Gastric grief

On occasional mornings, mom wakes up to little gifts I leave for her on the bedroom floor. Gifts that she claims she can do without, such as bodily emissions I cannot hold until morning.

The only reward I get for leaving these gifts is a mild reprimand, for which I have the mosaic flooring in the house to thank. Believe me, the reaction was a lot less gentle when such offerings were discovered in prime carpeted areas.

Given my tendency to ingest what mom calls as “garbage” and I claim as “food going waste,” combined with a slower metabolism due to my advanced age, mom awoke this morning to find the bedroom floor saturated with the entire contents of my stomach and bladder.

“What the …?” was her initial reaction as she rubbed her crusty eyes and surveyed the room, which had not one unsoiled corner. “Terri!” she yelled, turning toward me, arms akimbo. “Out!” she screamed, as I heaved and threw up what little was left in my stomach.

To cut a long story short, and to fast forward several bouts of vomiting through the day, I seem to have an acute case of indigestion.

“It’s normally associated with eating cow dung,” the vet pronounced as she inserted a fat syringe into my leg.

Ever since we moved to India, I’ve discovered a local delicacy found aplenty in our neighborhood. “You’re disgusting, Terri!” sighs mom, yanking my leash when she finds me dipping into this roadside delight, equally flavorful whether it’s freshly laid or baked in the sun.

Disgusting, indeed! What would she know, this woman who picks a plate of steamed Brussels sprouts over spicy buffalo wings?

Mom’s equally indifferent to another neighborhood delicacy I discovered on a recent beach outing – juicy, gelatinous clams washed ashore by the waves. Too impatient to pry the shells apart, I swallowed them whole, ignoring fine sand on my tongue and savoring, instead, the saltiness of the crustaceans.

“Do I not feed this dog enough?” wonders mom in dismay as she watches me scoop up empty milk sachets, bread wrappers, leftover sambhar and chutney bags on the road faster than her brain can instruct her hand to pull me away.

You see, there comes a time in a dog’s life when he tires of eating boiled eggs and spongy bread for breakfast, rice and dal for lunch, Marie biscuits for tiffin and steamed vegetables with rotis for dinner.

The canine body craves variety, which is why mom has taken to ignoring the gleaming, silvery fish with vacant eyes and pieces of juicy bone that my friends, the crows, occasionally drop over our compound wall as they sit on the coconut trees with their catch.

“The next time he gets indigestion like this, just give him some ice cream,” advised the vet, as mom settled the bill for a grand total of Rs. 150.

“Excuse me?” asked mom, still reeling from a $3 bill for medical services rendered.

“Yes, yes, regular ice cream. Try vanilla,” the woman replied.

Give me a few days to recover, and I might start competing with the kids on Friday nights for ice cream. Vanilla, did she say? At this point, I’m ready to try any flavor, as long as it’s not (bleah!) green tea or broccoli.

That's where even a dog, self-respecting or otherwise, would draw the line.

Oh Happy Day

Ask mom about the happiest day of her life, and she'll tell you that it wasn’t the time she stood first in class, won her first prize or became part of the hallowed cool chick clique in school.

Nor was it the day her friend’s handsome older brother made eye contact with her or when the scholarship results were finally announced.

It wasn’t even the day she lay on a birthing table with sweat pouring down her face and squeezed a watermelon-sized baby out of a lemon-sized hole.

Ask mom, and she’ll reply without hesitation that it was the day she woke up at the crack of dawn and sat on stage next to a man who gave her goose pimples by his mere presence.

“Did Appa go down on his knees and ask you to marry him?” her five-year-old Disney/Barbie addict wants to know as she looks through her parents’ wedding album. “Did he kiss you?”

“You don’t kiss in Indian weddings,” replies mom.

“Then I’ll get married in America,” her daughter firmly declares.

Her son’s reaction to the wedding pictures is quite different.

“You have so much makeup on, you look like a clown, mom,” he says quite frankly.


Scintillating Sands
Radiant Rads

Come on baby, light my fire

In her salad days, reading unrequited romances would’ve had mom swooning on the floor with a glazed look in her eyes. With one hand clutching the paperback and the other hand on her heart, she would’ve been a simpering mess, conscious of the goose pimples straining to erupt through her skin.

For example, she once devoured The Bridges of Madison County in the backseat of a car as dad and a friend drove through two states along the Pacific coast. Instead of admiring the verdant landscape or listening to fascinating guy talk in the front seat, mom sighed through the whole trip and gazed out the window with unseeing eyes to still her beating heart.

These days, however, chick lit romance has begun to annoy her, in much the same way an aunt once told her to stop filling her head with nonsense. “You know, husbands are very different from heroes,” the aunt said, noting the book in mom’s hand.

After reading Message in a Bottle recently, a soppy, syrupy romance where the male protagonist sheds tears and writes love letters, mom is inclined to believe the old woman was right after all.

Consider the following passage from the book:

They stood with their arms around each other, kissing in the moonlight for a long time, neither of them caring if anyone could see them. They had both waited too long for this moment, and when they finally pulled back, they stared at each other.

So far, so good. The couple return home and kiss more passionately as they shut the door, trembling with anticipation. One would expect them to proceed directly to second base, but it seems there's something far more urgent to be done first (no, it's not loading the dishwasher).

She walked to the kitchen, picked up the two candles from the table, and led him to the bedroom. She put the candles on his bureau, and he pulled the matches from his pocket, lighting them as she walked to the windows and began to close the curtains.

Now, there are many reasons why lovemaking should be interrupted – crying children, a nosy pet, nature's call, servant knocking on the door, mother-in-law on the phone, even power cuts in the summer come to mind – but somehow, mood lighting doesn’t seem like a valid excuse.

Some of you may claim that candles are as integral to romance as frosting is to cake, but I can't seem to envision even a hypothetical scenario set under an Indian sun.

Woman to man: “Is it in yet?”
Man: “I don’t know. I can’t see. Let me turn the light on.”
Woman: “No, no, I hate the glare from the tube light. I'll get a headache.”
Man: “Fine, I’ll turn the bathroom light on.”
Woman: “Hello, we can't keep the door open. The air conditioner is on. Let’s light candles instead. That’s how they do it in the movies.”

Pause.

Man: "And I suppose you want me to go get them?"
Woman: “Well, I'm not going through the house in the dark. There might be lizards. You get the candles, I'll put some soft music on. Kenny G would set the mood.”
Man: “Kenny G? You’re kidding, right? I can’t stand him.”
Woman: “Well, I refuse to do it to the strains of Hotel California.”
Man: “Oh, fine. Let’s skip the music then. Where are the candles?”
Woman: “You don’t know? They’re in the drawing room showcase, where they’ve been for the past year. You never noticed?”
Man: “I didn’t. And where are the matches?”
Woman: “Right there in the puja room.”

Silence.

Woman: “What happened? Oh, God, are you coming? I thought you were going.”
Man: “Er … you want me to go into the puja room in this condition?”

It's just as I suspected, candles in India are only useful during power outages.

Canine couplings

They say dogs make wonderful teachers.

Why, as a lad, even actor Akshay Kumar learned a thing or two from his pet dog. In a recent interview in People magazine, he said he first learned about sex from the family dog, “I had a really overactive dog, so I thought I would save my parents the embarrassment of teaching me. I just copied the dog. His name was Thumper.”

Mom frowned in disapproval when she read the statement. She’s of the firm belief that pets need to be sterilized (and Akki perhaps needs to keep his pants zipped up). But she realized, even as she winced, that her own children were being subjected to this candid form of coitus.

“See how those dogs are playing, mom?” her little one points as she spots the colony kuttas exercising their pelvic muscles in the middle of the street. “So cute. Can we pet them?”

The neighborhood canines have taught mom that spring is not the only time of year for creating or birthing babies. Over the last few months, we have spotted furry litters almost every other week, snuggling against each other in vacant plots, open drains and under shady trees.

The little balls of fluff are universally cute, and even though she warns her children not to get attached to strays, mom cannot resist holding a warm puppy close to her heart and whispering sweet nothings in its ear.

“Why can’t we take them home?” her daughter insists.

“Because there are just too many,” sighs mom, bracing herself for the tantrum that invariably follows.

The first batch of puppies brought home from a street corner died before they made it to the animal shelter. The second batch found at a construction site were dropped off at the Blue Cross, but mom discovered the very next day that the puppy population in the neighborhood is almost on par with the human residents.

On any given morning, as they walk to school, mom and the children are subject to humping curs who seem unmindful of blaring horns, roaring motorcycles, the searing sun or an occasional rock hurled at them.

The first time her son spotted an amorous couple at a red light, the mongrels were in the throes of a post-coital embrace.

“Hey, look at those dogs, they’re stuck to each other’s butts,” he cried out.

Mom tried to distract her gaping children by pointing instead to the derelict beggar woman who approached their car and rattled her bowl for coins.

“But how will they walk if they’re attached to each other?” continued her son in alarm, fully expecting his mother to hop out of the car, run across two lanes of traffic and physically pry the lovers apart before they were run over by impatient cars.

Each time the issue comes up, and it crops up with alarming regularity given the sights they're exposed to, mom tries to explain the baby-making business as best as she can to her children.

“No, no, they’re not playing. Soon, that black dog will have puppies. Well, that’s how dogs make babies. Er… right, by standing on top of each other. Yes, I’m pretty sure the black dog’s a female. No, I can’t see from this distance, but the one standing on top of her is a male. How do I know? Look, I just know, OK?”

One day, in response to the “What’s that thing between his legs and why doesn't Terri have one?” question generated by a passing mutt, mom launched into a detailed description of sterilizing dogs and its numerous benefits. The five-year-old seemed to lose interest, but her son stared at her and nodded solemnly. Using me as a role model, mom ended her lecture with, “And that’s why Terri can’t have puppies. Understand?”

In the days that followed, with no other coital questions forthcoming, mom felt rather pleased with herself for the excellent instruction she had dispensed as a parent.

When news traveled from across the continent about a 13-year-old father, mom thought rather smugly that her son, though only 10 years old, is surely smarter. Therefore, she was entirely unprepared for the recent exchange between brother and sister.

“Anu, why can’t we bring that cute puppy on the corner home?”

“Because Amma will get angry.”

“But I want a puppy! I wish Terri could have puppies. Terri, why are you smerilized?”

“Not smerilized, silly. Sterilized.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. Anyway, Terri can’t have puppies because he’s a boy. Only girl dogs can have puppies, not boys!"

Sigh! It’s back to the drawing board for mom as she wonders what part of the sterilization process her son retained, other than how to spell the word and pronounce it.

What a bummer!

With each passing day, mother gets more and more depressed.

No, it’s not because her parents left after the winter break, and mom now has to awake early to fetch the milk from the front gate before the crows peck at the packets.

It’s also not because dad threw in the towel after more than 14 years with the same corporation and both humans are now officially jobless. The poor man deserves to take a break, although mom has started dreading the casual, “Where does your husband work?” question directed at her in social situations. She’s noticed that nobody ever asks her where she works (not that she does), making her wonder whether she looks like the quintessential Indian housewife or a costly kept woman.

Mom's low spirits have less to do with her appearance (wait, is that even possible?) and more with the fact that nearly eight months after their move, the humans are about to run out of American toilet paper.

In a matter of hours or even minutes, depending on the family’s output, the last ply of Kirkland embossed bath tissue will disappear forever down the drain, leaving only a bare cardboard roll and a naked behind in its wake.

Smug NRIs, for whom quilted bath tissue is only a short walk away to the nearest restroom, may wonder what the crisis is compared to the more serious depression in the bear market. Isn't toilet paper as close as the nearest Nilgiri's? Or has the humans’ current jobless state affected their purchasing proclivities?

The problem is India manufactures sand paper that’s packaged and sold as toilet paper. A few vigorous wipes by the local brand can leave one with an inflammation in sensitive areas that are not even allowed to be kissed by the delicate rays of the sun.

Mom was not always a convert. Before she left Indian shores, she used paper the way Goddess Saraswati intended. Faithful use of the product for the last 15 years, however, has left her the kind of person who now stuffs her handbag with more toilet paper than money for unforeseen emergencies.

If she could, mom would request visiting relatives from abroad to dispense with the perfumes, chocolate, scented candles, saffron and dried fruit, and bring her gifts of ultra soft bath tissue instead.

“But paati said toilet paper is disgusting,” her children inform her when she berates them for using more than they require. According to mom, a wet bathroom is even more so. Besides, how does one walk around in damp underwear all day?