One November afternoon, the golden autumn sunshine was shining through the yellow, red and maroon leaves. The remaining birds in this fast-losing-its-suburbia-touch flitted about looking for worms and grains, squirrels darted past barely containing their curiosity for the creatures who took the time to wrap themselves up in woollen to take a walk. The dogs looked at us with a supercilious air and closer observation revealed that it was because of the new cardigans they were wearing. The squirrels thought them (the cardigans I mean) ridiculous and the dogs thought the squirrels underprivileged, not that they told me of course.
It was at this time that a hawk screeched loudly and attempted to land smoothly on the concrete walkway ahead of us. Some crows took flight in alarm, but the squirrels chittered amused and carried on with their observations of suburban life from the safe treetops. A baby panda came charging after the hawk and unable to stop careened into the hawk. There was a moment of terse anticipation and tension, but the hawk turned its head regally, surveyed the baby panda and hugged him.
“No…Panda. You have to slow down before landing, or you could crash, like you just did, and real hawks wont be as forgiving.” said the Hawk to the Panda.
I don’t know why, but we went for a walk that day with the son dressed in his fine Halloween Panda costume. It was about a month after Halloween. He attended a birthday party where the birthday boy wisely asked for a costume party, and the Halloween costumes got to air themselves again. I must say I enjoyed looking at princesses, iron men, spiderman, pandas and rabbits watching a charming magic show at the party. After the party, the streets were looking so beautiful that we decided to go for a walk.
“If he is coming as a Panda, I will use this,” (she said pointing to a wonderful Jaipuri shawl of mine), “as wings and be a bird.” said the daughter.
“What bird should I be, you little Panda?”
I did not know that Pandas liked Hawks, but apparently this one did. So, the Hawk taught the Panda to fly.
If an ornithologist were to observe us that day, I am sure he would have learnt surprising things. Which reminds me of this article where ornithologists studied Angry Birds to compare and contrast real bird behavior vs those in the game.
Mr Dawdles and Ms Riviera Robinson had wonderful holiday seasons. Ms Riviera Robinson had a stylized, personal seamstress to sew her clothes for the Yule-Tide Ball. She wore a pretty blue gown with pale blue flowers. The straps made of satin were most becoming on her brown shoulders and the blue proved to be a perfect compliment to her eyes. A competent, if talkative, accessory designer helped her with her final touches. When the earrings were clipped on, and the necklace pinned in place, she was already starting to know that she was going to be a big hit at the Party. By the time, the maroon waist-belt and shoes went on, she was looking beautiful.
Mr Dawdles had neither the time nor the luxury of the personal seamstress, and the talkative accessorizer, but he had a personal shopper, and hair stylist. The personal shopper hopped from one store to the next in search of the right attire. Mr Dawdles also had remarkably less accessory needs and has obliged to go barefoot to the ball. I don’t think he minded. His hair, he cannot complain about either, it is cut perfectly unevenly and along with his drooping eye, gives him an almost appealing aura.
Mr Dawdles and Ms Riviera Robinson were both dressed attired and oversaw a party teeming with children, good music and bonhomie.
The dolls came home to be dressed for a Doll Party in the toddler son’s classroom. Riviera Robinson was last year’s doll. The daughter tried for days to put together some good clothes with scraps of paper and stapler pins, to no effect. Then one evening, I trooped into the house after a particularly long day at work. We had been at an all-day offsite conference with no admirable distractions during the day, and I was craving nothing more than some mindless hmm-ing and aha-ing before flopping onto the bed early. All hopes of flopping into bed early were dashed with one look at the severely disappointed set of children.
The Doll had to be turned in, fully clothed, the next day and all those papers and stapler pins had come to naught. Left to my own devices, I would have poo-ed and baa-ed the thing off, but I could not bear the look of disappointment on the daughter’s face. Neither could I bring myself to brave the cold, and the winter shoppers after that long day. So, I cut up an old skirt and sewed on a make-shift dress. As the dress took shape, the daughter revived like a sunflower in the rising sun, and found accessories for her. All the while, the toddler son bubbled and bounced around offering plenty of talk, sometimes related to the Doll-Dressing-Disaster, but mostly not. The next day when he walked into his classroom with Ms Riviera Robinson on his arm, there was nothing short of admiration for her, and he beamed happily.
This year, he asserted his personality and said his doll was to be a man. Able seamstress as I am, I didn’t feel I was up to stitching men’s pants and shirts. So, off I was, on a cold Sunday night (The doll had to be turned in on Monday, if it was to attend the party) looking for parking, and silently cursing the sexist doll industry. If you want to dress up your girl doll, all you have to do is stroll into a store’s doll section and pick out clothes of your choice. If you want your daughter and doll to wear matching clothes, that too is available, for a nominal price. If your doll is a man, well, tough luck!
I was looking lost and desperate amidst the beautiful girl doll clothes. I had the whole week-end to clothe Mr Dawdles, or Mickey Mouse, as he was then known, and I fritted it away admiring fall leaves and unnecessary thoughts about falling leaves and their mortality.
I wondered whether I should wrap him in white cloth, paint glasses on him and send him as Mahatma Gandhi. An older lady, with a friendly face, came up to the doll section and exclaimed, “Oh! Are they still doing those? I remember doing that project for my daughters years ago. Heavens! They even look the same.” I poured my heart out to the poor thing. I told her how I could not manage to tailor pants and was thinking of dhotis. “Or”, she said, piping up to the theme, “you could go even older, and dress him as Julius Ceaser or something with white cloth draped about his shoulders.”
As we were talking, I cradled Mr Dawdles a bit and she stopped mid sentence. “This doll looks about the size of a preemie baby.” she said. That was it. A preemie baby it was. So, that is why Mr Dawdles wore preemie baby clothes that said, “Mommy’s Little Monster” to the ball. I did not have time time to make shoes.
Schools, these days, make the parents work very hard.
In Part 1 of the Halloween post, I had written about deciding on an Environment themed costume for Halloween for myself. I settled upon a Tree. We had a whole hour ahead of us to plan, execute and pull it off. I don’t know whether you have tried impersonating trees, it is very easy. You send your husband to buy something, say a car or some green cloth for the tree depending on your mood, get out a piece of cardboard and some green paint. You then set your children to cut and paint a tree-top and you sit back and you wonder how to pull off looking like a tree trunk and you are set. Ask some creative friend of yours to finish up the costume, stand back and project the spirituality of stolid trees. Like Booker. T. Washington said, “There is no power on Earth that can neutralize the influence of a high, simple and useful life.”
There is no power on Earth that can neutralize the influence of a high, simple and useful life. – Booker. T. Washington
Trees are wonderful and soothing. Their stoic presence, their sturdy silence and their useful practical lives should say it all. Setting aside the fact I cannot produce oxygen, or hold a sturdy silence, or be stoic, or useful, I could be a Tree. I need to stand rooted and sway a bit in the breeze. How hard can it be? I just have to be out and about for people on candy-highs on Halloween night to flock to me for some calm.
The Silent Spectator.
That went well. I only spent the whole evening explaining to all and sundry who I was. Have you tried impersonating a Tree? It is a spiritual experience in and of itself. It is not easy. For one. I don’t see Tree Costumes, so you cannot pick one up and pull it on. For another, it is dashed hard to hoist the top of a tree on a hat. It flops back and forth and does not stay sturdy. I am sure that plenty of people on Pinterest will tell you how to do it, but I can tell you how not to do it. Especially, if you try to work with a cowboy hat.
How to make a Tree Costume
So, with some excellent suggestions from my friends and children, we morphed it into a Tree Nymph whose express aim was to Save Trees. I tied the painted tree around my torso, wore brown pants so my legs would serve as the trunk and then wrapped my head with flowers to look like a Tree Nymph. I don’t know how Tree Nymphs look, but neither does the majority of the populace, so now they know. They look like me.
I must say I rather enjoyed myself. The son was Spiderman and the pair of us went around telling everyone that “Amma saves trees, and Son saves Humans”. When else could I have sported that Green nail polish the daughter and I picked up so we could have Rainbow themed nails?
Is this a Tree Nymph? If you haven’t seen one, then yes.
Say what you will about the rains that washed the Sun-dried California after Halloween, a small irrational part of me was happy. As a Tree-Nymph, had I invited the clouds over? It was certainly part of my original theme. The husband had even suggested I walk around with a large water droplet. But we did not have time to cut and color the water droplet. I sat relishing the sounds of the fresh patter of the rain, smelling the parched Earth drinking in the moisture, and enjoying a hot cup of tea in my hands.
“Next year, let’s all go environment themed. Maybe that will end the drought. If a Tree Nymph can bring rains, ….”, I crowed, and stepped out of my door to see an uprooted tree.
Usually, when Halloween rolls around, I am left out. What I mean is that I am the butler, the enabler, the inefficient decorator, the bad make-up doer, the scrambler, the chef, the doler of chocolates. But I am rarely one of the featuring stars in the evening’s show. When I say these things, I don’t want you running off with the idea of a pestilential sulker dulling Halloween. Far from it. I may decorate like a wet cracker, but there is one thing I bring to the evening – enthusiasm. One of my friends once said after witnessing a football game played by kindergartners that there was more enthusiasm than skill in the game. Exactly how I like to slot myself in the Halloween throng of emotions.
When I smile after hoisting a ghastly costume on folks, I smile widely, deeply and with affection. It gives the wearer confidence as they head out into the Halloween night. I like Halloween, for it is the one night when it is okay for serious minded adults who think of worldly problems to go out and publicly quack like ducks. It is often an illuminating experience to see that people give more attention to one’s quacks as a duck, than their most reasoned and logical arguments. It is all good – imagine if the Hippoceres lightened up.
What?! Don’t listen to me now! I am just Quacking!
If you like Halloween so much, why is it you don’t make more of an effort to dress up yourself? You ask. My answer drips in selfless service. There is usually a gaggle of folk around me needing attention – the costumes have to be just so and the food needs to be just so-so, the parents or parents-in-law have to be convinced to loosen up for Halloween and there it is. By the time the vampires, fairies and super-heroes come laden with plastic pumpkins, I have barely had time to lay the dinner on the table and grab a devil-hairband bought years ago, and smile (I have been accused of being the friendliest devil known to mankind, thereby failing spectacularly in even the simplest of costumes.)
This time, Halloween was on a Saturday and I had more time and energy on my hands. I started planning a whole two hours ahead that I wanted to be something too. Not just that. I was the decisive force: I wanted my costume to be Environment Themed. In what I thought was a brilliant teachable moment, I said that if we don’t save the environment, we won’t need Halloween Decorations at all, since the macabre stuff we see as Halloween Decorations, would be the sorry state of Earth.
The husband gave me a shocked, dismal look. The meaning of that look needs a much stronger pen than my own to record. I realized that far from a Teaching Moment, it could well become a Traumatic Moment, and swiftly swerved the conv. towards suggestions.
That did the trick. Ask us to talk and give suggestions, we trip over one another. There was a lot of shouting and a few good suggestions.
We need Water, Save Water, Less Plastic, More running water: (rivers, brooks), Recycle better, Anti Deforestation, More Trees, Drop of Water, Become a Cloud, No Toys (The toddler son came up with this and said proudly that he did not want to play with his toys anymore, and that I could give them all away, and not buy anymore. The pride on his face I tell you! It would have been a lot more virtuous if he had remembered that at the Lego Store the next day). The daughter said that I should crusade against oil spills since they harm animals, why not a Clean Ocean-Reef? Or Be a Farm.
An Ocean Reef – How in the name of Willow’s Marina Reefs can this be made into a Halloween Costume in an hour?
Every year as I walk by homes where the residents have gone to great pains to celebrate and decorate their house for the Holidays or Halloween, two things happen.
One: I take a tiny hammer to the brain and give it a rap– right there on the skull where it ought to remind you to say “Ouch!”
Two: I convince myself that I should indeed decorate the house and I get started like a damp fire cracker. I make a lot of noise, sizzle about a bit, generate a lot of smoke and then die out without doing anything brilliant.
The Brilliant Firecrackers hobnob with the Wet One
I’d call it a childish attempt, if I had not seen the attempts made by children and how vastly superior they were to my own. Not only that, for a week after that brave attempt, I was sore in muscles I did not know existed and I cheesed the pumpkin-carving after that. Only pumpkin craving remains now. My neighbors put me to shame with attempts like this:
The Neighbor’s Pumpkins
Last year, I steamed out of the house like a tank engine and came back with Halloween decorations that will make my house dazzle and not just that, uplift the whole neighborhood. I know my faults, so I went in for foam stickers with a bit of sparkle on them. We stuck spiders on the garage door and some foam stickers on the door. It looked beautiful and frightful enough. We even had a few children come and coo.
For the whole year after that we have had partial Halloween decorations – the foam stickers refuse to come off and the spiders stuck on the door remain there (well, some of them fell off on their own, the others remain, joined at times by their live brethren). The cobwebs are entirely natural and add to the aura of the place.
If you ask me what I did for Christmas, I will gallantly point you to the lights hanging outside. They have simply not been taken down ever since and we have blue and white icicle lights twinkling all year through. They light up the space for the spiders well enough should they need a little help. The thing is, I was so proud of our lights that I refused to take them down in January. Then, by the time February rolled around, my enthusiasm for Spring took over and the lights were forgotten.
The last time we had put up lights, I almost died of heart failure for one, and the husband almost fell off a six-foot ladder for another, so I was not going to take this brilliant easy lighting system down in a hurry (I notice I haven’t written about it yet, and probably should. A thrilling tale and I wish to do it justice. )
What horrors do you wish to inflict this time? You ask. I am thinking and rubbing that soft spot in the skull for ideas. I may go in for the tablecloth decoration once again. I bought one of those Halloween themed disposable tablecloths and stuck them on the door. I was so pleased with myself with that one.
I tell myself every year to buck up one of these years and try my hand at decorating something nice for Halloween or Christmas. How I admire people who have that creative bent of mind?Sigh.
Navarathri is behind us and I breathe easier. Navarathri – nice days of carb-loading, pujas, Golu hopping, shying away from singing (From Wikipedia: In Tamil Nadu, people set up steps and place idols on them. This is known as golu. Photos of typical golu displayed in Tamil Nadu style can be found here.In the evening women in neighborhood invite each other to visit their homes to view Kolu displays, they exchange gifts and sweets.)
You see, I have never been one of those artsy creative type of folks. I have seen folks carve a beautiful statue of Buddha out of a potato and I watch in awe. When I see a potato, I see a potato. In my creative moments, I see a potato-curry or a mashed potato. But there it stops.
The Creative Potato
Navarathri, it seems, comes along to show me what all avenues are there for the creatively inclined, and how very demented I am along those lines. It would be one thing if I could just withstand 9 days of this and then go back to my lack-a-daisical ways. But it refuses to let up. Navarathri is quickly followed by Halloween decorations and then Diwali lights followed by Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Some of my friends during Navarathri not only put up 9 steps full of dolls, they create themes around them, they have a side show of modern themes, and themes around their past themes. Maybe somebody should try the vegetable carving motif the next time around.
The Navarathri Golu at my Friend’s place: Main ThemeModern Themes on the Side
My theme is more practically suited to my ability: why bother? It seems better to go and enjoy the displays so painstakingly put up by the brave-hearted and creative-minded. My theme has been confused for lazy, but I say I am being gallant. If not for folks like us, who would appreciate all the work that goes into a Golu?
Facebook showed me Golu attempts in Chennai, New Delhi, San Jose, Seattle, Norway and Ghuangzhou Province in China. WhatsApp gave me blow by blow accounts of others doing it and mildly urged me to try my hand at it sometime. But I am made of sterner stuff. I admired everybody’s attempts, but am steadfast in not adding my own feeble attempts to the grander themes.
My daughter, who had a fantastic time with her friends eating the different varieties of rices and sundals (chickpea salads) laid out in hordes at the Golus asked me why I did not join in the fun. I pointed her to my past attempts at decorative splendor (being put up as Part 2 of this blog ) and she gave me a gentle look filled with pity, and a pat and said, “Oh Amma! I know you are quite useless at decorating, it’s okay!”
In our household, we skip, dance and thump our chests, looking proud when we arrange cereal boxes in a line like this, and if you visit, we can pluck one box and feed you with it:
There was a lunar eclipse and a red moon a few weeks ago. The world watched the rare phenomenon and so did we. I remember seeing the Halley’s Comet about three decades ago, using the School telescope. The telescope was set up in our neighbor’s garden. There is a secret excitement and a strange lesson in mortality when looking at a comet that comes once in 75-76 years.That, by itself, was sensational enough for us to brave the cold nights to see the comet. The newspapers had been our source of knowledge and I think the news on state television made a statement too, but that was all.The rest of the buzz we created. I remember a lot of intent gazing and saying “Watdidocee?Isthatit?WOW!”
Now, I am tripping all over the internet over viewing pieces of it remnants : The Orionid Meteor Shower: Leftovers of Halley’s Comet
I can’t but help compare and contrast how we would have viewed it today’s times. Just as spottily is my guess, though we would have the pleasure of seeing the recording taken by somebody immensely more skilled at these things than myself.
We set about viewing the eclipse in our customary fashion. That is to say, we made a complete muck of things: hashed a pig or two in the duck pen and squashed a rat.
The husband stood at the kitchen island, with a seriousand urgent expression on his face. The daughter strolled in and said, “Oh – he must be playing chess!”
The affronted husband puffed out his chest and told her not to say trivial things like that. “I am, in fact, checking out a very important scientific phenomena that we can see in the skies today. “
The daughter, suitably chastened, went near him and cried, “He is on Facebook!”
I laughed.
“Yes, but checking to see whether the lunar eclipse started, not, you know, just face-booking.” he finished somewhat lamely.
The toddler son, flying his toy plane, and attempting a lunar landing, then explained the lunar eclipse to us: Moons can be red, blue or white (Is it American? No Everyone can see the moon when it is blue, red or white) and hide in the sun (Won’t it burn? No. Because Shadows are not hot.)
“So, why can’t you go out and check if the lunar eclipse started?” I asked. “After all, if people were saying so on Facebook, they must have done the same thing.”
This struck the children as sound logic, and they ran outside to see what was going on. They caught glimpses of a red moon and they charged in with the sensational news. The son ran into the house, taking his bass decibel levels to an excited high and the daughter came, tripping over her shoes as she took them off. I was, as is usual, in the evening, flopping about the kitchen looking efficient and determined. The urgent appeals from the whole family made me set dinner aside for the moment:
Just switch off the dinner. We can come back and eat.
Come fast. Now.
It takes a long time to cook. You are always cooking dinner.
I likes dinner.
They hustled me out of the house and we stood outside in a sort of anti-climax. The clouds, usually welcomed in the Bay area skies, were having a tough time figuring out why people were standing outside and grimacing at them like that. Hadn’t these very people been pandering for rain, and putting up mugshots of what clouds look like to make sure the populace did not forget? Now when the clouds did come and flit across the evening sky, there was animosity. Did they think moons brought rains? No. Clouds did. Very confusing for the cloud-body.
By now, of course, the husband had to take matters in his hand. He sprinted out to the street and then said we’d get a better view from the end of our street, so off we went leaving the door ajar. The husband, looking like an Admiral General in shorts,was directing his troops to better viewing positions. The children dutifully ran after him. He turned to bellow out further instructions, only to find his faithful wife running in the opposite direction. It is enough to rattle any Admiral. One cannot determine strategic spots with the errant soldier retreating. He stopped and the children skidded into him and they all bellowed at the recalcitrant soldier.
lunar_eclipse_viewing
The problem was, there had been a spate of robberies of late, and I was loathe to leaving the door open. So, I doubled back to lock up, while the rest of the family ran. Questions, explanations, eye-rolls and lectures on how-to-live-in-the-moment and not miss lunar eclipses were happening when the daughter yelled – ‘There! There is the moon.” The mutinous Admiral and the penitent trooper, both abandoned earthly worries for the moment and gazed sky-ward to see the moon disappear once again.
The husband tried to take a picture with the phone, “There are far better photographs that are going to be shared at the end of the eclipse, why bother now?”, I said, like it was going to make a difference.
Picture taken by us
We gazed again only to find a twig obstructing our view of the clouds. The husband charged homeward saying he’d bring us the car, so we could all pile in and get a clearer view. I tried telling him that a better view can only be had above the clouds, but he had gone. He ran and I ran after him with the house keys,and we met each other mid-street (In case you thought the children missed this piece of action, they did not.The toddler thought we were playing, and ran after me. The daughter, tasked with looking after her little brother, ran after him.)Within minutes of this rhino-charge, the car came, with the husband panting in the driver seat and we jumped in and headed out to a open parking lot.
I don’t know whether you have observed children playing in the park. They run up and then they run down, they run left and they right. All with no apparent purpose. So do the child-like. After about 15 minutes of running this way and that, there was some heavy breathing, more useless photographs, and a state of dejection.
If aliens used this time to observe life on earth, I am afraid to say the news they carry back to their homing civilization cannot be a promising one. A lot of pointless running, needless pointing later, we decided to just head back home.
We entered our community when the clouds cleared again. Swearing loudly, off we leaped from the car, and charged out to see the eclipse. We saw a knot of our neighbors standing to view the eclipse too. They had, in their usual wise manner, skipped the drama and simply came out of their homes and raised their eyes.
This was the picture the internet showed us the next day:
We are enjoying Wind in the Willows sort of days of late. Every so often, I crave for some comfort reading and fall back on Children’s story books. The Wind in the Willows is one such. I still remember my best friend walking up to the front of the assembly and saying nervously, “The Wind in the Willows By Kenneth Grahame. The Mole had been working hard all morning spring cleaning his home …” She had me sit in the first row so she could look at me for moral support, and I gladly obliged. She had brushed her wavy hair neatly parted at the side, and her nervousness was evident in the small shake in her voice. She looked at me and smiled nervously and I gave her a large blooming-flower-kind of smile that encouraged her to go on and she carried on heartened. She finished her recitation to much applause, and collapsed on the chair next to me, and I assured her that she had been marvelous.
When I read snippets of the book on the train, I thought of her again and all the sunny balmy days of childhood play in the warm sun and pouring rain came back to me. Folks looked at me like I need to have my head examined, I grinned disarmingly at them. After all, Grahame described The Wind in the Reeds (the working title till it became Wind in the Willows) as:
“A book of youth, and so perhaps chiefly for youth and those who still keep the spirit of youth alive in them; of life, sunshine, running water, woodlands, dusty roads, winter firesides, free of problems, clear of the clash of the sex, of life as it might fairly be supposed to be regarded by some of the wise, small things that ‘glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck’.”
The Wind in the Willows
There is something deeply alluring about animal stories. I love to imagine them talking to each other, helping one another in times of trouble and having their little adventures. I was similarly happy when I read another passage on Dolphins and Humans in the Cosmic Connection by Carl Sagan. These helpful animals probably crave a little intellectual stimulation and have often been friends to humans, and yet we have shown them time and again how heartless we are by going after them.
Carl Sagan writes of Elvar the Dolphin, who he had the pleasure of meeting during one of his visits to his friend, John Lilly. John Lilly was an admirable scientist who was involved in several researches, Dolphins being one of them. Lilly introduced Elvar-the-Dolphin to Sagan-the-Human, and seeing that they were getting along, let them to it. Sagan and Elvar came into playing a sort of game, and after being splashed thoroughly by Elvar thrice, Sagan refused to play a fourth time.
Elvar surveyed the standoff for several minutes and swam up to Sagan up and said in a squeaky tone of voice, “More!”.
Carl Sagan, justifiably flustered, came running to his friend and said he might have heard a dolphin say the word, “More”.
To which his friend asked him, “Was it in context?”
“Yes! “, spluttered the poor physicist, to which the neuro-scientist smiled and said that it was one of the 50 odd words he knew.
In all these years, we have yet to pick up one word of Dolphinese and yet, we boast about being knowledgable and go to no end to display our arrogance to Mother Nature.
Why are we so quick so assume that a place like this will not be rife with little joys and strifes? Doodling by the Daughter
If we are so intent about looking for extra terrestrial life, maybe we should stop and let our own ecosystems thrive.
I am reminded of what William James said, about letting Nature teach us as she ought:
“It is to be hoped that we have some friend, perhaps more young than old, whose soul is of this sky-blue tint, whose affinities are rather with flowers and birds and all enchanting innocencies, than with dark human passions, who can think of no ill of man.“
The toddler son has always been a little preoccupied with Time. He buzzes around asking me the time every so often. Initially, of course, I did the square thing and checked the watch and told him. Soon, I realized that I could check the refrigerator, count my tomatoes, and just blurt out an approximate time. Then, I realized that he did not need the approximate time either – he just needed a number. (I tried time-to-sleep, and time-to-eat, but he did not accept that answer. He did, however, accept 14 o’clock, 14:52 – but not 14.)
The little fellow, like most children, is a question-machine. He asks why there is no half sun, why the dinosaurs died, how he came back to life to spend the day with Danny, why the flowers dried, why his sister came to the World earlier than him. What is dish – (You can eat a dish and put mammum (food) in a dish?), how to see if water reached a particular spot in the water-hose, what is before zero, how do tree roots drink water (Thank goodness, my biology teacher was not there to hear my answer.)
Dinosaurs can come back?
Sometimes, I give him an answer that is in essence correct, but otherwise useless. Like the time he asked me how to make water. (You take two hydrogen atoms, combine it with an oxygen atom and you will get water.) He looked at me puzzled and drank his water. So, I am drinking three water, but there is only one water? I never learn I tell you. After that rash answer, I spent a few trying minutes laying bare my ignorance in Chemistry for all to see.
One time, at the end of a 16-hour long day, we lay there savoring a children’s book together. I told him that it was his sister’s favorite book when she was a baby and he lapped it up. At the end of it, we both sighed contentedly and I told him it was time to sleep. That was when he crinkled his brow, and asked me what is Time. I must have looked perplexed for he went on: “You rember when I was eating applejacks cereal in the morning, you said Time is going? I want to go yesterday.”
If I wasn’t lying down, I would have gone. I am guilty of hustling the fellow when he is relishing his ‘applejacks cereals’ over breakfast, but mornings are a bit rushed in the household and my train won’t wait.
He looked serious and a bit frustrated to see that I had not grasped his simple question. “I want to go yesterday!” he repeated slowly and a bit louder than before. I know that on his timeline things that happened a decade ago qualify as yesterday, so I asked him why he wanted to go to Yesterday.
His answer to that was simple enough. He wanted to see his sister as a baby. I had to dash the fellow’s hopes. There were photographs I could show him, stories I could tell him of her babyhood, but no, he could not go back in time.
Then, he asked me why time only goes forwards and not backwards.
This is when you see me mop my brow. I tell you, I am no physicist. His questions are steadily chipping at whatever Science I have managed to grasp over the years, despite my teachers’ best intentions.
What? How? Why?
I barely understand time now. It is ethereal, and deceptive. I feel like I am spending enough time during the day enjoying the present, yet, here we are already confusing the Fall season with the sunshine that is Summer’s trademark. I seem to remember helping the fellow take his first steps and now here he is asking me for explanations that are dubious at best. If every day does not seem to fleet past, why do the years flit by?
How come I forget the name of the person I met yesterday, but remember the names of my friends from when I was 5 years old?
I deposited myself fluidly through the doors in the last second before closure. The trains in the USA insist on closing the doors, thereby denying folks like us to use the hang-on-by-a-strand-and-heave self onto train later technique. I can’t say I was in a frightfully enthusiastic mood as I plopped myself onto the only remaining seat. I turned and looked at the person sitting next to me and saw I had drawn the stiff corporate pant.
I had to drop some documents off at a government office and then face a regular day. I sat contemplating the task ahead while opening my book to read. Nothing that a good book can’t fix I told myself sternly and set to reading.
Minutes into the journey, he (the s-c-p, the stiff corporate pant I mean) whipped out his phone. A purposeful gleam emanated from his glassy eyes. I moaned. I think I can figure out when my quiet commute gets thrown out the window. He called his team in India, and far from having a how-are-things conversation, took a piece of mud and flung it with whim across the seven oceans. Ocean beds shuddered as they transmitted the bits from him to the unfortunate team on the other side. He shouted at them,and then looked about impressively.Nobody cared. I scowled. It made not the slightest difference to him. He talked on. He promised to call them all separately and ‘give them nicely’ for not running a report or some such thing.
He sounded like one of those folk who make mental lists of jumping on people, telling them in precise language how they failed as individuals, and how they would improve in life if only they were to listen to him and follow his instructions alone. I heard a goodish deal of his side, which meant that the stuffed mushroom thought nothing of hogging conversations.
“Hello Kavya?”
She probably said Hello, and that was about all she was allowed to say. If I knew her, I could have messaged her directly and told her to put down the phone and continue doing whatever else she was doing, with no loss. He started with the I’ll-show-you-who-is-in-control early enough. “What did you tell Gopal?” he bellowed.
I rummaged around for some cotton, fake-coughed a bit and stuffed my ears, but it did not help. What was required was one of those vacuum shower stoppers, not cotton. I could still hear every word:
“He said that you said that,” and on and on he went how about she was wasting her time. The passengers near me felt a bit sorry for Kavya, whoever she was. Luckily for her, she had no idea she was being publicly shelled like this. I mean, if you are whipping the air out of someone’s lungs, at least have the civility to do so in private, what? I threw him a dirty look. It simply evaporated like a droplet of water in the Saharan desert.
Soon, the bore lost the fun out of ripping Kavya and I tried to read again. He played on his phone for a few minutes. War horses need rest and restoration between battles. A minute later, he called Gopal and started by telling him what Divya told him and how he ‘gave her nicely’. The train was too full now for me to move away from this spot of misery, even if it meant standing on a one foot.
Say what you will about the steel glinted glass, he kept his promise. He made seven different calls and in between every call, he logged back into his game and riled himself up a bit more and got on with his ticking-off. He told every one of them again that he planned on calling every other member who had not delivered something, to ‘give them nicely’.After throwing his weight about like a dancing hippo in the local discotheque frequented by rhinos, he disconnected the call, looked pleased with himself and treated himself to a long round of playing a game on his smart phone.
I almost cheered when his stop came and he went out with a triumphant stride. Clearly, the hippoceres thought his day started on a productive note.
I ruminated for a bit about the phrase ‘give one nicely’. A very Indian expression is it not, to give one nicely while doing the exact opposite? What a super-fatted-bore!
Maybe like Russell said:
Civilized life has grown altogether too tame, and, if it is to be stable, it must provide harmless outlets for the impulses which our remote ancestors satisfied in hunting.
If the s-f-bore had to fight off a few dogs and then run a mile before he leaped onto the train, and then was barely able to hang on, he might not have had the need to ‘give everyone nicely’.
It turned out that the document drop off at the Government office was an egg drop too. I was sitting there an hour after my appointment time, and fiddling my thumbs watching the videos of ‘Incredible India’ play over and over again. The guy at the counter before me was waving his hand impressively and making a lot of noisy gestures. I could not hear him of course(I preferred the music).There is something hypnotizing about those videos like ‘Mile Sur Mera Tumhara’.
My stomach gave a threatening rumble before I finally washed up in front of the clerk (Are they still called that?). She looked peeved. Maybe the guy before me gave her nicely, I thought. She rummaged through my stack of documents for a minute and then said she could not help me because we required another form with notarized signatures of all players in the game. I gurgled and tried asking if my signature alone would do. She shook her head firmly – It was a no-go.
My stomach squeezed itself with hunger, and I thought to myself savagely that now is the time for all loud men and women to come to the party and ‘give everyone nicely’: Iwondered if Mr. Hippoceres would lend his services.
“Hello! May I speak to the Hippoceres Giving-It-Nicely Service please?”
“Yes Ma’am. Who would you like to give it nicely to today?”
Nourish-n-Cherish 