All bark but no bite

Now mom is usually the last person who would wish harm on a dog. She only has trouble with people and four-legged reptiles, but ever since we moved in, she’s been wishing the dog next door would die.

“That’s the best thing that can happen to him,” she thinks, choking back tears and going about her business as she listens to him bark incessantly from morning to night.

Chained to his front gate or the front door seven days a week, the overgrown pup pleads with his human masters for interaction that they’re far too busy and irresponsible to bestow on him.

Mom has come to recognize his moods from the tone of his voice so well in the past month that she can do an accelerated PhD. on the subject and pass with flying colors.

“I would’ve called the cops on that family if we were in the U.S.,” she mutters, as she watches the honey-eyed thoroughbred tip his steel feeding bowl, throw it in the air like a tennis ball and jump to retrieve it until his choke chain drags him back to his concrete post. With canine optimism, he looks at his drawing room window and barks to be let inside, wagging his tail furiously even as his masters throw curses at him to shut up from inside the house.

“Lesson no. 1,” mom tells her children, “never, EVER tie a dog. That’s the best way to break his spirit.”

“But what if he bites?” they ask.

“Tie a dog up and he’s sure to become a biter,” explains mom, a fact most dog owners in India seem to be unaware of.

Complaining to the dog owners is out of the question. Recent additions to the neighborhood, mom does not wish to piss them off, especially since their home is within spitting distance of ours.

Instead, she and her little one have befriended the puppy. Every time they step out of the gate, Kuki runs up to him, and mother and daughter reach through the iron bars and stroke his soft fur.

Curling their nose against the acidic stench of urine, they whisper in his ear and smile as he arches his head and rubs his wet nose against their hands, softly licking the fingers that pet him.

“What, you never came to see him yesterday?” their maid asked, as she stood at the gate this morning.

“What don’t you ever untie him?” asked grandma, unable to control herself. A pool of mush when it comes to pets, she and grandpa have passed on their crazy genes to their daughter, who’s trying her level best to pass on the same to her children.

“Well, the workers are here,” replied the maid, pointing to the renovation in the house. “I’ll untie him after they leave.”

Exactly 12 hours later, after rupturing the entire neighborhood’s ear drums, the parched dog finally stopped barking and settled in for the night, still chained to the same spot.

“Can we take him home, Amma?” asks the little one, posing a similar question every time she spies a stray dog on the street or a scrawny cat scaling a wall.

Mom smiles at her daughter indulgently - it’s a sentiment she knows all too well.

Yeh teraa ghar ya meraa ghar?

It was while they were both haggling with the vegetable vendor over the price of potatoes and pooshinikai that mom smiled at the woman across the street in a gesture of hello-I’m-new-here friendliness.

“Just moved in aa?” the lady asked, handing a bunch of carrots to the man and watching his weighing scales with a sharp eye.

“When you came?” she continued, asking him to throw in a few more carrots. “Carrot halwa for my son’s burthday, you see?” she offered by way of explanation at the large transaction.

Mom politely asked about the boy’s age, his school, eating habits, siblings, extracurricular activities, coaching classes, etc., as the women stood watching the vendor pedal away, calling out to the housewives and retirees in the locality.

Mom turned to bid the woman goodbye and extend the obligatory, “Come home sometime, OK?” that all women around her seemed to spout on auto-pilot.

“By the way, how much rent you are paying for this house?” asked the woman.

The genial smile froze on mom’s face. Shocked by this blatant intrusion into her privacy, her brain cells froze momentarily and the exact amount came tumbling out of her mouth.

“Aiyyo, toooooo much you are paying!” the woman responded shrilly, before walking away.

As mom entered the house with a flushed face, she was undecided on whether the question irked her more or the woman’s reaction to the response.

You’d think by now my human would be used to the blatant rudeness around her in the form of men who spit at her feet, drivers who ignore road etiquette, shopkeepers who pick their noses while attending to customers and grown men who use the roads as their latrine. Instead, the rent question still manages to take her aback.

It’s one thing when athimbers and sister-in-law’s brother-in-law’s parents inquire about the amount and deposit, but quite another when a passing raddiwala stops his bicycle and asks, “How much is the vaadagai, akka?” before asking for recyclables.

Really, if the humans wanted to inform the entire world of their affairs, they’d engrave the information on black granite and affix it to the front of the house - just like Mr. Manickaselvam, who lives at the end of the street, has.

Passers-by are urged to note that S. Manickaselvam, owner of two-storeyed “Lakshmi Nivas” has done his B.E. (Hons.) from Pilani, MSc. from Australia and M.Phil from U.S.A.

Wow, I’m so impressed. Aren’t you?

Doodh ka Karz

“I don’t understand why we have to boil milk everyday,” says mom, as she rinses the sand and grime from the plastic milk sachets that the milk vendor drops on our doorstep every morning. “Why can’t we just use it as is?”

“I’m not sure it’s safe to drink without boiling first,” says dad, busy pouring decoction for his morning coffee.

“But it clearly says ‘pasteurized’,” points out mom. “Don’t you think this is a sheer waste of time?” Snipping off a small triangle of plastic, mom watches in dismay as creamy milk gushes out and splatters on the black kitchen countertop.

“You can’t be too cautious here,” says dad, before finally admitting, “I need boiled milk for my coffee.”

In the last few weeks, the humans have started their day standing in front a hot stove, paying obeisance to a vessel of milk instead of their kuldevta. Despite their best efforts to not let the milk boil over, they have scalded, spilled, dropped, spoiled and wasted enough milk to nourish a calf.

“Have you picked a date to boil milk yet?” was the first question people had asked them before they moved into their rental home.

“Er … we’ll move in as soon as our new refrigerator arrives,” said mom.

“Yes, yes, that’s OK. But when are you boiling milk? Aadi maasam is around the corner, you know?”

“Like I said, we’re just waiting for a call from the refrigerator guy,” explained mom to shocked onlookers.

“Are you out of your minds?” grandpa had thundered. “Nobody moves into a new home without boiling milk first. It’s extremely inauspicious.”

“But we never boiled milk in the U.S., and we lived very happily for 12 ½ years,” said mom.

“That doesn’t matter,” roared grandpa furiously. “This is India. You have to follow tradition here. In fact, today is a muhurtham naal … very auspicious for boiling milk.”

“But we don’t have a gas connection yet,” protested mom. “In fact, we don’t even have the house keys. The owners are out of town.”

A compromise was reached after tempers flared like angry mustard seeds dropped in hot oil, and bottled badam-flavored milk from Aavin was consumed under the scorching sun in front of a locked house.

With the arrival of a refrigerator, the humans have started freezing excess milk - a practice that struck mom as rather odd at first - but is now seen as a blessing, given the rate at which milk in this house boileth over.

Last week, as she stood scouring another charred pot at the sink, mom decided to take life in her own hands. That evening, as soon as dad returned home, she announced triumphantly, “Guess what? I drank raw milk today, and I’m still alive. See?" Upon receiving no response, she persisted, "No loose motion either. Good, no?”

The man did not even bother to dignify the question with a reaction.

You don't get what you pay for

Where are all those people who said to my humans, “Just wait until you move to India. You can sit back and relax while people wait on you hand and foot”?

Mom would like to line them up and shoot them.

Not usually prone to such extreme reaction, mom finds that after two weeks of housewifedom, it’s not easy to manage ghar or grihasthi in India.

“Did you empty the trash in the kitchen?” mom asks the maid, Rani, every single day, the same way she asks her kids if they brushed their teeth before breakfast.

The maid seems to be a little short-sighted as she never notices overflowing garbage. To add to her handicap, she seems to be a little hard of hearing too, as she never responds to questions or directions.

“You mean I have to do this everyday?” her sullen expression seems to indicate, when she's asked to sweep under beds or pick up toys from the floor instead of skirting around them.

“Did you clean the commode?” asks mom, as the woman bids goodbye. After nodding brightly for an entire week, Rani finally scratched her head one day and asked, “Which cupboard did you want me to clean?”

For the two hours she’s here each morning, mom is on alert mode, keeping a sharp eye for obvious dust patterns Rani overlooked. “Can’t talk now; maid’s here,” she says brusquely on the phone, while the person on the other end nods understandingly and hangs up.

Long after Rani leaves, and her fetid body odor lingers in the air, mom thinks about her former cleaning ladies who performed their duties with no supervision. At $100 a visit, the polite, quiet duo scrubbed, washed, scoured, dusted, vacuumed and cleaned for three hours, leaving a sparkling house and a light citrus scent in their wake.

Rani, on the other hand, reminds mom of the bai on Channel V, who hitches up her sari and loudly proclaims, “Itna paisa mein itnaich milenga.”

For Rs. 1,500 a month (a princely sum I'm told) she wields a broom that picks up no dust, a dank mop that does not require her to bend, and splashes water on every conceivable surface in the bathroom, including the toilet paper.

Every time Rani lingers on the doorstep as she takes her leave, mom senses she is about to ask for a raise, but even at $100 a visit, we’re certain her modus operandi would stay the same.

“You should know how to handle these people,” says grandma, who’s never ever been happy with her help. “Just look at these north Indians. They somehow know how to get their work done.”

Short of firing her, mom has tried requesting, asking, demanding, demonstrating, ordering and even overlooking the woman’s faults.

Could someone tell her how to make her maid more of a naukar and less of a rani?

Mud mud ke na dekh

Given the way houses are constructed in India, there are enough cracks along the walls and under doorways for curious fauna of all sizes to drop in on an unsuspecting mom and say hello.

Spiders clamber along our kitchen walls; lizards, the size of alligators, mock my humans from crannies; and armies of ants march methodically along grout lines, lured by the smell of rasam powder and idli crumbs.

“Eeeek!” screams Kuki, every time she spots an ant as large as the tip of my nose.

“Don’t worry, they don’t do anything,” say the humans, flicking them away like carrom discs.

“Get away! Shoo!” she yells at flies, as though they’re obedient dogs who listen to their masters.

“Aaaaaargh!” shrieks mom, when she spies a scurrying lizard in her kitchen. She runs out ashen-faced, seriously wondering about her mental framework that willingly traded a safe cocoon for a reptilian paradise.

“You moved here knowing fully well there are lizards,” says dad, sweeping out a portly specimen that finds its way back into the house in 30 minutes. “You need to get used to them.”

If the offending creatures were furry with soulful eyes, mom would’ve been the first person to coo at them, much like an Indian film heroine cuddles white kabootars while breaking into a song.

The law of attraction ensures that mom’s day begins and ends with a few of these pesky pests. From the moment she awakens and spots a baby gecko smaller than her pinkie on the window, to the gnarly lizard couple by the front door, as fierce-looking as temple yaalis, mom’s days and nights are filled with visions of these vile creatures. So much so that even black mustard seeds clinging to a diced potato or a curly cabbage in her favorite curry are starting to resemble the beady eyes of a creepy crawly.

“Ho, ho!” laughed the uncle next door when mom jumped out of her skin and pointed to a chocolate brown lizard slithering along his wall. “Wonly people from the You-yes are afraid of lizards. They are like our pets now.”

Indeed, the children have christened the regulars they see more often than the neighborhood kids. There’s “Cubby” who lives in a cupboard in the kids’ room; “Wally” who lives on the front wall; and, “Mr. and Mrs. Lizard” who live on separate patio lights and make nocturnal conjugal visits to each other.

“Did you know lizards bring subhiksham to a house?” mom was informed. “You can’t kill them because they’re Brahmins. They are supposed to bring prosperity.”

You hear that, dad? Rest easy now. You don’t have to look for a job anymore.