Hairy Legs, Brussels and ‘I think she likes me’

The hair on my arms is the length of my toes. The hair on my legs has reached my toes. I wouldn’t say it is a completely new experience, but it is certainly most novel to experience it when a country is celebrating, yes celebrating, all 13 degrees of its summers with skin and sunshine. On the cobbled streets of Brussels I am probably the only one wearing stretch denims while the world is sprinting ahead of me in airy, breezy and frivolously delicious summer clothes. The moment I spot a pair of smooth legs enjoying the sunshine, it is as if the jeans grow four sizes smaller to kill me with asphyxiation, or whatever the hell tight jeans can do to your health when the heart burns green. 

But my hands are tied. 

I am thousands of kilometres away from a long-trusted tin of Shabnam Cold Wax (Rs 70) and a packet of disposable white waxing strips (Rs 25). Are there no salons in Brussels, you ask? There’s one in every Rue, but with my level of fluency in French I believe I might as well discuss foreign policy with a plant, and succeed in having a path-breaking dialogue, than explain to la fille successfully that I need a wax. Um, there is another reason why I have been Google translating salon menus but not garnering the courage to enter and ask for a pure and simple wax. 

It seems to me to be a secret kind of … something. It caught me by surprise. And I have been trying to unravel it as much as I have been my overgrown eyebrows from my lashes.

'Oh! My Name' is fabulous

Children love to own things. (So do adults I know, but let’s not go there!) The little ones want to be proud possessors of things they enjoy, can boast about and later stack and add to their burgeoning numbers. There is always a wish-list on display under the fridge magnet and another one ready to be scribbled after the best friend’s birthday gifts are opened or inadvertently an advert for the latest in children’s goodies watched. (You should have caught the TV remote in time!)

They just want! They know what they want and how they want it. Only sometimes they may know why they want it. Nonetheless, they want and that’s explanation enough. And you, loving parents, need to give, or to put it in the blackmailer’s language, provide. But wanting and getting isn’t always so bad. As a parent nothing makes me happier than my child asking me for books to read, for instance. It is a “demand” I love to meet and never argue against because I always feel like I’m pandering to my childhood love too as I cater to my child’s. Plus, it’s a great first love to have. Books! So be it book fairs or book shops, jumble sales or Children’s Day coupons, this mother hunts for good books with a zeal which she doesn’t even show for good food. Ahem.

So, what is a good Children’s book according to me? One which excites them, frees their imaginations, makes them feel, makes them question and maybe makes them learn a thing or two about their world, about gentle manners, values like team work and Quantum Physics, why not? They grow up so fast! And these days, academic pressure... Sorry. But you get the idea. That’s a good book there for me, minus the Physics, that is.

What is an even better book? A uniquely personalized book. No, not one which simply copy-pastes your child’s name in place of Prince Charming but something like ‘Oh! My Name’ by Nikhil Mittal, which takes personalization to a level beyond mere labeling. It’s a concept which instantly caught my attention and later my appreciation for how it involves tiny readers. 

When I ordered the book online, I was asked to write a Dedication which would actually be printed in my copy of the book.  You could write anything under the sun and over the moon, addressed to your child and signed off with your role of ‘Papa and Mama’, or whatever your relationship is with the kid you are ordering the book for. I thought it was a great opportunity for me to give him my list of Life’s 10 Most Important Lessons but his father disagreed. So a sweet little wish for his dreams to come true it was to be. This idea of creating a dedication not just personalized the book but also added an emotion to the giving of the present itself. The printed words making owning this book even more special. 

But it doesn’t end there, the promotion of a lovely ‘this is my book!’ sentiment. 

‘Oh! My Name’ makes your child a part of the book. Literally. 

‘I didn’t forget my way, but my name.’

This is the story of a boy/girl who has forgotten his/her name and is looking for it. The name is put together letter-after-letter and page-after-page in an adventurous tale. The wonderful twist is, your child is the protagonist of the story and it is he/she looking for the name. No surprise then that it is his name spelled bold and bright in white at the end of the tale! 

The boy in my book, with a unibrow and wearing a red cape, meets different creatures as he journeys ahead. His friend and ‘ally’ Dabi goes along; a favourite toy magically turned real. With expressions of bewilderment and wonder, he meets some animals that he knows and some fantastical creatures like Ila Pika who he is happy to now know. Everyone gives him a letter to take along, in return for what goes on. What goes on is a secret I’m keeping!       

The story is brought alive with big and beautiful illustrations in a book which is printed on a wide landscape format and is super easy to hold. The story is brought home in a child’s mind with its rhyming sentences and simple expressions. Invented sound words like ‘Ho Ho Hokeya’ make reading aloud fun and some conversations are bold and big to be read even louder, perhaps. 

There are lessons and messages gently tucked inside the story, without making it sound like school curriculum. Each tiny episode of meeting a different creature makes the boy in my book make the boy reading it learn something. Take help when you need it, but don’t forget to lend your helping hand when another needs it more. So if in the first part it’s the boy taking help, in the second he has learnt to help back. Both appreciation and gratitude abound, along with thank yous and awards. Dabi, the magical toy, stands for that magic which shows itself when you most need it. It tells children that friends help. Strangers become companions. The universe comes together to lead you on to happiness. Even a snake can give you something that ‘will help you make progress.’ The important bit is to move onwards. And even more, to know yourself. But for now, your name would be enough.

‘Oh! My Name’ is great for pre-schoolers who are just jumping into the sea of phonetics as well as early-readers. This book will certainly make them identify the letters of their name, in the correct sequence at that. Of course, adults will have to help them read the rest of the book. It can make for a good first introduction to many animals too! Words like ‘Organic’ and a picture of Shakespeare made my reading session with my five-year-old digress into unchartered territory. Even more fun! The mystery keeps them hooked, even if the older clever clogs realize the spelling of the name rings a bell. So if by the time NIS have been found and Nishad guesses it’s his name, how the rest of the letters will appear in the story keeps him reading on. For those who don’t make an effort to start putting the letters together as they read, well, the book holds a bigger surprise then! Who says being lazy is bad, huh? 

There was one thing though, in NISHAD’s story that caught my eye. The transition from I to S, only, seemed like a jump. If the book is created by stringing letter-episodes together, it should be seamless. ‘The boy was looking at a creature’ could begin ‘Just a few steps ahead…’ for example. That would help maintain a continuity to the journey. However, such nuances are for the adults to notice in their boring grown-up critical worlds. Children don’t have time to waste on such nitty-gritties. All mine had to say when I asked him about it was ‘I don’t know what you mean. I only wish my name were very loooooong’. Request denied, of course.

While ordering the book online I could read the complete thing with just a ‘tap to open’. Just a sample page as preview would have been enough, or it takes away the charm for adult readers who love tales written for children. (Pssk! It did make me create one in my name to read.) I also found out that the same letters in two different names have same episodes in both books. But repeat letters in the same name have different episodes. Which means multiple stories have been created for the many letter combinations. Which also means siblings with common letters in the name will share a little more than just their parents.

What if siblings could become characters in the same book, looking for letters of their names appearing all jumbled up? Fighting to own the first shared ‘A’ or ‘I’? Oops. Sorry. I digress there.   

‘Oh! My Name’ is a lovely book created with much thought.  It came along with a muppet of Dabi, who has now occupied pride of place in my child’s bed. He felt immense surprise followed by interest and joy on receiving and reading this story which brings together the real and the magical. A real him in a magical story! The tiny adventure in this good-looking book is very personal and at the same time very important too. Because what’s in a name? A lot, especially if it belongs to a child.

'Oh! My Name'  by Nikhil Mittal is self-published (2017)

[Review was commissioned by the author. Views are my own.]

The Life of the Over-Anxious Types

Some people get ‘too worried’ about too many things. The list of things which gets such over-anxious folks, well, over-anxious, seems endless to others. Even if there are just 957 items (and counting) on the ‘List of Worries’, those around such palpitating folks prefer saying ‘you have to worry about EVERYTHING?’ It isn’t everything we worry about, but truth be told we do worry about a lot!

We? Okay then. Time to own up, confess and also confide. I am the over-anxious kind, but because there is comfort in numbers, let me use ‘we’ instead.

We like the usualness of the everyday. We are low-maintenance that way. A routine sans ‘interruptions’ is good for our hearts’ health. Interruptions? They come in all sizes, and the XS ones are present even in the normal day-to-day. For instance, those to do with timing. Waking up 10 minutes after the alarm sends us into a tizzy. No, we are not sure we are late but we worry that we can be because 10 minutes of usual get-the-house-folk-ready time has been lost. We berate ourselves, beat the coffee harder, bathe like standing on live coals and generally go scurrying about the house like rats. Worrying rats! ‘We are all going to be late!’ While we do that, those around us go about, or certainly seem to go about, at a shamefully languid pace, staring at the rampaging monster frothing at the mouth. ‘Can’t you do your potty fast? You are late!’ Needless to mention, by the time the bye-byes happen, usually still at the O’clock, even the sweat droplets on the nose are fatigued from the work-out. They simply want to drip away. 

This worry to do with keeping time extends to bus depots, railway platforms and airport terminals too. On an average, we reach our places of departure an hour in advance; that is after spinning like a crazy top while preparing for the trips. All lists crossed out two times over. Our bags packed for WW III. Our pockets worried full of peanuts in case a dinosaur blocks our car en route. And anxiety tucked in the top pocket, with the tickets. By the time it’s departure time, we have moved ourselves so much we don’t even realize the train is moving. And then ‘Do you think it will be raining there? We haven’t kept an umbrella!’ That's a size M for the rest of the journey.   

Then there are the Size L interruptions. Like exams! As teenagers the gut takes the kick. As adults, Lomotil becomes your best buddy. Anxiety for scoring well makes your hands shake, your hand-writing drunk and your examiner impatient, and thus often plummeting your scores. (Not for me though. I was always above average!) Vicious circle. Invoke your favourite gods, chew your nails, wear your lucky shirt, do what you may. With eyes stuck on the clock and mind on the consequences, you lose all control on your nerves. And bladder, if it’s Physics, Class XII, Board. Similar to your wedding day, cold feet included!

But some of us have not felt The Anxiety till our kids fall ill. Sneezes to infections, flu to grazed knees, weird worst-case scenarios drawn from Google or Biology books make traumatic appearances in our over-anxious eyes. Perhaps, this is why I confide today …

My son got the tummy bug a week back and has been languishing at home, with no appetite for food or fun. His parents have been doing what is needed, but it is his mother who has been doing more than what is needed. Or in other words, what is generally considered 'not needed'. I have been poring over poop and pee, pressing his tummy to generate reactions, putting each morsel in his mouth with shaky hands (Will it stay? Why won’t it? WHEN WILL IT?), touching his forehead every 30 minutes and making lists of questions to ask the doctor on the next visit. Obviously, my over-anxious behavior is generating reactions. My son’s response to ‘How do you feel?’ has gone from ‘I feel fine’ to ‘Fine!!’ My husband with his well of patience has, as usual, asked me to not worry for ‘how will it help?’ about 899 times and is now metamorphosed into his quiet helpless presence around me, passing ORS, indulging the kid with Battle Ship, sending SMSes from office and generally  trying to be helpful.

But what helps an over-anxious person? Can something?  

If it is a man they call him a birch-rod ‘disciplinarian’ and if it’s a woman on the go she’s got to be a reactive ‘menopausal’! Our worrying and worried persons are seen as child-like, predictable and unreasonable and our often shed tears common and thus needing no one’s hankerchiefs. All our worries are either unfounded or balderdash. Our very presence itself is believed to add to the grim (to us!) situation rather than take away from it. Even the doctors must be whispering under their breaths ‘Here she comes again!’ readying their best placating methods for the child’s mother’s child-within.

We over-anxious kinds sound like awful people to be around. Don’t we?

But you know, it is equally awful to be this kind too. Pretty painfully awful. Taxing! That too to be punctual, or concerned! Oh, helplessness!! To not be able to control your disorderly heartbeat even if it’s about bringing the house to order in the mornings. To not be able to not sweat when the ticket screams a departure time. To keep the hands from shaking while entering the exam halls. To not be able to fully-freely enjoy your own weddings, parties, farewells and book launches because ‘what if…?’ To not panic when the kid pukes. To not cry when he does it again...Yes, EVERYTHING! GRR!   

What helps an over-anxious person not feed on worry? Can something? 

Hm. No one’s answered that satisfactorily yet. But of course, if you’ve read this and you worry for my BP, you’re welcome to gift me a weekend at the spa in the hills or fly me for a solo beach holiday. 

(Um, what time exactly does the flight leave and which Terminal, please? Just asking. I guess.)

Once, at this museum in Delhi…

When news of a midnight fire destroying Delhi’s National Museum of Natural History broke, and images of the building’s façade black with soot went viral, I was struck with a strange sense of loss. Strange it seemed, for neither did I grow up in Delhi for my childhood memories to feature trips to this museum, nor was it among the popular places I frequented as a student of Delhi University for five years, and later as a journalist. Why was I sad then? What was it that made me lament the mishap as if the loss of a museum is a personal loss? Was it because it made me remember a visit to another museum, once…

The National Museum, New Delhi, was the first museum my son saw, one afternoon in the month of April. He had just turned two. My husband and I had strapped him in the car and converted an otherwise lazy afternoon into one where we were ‘doing things’ with our bubba. I had teased him for his nine years in Kolkata, which that day proved him a Bengali-parent-type by taking a tot to teach in a museum before the said tot’s molars were out! He in turn had smiled and ventured with conviction how much fun it’ll be. Come on! So I packed a WW III survival kit with finger foods, juice, hat, spare shorts, mosquito repellent cream, wet wipes, water and his favourite book. I knew I would be sitting reading to him in a cool corner, as his father fulfilled his own childhood fantasies, not having got enough of those while growing up with his face shoved inside a museum window in museum land! 

And guess what? The book wasn’t needed at all! 

The feet which climbed the few stairs at the entrance went thappad-thappad, excited just to be climbing. But the steps matured into slower taps once inside. Suddenly, the roof was soooo high, the huge room had more than the usual four walls (one, two, three, four, FIVE, SIX…) and the shiny corridor leading us in was lined with rows of statues. Hello! Are you stone?

Suddenly, there was so much to see! Further and further in and up and up towards the sky. 

The moment we entered the grand building, my son entered his own grander world of imagination seldom disturbed with facts or need to eat or pee. Curious. Quiet. Contained. With his head turning angles to really, poperly see. With his toes taking his weight so inside exhibits he could do peep-peep. With ‘what’s that and that and that?’ the only question, whispered so as not to hear his unnerving echo, and with an enthu-father ready at his service with simplified answers. Enjoying the company of his thoughts he walked. Enjoying his ‘serious’ side we followed like followers. 

He had to see everything, right till the tiniest of artifacts which never before had seen so much attention. And we saw everything too through his eyes, as we looked at him seeing and describing everything in his limited vocabulary but with limitless joy. It is a joy I fondly remember when I think of it. I look at these to remember it…

Those who are remembering their visits to the National Museum of Natural History probably have memories of the place to turn back to in their most boring, idle, happy or lonely times. But no more do they have the same place. A lot of history has been lost in this fire, of course. Objects of immense value, which preserved within them a lifetime of stories, reduced to ashes. And then comes a question...   

When places vanish into clouds of smoke or wars of time, what happens to our personal histories; individual histories created as we live? Isn't it good to believe that even though places of note may be no more, or change faces like our hometowns, or be named anew on a whim, our memories of them cannot be taken from us? They are ours to own, like undocumented, dormant, sometimes silenced but always intimate thoughts which make precious home in our hearts and minds. Those bits which remain inside us till we remain, like unwound movie reels, sometimes forever, and other times flowing before our mind’s eyes in high speed. Triggered into limelight. Woken into remembrance. 

Just like this morning, when I watched one museum burn, I stepped into a different one. That was the first museum my son saw…

Belonging to the Middle Class

I don’t know what being a part of the middle class in a statistical sense means. I think it has got something to do with economics, sociology, demography, perhaps history with government policies, subsidies and electoral speeches thrown in. I leave the division of the pie chart to those who know their numbers. I don’t. 

What I do know, totally personally, is what belonging to the middle class is all about. And that is the pie I’d like to talk about!

In the days of Chitrahaar and Krishi Darshan on Doordarshan (let’s say late 1980s, give or take a few ‘rukawat key liye kheyd hai’) we all seemed to be living very similar lives, where class as a label or a designer handbag was never important enough to be acknowledged. We didn’t even know what class was! It was only when a handful of oldies got together at the chowk to discuss the latest budget would we kids hear ‘where will us middle class folks go?’ Of course, the moment we over-indulged by buying a Chocobar instead of an icy Cola Bar we would be frowned upon by prying aunties - ‘Look how our middle class youngsters indulge these days!’  That didn’t really help to explain middle class to us imps, except hinting to us that none of the 23 rusty trunks in the house, with at least one turned into a settee, carried gold bricks. Money was precious. Chocobars could wait for occasions. Clothes could be handed down and Casio casseroles, cycles and curtains never gave up on a few generations. 

But who cared! We all seemed to belong to one, big, happy class. Except the heroines cast opposite actors, who drove open cars, wore big shades, with perms on foreheads and Pomeranians in their laps. They must be upper class! Us? No. No. Every man in every household drove a Bajaj Chetak or an LML, of the "Ley Matt Leyna" variety with one long scooter seat, instead of two with a safety handle in between. One helmet and many heads rode it, together, and the wife compulsorily had to hold on to her husband to stay aloft. Romantic! The cars on the road were Fiat Padminis, and Maruti 800s the rare show-stoppers. Especially the red ones, remember?

A sepia film of sameness of class seemed to cover complete townships in our child eyes, prominent tell-tale signs of which were present in every house we visited in my small town at least – languidly carrying freshly made idli-sambhar or for urgently exchanging coloured chalk for WWF trump cards.

What were those signs, tucked below mattresses like old gift wraps waiting for a new gift or filled up in trunks like 4 extra razais, with bleached white covers? Every morsel left after a meal found home in the single door Kelvinator, which served more humans successfully than the number of katoris stacked in pillars inside it. Two ladles of leftover besan mix or one half of a boiled potato could be turned into a snack for friends after the evening’s hopscotch, served in solid steel plates. Just like left over threads of gota-zari or sari borders, in a separate packet marked ‘needlework’ could convert an old suit into a new fancy dress for the little girl, puff sleeves included. Just about anything – from ink pens to brass show pieces to Tobu cycles to rectangular school bags with metallic clips which pinched fingers – anything could be handed down and received with love.  

Trunks as the best bet for storage were trusted like god himself, who resided in every kitchen in a small and sober temple in the corner farthest from the sink. Old utensils with broken handles were as important as LICs and debts, never forgotten, and old toothbrushes which could scrub just about anything (especially white PT shoes) never thrown. Umbrellas could always be mended, just like gaping shoe toes, lacy TV covers with piping and even relationships. A watch simply told the time, a car transported us, a ladies bag carried floral hankies and Relaxo rubber slippers could travel everywhere without cringing, after their boxes became robots for playing with! Telephones, those black beauties (maybe beige) made for good neighbours and loud trunk calls. 

When middle class became a puckered up ‘so middle class!’ as a term for looking down upon another’s status, I know not. But I regret it. Because the moment it did, those valuable characteristics which defined a middle class household and showed through these spots and signs got ignored as irrelevant. And worse, useless. 

Those days, one of the most precious things in our lives, enough to be kept in the locker of the dark grey steel almirah, were our school mark sheets and character certificates; given a better plastic folder than even our passports!  I look back today and find this symbolic… 

Hard work was worship, merit was god. Only then came well-deserved vacations, mostly needing no passport. Over a typical day, all members of middle class homes were following routines which seemed to aim at one thing – to contribute to the house as an organic whole; to keep it together. In a happy way. Because all parts of it were equally important and present and needing care and attention. We ate together, often on the beds spread with newspapers. We watched the same soaps, same prime time. We shared rooms without fussing and slices of water melon with kaala namak without a dreg of regret. We were never alone. We almost never wanted to be.  

Our families were like that big polythene bag behind the kitchen door, forever open to welcoming more into its fold. We wanted to keep it together no matter what it took, because it’s what mattered. 

That meant being thrifty and minimizing wastage, and which then took preservation and storage of things (and values!) to huge heights of importance. We were assured of a shelter from the rains for our little paper boats made of newspapers but there was also a continuous effort to ensure that shelter for the future too. Yes, some hand-knit sweaters for men were preserved beyond their threaded destiny, but then things became objects of desire precisely because granny made them or both father and son used them; objects became a sentiment, like my first block-printed table mats, dear and dearer by use till only their memory could outlive them.  

And we of the middle class variety were happy, once. Perhaps, a touch of humility came from acknowledging that in the social ladder this is what we are with what we have, a black and white TV with a family photo on top and a springy sofa with hand-embroidered covers sitting on mosaic-grey floors. There was always enough of the things that we needed. There were better jobs than our fathers’ to work towards and marriages and kids to dream about. Obviously! But there was also this plain and simple Contentment to aspire for, and that pretty little feeling was actually reached every rainy Sunday evening, 5pm, when bread rolls and chai tickled the noses of the neighborhood kids, and adults, to make them walk into our verandah chiming with a watering mouth - ‘What lovely weather. Feels like heaven!’ 

Yes. Heaven seemed within reach. 

It’s different now, perhaps because I’m writing this through an adult’s spectacles and viewing all those years with pigtails on my head. 

A lot of us seem to be constantly climbing into the next higher levels of ‘class’, class being something we are acutely aware of, making our kids aware of; something which has replaced the wish for a lovely rainy evening on cane chairs with wine-n-dine parties overlooking a rain-soaked valley from an air-conditioned room on the ninth floor. Through the glass windows. The hands never wet. The wind never felt. The property prime. The soaring ambition in place. One wonders if there is a definite ‘middle’ anymore (or was there ever?). If there is, why does it appear like the girth of a prosperous man wearing a Gucci belt, increasing, living in a home with much lesser space for old things, and even less space for extended families? 

Even as my son plays with a clown his father grew up playing with, I have stowed away some of his toys for my brother’s kids. Who is yet to get married! I’m thinking aloud as I catch those signs. Wondering, if in our bid to leave behind ‘where we come from’ we aren’t really shedding the life-jacket we rode the mobility wave in. And just maybe those very middle class values still flow in our systems, secretly, struggling to keep us grounded. Beneath the comfort of plenitude and beyond the layers of fineries. 

Because after all to them we once belonged. Without even realizing it!  

Cousins

‘I’m going to go meet my sister since I’m in Gurgaon. She stays close by, on Sohna Road’, I told a gathering of friends over lunch.

‘Sister? But you said you have a brother?’ asked a doubting Thomas.

‘Oh, my cousin’, said I with a smile.

‘So say cousin, na. Not sister!’ he was quick to correct.

‘But we grew up together, in the same house, so the concept of ‘real’ … but the conversation had moved on. The thought, however, remained stuck. 

~

Most of us trying to grow up since the 80s have lots of cousins. That’s because at that time children did not wait for office promotions or ‘right ages’ to come. They just came, like a logical next step to a formally organized marriage and a year or so of couple time, at best! Single children were as uncommon as a house without a carrom board, and ‘hum do humaarey do’ as common as evening cricket in the lanes. Kid 2 happened right after Kid 1, riding on the wave of left-over nappies, or after the mother had regained her breath and sanity and combed her hair. Economy of time, money and getting done with bodily expectations for the woman remained the drivers for “completing” a family. With romance and drama in it the movie reel went from I’m ready, set, go, boom, aaaa, push, out (times 2). Pack-up!  

As a result of all that mathematically proven conception and delivering, happening in all our extended homes, we in our 30s have a vast network of cousins. If we compare the spoils with how many our parents had, we don’t have the same numbers. So let us not. But, if we compare with how things will be, with the single-kid wave spreading like a chalky patch of hopscotch in rain, we know Cousins, as a role and relationship, will slowly fade away. 

And so will the Superpowers that cousins have had ever since the Big Bang. 

Back then, when the bones were young …

… we did lots together! If you grow up in a joint family, like I did, you’re far above the rest of humanity in the Republic of Fun. Top class, really! But it is not the only way to know what cousins are made of, of course.  Cousins, lived with or met over summer vacations after a day’s train journey with our mothers, were precious wherever they were. Distance no bar! Age no bar! 

An older cousin was a window to our own futures, setting standards for a younger, aspirational demography of children in at least a couple of houses of the family. From getting princesses in Mario Brothers to ones in school; from acting guides on how to pluck mangoes to being buffers against bullies in the lane, older cousins were relied on with wide eyes and mouths agape. Idolising one such was as easy as the swish of hands pulling out a sling from the back pocket, or a billet doux. Looking up was especially easy if your relationship status with the ‘real’ brother or sister was … ahem … complicated, making you wish your parents never got a second ‘from the dustbin’ after they got you from a ‘pretty nurse in the hospital’! 

Older ones put in place standards – of smartness, sportiness, suaveness, sensibility, sense and maths scores, sigh. They did the hard work of setting benchmarks, and the younger ones like me simply had to try to reach them. No marks for guessing the parental dialogue we heard-unheard if we did not. Let’s not go there! 

On the other hand, a younger cousin, with kachhi mitti in all games, was exactly that. Soft clay in the hands of those who had lived slightly longer, and an inspiration for the older ones to act wiser than their milk teeth could ever allow. For all we know, those emulating hands and feet forced them to cut the wisdom teeth in time. In the complete food chain of all cousins put together! A sister who first taught you how to plait your hair may have grown into a confidant to discuss your period pain. A brother who let you in on his school bunking secret did so, so as to sneak you along to the cinemas. Another told you how bees do it because she had a chapter in the biology book. An army of cousins who made your goriest battles their own, and only in exchange for WWF trump cards (everyone wanted The Undertaker, and to see his face).  

Yes. Our cousins were a cross between best friends and siblings, and they were great at being both; like those double-sided tattoos Boomer gum came wrapped in, or audio cassettes where both Side A and Side B were equally exciting! They oscillated from becoming kith to being kin, helped us grow up or grow down, and most importantly left us feeling a part of a big happy family, because they were family.  No matter how infrequently we met them.

   

Now, when the hearts are getting weaker …

…families have undergone a change. We’re not just smaller, we’re also living lives within our own addresses. And our cousins are scattered all over the world. That proximity when we batted not an eye lid to share a bed with three others (tallest near the feet, please!) can no longer be achieved, not even at their weddings or our children’s first birthdays. We’re still close but we’re living apart and our lives are very different from those days when the same jean-pant passed down three pairs of legs, or the same Tobu cycle changed its moulded plastic seat for three toddlers in a row. 

Does that mean we are islands drifting away from who we thought were our ‘real sisters’ and ‘real brothers’? Was what nourished us and shaped us as children and teenagers that impermanent? No. It has to be about scarcity of time and a busy life. Has to be. You can’t make invisible the little bits of our cousins that we have inside each one of us, no matter how you have found your I-for-Individuality in the maddening urban crowd. Nope, you can’t.

As I sit and type this, I realize how there is a very important secret superpower we cousins can tap in each other. The power to keep holding hands even when factions of families feud - over property or businesses or marriages or mere gossip - things that adulthood in our parents often comes furrowed with. What if we kids-of-yore stand up to our respective parents to say ‘You and your brother don’t get along. But my brother and I still do.’ Do you think this insistence to look beyond the temporary ‘now’ will help bind extended families with glue better than the translucent grey one we used to make birthday cards with, popping brushes into a shared blue-and-black bottle?

Isn’t it worth it to ground ourselves in happier memories of climbing trees and playing pitthoo than letting grown-ups fight like the kids we never were, not permanently at least? Isn’t it worth using that superpower, the power of choosing to be brothers and sisters despite all odds and above all else? Totally worth it, then, not growing up enough to let differences seep in. And especially now, at a time when cousins are an endangered species. Endangered, because the family tree is tapering and one day this role and relationship will … 

Fade into nothing? 

No. Not in my lifetime.

Heen-credi-bull ‘Sept-Opus’ by Jyotin Goel

There’s a new super hero in town, and no, this one doesn’t come with underpants in the wrong place. This one comes with seven-and-a-half tentacles and an unusual supply of intelligence, enough to make Jyotin Goel write this almost-octopus’s adventures in ‘Sept-Opus’. He’s called Rot8 too; you know. Rotate – Rot8, because thanks to his missing limb he tends to spin and boomerang back to where he’s running away from, including a killer whale’s killer jaws closing in on him and … but that’s the suspense you need to read for yourself. I’m only going to tell you a wee bit more!

The story in this children’s book takes place in the Goa Sea World, where Rot8 lives with his family and other water creatures. Now, Rot8, ‘a civilized octopus’, is already quite something. ‘His family’s musical vein ran rich in him’, and he was a smart one too. Tumboo, the turtle, is his best friend and not just because she never makes fun of his half-limb, unlike Rot8’s other friends. One day, something happens (It’s a secret!) and Rot8 lands in the lab of vet Reena Ronaldo and the mad scientist Subbu Swami. ‘Heen-credi-bull’ events ensue and a new superhero-with-tools is born! And where there’s a superhero, there’s got be an adventure close behind him, isn't it? Except here, it’s in the tank where Rakshus, the killer whale, is swimming angry and very hungry …

As much as the book made me feel 8-years-old again, I need to tell you in grown-up language why books like ‘Sept-Opus’ are great for young readers who are looking for novelty in their everyday reading.  Jyotin Goel has created memorable and witty characters and set them in a suspenseful story in a very real monsoon-rich Goa. But what he has also achieved with this book is connecting with his young readers and involving them, almost reading their mind to take them along, and even asking them to guess what happens next with three bullet-ed options! 

Conversational but highly invented language, man meeting animal, the humour all over and interesting trivia to make parents happy are the USPs of this book. The novelty of the story is also in that it doesn’t lecture with a clear ‘thou shalt not’ moral at the end of it, but subtly eases kids into a revelation  - the “power” of disability. 

Man and Animal Talk

There is no dearth of invention and imagination that has gone into this book. Have you ever met ‘eight-legged blobs of goo’ called Irrit8, Overw8 and even Po8, who writes verses? They speak ‘Octopi’, just like blowfish speak ‘Blowish’. For that matter, every single character in the book, human or animal, speaks differently from the other. 

So, if Reena’s helping hand to Rot8 and Tumboo sounds like ‘Letto meeaaloo hellapoo yaouula’, Dr Subbu Swami introduces himself as ‘Dr Zubbu Zwami, proztheticz h’expert.’ It’s a world where ‘no one speaks Fishy well’ and human speech sounds like ‘gobbledygook to all creatures.’ Just imagine the confusion! Yet, they are all communicating (though some like Clumsy Claude are bumbling-fumbling too!) and making themselves understood. When Reena talks to Rot8, ‘he didn’t understand her words, but her meaning was clear.’ 

In ‘Sept-Opus’, rather beautifully, all creatures are meeting in their truest best sans a shared language, or accent. It is where ideas of sibling love and loyalty, communal support and friendship, loneliness and heart-break, silly mistakes and forgiveness cut across the two defined Kingdoms as we know it, and bring Man and Animal on a common plank, whether above or below sea level. 

(Okay, killer Rakshus may just be an exception. But ‘his mind had shrunk to contain just one thought – the last, deepest thought of a killer whale: to find its prey, to hunt, to kill’. Shall we excuse him?)

Humour

And this is how the book begins, in peace-time:

‘And now, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls … for the Final, Fantastical Act of the Goa Sea World show, preeeeesentinggg the Cleverest Creatures in the sea – the Octopi!’

That announcement had two mistakes. As every octopus knows, the plural of ‘octopus’ is ‘octopuses’, not ‘octopi’ (Octopi is the language octopuses speak). The second mistake was calling octopuses ‘the cleverest creatures in the sea’ – they’re NOT. They’re the cleverest anywhere!’

And this is how it is, in panic-time:

‘Whale …tail…jail…fail…’ Po8 muttered, terrified.

‘W…what are you doing?’ Irrit8 whispered.

‘C…can’t help it…bit…sit…When I’m scared, I rhyme…time…mime…dime… It’s poetic reaction…faction…action…’

While in another corner of the pool, Tumboo has been badly bitten but let alone by the shark with a ‘Pthoooh! Taste terrible!’ Giggly Tumboo pops her head out, ‘I’ve never been so insulted!’ And the kids are breathing again. The book spirals into nail-biting action sequences towards the closure, but little readers will be laughing their lungs out even as they chew their nails. (Parents take note.)

Superhero

Children love one, don’t they? And Rot8 is special, not just because of the “powers” he acquires in the lab or that he heroically ‘clamped to the whale’s fin’, but also because he is not usual. He has only 7 and a half limbs. And ‘Sept-Opus’ stands for the idea of how every lack comes with a special something in stead, and how disability thus becomes a specialty. 

A lovely message without making it sound like one! Should make the parents happy, apart from the fact that the book is also teeming with scientific trivia about camouflage and inks, octopuses swimming at 70 kilometres per hour but not surviving 5 mins in the air, and that ‘what is loud for an octopus (under water) is shattering for the whale.’ 

Wait, I’m entering spoiler territory now. ‘H’EEM-pozzi-bull!’

Swimming to a conclusion then, ‘Sept-Opus’ is a children’s book that has it all. It will make them laugh, maybe go sniff-sniff in some scenes, keep them interested, entertain them with illustrations and plant a tiny moral seed in them too. It will be a treat to read aloud, thanks to how it has been written, and even more to be read aloud to. I would really love that!

'Sept-Opus' by Jyotin Goel is published by Red Turtle, Rupa Publications, 2015

[Review was commissioned by the publisher. Views are my own.]

What to expect when you’re not expecting

Thank you, Google.

It is that exact time in my life when people have started poring over my stomach to look for signs of a second pregnancy. After all, my first child is now going to be four! And even Doordarshan has known since times Krishi-Darshan that just like the ideal gap between two saplings is 3 feet, the one between children is the same number, in years. While I feel intelligent enough to draw myriad pleasant-thorny parallels between children and plants, wrap those inferences into a theorem and publish them as natty derivations, I am yet to figure out how to keep those eyes from gazing intently at my belly. Or those stranger-getting-weirder mouths from pronouncing, ‘It’s high time now!’

High time it is, indeed, that I claim my uterus and its neighbours, my husband’s similarly located organs and my family’s personal choices as exclusively my own. Oh, add my fertility (waning as it may be, main lut gayi) to that list too! 

That family-planning is the community’s business is the single greatest truth that drives the generation which has been-there-popped-theirs’ and packed up the nether regions in chaste panties and briefs for reproductive use in another life now. (Thank God! Some genes need to go dormant till the dinosaurs walk back!) But that doesn’t mean well-wishing minds will jump into the noise-cancelling well just when you want them to, which is exactly the second they ask ‘What about number two now? This is the best time!’ One would imagine they mean it’s a good time to go shit, but a few years into motherhood and you know they mean … well, shit still. Regardless that they barely know you. Oblivious that they may be intruding into private territory. And ignorant of the expression they make when they ask such silly questions – one eyebrow raised, half-a-smile and fleeting glances at your spouse which may want you to scratch their faces with pitch forks.

Such violent thoughts seep into your cherubic minds as would shock you, but probably not more than being asked in McDonalds over an extended family-cum-friends birthday party and across a table-for-twelve in a hall full of din – ‘Your first child is going to school. Are you trying for the second one now?’ Around you heads turn to look (often at your stomach) and on your lips are the words – ‘Yes, madam, I am, with my hand on my softy and his on his Maharaja Mac right this second. Demi-Gods have been born in such super ways one never knows, right?’ But you just smile, shake the image of those hair-spa heads into the fryer and convince your mind that some murders will be in self-defence. Plus, God helps those who help themselves. Amen.

To be asked ‘when next?’ by those you don’t feel akin to is like hearing the sound a fork makes when your tod’s teeth rub against it while having a banana, again and again. But to be advised to ‘have one, one more’ is like seeing the same banana-infested fork being shoved up your nose. These being my exact feelings.

So, what’s my plan? 

Maybe I can carry an 18”x18” cushion and push it in my jumper whenever my radar catches the signal of an individual with an inverted red triangle (c.f. GoI) for a mouth. What fun it would be. ‘Second trimester, aunty ji. Cancel your Europe trip and stay ready for an invite to the baby shower soon. Theme – Stone Age.’ 

Perhaps, a better idea would be to ask the experienced to speak up in the same gathering they advise you so politely in - ‘Do you think a particular rare position is conducive to producing a healthy second child? Planetary, planetary position of course. Your pandit ji should know, nahi?’

On a day when I feel totally vanquished I will just remind the tied and dyed kitty party that ‘You know, the world’s oldest mother to conceive naturally was 59 years old. And you are way beyond natural, so why not try it yourself, hain ji?’ All this with one eyebrow raised, half-a-smile and fleeting glances at the revered uncle jis, of course.

Now, any questions? 

Anyone?

The Winter Sun

I began typing this sitting outside my son’s school, waiting for it to get over for the day. As always, I was the first parent to arrive, because I am yet to get over the look in his eyes when he sees me as the first person at the classroom door. Before any other ma or papa or driver uncle. I like it that way, so I make sure I leave home a little early and catch his face lighting up before the crowd catches up with our special moment.

Today, though, I was exceptionally early. There were 65 minutes to go before I could get up from this plastic chair under the tin shed and walk up to his class to take him home. Who knew the part of the Ring Road that was squeezed by the Metro workers for months would be thrown open to traffic. What a relief really to have a full road, but still … how much can I just sit and look around now? And look around at who? Or what?

But then, have eyes had time and had to look around. 

The recess had just got over. While the bell announcing the end was met with a loud uproar, a sudden silence was descending over all visible parts of the school. Much like how a dry dupatta falls off the clothes line on the first floor and comes gliding down. In no real hurry but getting there. The silence. The breeze felt nippy. I tightened my stole around my shoulders, hid my hands inside, and re-crossed my legs for the 14th time. Some minutes must have gone by, when I heard a screech loud enough to make the bus driver in the far corner of the parking area turn, and make me look up from fidgeting with my phone.

The guard at the main gate had dragged his chair two meters away from the post and was now sitting in the sun; the metallic letters on his shoulders making tiny reflected moons on the nearby tree. And his face? Gloriously snug and warm. Seconds later, as if it was a sign I was waiting for, I did the same. I shifted my own grey chair right on the shadow line where the tin roof’s shade ended and a sea of sunlight began. 

To describe what I felt when I re-crossed my legs for the 15th time, this time in the sunlight, is impossible for me. It did not feel like first love, no, but certainly like the first warm kiss of the season. I knew that the dark blue top would absorb too much too soon and I will have to relocate, but who worries about teething babies on their honeymoon night itself? I still had a lot of time on my hands, but at least my hands were in the sun now. I looked at them. I ran my left thumb over the slightly visible veins on top of the right hand. Like a ship breaking through pieces of ice, tiny brown wrinkles of collected skin formed. Dryness, despite the lotion. That’s when a scene from my childhood scooped me away from the present …

It either used to be petroleum jelly, which one of her NRI sons brought for her, or mustard oil. Most of winters you would find her rubbing either of those on her arms and feet. My grandmother. My dad’s mother who would enjoy the winter sitting on a folding bed in the tree-lined back yard, and always in the sun. More than the gold bangles it was the patterns on her wrinkled skin that held my childish attention. If I think now, I would say they looked like hexagons made from the most delicate glass. They shone so bright. So thick the layer of oil, so thin the skin. Once done, she would call for her sacred book and its exquisite wooden stand and go oblivious to the world around her, a world which was making its own life around the winter sun.

The older children, with their backs towards the brightness because young girls just didn’t want to get tanned, would be busy with their school books. Winter holidays never came without home work! One of us from the middle rung would be seen helping an aunt spread the orange peels and amla slices on newspapers. To dry. In another sunlit patch, empty plastic jars would sit agape, to be ‘dry-cleaned’ to hold this winter's pickles. Pickles too would be basking in their preserved glory a safe distance away from the two youngest imps throwing mud around, digging the flowerbeds and burying broken idols hoping for a temple to grow. At least one pair of just-washed sneakers would lean against a wall, snoozing in the sun, much like the writer of this post would right after lunch and just below her favourite mango tree, with a shawl on her head because some falling leaves can have tiny bugs on them, plus those fruit flies ... 

There was so much happening in the Sun back then, that the Sun just couldn’t have got bored for the day. Today, I sit wondering here in Delhi - where is the time, the space? Where are the people? And where is the full blown winter sun to enjoy? And then I answer myself – I think we bored the winter Sun away. Because even when we have such moments of free time on our hands and a bright sunny sky, we just don’t know what to do with them. 

Maybe, those bright patches of yellow sneaking in from our windows and doors or catching us unaware outside offices and schools are just asking us to see. To look closer, even if at our own hands. For who knows what streams of thoughts, what journeys into the past are waiting to happen. What bonds asking to be re-lived. And what stories knocking up there, hungry to be told. Spontaneous ones … told just as they come to mind, like this one here. Unedited for now, but a polished version of it waiting especially for him, for bedtime tonight. 

Him. My son. The one I was the first to pick, today again, and around whom my life now revolves. My sun for all seasons to come. 

Swimming-Shimmying

I love swimming. Especially early in the mornings. You know, when the birds are twittering awake and the sun playfully winking at them from behind lush green trees swaying lightly to the cool and clear wind and …

Right, as if! When you wake up to 35 degrees at 6:00 am, the birds are tweeting rants in more than 140 characters and the brown trees trying their best to give the sun a blue eye for being such a butcher in heat. 

You exit your air-conditioned room where your cherub happily snores and it’s as if you entered a black hole spinning closest to the Sun. You gulp your cold coffee in precisely five sips lest it turns warm. As warm as the “fresh water” CPWD releases your way for an hour expecting you to tank-up and shank-down before the heat evaporates their whole office and the pipes run dry for the rest of your baking day. You water your plants and they seem too tired to raise their heads in gratitude even. Depressing. Try reading a newspaper under a fan-on-five-number and you might as well do dardey disco with your arms, neither needing eyes nor brains. 

And so, I thought of joining a DDA Sports Complex nearby to use their pool and spend some hot morning time feeling like a cool mermaid, swimming-shimmying up. And it is sitting exactly there, on a white sun bathing chair (which we Indians use like berths in a train) under an umbrella that came free with Bagpiper Whiskey, that I write this. Sitting by the side of the pool which my toes touched a few minutes back.

If I did not belong to Haridwar’s neighbour, I would have thought this is the ghat people come to dip their free sizes in after freely sinning. Citizens of a whole continent are in this pool right now, a length which takes me no more than 15 seconds to cover – all interruptions included. Like excited tadpoles in a mug of water the previous tenant left on the roof top, God alone knowing what the mug was used for. That many bobbing up and down, in that little space. And many around the pool too. 

Say that man under the shower just outside the men’s changing rooms. Little does he know this is not his ghar da shaavar, or that open air ones are for a token rinse only. He just began shampooing his hair – eyes closed tight as if his jet is landing and such chaos between the hurrying hands and the hair that soap suds are flying to stick like white whales behind another’s behind; a man’s, the one next in line who is waiting his turn, respectfully keeping his back to the lathering spandex while keeping his front reserved for public gaze. As I notice his eyes trailing to the ladies side of this family-time pool-time, I wonder which is stronger - his elastic I hear crying SOS under a monstrous belly, or that one leg which carries all his weight as the other stylishly extends forward. With hands on tilted-hips, he’s discussing politics with two men swimming breadths at the deep end. Both men periodically sprout mysterious bubbles up their back whenever they stand still, or are not burping. I switch undigested Times Now off to turn my face away, hoping for pleasanter sights and sounds. Certainly less hairy ones! And that’s when I am enamoured by a bra.

A gang of girls about 40 years of age are having a mini-kitty in 3 feet water. Two have held on to the side rails and are floating belly-up, admiring their nail paint on the toes while two others stand bent at the knees, gracefully keeping their bergs below sea level. I can make out the discussion is serious. Could be about the class 12 board results, or about Mrs Nanda’s long nose – both horrific enough topics to garner haws and hmms. One kind-looking lady's eyes just bulged forward enough to touch the strapped goggles now fogged over with what could be rage. Must have heard Mrs Mehta changed her boutique. Clandestinely. And for those couple of seconds she stood up, with knees straightened, water to the waist, hand on mouth, head shaking side-to-side I saw it. A brassier under the costume! (How lovable must their bond be that he followed her chastely to the pool! Oh envy!) The straps seemed to match the costume frilly leotard she’s wearing, so certainly intentionally worn and not forgotten to remove when in a hurry. Why, it kind of matched well with the eye shadow too.

I did decide to get in, exactly when the two teens making chapatti dives at the deep end were leaving. But at the ladder I found a face staring at mine with such concentration in its eyes and pouted mouth. What is this? Ek choti si love story happening in the pool?

The child, about three years old, looked as lost as the Batman on his floats was in this Punjabi pool. He had stopped flapping (moving as successfully as a fish on a treadmill) a couple of seconds back, and now just floated. Staring. I climbed down holding the rail, eye-to-eye, in slow motion, suspecting a loving lunge or maybe a water proof firecracker going off under me making my one piece become three. Like a prank. His older sister was trying to swim underwater but ending up much above it instead. Something was up most definitely. Well, time revealed nothing was up at all. It was all down under, for soon as my toes felt the warm water, he turned around and screamed with an ace performer's glee – ‘Mummy, I just pee-pee on my own in the middle of swimming swimming.’

In the meantime, Mummy across the breadth was too busy to have heard her boy’s success story. The two political bums in the deep continued to laugh and bubble over jokes they shared, while their friend, the second-in-line, was now vigorously wiping himself with a towel near the shower, soaping-shampooing over, of course.

Might as well jump in now? Not me! 

You?

[Written for WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts. The prompt for today was - Might as well Jump - What’s the biggest risk you’d like to take — but haven’t been able to? What would have to happen to make you comfortable taking it?]

Soldiering On

The last black pin pierced the tiny bun of white hair at the nape of her neck, completing the neat circle. She patted it in place with a dab of oil. And then she looked at herself. What was once a cascade black as the night had lived its life over the past 80 years. It had turned thin, turned white. Does white mean an absence of colour, or is it black which signifies a vacuum in life? She smiled, raising her chin ever so slightly so as to show the mirror the jawline, set as tight and taut as determination itself. Her hair, her companion who never cut-away from her even when so much else severed …

A trickle of sweat down the side of her face reminded her of today’s task which lay waiting to be done. To defeat the 46 degrees of heat. With creased fingers nimble as those of a tea-picker she rolled away from the comb’s teeth those stray strands which seemed to part her head every time she combed them. She rolled them into tiny white ball, no, silver … like a ball of pure silver wool.  

She called it silver, her hair, ‘as silver as the thunderous lighting in the sky, powerful, alone and brave in all that darkness’ she used to tell her granddaughter when she would play with her plait. But that was when they stayed together. Now, Simar stayed in the same city but in a different house. Bigger. Better. Where her son moved with his family when the confines of Amar Colony and even more claustrophobic memories of what was once refugees’ shelter disturbed his peace, his dream of upward mobility. The day he drove into his lane in a Maruti Esteem too big to park, bigger than anything the coiled wires or shoulder-to-shoulder clotheslines overhead had ever seen, that day he left Amar Colony behind. The car was now parked in its own garage, in a plush Delhi locality. Along with a few more signs announcing how far he had come away from all things past.

And that is where she was headed, S-13, Green Park. Always putting in an extra effort to look her best. Hair all neat, fresh clothes from the cupboard and not those partially worn ones off the hooks in the corner of her two bedroom flat. ‘Mummy ji, please use this before meeting the guests,’ her daughter-in-law had asked her once, giving her an expensive looking bottle of perfume. She was over for Simar’s birthday party and had forgotten to change her suit after rolling 50 besan laddoos at home specially for the occasion. Foolish excitement had made her board bus number 469, totally unmindful of her dusty slippers, a mismatched synthetic dupatta and patches of sweat all over the body. It was July! She had done as the daughter-in-law told her to, but had quietly left soon as Simar had cut the cake, and the guests got down to eating chocolate fondue and tiramisu.

And so, when she handed over her house key to the tenant above and boarded bus number 469 this day, she was neat and fresh. She even carried a newspaper to shield herself from the sun. After all, the doctor had given her strict orders to beat the heat. Strangely for Dr. Singh, there was a connection between her failing kidneys, the arthritis in her left knee and a developing cataract in one eye. Or maybe, he was just being caring, that handsome sardar! She smiled as she remembered how far back they went. Dr. Sukhjinder had come from Pakistan’s Punjab the same year as she and her husband. A widower now, he practised and lived alone a few houses away from hers. All efforts of his son’s to make him shift abroad went in vain. At least that was the story Dr. Singh, MBBS, liked to tell his neighbours.

The bus barely stopped for the passengers to get off. She almost fell on the hot tarmac road, but steadied herself before she could get hurt. Or her clothes dirty. In Hardeep’s house everything must be presentable. Just like the kind woman who always opened the gate to her. She was about her age, reminding her of her best friend from those days of gay abandon we call school. They would chatter at the gate itself, like excited girls, but just enough. ‘Madam will get upset if she sees me away from work for so long. I better go. Come, come inside. I’ll ring for her once you make yourself comfortable,’ and she would sit on the chair closest to the door. Closest to the door. You know, where one hangs umbrellas and caps and keys to storerooms. Things which have no use, no business no point being inside, on marble floors and under chandeliers. It was that corner in S-13 where she usually felt most comfortable. Never far from the door.

‘How are you, daadi?’ shrieked Simar when she saw her grandmother sitting uncomfortably on that chair they jokingly called "In the middle of nowhere". They hugged so tight no air could pass between them, and talked so fast an express train would hide in shame. Simar told her about that boy in class, ‘Oh and I won the tennis championship so mummy got my hair styled at fancy Madonna Salon and papa says if I do well in school we will holiday in Europe this autumn and how do I look? We’re going to the pool party at Sainik Farms …’ and she just sat there listening. Smiling and listening and enjoying the excitement in Simar’s voice, an excitement that made her feel … how should I say? Um, it makes me feel … wanted! Yes, wanted. And what is wanted is loved too, right? She loves me so much…

Hardeep’s leather soles announced his arrival. As he bent to touch his mother’s feet, she got up to caress his cheeks, as if he was a little boy, her boy, still. As if. They sat for five minutes of silence sipping lemonade, broken only by Simar’s interjections of things she wanted to share with her daadi, skipping whole words and certainly all punctuations to fit into this moment as much talk as any 8-year-old could manage. You see, time was short. The farmhouse the family had to go to for the pool party was far.

Plus, the rickshaw walla who was to transport the cooler and her daadi back to Amar Colony was already clocking his fare outside the imposing gate.

Silently, she saw her daadi get on to the tiny cart next to the cooler they no longer had any use for. Will you be okay, daadi? It’s so hot and what if the rickshaw bumps plus you have so many kilometers to go and papa, don’t you think we can drop … but before her thoughts found breath as spoken words, she was waving a good bye. She looked at Simar straight and smiled, that chin-raised-that-tight-jawline smile the mirror had seen just this morning. As if her teeth were gritted inside, proudly, determined to make her journey comfortable, and safe. She tightened the black strap carrying the kirpan and looked ahead.

Like a soldier on a mission. 

Wait till Dr. Singh learns. I must carry his favourite jalebi next time I go visit him to tell him about my new companion. My own cooler. How pleased he would be that I am taking care of myself ...always mumbling how we children of a past lost to time are our own sentinels to our selves, to take care of our selves. 

The sunlight bounced off her hair, hair which shone as silver as the thunderous lighting in the sky, powerful, alone and brave in all that darkness.

[Written for WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts. The prompt for today was - Take Care - When you’re unwell, do you allow others to take care of you, or do you prefer to soldier on alone? What does it take for you to ask for help?]