!” she exclaimed in horror, “they’ve broken all the vathal that I’d brought so carefully. This is too much! The last time they broke my brand-new suitcase, and this time, they opened it for no reason at all and broke my vathal.”

“I told you not to bring so much stuff,” said mom, stuffing laddus into her mouth, and reaching for a handful of banana chips.

While the humans pig out on badam halwa and murukku, and sleep in, grandma and grandpa, who wake with the birds, take me along on their daily power walks. Grandma strides purposefully in her bright salwar kameez and black Bata shoes, trying to keep pace with grandpa, who always walks as though he’s trying to catch a speeding bus. “Why can’t the man ever slow down and walk with me?” grandma has often sighed, throughout their 36-year marriage.

Much to mom’s delight, the children are starting to bypass the humans and flock to the grandparents with their concerns. “Bored? Go see grandpa. Hungry? Go see grandma,” directs mom, shamelessly herding the kids away from her, while she reclines on the couch and flips television channels.

The woman’s even outsourcing my hugs. “Not now, Terri,” she says, dismissively patting me on the head. She takes a sip of her cold drink and fluffs the pillows around her. “Go, follow the kids!”

Selective Hearing

Mom: “I don’t think I’ll be able to make it to the Mother’s Day luncheon at Kuki’s school tomorrow.”

Dad: No response.

Mom (teasingly): "Do you want to go, instead?"

Dad: No response.

Mom: "Hello? I said, 'Mother’s Day lunch.' Do you want to go?"

Dad: "I can’t. I have a meeting."

Doctors and patience

After much procrastination – three years to be exact - mom ran out of excuses, and finally scheduled her physical.

It’s not that she dislikes being examined; OK, she is afraid of needles, but mom will willingly let you collect all the blood samples you want, pee happily into a cup, tabulate her menstrual cycle and candidly answer questions about her preferred method of birth control. She’ll even insist to an apologetic doctor, “Don’t worry about it. I really didn’t mind waiting for over an hour, even though I arrived 10 minutes early for my appointment; really, I didn’t!” In short, the woman will do anything and almost everything save put her feet up on stirrups and display her wares to a latex-gloved stranger.

Steeling herself for the ordeal, mom ate lunch with care that afternoon, deliberately avoiding beans and broccoli and other flatulence-inducing foods. She arrived early, flipped through magazines in the waiting room, smiled when the nurse butchered her name, and lay down cold and naked under a white sheet in the examination room.

Listening to imaginary lounge music while waiting for the doctor, mom looked up to find a picture postcard of snow-capped mountains taped to the white ceiling, directly above her head. Somebody extremely thoughtful had had a brainwave that staring at the Swiss Alps during a pap smear would help women open up and get the juices flowing. Obviously, this person has never heard of a Brad Pitt or a Tom Cruise. Heck, even Angelina Jolie or a half-clad Mariah Carey would do, under extreme circumstances.

Mom closed her eyes and allowed pleasant images to invade her mind. Breathing deeply, she thoughts of the kids, me and finally, dad.

She thought about his shy smile and gentle hands, the smell of his heady antiperspirant, the way he blushes when she catches him ogling, the mean roast potatoes he can whip up, the way his stubble scratched her lips that morning …. Thinking back to that morning, mom’s thoughts took a slight detour and lingered on the image of the wet bath towel dad had flung on the bathroom floor instead of hanging on the rack. A slight irritation mounted inside her. “Why is it so difficult to hang the towel on the rod?” she thought. “And why is it next to impossible for him to put a new roll of toilet paper in the holder instead of setting it on top of the old one? Or empty the dishwasher, for that matter? Or clear the table? Or put away the laundry? Or recycle the newspapers after he's done reading ….”

Her train of thoughts was interrupted by the doctor breezing in and getting down to business. The dreaded examination lasted all of two minutes. The entire consultation came in under seven minutes - considerably lesser than the amount of time mom had spent in the waiting room trying to politely avoid a runny-nosed baby who insisted on cooing at her, and his monster brother who was having a major meltdown on the dirty carpet.

“You did great! Everything looks great! I’ll see you same time next year!” said the doctor, before sailing away to her next patient.

“Not unless you change that ridiculous picture on the ceiling,” thought mom, smiling sweetly at the departing doctor.

Birthday candles make light of your age

Since I feel compelled to share every intimate detail of my life, and some of you feel compelled to read about it, I’d like to announce that I am officially a decade old today.

No, that does not make me 70 in human years, as is widely believed. I’m on the younger side of 50, although I still look and behave like a spring chicken.

The humans have no clue when my real birthday is, since I ain’t no thoroughbred, and didn’t come with no papers. The good folks at the pound looked at my teeth and decided I was about seven months old, so mom counted back seven months to the day she brought me home and decided on Cinco de Mayo.

You’d think the humans would try to make my day special and take me out for margaritas and nachos. Not these cheapskates! There was no cake; not even a bowl of payasam - a rawhide bone and a bunch of kisses do not count. Even dad’s mom, who was here for a brief visit, left town today, of all days.

The family fussed over me for a few minutes this morning, somewhere between the time they sat up in bed and went to the bathroom to pee. Mom put on a happy face in front of the kids, but later, buried her head in my neck and thought about my advancing age. Trust the woman to spot a grey cloud behind every silver lining.

Moving right along, folks, let’s leave the moping and worrying to mom, who’s so good at it, and concentrate on moi, instead.

Thank you in advance, shy lurkers and brave readers, for your good wishes and warm thoughts. All the virtual attention is deeply appreciated; although frankly, if I had a choice between wishes and gifts, I’d settle for gifts anytime - chiefly of the edible kind.

Did somebody say carbs?

If people from Poland are Poles, why aren’t people from Holland called Holes?

The first time it happened, it took her completely by surprise.

“Amma, what’s this?” asked Anu one evening, as they were stuck in a mile-long traffic jam.

“Hmm?” murmured mom, absently, wondering if there was yoghurt in the refrigerator and praying there were enough leftovers from two nights ago so she didn’t have to cook as soon as they got home, but could, instead, concentrate on important tasks, such as checking email while Kuki was perched on the potty.

“What is this?” repeated Anu, from the back.

“What?” asked mom, glancing at the rearview mirror, thinking Anu was pointing at a billboard or a new construction.

“This,” said Anu, raising an upturned middle finger at eye-level.

Mom went into shock. She slammed the brakes hard, just in time to avoid hitting the red pickup truck in front of her. “Shit!” she blurted out. Then, “Shoot, don’t say that. It’s not polite.”

“Amma, you crash?” trilled Kuki, as she tried to hold her finger up like her brother.

“No, like this, Kuki. See?” offered Anu, helpfully folding back his sister’s fingers.

As bells tolled, waves crashed, thunder clapped and images of Lord Shiva dancing the Tandava flashed in mom’s head, she wondered how to broach the somewhat delicate topic of the birds and bees with an almost eight-year-old.

Mom considered her options:

1. Bio 101: “The sperm fuses with the ovum, leading to the formation of a zygote.”
2. Desi response: “Chee chee, shame shame, puppy shame!”
3. Dr. Spock’s method: “When daddy and mommy love each other very much, he inserts his penis into her vagina. Together, they make a baby.”
4. Easy way out: “Go ask Appa.”

After quickly vetoing no. 1 (too boring, also not sure what the entire process is), no. 2 (get with the times, people), no. 4 (Appa will probably redirect non-mathematical questions to Amma), mom settled on a watered-down version of Dr. Spock, and managed to deliver the fundamentals with minimal stammering and a straight face. (Keeping her eyes on the road the entire time helped.)

With the floodgates of communication officially opened, mom now finds herself doubling as a dictionary cum encyclopedia for choice reference material, usually at the most inopportune of moments.

Anu (while mom’s on the phone): “What does ‘shit’ mean?”
Anu (while mom’s trying to strap a screaming Kuki to the car seat): “What does ‘gay’ mean?”
Anu (in the produce aisle): “Do bugs fart?”
Anu (as mom rolls out rotis): “Why is ‘f___ ‘a bad word?”
Anu (as mom exits the shower): “Why do you shave your armpits?”

Teaching opportunities aside, there are times when mom feels her life would’ve been easier had she followed her ancestors' footsteps and chosen option number 2. But then she thinks back to her school years and the humiliation that followed the day she realized that the Nirodh advertisements on television were not promoting razor blades, as her mother had informed her, but something quite different, and of all people, the boy she had a secret crush on, stood up in the middle of biology class and told her about it.

So, like a fairy dropping glitter in her wake, mom imparts life lessons, whenever, wherever and as best as she can - be it fielding questions that publicly mortify her, such as "Hey, how come you have a moustache?" or make her want to cross her legs, such as “Why do adults have hair down there?”

Anybody care to answer that?