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.