Hair today …

Gone tomorrow!

“It’s just hair, it’s just hair,” chanted mom silently, as the hairdresser cut away four years worth of her daughter’s hair.

“It’s not a limb; it will grow back in no time,” she consoled herself, watching Kuki preen in front of the mirror in her new hairdo.

Vague recollections from a lifetime ago floated into her mind. Temper tantrums, whining, sulking, pleading, cries of ‘It’s not fair!’ had preceded her own first haircut – an act of open defiance at the age of 12.

Grandma’s face was dark and unreadable when mom had returned home with her new blunt cut.

“You’ll understand when you grow up,” she had sniffed, quietly returning to the kitchen.

After all these years, mom just did.

P.S. At grandpa’s insistence, a lock of hair was set aside for deposit in the Tirupathi hundi.

No one (including grandpa) is really sure why.

Holiday wishlist

When mom says, “I love to shop,” she means strictly for herself, of course.

The woman has no trouble spending her time and dad’s hard-earned money on herself. But when it comes to finding the perfect present for anybody above the age of five, mom is not, shall we say … gifted.

The last few days have seen her standing in the middle of the mall with a deer caught in the headlights look, while shoppers scurry purposefully around her like ants on a picnic table.

The frown lines on her forehead threaten to run into deep fissures as she contemplates a retail world replete with a million choices - not one of them aimed at her sari-clad, bindi-wearing, makeup-eschewing beautiful mother.

“Satin thong for $19.95? Amma would have a heart attack,” she thinks, wisely walking away from a racy number as wide as her shoe laces.

“Apple cinnamon candles from Bombay? Um … I think they have a generator back home now.”

“Spa certificate for a massage? But she won’t relax and take her bindi and mangalsutra off.”

“$99.95 knife from Henckels? Amma will never even unwrap because of that story in the newspaper where the trusted servant of 15 years stabbed the homeowner with a kitchen knife.”

“Cashmere socks in pink, blue and yellow? She’s sure to say, ‘Light color aa?’”

On any other occasion mom would not have fretted over gifts, preferring to give nothing over something that she knows will never be used and will languish in the trusty Godrej for another generation.

But the conspicuous Christmas tree in the living room at this time of year is just begging to be surrounded by gifts in a few days.

Grandpa, thankfully, wears Western clothes, but there are only so many cotton shirts in dull colors a man can possess.

It’s clear mom needs a little help in the imagination department, so indulge her, won’t you?

What would you give two special people who say they only want you to be happy?

It’s that time of year when the grandparents are here

• “Such a big house, and you have no place for god? You have to keep perumaal in the bookshelf?”

• “There’s no matchbox in the house? How then do you light the lamp everyday?”
  

• “Wait, isn’t this east? Why are the gods facing west then?”
  

• “You’re going for a haircut on Saturday? You’re trimming your nails on a Tuesday?”
  

• “No, no, vaangibath powder never expires. Manufacturers simply put a date on the packet.”
  

• “At least wear a small bindi everyday.”
  

• “I’m NOT cooking too much.”
  

• “Why aren’t the children enrolled in Kumon? All the other Indian kids are.”
  

• “Fat free milk is just white water.”
  

• “Women should always smile and never complain.”
  

• “Enough already. Do us a favor and stop blogging!"

In a vortex over latex

It was the $5 off coupon that compelled mom to deviate from routine one afternoon and shop at the other grocery store instead of her regular haunt.

She filled her cart with all manner of provisions and proceeded to the checkout lane to patiently wait her turn.

By the time she reached the cash register, her nose buried in a magazine, mom had learned that gorgeous Vanessa Williams doesn’t really diet and follows a soap and water beauty regimen.

What a coincidence! So does mom, but it’s hard to mistake her for a beauty queen.

As she unloaded her purchases onto the belt, mom hesitated for a second and looked around before placing a pack of prophylactics (on sale for half-price) on the counter.

Memories of bumping into a girlfriend with a pregnancy test kit in hand came flooding back, and not wanting a repeat scene, mom took care to casually conceal the box by sandwiching it between two gallons of milk.

Digging through the dregs of her purse for her debit card, mom reached the cashier, ready to greet the person with a polite plastic smile in place.

The cashier turned toward mom and caused her heart to momentarily leap out of its cavity.

Of all people, it was the desi uncle she occasionally bumped into at parties.

“Hello, how are you?” he smiled, running her buttermilk over the scanner.

“Er … fine,” mumbled mom, belying her current state of anxiety. She wondered if it was too late to dive across the conveyor belt and shove the offending pack into the Kit Kat bars lining the aisle.

“Did you find everything all right?” asked uncle genially, offering mom a perfect opening into a conversation.

On any given day, mom would’ve inquired about his family and made polite small talk about the buy one get one free deal on russet potatoes.

That day, however, she could only watch mutely as the cause of her consternation steadily made its way toward uncleji with every successive beep.

Wanting to bury her face in a paper or plastic bag (she wasn't choosy), mom pretended to be VERY busy rifling through her purse for her car keys.

“Would you like any stamps or ice with that?” inquired uncle, unaware that mom was in no mood to prolong the transaction.

Conscious of the flush spreading across her face, she picked up her purchases and all but ran out of the store as fast as she could.

Later, as she unloaded the groceries at home, the $5 off coupon fluttered to the floor, crumpled and unused.

"I wonder what uncle’s schedule is," thought mom, smoothening out the edges and squinting to read the coupon's expiry date.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she idly wondered if the rubbers would still be on sale.

Chained by tradition

All mom really wanted that day at the doctor's office was a rubber band for her hair.

She dug deep into her purse and found everything else, including the mangalsutra she had misplaced two years ago coiled like a golden snake against the dark interior.

“Oh, my god,” thought mom, her eyes widening in disbelief, “how many times has this very same handbag passed through airport screening without beeping even once?”

Despite the time difference, the occasion warranted rousing the maternal grandparents in India out of deep slumber.

“I can’t tell you how happy I am,” gushed grandma, as though mom had stood first in the civil service exam. “My prayers have been answered.”

A vada malai to the neighborhood Hanuman was duly commissioned, and coconuts were cracked in front of various temple deities - the halves then distributed to the Gurkha guard and the chappal keepers out front.

The hullabaloo her parents had created when they first learned of the missing mangalyam reminded mom of the similar bedlam she had generated when she awoke with a stinging red eye on her wedding day and couldn’t pop her contact lenses in.

If it hadn’t been for her cousins who clustered around her during the ceremony and guided her every action, mom would’ve married the closest pandal pillar for all she could see.

Unlike the premarital red-shot right eye which was blamed on jitters, mom had no one but herself to blame when she mislaid her marital symbol many years later.

“What do you mean you can’t find it?” exclaimed grandma over the phone. “First of all, who told you to take it off? Have you looked in your bed?”

“That’s the first place I searched,” said mom defensively, happy to note that she wasn’t the first godfearing Hindu woman to stow her chain under the pillow.

Perhaps the traditional Tam Bram thaali needs a serious redesign if generations of women have been taking the chain off at night at the behest of their husbands, lest the jingling awaken a sleeping household at the most inopportune moment.

When grandpa first learned of mom’s errant mangalsutra, he promptly dipped into his retirement savings and sent her a shiny new replacement through the next visiting relative.

“Find a good day to take off the yellow thread from around your neck,” grandma had instructed over the phone.

Mom touched her bare neck and gulped.

“Do puja and then wear your new thirumangalyam. And don’t you dare lose this one also,” warned grandma, silencing mom’s protests of needless expenses.

Mom’s neck is now dutifully weighed down by guilt and her cleavage raw with dent marks from the new mangalyam's sharp edges.

“What are you going to do with two chains now, Amma?” asked Anu, echoing the question in mom’s own mind when she recovered her jewelry.

That's a good question.

I wonder if wearing two thaalis simultaneously would doubly impress the maternal grandparents when they visit next week.

Rama Rama Kya Hai Dramaaa

You’d think after a gap of two weeks the humans would throw their inhibitions to the winds and play tonsil hockey as soon as they laid eyes on each other at the airport.

In her defense, mom did go to the airport to receive dad with good intentions.

She imagined herself running in slow motion through the terminal to the strains of a guitar strumming in the background and throwing herself in dad’s outstretched arms.

After a week of burying her face in his laundered shirts hanging in the closet, she yearned to nuzzle his neck and feel his rough stubble scratch her cheek. She was even ready to overlook the bird-cage breath that usually accompanies 28 hours of flying half-way across the world.

It was not for nothing that mom had spent the last hour before dad was scheduled to arrive shouting at her kids.

“We’re not going to the airport if you don’t hurry up and eat your vegetables,” she threatened. Even flying debris on the freeway in the form of an errant washing machine didn’t slow her down as she pulled up to the curb a good 20 minutes after dad’s flight was supposed to land.

“See, if you had finished your dinner quickly, we could’ve parked the car and gone inside,” she told her kids, pulling up under the “No Parking” sign and scanning the crowd for dad.

It seemed as though the whole world walked out of the automatic doors, save dad, and after 10 minutes of listening to “Where’s Appa?” and keeping a wary eye out for the cops, the fuzzy feeling she had felt since morning started to slowly dissipate.

“Why isn't he answering his cell phone?” she mumbled irritably, cruising the terminal and driving around for another 10 minutes.

Nature calls from the kids finally forced her to park, and once inside the airport, mom found to her immense annoyance, that the flight had only taken off at about the same time she had left home.

With nothing left to do but wait, mom settled into one of the chairs, thankful she had changed out of her pajamas before leaving home.

She spent the next hour cradling a sleeping child and watching the passionate embraces of couples around her, some of whom greeted each other as though they had returned from an expedition to Mars.

Dad finally emerged through the security gates to find mom tapping her foot impatiently.

“You could’ve called to let me know the flight’s been delayed,” she blurted, even before she said hello.

“You should’ve checked before leaving home,” said dad gently. “That’s why I sent you my flight details.”

“If I had that much free time at home, I would’ve had dinner and peed,” retorted mom hopping on one foot.

She thrust a half-asleep Kuki at dad, whose shoulders were already weighed down with bags and a backpack, and made her way to the parking lot.

Apparently that filmi reunion she had planned would have to wait until his next trip.

'Tis the season to be thankful

The proclamation was hardly worthy of the dinner table, but just as her friends were about to dig into their macaroni and cheese, Kuki decided to speak her mind.

“Hey, guys, guess what?” she said, swinging her pony tail from side to side. “My mommy wears a diaper!”

Her friends paused, their spoons suspended in mid-air.

“And it’s red!” continued Kuki, her eyes as wide as saucers.

Mom jumped from one end of the kitchen to the other like Hanuman leaping to Lanka and hastily thrust a spoon into Kuki’s mouth.

“Eat!” she hissed, silently thankful that her child had restrained herself at a puja gathering last weekend. The pious had been spared mom’s menstrual details.

Readers of this blog, however, may not be as fortunate.

Digging your own grave

It was probably the poppy seed muffin that loosened mom’s tongue at the matinal team meeting.

“What values do you hold dear?” asked the boss, as part of a team building exercise.

A few people picked up their pens, while others stared into the distance.

“Honesty,” answered the guy seated across the table.
“My family,” said a woman, setting down her coffee mug.
“Integrity,” said somebody else from the far corner of the room.

"I value happiness,” said mom, just to sound different.

As her co-workers directed quizzical looks at her, mom decided to fill the awkward pause that followed by elaborating on her interpretation of happiness.

In what is sure to go down in the annals of “Corporate hara-kiri,” mom declared that she’s not very ambitious.

“Really, I’m happy with what I have,” she blabbered, ignoring the hushed silence in the room and the barely perceptible frown that crossed her boss’s brow.

It was only later when her boss cleared his throat and thanked mom for her “interesting perspective” did she realize that her performance scorecard would be crossing his desk very soon.

Mom had jumped off the bridge, as usual, without knowing how to swim.

I’m no banana, but I’m akela

I feel sorry for mom’s toothbrush.

All alone in a cold holder, it sorely misses its companion, who’s living it up in Chennai.

Mom should have gone along on the trip, if you ask me - just so she can stop telling people that she hasn’t been to India in 3 ½ years.

“Just book your tickets and go,” says dad, who never lets money (or the lack of it) stand in his way.

"I refuse to go India for only 10 days," retorts mom haughtily.

She quickly calculates the cost of a return ticket and local air travel within India and decides it’s far cheaper to stay home and complain.

Or maybe she just wants to use homesickness as another legitimate reason to quit her job.

Oru deivam thantha poove

After a short bout of secondary infertility and months of pregnancy-related hormonal agony borne directly by mom and hence indirectly by dad, you’d think the humans wouldn’t have been in such a rush to return home a mere 24 hours after Kuki’s birth.

But the television reception at the hospital was limited, the food was bland, the bed was uncomfortable and the parents were done arguing over the baby’s name.

“Look, she’s fine; you’ll recover; let’s go home now,” said dad early the next morning.

“But, but … the insurance covers two nights, doesn't it?" gasped mom, unable to resist a bargain. “That means we can stay tonight also, right?”

Dad silenced her with a don’t-be-cheap look and before mom could sulk, a nurse walked in to prick the baby’s heel again and make her cry.

That was enough to rouse mom to action, and the baby was whisked home even before the arati tray was ready.

After dealing with a model firstborn who rarely cried, never threw tantrums, and ONLY called for his father to wipe his bottom, mom walked around in a daze the first few months with a tiny fireball who voiced her discomfort frequently and very vocally.

As the baby became mobile, the humans childproofed the house for the very first time, and even allowed me on the furniture at times to escape from unrelenting little fingers tugging on my fur or razor-sharp teeth biting into my tail.

“No!” soon became the mot du jour, and mom’s every waking moment was spent keeping tabs on a curious toddler who neither respected boundaries nor cared about consequences.

After four years, mom still wonders why she naïvely thought girls would be easier to handle. Her son obeys his parents without question; her daughter glares back defiantly while struggling against restraining car seat belts or swinging gleefully from monkey bars.

“You have to learn to pick your battles,” offers dad helpfully, every time he’s faced with a litany of guess-what-she-did-today as soon as he walks in the door.

Early on in the relationship, he smartly learned that it was easier to obey than to defy a princess, even a pint-sized one.

In an effort to save his delicate ears from constant whining, which can rapidly escalate into a full-blown tantrum, dad silently succumbs to orders of toys and junk food when they’re out shopping.

“You can’t spoil her like this. You have to set limits,” advises grandma on the telephone, from a million miles away, before asking her granddaughter what exactly she needs for Diwali and Christmas.

Listening to her little one’s wish list of pink bangles, pink hair clips, pink bindis, pink nail polish, pink cell phone, pink handbags and pink shoes, all of which already grace her closet, mom grabs the phone from her in the manner of Rukmini reminding Krishna not to swallow any more of Sudama’s poha.

“You have too many things, Kuki,” remonstrates mom gently, trying to introduce the concept of altruism to a child. “Let’s give some of your stuff away.”

“OK, but can we go shopping then and buy new things for me, Amma?”

Ever tried arguing with a four-year-old, especially one who takes after her mother's own heart?

Kaan't take a hint

Body piercing talk at lunch.

Male co-worker to group: “I don’t like to date women who have their ears pierced. I mean, earrings just get in the way when you’re trying to nibble on somebody’s ears, don’t you think?”

A light bulb flashed in mom’s head.

Later that night, after the kids had gone to bed, she changed into her night clothes and snuggled up to dad on the couch.

“What are you watching?” she asked coyly, paying no attention to Jay Leno gabbing on screen.

Tucking her hair behind her ears, mom hoped dad would notice her naked earlobes. She had even taken off her bracelets, ring and mangalsutra for good measure.

Dad yawned loudly, stretched and scratched his head.

“I have to wake up early tomorrow,” he said, handing mom the remote and heading upstairs. “Good night!”

At least I left my toe rings on, thought mom, turning her full attention to Jay Leno.

Don’t cry for me, aw-gentle-junta

Well, the votes are in, and I owe a big thank you from my bottomless heart to all those who bothered to vote.

Judging by the handful of people who read this blog (talk about an ego deflator – the number of readers just about surpasses mom’s real age), it looks as though you’d like me to watch Desperate Housewives to see what the other Teri and I have in common, apart from the size of our minuscule fan clubs.

Is it more embarrassing to admit that you’ve never watched a single episode of Desperate Housewives and other television dramas aired after 1998 when your first child was born, or to admit that you've started falling asleep on the rare occasions you do watch TV, just like your mother does?

Anyway, the point I was trying to make - and there was one when I started, believe me - is that I won’t be shutting shop anytime soon. That is, not unless dad delicately clears his throat (as he usually does when he has something important to say, such as “Are you going to eat that last breadstick?”) and pointedly asks me to.

Being lord of the manor, and as such our resident computer fixer, the master commands quiet respect, and I might be inclined to obey him in the style of a pati-vrata woman, aka mom. She might not be the kind who observes Karwa Chauth, but at least she washes his dirty laundry, albeit in public.

As it is, I’ve already toned down the raunch factor on this blog for the sake of my grandparents who tend to mumble purification prayers and sprinkle holy water on the computer every time they log in to this site.

What would I not do for the man I love?

Will you still love me tomorrow?

All this talk of tumors and suspected cancer and watching Five People You Meet in Heaven have spurred thoughts of an exit strategy in my already-addled mind.

Thanks to the movie, I now perceive eternity as hog dog heaven scattered with treats and a nearby rainbow bridge I can lift a leg to while waiting for mom to join me.

Ever since we watched the movie together, mom’s convinced that heaven seems like a rather cheery place to settle in, provided she’s allowed to bring a laptop. If the bestseller is to be believed, the parade of people passing through our afterlives should be able to answer any questions and queries hitherto unresolved by Google.

Coming down to earth, my subsequent ascent up the stairway to heaven begs the following question: What will happen to this blog when I'm gone?

Should I sever all earthly ties and make a clean break or should I continue to write from eternity and beyond?

Get thee to the poll on the right side and vote.

I leave it up to you.

Kabhi alvida naa kehna

The veterinarian running his fingers through my coat straightened up and cleared his throat.

“Ahem, let’s see now, it could be one of a few possibilities,” he said, fingering the bulbous mass on my leg that I had licked until bloody.

Mom’s heart sank to her stomach as she listened to him list medical terms the average person can neither spell nor pronounce. The prognosis sounded grim, especially since the only word she understood was “carcinoma.”

“I recommend immediate lumpectomy," continued the doctor, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Here’s the estimate,” he said, handing mom an itemized list as long as her grocery receipt before a party.

“Is Terri going to die?” asked Anu quietly, as we walked to the car.

“Where’s Terri going?” asked his curious sister. “Can we go with him?”

The 'immediate' surgery recommended by the vet was scheduled three weeks later when there was an opening in his busy calendar.

Meanwhile, bracing herself for the worst, mom treated me the way a first-born should be treated before younger siblings usurp his rightful place in the household.

Lots of cuddling, followed by teary talks, unhurried walks, treats and even the occasional ice cream followed.

“Here, kiss Terri,” mom would encourage dad, as soon as he returned home from work each day. Needless to say, she had to pucker up and lavish dad’s share of kisses on me so I wouldn’t take the rejection personally.

Now I know why they call this an Elizabethan collar

Post-op:

I’m happy to report that grandma’s prayers to the Hindu pantheon worked. The magic word, “benign” was left on our answering machine this morning.

Relieved, mom called to thank the vet and discuss the results of the biopsy, but he had already left on vacation.

I hope he’s enjoying himself. After all, we funded part of his trip.

Au Canada

In spite of the snippy service by a snooty, fresh off the boat cashier named Poonam, the hot chocolate at Tim Hortons warmed the cockles of mom’s frozen heart.

As the warm liquid coursed through her veins and returned the circulation to her numb fingers, mom was thankful for living in a warmer climate - one that does not involve wearing thermal underwear year-round and wiping a runny, red nose à la Rudolf the reindeer.

In downtown Montreal for a week-long conference, mom had forgotten how frigid the Canadian weather could be, especially for someone whose teeth start chattering when the temperature dips to the 80s.

The cold didn’t bother her as much 13 years ago, when she was the lone desi in a southern Quebec university. Mom was younger and a lot plumper then. The average meat and potatoes québécois predicted she wouldn’t last the winter on a vegetarian diet, but the thayir sadam - chips - pickle padding on her hips, combined with the thought of returning to an English speaking country, kept mom alive through two winters.

Things were different on this trip. The thermal layers, gloves, scarf and jacket were no match for the gusty wind blowing in from the St. Lawrence River, and mom could only stare in awe at the petite young girls in Chinatown dressed for a Shanghai summer.

Bundled as she was in various layers of clothing, and dealing with a constant drippy nose, mom was somewhat surprised this time to find herself on the desi radar at the conference. While manning a booth at the trade show for her department, the lone desi female soon found herself neither alone nor lonesome for very long.

“Hello, myself Pitamber “Pete” Patil from Plano. Your good name please?” an invariably pot-bellied, balding guy in a plaid jacket would query, squinting at mom’s name tag.

Variations of “Where from in India?” “How long you been working for this company?” “They pay well?” would follow.

The bolder ones would shake hands, hanging on to mom’s limp palm while she looked around furtively for hand sanitizer.

“How long you have lived in America?” “You came for job or …?” “What language do you speak? Punjabi?” “Which hotel are you staying in?” “How much you paying for room?”

One particularly persistent admirer delivered his slickest pickup line with a leery smile, “Oh, you’re married? You’re kidding. Wow, you have children? Really, you don’t look old enough to be married even. How old are you?”

He proceeded to tell mom about his lonely status in Montreal because his wife apparently didn’t like to travel. “She just likes to stay home with the kids,” he said, waving his hand dismissively, while mom made a mental note to accompany dad on all future conferences.

“What you doing for lunch? I will look for you. You sit with me, OK? You like isus-spicy food?” he winked at mom, as she tried to steer herself away from him and attend to potential customers.

By the end of the trade show, mom was glad she wasn’t blonde and busty like the Swedish beauty in the next booth fending off advances from all nationalities.

Her last night at the hotel, after many days of eating bread, walking around in frigid, sunless weather, sleeping on overly-soft down pillows and surfing through the five English channels on television, mom sent an e-mail to dad.

“I miss you so much,” she typed, hoping that simple sentence would convey her anguish on being away from him and her longing, desire, yearning and inclination to be with him the next day.

Nearly a week later, mom is still waiting for a response.

Riding in Cars with overgrown Boys

After driving solo for a whole week, mom now has a carpool partner again.

Perhaps you know him? He’s Shaggy’s twin, Slobby.

Of all the desirable men carpooling on the I - 10, mom had to land a partner who seems to rate personal grooming and hygiene a little low on the priority scale.

In between driving 25 miles above the speed limit and weaving in and out of traffic, Slobby likes to scratch his head and whiskers rather vigorously, making mom suspect he has a dandruff condition that is likely to exacerbate as cool, dry weather sets in.

He also yawns without covering his mouth and snores loudly when mom is at the wheel. Rather than be insulted by this affront to her driving and conversational skills, mom is secretly relieved that she doesn’t have to make small talk and turns up the radio to resist the temptation of jabbing her elbow in his ribs.

After sharing a ride with two meticulous females who kept their cars in pristine conditions with nary a stray wrapper nor an errant french fry in the backseat, mom now endures the 60-mile commute with little alacrity.

The guy’s obviously single, and is doomed to stay so, until he vacuums the dog hair from his car, launders his coffee-stained jeans and realizes that women do not like to be kept waiting - especially women who spend the entire workday with an anxious eye on the clock. Little wonder then that he broke up with his earlier carpool partner, claiming she was too “high maintenance” and “cranky.”

A few more days and mom will dispense with all vestiges of politesse, preferring instead to bury her nose in a book when it’s her turn to be the passenger.

In the meantime, she stares at the crack in his windshield that’s starting to resemble a cartographic river and its tributaries, and steers clear of the dog drool on the window.

The only redeeming factor in this partnership is that the guy's a non-smoker.

Really, he has no idea how lucky he is to have mom in his car.

Show me the pie

Apparently pumpkin ice cream only sounds delicious.

Aaja meri gaadi mein baith ja

After carpooling the last six months, mom finds herself on her own again.

Instead of leisurely reading novels on her daily commute or catching 40 winks before her stop, she now listens to Himesh remixes, stares forlornly at bumpers and throws dirty looks at cars whizzing past in the carpool lane.

In between e-mailing random strangers on carpool and vanpool boards and considering posting her availability on a giant blimp floating over the I-10, mom has also briefly mulled over the following options to beat rush hour traffic:

1. Quit her job.
2. Start work at 3:30 a.m.
3. Sleep under the desk and go home only on weekends.
4. Quit her job.
5. Hitch a ride on a motorcycle if one can somehow avoid touching the rider.
6. Get pregnant and declare self-imposed bed rest.
7. Quit her job.

The practical solution for mom would be to trade in her gas guzzler for one of those hybrid cars with solo drivers that are allowed in the carpool lane, but that would mean not being able to exercise attractive options 1, 4 and 7 above.

The truth is, the woman is nursing a faint hope in her heart that dad - who’s never commuted more than 6.71 miles in his working life - will turn off the television, look deep into her eyes and say something along the lines of, “Take a break, my beautiful, talented, hotter than a jalapeño wife. These petal-soft hands (kiss, kiss) were not meant for working or driving.”

Hey, a woman can dream while driving, can't she?

Division of labor

“Awww! That’s so nice of your husband to take your car in for servicing,” gushed the women at work.

“Really?” thought mom guiltily. She always thought it was a man's job because dad treats his cars like objects of veneration - even long after the honeymoon is over.

She, on the other hand, views cars as metal boxes that transport her from point A to point B without mussing her hair.

Mom wonders if dad receives similar comments from his Caucasian co-workers.

Would they consider him lucky because his wife packs his dabba every day?

And what if they came to know she even (gasp!) launders his underwear for him?

Too fast, too soon

Mom winced as she glanced at the front page of the newspaper this morning.

"Jeffs convicted for role in child's rape," screamed the headlines in size 24 font, reporting on the sentence handed down to a leader of a polygamous sect.

Mom's first instinct was to throw the front page into the recycling bin, before it even made it to the kitchen table.

If dad hadn’t been asleep, she would have thrust the newspaper under his nose and said, “See? This is why I don’t encourage Anu to read the newspaper.”

Her nine-year-old is far too young to add the word ‘rape’ to his budding vocabulary.

On a wing and a prayer

It’s one thing to sit in a dark study and play Flight Simulator X for a few hours while your wife taps her foot impatiently and clangs pots and pans in the kitchen to get your attention.

It's quite another to read Plane&Pilot magazine in bed late into the night while your wife shields her eyes from the glare of the reading lamp.

But it's an entirely different matter altogether to sign up for flying lessons and nonchalantly dismiss your wife’s fears by spouting statistics on the number of airplane fatalities being lower than in other kinds of transportation.

Do you think your wife even cares about the studies conducted by the National Transportation Safety Board?

As you drive to the airport three times a week for your lessons, she summons all the long-ignored gods of her childhood to calm her pounding heart as it threatens to explode from its cavity.

If she were four years old, she’d stomp her feet, throw herself on the floor and cling to you with tears streaming down her face, begging you to stay home.

Instead, she exhibits about the same insouciance as when you step out for an evening jog.

Mom's not the kind to stop you from doing what you want, but if you really need a new hobby, dad, why don't you take up blogging instead?

If you want glitz, go to the Ritz

There were no mirrors on the ceiling or pink champagne on ice on check-in.

Instead, a ghastly green bedspread, the exact shade of meconium, greeted mom when she walked into the hotel room.

“Er …, the owner does her own decorating,” said the genial general manager in an apologetic tone, as he guided mom and a few of her co-workers around his three-star property for an impromptu, behind-the-scenes tour.

Mom steadied herself against the closest wall as she took in the matching bedspread and curtains, the yellow bed skirt, the pink shower curtain in the bathroom and the geometric-patterned purple carpet in the hallway.

“Almost reminds you of Vegas, doesn’t it?” the manager joked feebly, pointing to the carpet.

“Imagine walking out of your hotel room with a hangover and looking down at that,” stage-whispered the woman next to mom.

As she listened to the manager wax eloquent about the finer points of his hotel (few and far between), and lead the group through an assortment of conference rooms, gym and supply rooms, mom learned that running a hotel – even a midsized property with mismatched furniture - was the probable cause of the man’s receding hairline.

“The owner invested her alimony in this hotel,” revealed the housekeeping manager on the second half of the tour.

As she ushered the group into an elevator for the penthouse tour, she said, “Ladies, take my advice. If you ever get divorced, don’t put your money into a hotel.”

Throwing open the door to a room that bore further testimony to her mistress's decorating prowess, she announced, “The owner lived here for three years. Can you imagine what it’s like to have your boss 24/7 on the property?”

In between running a gloved finger over the headboard, the top of picture frames, the bathroom mirror and the television set to inspect for traces of dust missed by her Latina crew, the woman informed the group that her team was the lowest paid in the industry, but worked the hardest.

“My girls have 30 minutes to clean each room,” said the woman, who reminded mom of Mrs. Tharakan, her physical education teacher in high school, who tended to smack children on their heads and blow a whistle in their ears.

The group watched in awe as one of the “girls” stripped a bed and remade it in a minute. She changed the pillow covers, fluffed the cushions and tucked the sheets in hospital corners in less time than it takes mom to successfully operate a hotel key card.

“People can be such pigs when they stay in a hotel,” continued the housekeeping manager as she lifted the ruffled bed skirt to peer under the bed. “You wouldn’t believe the stuff they leave behind.”

As an example, she narrated the time her hotel hosted a gay convention.

“It was just one big porno fest. That’s what it was, I tell ya,” she said, recalling the reek of marijuana in the hallway and the “No women allowed on the 3rd floor” rule imposed by the demanding delegates.

“It was a three-day orgy, yessir,” the woman shuddered. “Some of the guys were really cute, but they were as gay as I'm female.”

At the tail end of the tour, while wolfing down complimentary chocolate chip cookies at the front desk, mom asked a question that had been bothering her the entire day. Spurred by guilt at having made off with one too many unused shower caps and lotion samples over the years, mom wanted to know what the most common items filched from hotel rooms were.

“Anything that’s not glued or nailed down,” said the housekeeper, a look of disgust spreading over her face.

Unused toiletries, thankfully, were not on her list.

The Bible in the drawer, however, is a different story.

Itna sannaata kyun hai bhai?

“You must be glad to have your house to yourself,” said the neighbor when she heard that the grandparents had left after 3 ½ months of cooking, cleaning, baby and dogsitting.

Sure .... If you usually loll around the house au naturel.

Other than that, I don't see the perks.

Yeh tera mera milna

Watching the humans canoodle like newlyweds in private this weekend, one would think that dad had returned home from an odyssey instead of a mere nine-day trip with limited cell phone service.

If you ask me, these people need to get out more.

Mom, however, begs to differ.

She'd rather they acted like an old, married couple than stay away from each other for any length of time.

Machu ado about nothing

So what if dad never asked us along on his trip? Not even for courtesy’s sake.

So what if he’s busy traversing the Inca trail, and we imagine him standing in the silent city of Machu Picchu, thumping his chest and shouting, “I’m King of the World!” into the mist?

Just because he’s traveling in exotic parts and we're home, doesn’t mean that our lives are entirely bereft of adventure.

No sooner did dad leave for Peru last weekend that the water pipes at home coughed, gagged and breathed their last.

Normally, mom would have clicked her fingers and expected dad, had he been around, to magically solve the problem. However, being on her own, with dependents, over a three-day weekend, it took the woman well over a day to realize that the problem would not right itself with prayers alone.

In the last 10 years, the humans have never had occasion to enlist the services of a plumber, so the hunt began in the middle of a crisis, with mom trying to track down a plumber who (a.) would call her back and speak in plain English rather than Plumbese, and (b.) wouldn’t charge her the equivalent of an expedition to Machu Picchu only to let her know that her water softener was at fault and she needed to call them instead.

After gasping in disbelief at astronomical service charges quoted over the phone, mom finally invited Roto-Rooter home for $40. Two minutes after he arrived, the plumber blamed the water softener for the family's water woes and departed, wishing them a good weekend.

With only the kitchen sink in operation, mom was transported back to her growing years in India when the faucets usually ran dry, and she took her reluctant kids down memory lane with her.

Buckets were filled with tepid water and every last drop suddenly became more precious than the dregs of cookie dough ice cream in the freezer.

“See, you only need half a bucket of water to bathe in,” explained mom to the kids, hoping the experience would deter 15 minute long showers and letting the water run while washing hands and brushing teeth.

“I never took a shower when I was growing up,” continued mom. “We filled buckets of water in every bathroom and used whatever we had wisely. That’s why it’s very important you don’t waste water, OK?”

The children silently drank in mom’s ramblings, their American minds conjuring up visions of acute poverty and extreme destitution.

For three days the humans lived with dry water pipes, somewhat comforted by the fact that dad was also probably relying on wet wipes and fantasizing about running water somewhere on the Inca trail.

Never has mom waited with such impatience for a long weekend to pass.

Her first order of business Tuesday morning was to schedule another house call, and $365 later, the family now has running hard water. For another substantial sum (not including replacement parts), soft water will flow through the homestead pipes again in two weeks.

Meanwhile, we eagerly await the return of the intrepid explorer to rightly reclaim his spot as head of the house and settler of exorbitant household bills.

It probably would have been cheaper to take the whole family along on his trip.

Dim Light Can Play Tricks on the Eyes

Rather than explain to a four-year-old why her parents, (actually only her mother), might like to go out to dinner once in a blue moon sans children, the humans took the easy way out and included the entire family in their anniversary dinner plans.

Left to mom, she would’ve white-lied and told the kids that they were going out to a work-related meeting, but since dad believes in full disclosure, the family of six piled in two separate cars (men in one, women in the other) and headed to a swanky Italian restaurant for dinner.

The few odd patrons at the dimly-lit restaurant consisted solely of lingering couples, so the hostess, anticipating brattish behavior from the kids set, placed the humans in a tenebrous private room - well away from the other diners.

Mom struggled to read the menu in near darkness, periodically stopping Kuki from blowing out the tea light at their table – their strongest source of light. She contemplated suggesting to management that perhaps they ought to print the menu in Braille.

The mood lighting afforded the perfect opportunity to play footsie under the table, but that would have been too much to expect from a man whose only anniversary acknowledgement had been to send mom a terse e-mail asking, “Do you want to go out to dinner? (EOM)" in the subject line.

By the time their pastas arrived (all the way from Italy, no doubt, judging by the time it took to process the order), mom had worked her way through her second loaf of bread and had trained her right ear to eavesdrop on the conversation at the wait station. In between listening to Kuki’s banter with her left ear, she learned that the manager’s wife suffered from poor body image issues.

She’s not the only one, sighed mom, conscious, with every mouthful, of the strain of her own stomach against her snug pants. With a heavy heart, she refused the crème brûlée and sucked on an ice cube instead.

On the way to the exit, as she helped Kuki reach for a mint at the hostess station, a stranger standing by the door asked mom, “Hey, don’t you live on Wildwood?”

"No," replied mom, sniffing suspiciously.

“I’m sorry," he said. "You look like my neighbor.”

Only in the parking lot did mom realize that the man had probably mistaken her for her supra-sexy, long-limbed, should-have-been-a-model friend, Gauri, who lives in the man’s neighborhood.

What joy! To be confused with such a paragon of the female form!

Mom had to be physically restrained from reentering the premises, grabbing the man by his lapels and breathlessly rasping, “Tell me more ….”

Not once did the thought of the dim lighting in the restaurant even cross her mind.

I’m no Dingo, but I can Lingo

“What was your take-away from the meeting?” the boss asks.

Other than a crappy corporate stress ball and a notepad, pretty much nothing else, you want to answer.

Instead, you string together CEO-style phrases, such as “core competencies,” “shifting the paradigm,” “proactive strategery,” “create synergy,” etc., and spit out a few sentences, hoping the boss will walk away satisfied.

Just don’t ask me what they really mean, you pray.

Khel Khel Mein

Instead of drawing on the walls, Kuki’s favorite game these days is to pair her dolls and make sure they kiss each other for a full 4.5 minutes with their heads tilted at an angle.

And so we have anomalies like Fairytopia Barbie locking lips with Bitty Baby, and Dora’s locks entangling with Indian Barbie’s nose ring.

Kuki watches indulgently and goads her dolls by mouthing dialogues such as, “Do you want to be my boyfriend or my girlfriend? … Then hold my hand like this … OK, let’s kiss … Hey, you can’t be Ariel’s prince, you have to stay with Aurora! … I loooooove you!”

Mom isn’t quite sure whether to enjoy the show or bring her four-year-old back to reality by making her work on math concepts instead.

Last week, after listening to one too many declarations of love between a nose-less Mr. Potato Head and a tatty Winnie the Pooh, mom finally asked Kuki, “How come your dolls are always kissing each other?”

“'Coz they wanna,” retorted Kuki, shooting mom a you-got-a-problem-with-that? look.

“Yeah, but … um … er …,” stuttered mom, anticipating another royal snub, “don’t you think they’re kissing a lot? Look at Appa and me," she justified. "We don’t kiss each other all the time.”

“That’s ‘coz you guys are married,” responded Kuki, picking up her dolls and leaving the room.

The child is obviously not using her parents as role models. Way to go, kiddo!

Another Reason to Love the In-laws …

For creating their first-born two score years ago.

Happy birthday, dad! This blog owes you big-time for all the fodder you unwittingly provide.

Spectator Sport

You have to either be very foolish or very brave to ignore a heat advisory in August and venture out in the middle of the afternoon to watch a ballgame.

And since my humans have never been accused of bravery, they loaded the kids and grandpa into the car and set off in 114-degree weather to make good use of the two free tickets that the kids had earned through the summer reading program at the local library.

Mom’s gracious presence at a sporting event had more to do with maternal affection than a love for the game, and she spent her time scanning the crowd at the indoor ballpark, gawking at plunging necklines and gravity-defying boob tubes, to pay any real attention to the activities on the field.

“What happened?” she’d half-heartedly ask Anu every time the crowd leapt to its feet and cheered wildly.

Anticipating a most monotonous afternoon, mom had carted a book along to read to stay awake. Therefore, it was somewhat of a pleasant surprise when she found herself seated directly behind an amorous teenage couple who seemed most determined to score a home run before the game ended.

Flanked by the girl’s parents, a pimply-faced boy and his uninhibited date rammed their tongues down each other's throats with wanton disregard for the staid desi family seated behind them, pausing only to come up for air and to gaze fondly into each other’s eyes.

Confronted by such an unexpected exhibition of ardor, mom had no choice but to arm herself with a large order of fries and a milk shake and to sit back and enjoy the precocious performance.

For the next four hours, mom alternated her attention between the couple and the rest of the peanut-shucking crowd, stopping only to check if the free show playing right under his nose might somehow inspire dad to display some form of public affection for his own wife.

As it turned out, she needn't have bothered.

Dad made no attempt to even step up to the plate.

Holler if you can Help

Surely, there must be a trick to staying awake at rambling, run-on meetings and conferences that you've perfected?

I'm referring to the kind of presentations where the moderator is as enthralling as Ben Stein in the Clear Eyes commercial. And the topics covered are as significant as the socio-economic status of the Sahariya tribe in Madhya Pradesh.

Here are some tried and true distraction techniques you could implement at your next laptop-free gathering to stay awake. Unfortunately, none of them work:

1. Pick imaginary lint off your clothes, unless you have a pet that sheds. The lint, in that case, would be real and uncontrollable.

2. Pick your teeth with your tongue to ensure broccoli bits from breakfast quiche are not embedded in your upper incisor.

3. Perfect Kegel exercises and silently vow never to consume rajma masala or other gas-inducing beans just before meeting.

4. Discreetly scratch body parts, preferably your own, under the table.

5. Redirect successive yawns through nostrils until your ears pop.

6. Slowly tickle the nape of your neck with your hair and feel your pheromones releasing.

7. Look down your blouse.

8. Look down the blouses of women sitting next to you and across from you.

9. Unbutton your pants to allow for breathing room, but don't stand up in a hurry.

10. Count the lines on your palms and worry whether you’re a worry wart.

11. Count the furrows on senior executive’s forehead and wonder if anybody has ever seen him smile in the last 30 years.

12. Pick on a pimple that appeared after a late night potato chip-binge.

13. Surreptitiously check BlackBerry for messages from friends.

14. Compile grocery list and chart menu for an upcoming party. Idly wonder why X accepted the invitation knowing fully well her sworn enemy, Y, would also be there. Mentally dismiss X and Y and hope Z's husband will definitely be attending.

15. Study the perfectly polished nails of other women in the room and wonder if they ever deign to cook. Discreetly sniff the smell of garlic lingering from last night's dinner on your own hands.

16. Drop your pen at least a dozen times so you can rest your head on your knees for a micro-second.

17. Wonder what the marital status of the lone, attractive male in the room is, and check for a tan line on his naked ring finger.

18. Pray for an emergency fire drill.

19. Envy Joe-the-mailroom-boy who never has to sit through long-winded meetings on projected fourth quarter earnings.

20. Pull out a gun and shoot yourself in the head.

At Least You're Getting Paid

¿Por qué, Shakira, ¿por qué?

The whole world knows you have a beautiful body. And if you wanted to flaunt your assets while performing, why wear a regular T-shirt in the first place?

Perhaps this what grandma’s referring to when she calls my writing trashy.

Shakira, bebé, it looks like one of us needs to tone down the act.

Should we just let our audience decide who should?

Would Mouthwash Help?

Kuki: “Amma, will you kiss Appa when he comes back from Oregon?”

Mom: “Um … yes.”

Kuki: “Will Appa put his lips inside your mouth?”

I seriously doubt it, kiddo. Not when the first words mom utters when she sees dad are, "I'm so ready to quit my job!"

Her Daily Prayer

Every morning without fail, even before she rubs the sleep from her eyes, Kuki asks, “Are you going to stay home with me today, Amma?”

Every night before going to bed, she asks again, “Can you stay home with me tomorrow, Amma?"

Mom has never felt so needed in her life.

One day her child will stop asking her to stay. Quiet resignation may replace the hovering hope in Kuki's little heart.

Mom will have nobody to blame then but herself.

An Austrian Touch

As a matter of principle, mom usually doesn’t argue with strangers when she’s lying naked on her back in a dimly lit hotel room.

So, when the Austrian woman kneading her inner thighs paused mid-massage and declared mom was no vegetarian, she merely smiled and tried to change the subject.

“You're not vegetarian if you eat eggs and dairy,” the masseuse insisted in her guttural accent. “Do you eat fish?”

When mom replied in the negative, the woman scoffed. “Fish is not an animal,” she declared. “You need protein. Where do you get your protein from?”

Perhaps the woman mistook mom’s sigh for one of pleasure, for she proceeded to rub her thighs rather vigorously, until mom felt an urge to cross her legs.

“How long have you lived here?” mom asked weakly, steering the woman away from rhapsodizing on the 101 ways an Austrian sausage could bring one pleasure.

Mom had signed up for a one-hour massage as part of an offsite team building session with great expectations. The morning at the boss’s house with her co-workers had passed pleasantly by, followed by a leisurely lunch at a local resort. The massage was supposed to be the grand finale of a day away from the office on company time and dime.

Pleasant visions of a relaxing rub-down were dashed to the ground as soon as the masseuse entered the room talking incessantly and proceeded to butcher mom’s name despite her mastery of four European languages.

In the hour that followed, mom learned about the woman’s birth in Argentina following the collapse of the Reich, her return to Austria, her migration to Chicago, her grandson’s near fatal shooting, her mother’s advanced Alzheimer, her husband’s Italian ancestry, her twin sister’s leukemia, her daughters’ children and her older son’s divorce.

By the time she rolled over, mom knew more about the woman’s family than she did about dad's erogenous zones.

Biding her time until she could collect her clothes, mom listened with one ear until she lost track of whether the woman’s paternal grandfather or her maternal great grandfather had sired 16 children with three wives and a mistress.

“Where are your roots?” the woman asked her.

Before mom could point to her head, the masseuse clarified, “Are you Islam?”

Upon learning of mom's roots, she proceeded to tell her about a girl in her village who was abducted and vanished without a trace. “It’s so sad, you know ... She was so beautiful and young … Such a good girl, with no boyfriend or anything. Nobody knew who took her.”

Mom clucked sympathetically, hoping the woman wasn't talking about a close relative.

“She was 16, white as snow and innocent. So sad …,” sighed the woman, shaking her head.

Mom asked gingerly, “Er, did this happen recently?”

“No,” said the woman, looking up at the ceiling to calculate. “It happened in 1881, I think … Or maybe it was 1887.”

As mom gaped open-mouthed, the woman continued, “We think the gypsies took her. She was so white, they probably sold her in Turkey, or Arabia, or India,” she spat out.

Suddenly recalling mom’s ancestry, the woman transitioned into another subject dear to her heart – her grandfather’s second marriage.

Apparently, her grandparents had nine children until her grandmother passed away in childbirth. Grandpa married a local woman who already had a daughter, but the couple never had any children together.

“I have a feeling they never had sex,” the woman declared, oblivious to mom’s eyes popping out of their sockets by now. “Interesting, no? They were both fertile, but they never had any kids. I wish I knew why.”

As the massage drew to a merciful climax, mom, in an effort to be polite, asked the woman whether she had always wanted to be a masseuse.

“I’m doing this for my twin sister,” the woman explained. “She’s dead, but I’m actually using your body to massage her.”

For her next team building, mom will probably opt for the pedicure package.

Sound Bites from a Public Restroom

Observations by a four-year-old who has yet to master the art of whispering:

• “Yuck, it stinks in here! Amma, did you do an ‘Excuse me?’”

• “Why can't I wait outside? Why do I have to watch you pee?"

• “Hey, you have flowers on your underwear, Amma, just like me. Wanna see?”

• “Oh, you’re bleeding in your diaper. Want some ice?”

• “Only mommies have hair over there? Why not girls?”

• “How come you don’t sit on the potty like me?”

• “Why are you doing so much pee pee, Amma? Do you have to go poo poo also? I'm tired. I want my cookie now.”

• “Why do boys have downward pee-pees?"

• “Why can't I help you flush?”

• “Gimme that. I can peel the stickers for you. Oops, I dropped it!”

• “Look, Amma, I can crawl out from under the door.”

• “Hey, that lady didn’t wash her hands. Why should I?”

• “Why are no daddies allowed in here?”

• "Is your pee-pee still bleeding? Amma ... Amma ...? Answer me, Amma. I said, IS YOUR PEE-PEE STILL BLEEDING?"

Na Maangoo Sona Chaandi

Not that anybody's asked, but if one really wanted to know what mom would like for a birthday or an anniversary, it would be to linger over a giant banana split with dad at a local ice creamery and languidly watch the world go by.

Nothing more.

Dad has already given her everything else she ever wanted.

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Title modified by popular request.

Tag Mein Twist

I’m starting to feel like Atlas if I don’t respond to phone calls and tags promptly. By all accounts, this is the last tag pending, and I want to inform you that I’m on sabbatical in the jungles of Borneo for the next six months with limited access to e-mail and voice mail. If you need immediate assistance, please tag the first person who leaves a comment here.

The Thinking blogger award / tag has been giving me sleepless nights. At first I thought it was dad’s snoring or gas buildup in my system that was keeping me awake, but later realized that asking me to pick five favorite blogs is like asking Draupadi to pick her favorite husband and expecting to get a straight answer from the quintessential bharatiya nari.

However, tags must be honored just like dinner invitations you can’t get out of. So, in the spirit of Draupadi seeking female companionship for intellectual stimulation after cohabiting with a bunch of mama’s boys, I hereby list five of my platonic preferences (in no particular order):

• Boo’s Baby Talk – Sometimes I’m not sure who the child is on this blog. Is it Boo or Ashu? Perhaps that’s the reason I’m drawn to it – for the author’s childlike simplicity, fragility and naïveté, delivered with a heady dose of humor. Billy Joel probably wrote She’s Always a Woman just for Boo.

• Mahanandi – I imagine Indira elbow-deep in garlic, onions and peanuts, as a pot simmers behind her on the stove and she cheerfully pounds spices for the evening meal in a mortar and pestle. In times of duress, it would be her lap I would seek to rest my head on because Indira spells comfort to me - like a soft, cozy shawl you’ll never throw away.
  

• IndieQuill – Remember the famous deli-orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally? I react in quite the same fashion as does Sally whenever I read Amrita’s writing. Except I’m not faking it.

• The Mad Momma - You know how you start an argument with your spouse at the kitchen table just because you want some attention? And he puts down his coffee mug, takes off his glasses, calmly folds the newspaper and starts to analyze your argument, breaking it down by points and dividing it into categories and sub-categories? And you realize with a sinking heart that he’s right, as usual, but all you really wanted was for him to throw his coffee mug aside and bop you like a bunny right there on the kitchen table? That’s how I feel when The Mad Momma gets going. I might not agree with her, but by the time she’s done, I reluctantly concede that maybe she does have a point after all. (Heck, if I could argue as sensibly as she does, our kitchen table would probably be on its last leg.)

• I Think – So similar are we in temper and temperament that if life were a Hindi movie, Lakshmi and I were probably separated in a Kumbh mela setting as children only to reconnect in the blog world a couple of songs, a few dishum-dishum scenes and one Mallika Sherawat item number later. And when we finally meet at that clean, white temple on the hillock you see in every Hindi movie, rose petals would rain down from the sky, conches would blow loudly and a mysterious breeze would cause the temple bells to start clanging wildly. We'd need that background score, you see, because given our reticence, the silence would be earth-shattering.
  Lakshmi, do you perchance have a heart-shaped locket with a missing half? Neither do I. What about a strawberry-shaped mole in a spot that only your husband can touch? Just checking.

Coming Clean

Do you remember when the “8 Things I’m Proud of” tag did the rounds? Don’t worry, I don’t either.

I read so many tag posts last month that the details are fuzzy and the categories a blur. This is what happens, I suppose, during the wedding season in India when you attend muhurtams upon receptions until you start pairing the wrong couples together.

I don’t know about you, but I think it’s far more interesting to read about “8 Things I’m NOT Proud of.” It’s all well and good to hear about how you studied under a lamp post and came up the hard way to make your family proud, but what about pandering to your readers' baser instincts?

I can think of a few things I’m not proud of, but unfortunately cannot reveal. I have a public image to maintain, you see. I have no qualms, however, about besmirching my mom’s reputation. She has a track record of at least 800 things she's not proud of.

• Mom cheats on diets. Wave a baked product in front of her face and she will succumb to temptation in less than a minute. (And this same woman tried to teach me to balance a biscuit on my nose.)

• She's addicted to certain blogs, but never leaves a comment because she’s overwhelmed by the author’s prose.

• Mom has been known to steal food from her kids. She will swallow the last Oreo cookie in the pantry and tell her kids there’s no more without batting an eyelid.

• She could be standing right next to the telephone when it rings, but if she’s not in a mood to talk, she’ll let the answering machine pick up. Needless to say, guilt will force her to call the person back in the next 7.5 minutes.

• Despite what she tells her mother, she doesn’t make a sweet dish for every major festival.

• She’ll go out of her way to be nice to random strangers, but takes the people she truly cares about for granted.

• There were moments, specifically in the middle of the night or pre-dawn, when she felt like throwing her crying babies out of the window.

• I'm sure you never do this, but she makes unauthorized use of the company's electronic system when she’s supposed to be working.

Pssst, any skeletons in your closet that you'd care to share?

Tourists Gone Wild

Mom was all jazzed up about her trip to New Orleans until the night before she was supposed to depart for a five-day conference.

“Please, Amma, can I come with you?” begged Kuki, as she helped mom pack. “I’ll be good,” she promised, her eyes welling.

Mom choked back her own tears and made a mental note to refuse future job offers from The National Geographic if it involved being away from her babies and Indian food for more than two days. The indigenes of Irian Jaya or southeast Ecuador will just have to wait for media coverage until mom’s good and ready to cut the umbilical cord.

She slipped away the next morning before Kuki awoke, and spent the next five days desperately missing her family as she roamed the French Quarter and watched tourists make out by the river walk.

As mom pounded the pavements downtown looking for seemingly non-existent vegetarian food, she realized why New Orleans wasn’t on the desi radar - the dank air smelled of fish and urine, the buildings looked decrepit, the panhandlers were particularly persistent and the famous beignets tasted like badusha’s country cousin.

Mom even encountered some street sexual harassment - her first since she left India - as she walked around soaking in the sights. “Hi, baby!” an ugly moron clucked at her as he passed by. Mom wondered if showing the guy her middle finger would deter or encourage him, but the man had disappeared into the crowd by the time she made up her mind.

Perhaps he had mistaken mom for one of the “topless bottomless” dancers advertised outside every second edifice on upper Bourbon Street. Naked pictures of pouty women graced the building fronts and bouncers lured passers-by with promises of two-for-one drinks and other, ahem ... attractions.

If all one wanted in life were rich food, booze, jazz and willing women, N’awlins is the place to "laissez les bon temps rouler," as the city's tag line states.

But for all others - especially people like mom who drink water and are of a somewhat virtuous bent of mind - the city holds little in terms of charm and even less by way of entertainment.

Senior Sampats

You’d think with dad’s parents visiting us for the summer, mom would be nervous and on her best behavior, playing the part of a well-dressed Zee TV soap bahu to perfection.

But the woman’s genuine, if nothing else, and also a bad actress - so she treats her in-laws with the same informality she reserves for her parents. In other words, grandma cooks and mom eats; grandpa walks me and mom sleeps in; and the grandparents mind the children all day while mom shoots e-mail and writes mindless memos at work.

Dutiful daughter-in-law that she is, mom promptly surrendered the kitchen to grandma the day she arrived. She threw open her pantry, the refrigerator and cupboards, brought out spices from storage, and asked grandma to unleash her culinary creativity.

A superlative cook, grandma can whip up fare for a party of two or twenty in roughly the time it takes mom to peel one onion.

Not wanting to disrupt grandma's well-oiled rhythm, mom stays away from the food preparation area, salivating instead in anticipation, as aromas fill every nook and cranny of the house.

She assuages pinpricks of guilt by consoling herself that grandma would be bored without kitchen duties, and grandpa would be equally frustrated if he couldn't brew his own coffee or wipe the kitchen countertops to his liking.

With the arrival of grandparents, not only has mom’s domestic workload reduced by three-quarters, but the children have found new principal pals, as well. Mom heaves a huge sigh of relief when the kids bypass her and run to grandma for imaginary bruises and rumbling tummies. The little ones still need mom for chauffeuring and arranging play dates, but grandma and grandpa bear the brunt of temper tantrums and hourly arguments over ESPN or the Disney channel.

As if holding down the fort weren't enough, dad's parents are also the kind of people who keep their opinions to themselves. They do not comment on mom lolling around in shorts, her erratic sleep patterns, dubious choice in movies, religious indolence or even her missing mangalsutra.

“How did you get so lucky?” envious cousins often ask her.

Mom has no idea.

She shrugs and reaches out to knock on wood instead.

Time Management

While riding their scooters around the house one evening, Little Niv., Kuki’s five-year-old playmate, announced to no one in particular, “My daddy keeps kissing my mommy. On the lips!”

(Note her use of the present continuous tense to show that the activity is a recurring one.)

Perhaps that’s why Niv.’s parents, the charming Krishnans, constantly bemoan the lack of time in their busy lives.

P.S.: My own humans suffer from no such distractions, of course, but still claim to be crazy busy.

Tag Times Two

Not that it matters much, but it appears that the rules of this meme game (it was noon and now Lakshmi who tagged me) involve posting six or more fascinating facets of my personality. And I’m supposed to tag somebody else in return so this chain never dies - sort of like the scam grams from Nigeria that show up in my inbox or the spooky-looking host of Unsolved Mysteries who, I’m convinced, is really a ghost.

I’m afraid of rejection from people I don’t know well, so I tag mom, who’s only too happy to talk about herself - even when she hides behind her dog.

1. Mom dislikes shaking hands. She’s convinced that she fell sick the first week at work because she shook at least 263 hands in greeting. Now you see why this woman can never be president.

2. She doesn’t like to touch door handles in public for the same reason. After every trip to the restroom at work, mom walks out with the white paper towel she just dried her hands with to open doors. And since there’s no trashcan nearby, she has to walk through a sea of cubicles holding on to a damp paper towel, all the while praying she wouldn’t be introduced to someone and forced to shake hands.

3. Mom attracts static electricity the way Paris Hilton attracts controversy.

4. The smell of coffee makes her barf (yes, she’s probably from another planet). The scented candle overdose at Pier 1 gives her a headache; perfumes make her sneeze; and the fecal stench in public restrooms is enough to make her faint. Given her sensitivity to odors, I’d say she was a dog in her last life. But her partiality to the smell of musk cologne on a faintly sweaty body has me thinking that she could very well have been a doe.

5. Mom is a self-proclaimed dishwasher queen. With Hercule Poirot-like precision she will arrange cutlery and plates in such a way that the dishes are never tempted to run away with the spoons.

6. Politics and religion are to mom as romance and foreplay are to dad – completely pointless and a sheer waste of time.

7. Despite dad’s undisguised disinterest in romance, Lifetime television, office gossip, family melodrama, celebrity news, Michael Bolton’s music and this blog, if she had to do it again, mom would pick him in a swayamvara of 10,000 suitors with her eyes closed - he'd probably be the only guy there with a laptop and no cologne.

Self-Love

I could have sworn someone tagged me awhile ago. Was it The Visitor? Or was it my imagination?

Somehow, the guilt of not responding is weighing down on me and causing a bit of acid reflux – quite like when mom procrastinates to call visiting elders from India despite constant reminders from her parents.

Therefore, in the interests of my health, let me tell you a few things about myself that I’m sure you’re dying to know.

1. I sniff crotches. That’s how I say hello. And I think it’s more sincere than the fake smiles and the breezy how-are-yous exchanged by sworn enemies in mom’s friends’ circle.

2. The nose knows. I can tell you your entire medical history in one sniff – ask me the date of your last period; current medications you’re on; the last time you were intimate, and with whom; your ovulation cycle; etc.

3. I drink from the toilet on occasion - when my water bowl’s empty. As far as I can tell, it tastes no different from mom’s rasam.

4. I can hear the rustling of a loaf of bread in my dreams. I might be fast asleep upstairs, but the sound of a plastic wrapper in a sound proofed basement can rouse me from the deepest slumber.

5. I think mom should quit her job and stay home with me. She and I are both happier that way. Mom was born to live life as a pampered princess, not as a corporate slave. Dad, on the other hand, suffers from no such delusions, so he’s well-advised to continue working and keep the hearth fire roaring.

P.S. How embarrassing would it be if nobody actually tagged me and I just sat and wrote a whole post about myself?

Man Booker Prize Can Wait

Who has the time to write when there’s so much to read? And I’m not just talking about the updates to my favorite blogs or the 85, mostly Viagra-related, e-mails in my inbox when I returned.

I’m trying to revive a lost habit – reading books.

For some reason, Amrita’s laboring under the false impression that I’m actually erudite. Er … does reading agony aunt columns and the comics page while perched on the throne count? How about the ability to immediately spot the word “sex” in a sea of syntax?

Based on empirical research and observation of Generation Yers in my vicinity, it appears that reading seems to be a dying art - disappearing almost at the same rate as the endangered Bengal tiger.

On her recent flight to and from New Jersey, mom noticed that roughly three-quarters of her fellow passengers whipped out their laptops in the waiting area and as soon as they were airborne. The few people who weren’t fixated on a screen the next five hours were either fast asleep or trying hard to ignore Kuki’s singing - which could be heard well above the drone of the airplane engines.

Even the toddlers onboard had their own viewing devices with headsets. And the sight of two desi dudes sitting VERY close together, trying to concentrate on Tabu on a shared laptop while studiously ignoring looks from curious passengers, is forever etched in mom's mind.

“Good lord, don’t people read books anymore?” mouthed mom to dad, from across the aisle and over the heads of her two children.

Dad adjusted his headset and stared at her blankly.

That does it! I'm very tempted to put my wordsmith ambitions on indefinite hold.

If my book falls in a literary ocean, and no one is around to read it, will it still make a splash?

Out of Service

The humans are off to visit family in New Jersey the next few days to eat, drink and be lazy - as if they don’t do enough of that at home.

Do I sound bitter because they’re not taking me along?

In between 10,000 guilty kisses mom rationalized that given my rabid fan following, I was sure to be recognized and attract attention from the bloggarazzi. Oh, the price one pays for popularity!

Anyway, if you happen to see a desi family of four, along with a gaggle of relatives, in the Noo Joisee area this weekend, stop and say hello, won’t you? They should be pretty easy to spot as they'll be hanging out near a food source.

What are you doing for the long weekend?

Kutti + Baby = Kuki

Unlike her angelic brother who mewed softly like a kitten when he was born, Kuki made her entrance into the world four years ago bawling like a banshee.

The obstetrician covered her ears and the nurses poked their heads into the room, claiming they could hear the baby out in the parking lot.

“Nothing wrong with her lungs,” wryly observed the doctor, as she placed a muculent, caterwauling newborn face-down on mom’s belly.

Exhausted and sweaty from the labor, mom clung to her clammy bundle of joy, afraid the baby would slip from her hold and fall to the floor. She was still amazed that nobody had managed to drop either one of her babies as she ejected them from her body. As far as she could tell, there was no safety net below the birthing bed, like in a trapeze act, to catch slimy babies that fell through the doctor’s grasp.

As the nurse whisked the infant away to the far side of the room to be weighed and cleaned, mom prodded dad who stood silently holding her hand. “Go count the baby's fingers and toes,” she hissed, slightly miffed that he had forgotten to charge the camcorder battery despite being informed of the big event approximately nine months in advance.

When the nurse finally handed a swaddled, quiet babe to mom, she noted that the little angel looked quite like her older brother did when he arrived – chalky white with pink splotches, shriveled skin, navy blue eyes, a conical head from being sucked out and a face that didn’t resemble anybody the humans knew.

Mom (cooing): “Hi, kutti baby! Welcome ... Hello, Ananya.”

Dad: “Ahem … I thought we’d decided not to go with Ananya.”

Mom: “But Ananya’s a nice name. I tried it on the nurse and she didn't mess it up. It means unique.”

Dad: “Yes, I know what it means. But I still prefer the other name we picked.”

Mom (stalling): “You mean the one you picked. But Ananya starts with an ‘A,’ like Anu.”

Dad (acting as though he had just squeezed a watermelon through a grape-sized hole the last five hours): “Look, stop being so wishy-washy. When you decide on something, stick to it. What’s the point of going back and forth again?”

Mom (snapping): “Fine, do what you like.”

Dad (storming out of the room): “Fine!”

Mom gazed at her infant, who looked back at her quizzically. Barely an hour old, the baby had already witnessed her first battle of the sexes.

Mortified at the first impression they had created, mom decided to conserve her energy for the really important battles, such as whose turn it was to change the baby’s soiled diaper, or who gets to pace the hallway with a crying infant at 3 a.m.

A good half-hour later, as her arms grew weary of holding the suckling and the sensations slowly returned to her nether regions, dad walked into the room, looking slightly apologetic. He took the sleeping baby from mom’s hands, and with a sheepish grin, handed her the birth record.

"How considerate," noted mom.

The baby's middle name was now officially Ananya.