R.I.P.

"It's the oddest thing," thought mom. Just by chance, as she was flipping through today's newspaper back to front, mom landed on the obituary page.

Normally, mom doesn't even glance at the obits, unlike certain senior citizens who daily peruse obituaries with the same interest she normally reserves for malicious gossip and salacious celebrity rumors.

But for some weird reason, mom happened to chance upon the death notice of a former co-worker, a woman she didn't really know and hadn't seen in more than nine months.

It looks like the woman, who used to sit in front of her and munched on an apple every day, succumbed to cancer.

"Kinda puts things in perspective, doesn't it?" mom's co-workers commiserated. Mom dutifully nodded, even though she has no clue what the phrase actually means. (It makes for a good conversation filler, though, especially during awkward moments, so mom uses it from time and time, and people around her nod solemnly.)

Like most savants with a lot of time on their hands, mom frequently ponders on the mysteries of life and death.

How does a soul enter the body? Did Patrick Swayze's character really enter Whoopi Goldberg's body to kiss Demi Moore? Do ghosts float around like they do on Pac-Man? Can mom's ancestors see her while she's on the throne? What about when she's making love? Did her cherished childhood pet be reborn as one of her children? And, come on, do they really have Philadelphia cream cheese in heaven?

Her imagination being what it is - combined with an overdose of Lifetime TV - mom tends to be a little jumpy around things that go bump in the night: The ice-maker in the kitchen sounds like a dying man's gurgle; the wind against the back door signals a possible intruder; she's afraid to look out a dark window for fear of seeing Cathy's pale face as did Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights; and the shrill ring of a telephone causes her heart to momentarily leap out of its chamber when she's watching a thriller on television well past midnight.

Given her somewhat delicate frame of mind, it should come as no surprise that mom feels that Halloween should be banned. "I can't believe they celebrate ghosts, goblins, witches, spirits, aliens, vampires, phantoms ... Freddy Krueger, and think we're backward for worshipping cows," she thought, when she first landed here.

Before she had children, mom would turn off the lights, draw the blinds and pretend nobody was home on Halloween nights. These days, she can be found traipsing around the neighborhood with her children, instructing them to pick more of the chocolate she likes and less of the jawbreaking Tootsie Rolls they invariably collect.

I should also mention that the woman is afraid, very afraid of shower curtains - especially in lonely hotel bathrooms.

Is she pyscho, or what?

Bewafaa

In the last few days, mom has been reminiscing a lot about her first love.

Perhaps it has something to do with dad being away on the road. Perhaps it’s the fact that when she looks in the mirror each morning, an exhausted, wan face peers back at her, making her feel older and less secure than she did the week before.

Or perhaps it was that carpe diem e-mail she received again recently, the one about life being too short to live on regrets. Whatever it is, mom is starting to have serious second thoughts about this marriage of convenience she consented to.

She was happy in the beginning. Her family was thrilled for her, and she vowed to make a clean start and give it all she had. There was little to complain about; others would have happily traded places with her: she was mistress of her domain and she was free to do as she pleased, within reasonable limits, of course.

Gradually, the euphoria faded, and a jaded resignation replaced the initial enthusiasm.

Mom realized that she was in the relationship solely for material purposes. Whatever emotions she had invested had long faded, like dust in the wind, and she now finds herself pacing like a caged lion, waiting for a suitable opportunity to break free.

As she watches people around her, mom wonders if she’s alone in this situation. Are the smiling, happy faces of her friends and co-workers, people she interacts with regularly, belying their sense of ennui and despondency? How do people find the strength to persevere in relationships when they know they’re dispensable?

And what of dad, who is an unwitting spectator in this drama? If he’s aware of mom’s conflicting loyalties, he masks his emotions behind a layer of detached stoicism. Not one to judge people or impose his opinion on others, he waits for mom to wrestle with her internal demons and make her own decisions.

Perhaps it’s time for her to leave before she’s shown the door. Mom feels she has invested enough of herself in this loveless association to walk away with her head held high.

Before she gets any older or bitter, before it's too late, she wants to return to her first love.

She is well aware that the adjustment will not be an easy one. She’ll have to adapt to the penury, the irregular lifestyle and the eccentricity that often accompanies creativity. But she might regain that sense of gratification that is missing in her present passionless union - that glorious, heady feeling of building hope in a heart, of bringing a warm smile to a face or an unbidden tear to an eye.

Mom is thinking of going back to journalism.

A Change of Heart

As grandma’s return to India fast approaches, mom finds herself in a familiar funk again. The petulant child in her does not want her mother to leave.

Despite grandma’s constant observations on how careless mom is about her things, and how she still hasn’t returned her aunt’s phone call since May, mom wants to cling to her sari, with tears streaming down her face, and beg her to stay. She wants to lie on her lap and feel her chapped, work-worn palms stroke her hair. She wants to go on long walks around the neighborhood with her. She wants to tell her how sorry she is when she snaps at her. She wants to make her tea flavored with cardamom and ginger. She wants to pluck the moon from the sky and bring it to her….

Not for the first time since she moved here, mom wishes she were Mexican. Just so she could visit her entire family by hopping in her car, like her former neighbor regularly did, and drive across the border with her kids and dog during school breaks.

“Can’t you get an expat assignment in India?” she asks dad, as though his company hands them out like mithai during Diwali. “That way, we can get a taste of living there.”

“Well, can’t you?” counters dad. “And what do you mean by getting a taste? You know exactly what it’s like in India.”

True. Mom spent her formative years dodging killer traffic, creepy crawlies and groping men. When the time came to look for a husband, she unashamedly asked for a groom abroad – a non-demanding type who could conform to her late-to-bed-late-to-rise lifestyle and wouldn’t annoy her by playing Suprabhatam by M.S. Subbulakshmi at 7:30 a.m. on a Sunday, as her parents sometimes did.

“Do you like to do breathing exercises in the mornings?” she had asked dad at their first meeting. "Do you find it mentally relaxing if you jump-start your day by waking up at the crack of dawn and bathing in ice cold water?"

“You're kidding, right?" dad had asked quizzically.

It was a match made in heaven.

For the most part, mom adores her lazyass laidback lifestyle here, where she doesn’t have to boil milk on a daily basis or haggle with vegetable vendors over the price of tomatoes. She likes living in a place where she can publicly argue with dad in a language that people around her wouldn't understand.

At other times, however, such as when she hears her daughter gurgling with her grandmother or watches her son locate his grandfather’s misplaced reading glasses so they can solve a Sudoku puzzle together, she longs to return to that familial fold she left behind more than a decade ago.

She yearns for that place she once called “home.”

Yanking the Chain

I wonder if there's a polite way of letting my family and friends know what exactly I think of the chain e-mails and mass messages about friendship and love, with images of cute puppies romping in daisy fields and plump babies sitting in sudsy tubs, that they send my way?

What perverse pleasure do these people receive by forwarding me religious rants or graphics of a gaudy Radha-Krishna with an inspirational message about divine love and a dire warning at the bottom that the memo better leave my hands in the next 24 hours or else?

Folks, I understand that you don’t want to tempt fate by deleting chain messages, but why send your trash my way? This is like cleaning your compound and depositing the garbage outside my front gate.

The same goes for e-cards. I don't want to click on links and watch pink candles flickering on a cake or listen to fireworks in the background. I’d rather you sent me a one-liner on my birthday and major festivals; or better yet, just send cash or edibles.

Therefore, unless the content is R-rated or the joke uproariously funny, I humbly implore the people in my inbox to stop forwarding me tales of spiders under toilet seats in Florida or prayers invoking the 108 names of Lord Ganesha.

Please, no pooping on my property. Use your cyber neighbor's litterbox/inbox instead.

Marital Musings

Observations from the other side (as interpreted by me):

(1.) Wife constantly wants to know what I’m thinking about. Somehow, a truthful “Nothing” seems to infuriate her.

(2.) Wife has an inordinate amount of family members. She expects me to remember the hierarchy of all her uncles and their offspring, and to recall the names and relationships of half the people I met at our wedding.

(3.) Wife conveniently claims she cannot make coffee because she doesn’t drink it.

(4.) Wife spends an hour in the bathroom getting ready and emerges looking pretty much the same as before she went in.

(5.) Wife demonstrates the intelligence of a hirsute mammal that brays when it comes to driving a stick shift.

(6.) Wife pointedly asks questions about her appearance but seems upset at my honest answers.

(7.) Wife also does not appreciate my frank appraisal of her friend’s long legs.

(8.) Wife wants a bigger house, preferably like the one her successful surgeon uncle who’s been living in this country for 30 years and is married to an equally successful specialist, has.

(9.) Wife does not think Shawshank Redemption is worth watching 167 times.

(10.) Wife shows a preference for soft rock and for music by long-haired gays…sorry guys…like Michael Bolton, Kenny G and Yanni.

(11.) Wife thinks I drink too much.

(12.) Wife thinks my friends drink too much.

(13.) Wife makes way too many phone calls to her parents in India. Worse, she thrusts the phone at me when they enquire how I am.

(14.) Wife does not have lesbian threesomes in mind when she says she likes movies about women.

(15.) Wife likes to experiment at restaurants but usually ends up eating from my plate.

(16.) Wife asks me to fetch a movie of my choice from the video store but will invariably criticize whatever I pick.

(17.) Wife does not roll over and disappear until next time after lovemaking.

(18.) Wife cribs a lot. It seems to be one of her principal hobbies, second only to picking jeera out of her food.