Daddy Diaries : And she turns one

Dear diary,

Anika turns one today. In the last few weeks, she gave us one jolt after another. First, teeth started sprouting all over inside her mouth. I know that is normal but it was strange to see her with teeth. She looks like a bunny when she laughs which she does a lot nowadays. She farts and laughs. A lot.

She has started walking too. She did a drunk dance for a few days and then one day, got up and crossed a room. Everyone fell silent and looked at each other, as if we have realized that there was a green alien from Mars sitting in the room with us. Then everyone fell upon each other to grab their mobiles. She clapped and laughed and walked. She is still getting the hang of it. Her gait is funny.

She has started eating all kind of food – eggs, yogurt, butter, panner, khichdi – you name it, she eats it. We usually have to put up a song when she eats. Thank God her relationship is over with Justin Beiber’s Baby. The affinity was driving me crazy. Nowadays, it is plain, old Lakdi ki kathi. Bless the Lord.

Diary,

A few days back she made the first connection between a word and what that word means. It was a bit surreal. I don’t know how to explain it. It is like that moment when you understand the first word in a French movie because you have started learning the language. That happiness. That first click. I felt that for her.

And that was the first time I felt how far away she has come from being an unknown face floating in liquids that she was a year back.

Last year, we were worried about everything going right, worried about her grand entry in the world. And when the doctors brought her out – a pink mass of flesh, completely dissatisfied with the change in her quiet existence, hungry, crying – I felt a surge of blood to my face. Something changed inside me. I went to the nursery, saw the nurses put some identification on her as she tried to open her eyes and look at me. I stood there a long time trying to comprehend what had just happened. I became a father. Holy crap!

Dear Diary,

It had been a crazy one year journey. Geet and I went through myriad collection of emotions. Our limits were tested. Sometimes, there were cloudbursts of happiness. Sometimes we went through volcanic eruption of frustrations. But we clung to each other. We watched her face change every day. We saw her pick up new habits and discard the old ones within weeks. We saw her smile one fine day and smiled with her. I won’t lie if I say that there weren’t times when we wanted to break free, when we wanted our own personal space, when all this got too overwhelming for both of us. And that is when our families came to our support. I don’t know what we would have done without them.

But you know what, Diary? We always felt guilty about leaving her behind whenever we went for a movie or a dinner date. We kept talking about her. I remember both of us getting restless when we went to watch a movie leaving Anika with her grandparents for the first time. We could not sit through the second half. And that is when we realized how much our lives have changed. How much this girl has crept up in our thought process. How much she means to us.

In January ’14, Geet and I went on a holiday with Anika to Kasauli. She was seven months old and everyone scared us to bits about taking such a small child to the hills. We still went ahead and immensely enjoyed the trip except for that one time when we had to go to a temple on the top of a hill and taking her there in the pram was not an option. I picked her in my arms and climbed the hill and then scared a monkey away who tried to kidnap her. I was Superman in Geet’s eyes that day. Her jaw scraped the ground and she had no idea how I did that. Neither did I.

Diary,

 I wonder what is in store for us in the future. I am scared that she might not pick up my habit of reading or watching movies. I want to discuss books with her. I want to discuss old Hollywood classics with her. I know, I should not be imposing any sort of career choices on her but I want her to an artist – a singer or a painter or a writer or a dancer. I want her to love her profession. I want her to choose a career that fulfils her, not something that just pays the EMI of  her apartment. But, well, I think I am thinking far ahead. We will cross the bridge when we come to it. All that makes her happy right now is her plastic fruit basket that she loads and unloads relentlessly with plastic mango, papaya and bananas.

So, one year has gone by Dear Diary. Who knows what the future holds. But I do pray that the fun continues.

Happy Birthday Anika.

Daddy Diaries : Music, Sounds and Radars

Dear Diary,

Sometimes I feel that children are born sadists. How else do you explain their waking and wailing at exactly the time when you are praying to God for a minute’s respite? I can give a million examples –

• Geet and I put Anika to bed and even though we are tired to the bone, we think of indulging ourselves with a bit of ding-dong. We are on the cusp of happiness when Anika raises her head from the cot and start wailing.
• I desperately want to work on the book and miracle of miracle happens and Anika goes to sleep. I haven’t even greased my mind properly to write a few words and there she is, sitting and grinning at me.
• We are getting really late and as soon we glide towards our car, Anika dumps a royal poop in her diaper.
• I have an implementation the next day and I have to get up at 4 am and all I am praying for is a good 3 hours sleep. Anika somehow hears my prayers and wakes up so many times in the night that I wonder why I didn’t stay in the office.

I think children have this radar that catches adult happiness pretty quickly. Then, very clandestinely, they start making elaborate plans for ruining that happiness. I wonder how they do it. Is it some form of a seventh sense? I am glad that some children lose the ability as they grow because the world will be inhabitable otherwise.

Dear diary,

Two teeth have mysteriously appeared in Anika’s mouth and she looks quite cute when she laughs. But before those teeth appeared, we had a harrowing time grappling with the indicators. So almost a month before the twin towers appeared side by side, Anika had an upset tummy that lasted for almost three weeks. Geet and I nearly died of exhaustion during that time. We were changing her diapers for 10-15 times a day. We felt as if there is no other purpose for us to exist other than to be a diaper-changing-machines who were dragging on all four after those horrendous three weeks and were praying to God to have some mercy on them. Anika, of course, had no idea as to what her poor parents were going through. She was busy being a poop Niagara. Finally there was some sunshine and the teeth appeared as our saviour.

Anika has started to crawl with the dexterity of a crocodile master crawler. She can be from one end of the bed to another during the time it takes us to say – Oh Shit! She can now sit in her walker and pose immense threat to all the show-pieces and flower vases appearing in her range. She needs her favourite songs playing in the background when she eats her food. Her favourite songs include – Justin Bieber’s Baby (Sigh!), O Gujaria (Queen), Tum Hi Ho (Ashiqui 2) and Baby Doll main Sone di (Ragini MMS 2), Aaj Blue hai (Paani)x8 (Yaarian) and Gandi Baat (R…Rajkumar). In fact she is so smitten by Tum Hi Ho that she starts staring at the wall the moment the song plays and loses the sense of all her surrounding. It is the correct window to put dollops of Cerelac in her mouth. Bless the Music Director!

Dear Diary,

Anika has started filling the house with her sounds. The first sound she made was Pa-Pa. Of course she has no idea what she is saying and neither does she associate the sound with me. He even calls a flower-pot Pa-Pa. Then the second sound she made was Ma-Ma. Then came Ba-Ba, Ka-Ka, Tat-tat and Bye-Bye. It was a bit surreal after all those cries and throaty laughters.

Sometimes her growth scares me. I mean, she was like a toy earlier to play with but now she has started turning into more human with all those sounds and the way she now recognizes family members and her reactions. It is as if the human that was hidden somewhere inside her is coming out. It makes me more and more aware of the immense responsibilities that Geet and I have as parents. I hope we do well. She is a happy child. She laughs a lot and cries very little (only when she has to oil her happiness radar). We hope we will demolish the radar as she grows up.

Open letter to my maid

image from here

My dear Maid, 

I know guys don’t write letters to maids and they definitely don’t call them ‘dear’ and I hope you do not take offence in me addressing you as someone who is dear to me. So help me God. I have seen women write incessantly about the love-hate relationship they share with their maids but guys usually shy away from it. I blame our system for it, much like Rahul Gandhi. We are not supposed to feel affectionate towards our maids. I am breaking the barriers here and that is why it is so important for me to call you ‘dear’. It is not a word, it is a hammer and I am using it to break the wall and show my gratitude to all the lovely ladies who have worked in my house over the years. 

Let me begin by saying that I was brought up with a sense of being higher up in the pyramid of society. My grandma used to keep a separate plate and glass for you to eat breakfast and drink the tea she provided with a sense of charity. We were not supposed to touch those utensils and it was blasphemy to eat in your plate or drink water in your glass. You were supposed to be a lower class nobody who could never be satisfied with what has been given to her and your whole community was supposed to be like you. Well, let me tell you dear, that the phoniness of this unabashed display of superiority pissed me off as a kid and I gleefully indulged in numerous acts of blasphemy when I ate in your plate and drank water from your glass, much to the utter shock of my grandma.

Dear maid,

I remember so many unintentional hilarious and sad incidents involving you that I have lost count. So, thank you for the doses of laughter and the pauses of pondering I have collected over the years. I remember, when grandma in her rare moods of philanthropy, started teaching you the Hindi alphabets. I was surprised to know that you could not read or write. I was young. And then, grandma and you reached the alphabet ‘sh’. She would say ‘Sh se Shatkon’ and you would say ‘Sa se Satkon’ and it went for such a long time that I thought that only a calamity like grandma grinding all her teeth to dust or an astroid hitting the Earth could possibly stop the loop. And your name was Geeta which is one of the many ironies of life. Then you transformed into Bhagwanti. You were usually beaten blue and black by your husband when you came to work. You were 2D thin. I always wondered how much endurance you had for doing such physically challanging work when half of your body was swelling with pain. You made me laugh by the way you cleaned the utensils with all your might as your sari danced like waves with your movements. Then you turned into Sheila, who used to steal spoons for reasons I could not understand. It was hilarious because once mom caught you while you were trying to hide a spoon in your salwar. You said that you were itching terribly and merely rubbing the spoon over your skin. Then you turned into wide-eyed Sampa who would, in excited shrieks, tell her sisters over the phone that you went to the mall with us and saw a movie in the theatre and had chow mein in the food court. 

Dear Maid,

I know sometimes people are ruthless and you end up doing more than you could endure. You are constantly pestered at times, even when you are doing fine. Sometimes, you rebel and then you are told that you belong to a category of society that can never be thankful for what is being given to them. Have you noticed the crazy flip-flop of hatred and harmony you experience with a family? At one hand, you are sitting with them and having tea in your designated cup, telling them the story of your life and how miserable everything is, expecting some gift on Diwali and New Year and on the other hand you are blamed for being lazy and not doing things properly. How do you handle such relationships when you are at the receiving end? Of course, you grin and bear it, just like all of us who take shit from people above us in the pyramid, conveniently forget it and do exactly the same to the people below us.

Dear Maid,

I would like to thank you. Thank you for cleaning my room, my wash-room, my clothes, my utensils. Thank you for dusting my house, for making the food, for folding my clothes, for making tea for me, for being there. I know it would be impossible to survive without you. I know everyone knows that, no matter how high in the air their nose is, no matter how much difficult they find it to give you a raise which is equal to the price of a plate of chicken tikka kabab in a mall. 

And in the end, a small note for my present dear Maid –

It has been a month since your mother-in-law died. I know you have no love for her (and I am quoting my mom here), but you have already extended your 15 days break to 30 days. Yes, unbelievable as it may sound, my household has been operating sans you for a month now. It is a miracle and we are enduring one day at a time but a day does not pass when we don’t remember you. What you have done is unprofessional but it is OK. As always, mom will forgive you after giving you a nice piece of her mind. And then everything will be as it always was. It has nothing to do with the pyramid, believe me. So, you should return now. We are somehow, barely holding the fort but we need reinforcements. We have never told you how important you or your successor (who might be a reality soon) are to us and that is what this letter intends to tell you in addition to the fact that we are dying without you.

Thank you,

A humble dependant.

p.s. I will be a bit erratic for a while on my blog and all the amazing blogs I regularly read because I am working on my second book. Please forgive me.

Daddy Diaries : Beds and Hobbitses

Dear Diary,

The day for which the Sharma family was eagerly waiting arrived a few days back. Anika started crawling on all four (more like an alligator) a few days back and the house was buzzing with gossip about how long we had before she would fall off the bed. Everyone was of the opinion that her crawl was more of a slither and that she won’t be able to pass the single pillow barricades. How wrong we were! It so happened that one fine evening when Geet was stuffing stuff in her overstuffed almirah while Anika sat sprawled in her pillow cage, she suddenly heard a thud followed by a blood-curling wail. Anika had broken the cage and fallen off the bed.

image from here

There was a sudden buzz in the house. Anika was passed from one hand to another, like a stack of bricks at a construction site. It was one of the landmark days when you realize that your child has crossed a very important milestone. We almost had a party to celebrate the bump on her head.

Anika has also started reacting to all the food that is never going to get into her mouth for a long time. She hates her Cerelac and mashed bananas but stares gluttonously at the aloo paratha in my hand. She then licks her lips and makes sound with her tongue as if she has not eaten in months. She stares beseechingly at Geet’s dinner plate but closes her mouth the moment I try some fruit juice on her. She seems to be a pretty good actress.

Geet and I left Anika with her grandparents and had some ‘us time’. We watched the desolation of Smaug and had pasta followed by brownie dipped in boiling chocolate sauce and got nostalgic about the good old days when we used to eat chocolate off each… never mind. So, we came back home and I decided to create a Lonely Mountain in our bedroom. The trigger was the fact that Geet was feeling tired and wanted to have a nap. So I turned Anika into Bilbo. I was Thorin, the Dwarf king and Geet was Smaug who was lying under her comfortable duvet which was actually millions and millions of coins. I commanded Bilbo to go into the mountain and find the Arkenstone which was nothing but Geet’s hairclip. Bilbo quietly slipped into the mountain of coins but she wasn’t very quiet. She woke up Smaug but before the dragon could shoot fire at the hobbit, Bilbo snatched the hairclip and pulled it with all her might. Smaug bellowed and Bilbo and I ran for our life. Thankfully, that was not the day Bilbo fell off the bed but Smaug made us feel sorry that we woke her up.

Dear Diary,

Seven months have gone by and Anika has turned from a sleeping beauty to a roadrunner. It is hard to catch her and make her stay still. As much as Geet and I are scared of the terrible twos, we are also looking forward to having a full night sleep, an act about which we have very faint memories. Recently Anika went through a phase of nightmares and would wake up screaming like the heroine of a Ramsey movie. We had to eat Crocins before going to work during that horrible phase.

We have realized that with a child you never know what the next day holds. And as a wise man once said – The smaller the package, the smaller the problems. I find solace in believing that nightmares followed by screams, diaper rashes and hobbitses falling off beds are smaller problems as compared to what lies ahead.

Money in the blouse and other stories

images from here

The Toofani Couple

A few days back I had an early morning live implementation. As my cab driver played Need for Speed on the roads of Delhi at 5.30 in the morning, I kept an eye on his nitro consumption which basically means that I was wide awake ensuring that he does not squash me in the rear of a truck. Suddenly, a car overtook us near Hyatt. I noticed that it had two toofani couples in it. Now the couple at the rear seat opened their respective windows, pushed their sorry head and torso outside and planted their butts on the windows. They then went ahead and smoked the same cigarette, passing it to each other from the top of the car.  The eyes of my cab driver went wide while I studied them with mild amusement. I was more worried about my cab ramming into their car and the driver flying out to join them. They smoked the whole cigarette and went inside like the neck of a scared turtle. I narrated the whole incident to my team at office and one of them remarked – What’s so toofani in that? It would have been toofani if they would have exchanged the cigarette from the bottom of the car.

I guess I am getting old.

Another not so lucky Toofani couple

The same week, while returning home enduring my rickety office bus, I saw an accident on the highway. A motorbike was racing in the wrong direction (Yes! On the highway!) and rammed into an Audi. People actually stopped their cars and came out to help (Surprise!). The woman and the bike ended up between the front and rear wheels while the man was dragged to safety. Now they were not able to pull out the women because the Audi went over her. So they tried to get the Audi off the woman by picking it up. I hope she survived but the chances are slim. This happened a day before Diwali.

I wondered if I could show this whole sequence to the Toofani couple in the earlier story, would they still think what they did was cool? Would they care more for their life?

Money in the blouse

Why on earth do people keep their money in their undergarments? The other day, I squeezed myself in a shared auto, which is basically a metal entity used to carry 10-15 people crammed in a space for 6. Sitting in a shared auto will be the closest you would come to understand the feelings of Jews jostling for space in a gas chamber. So, while I shrunk my butt to adjust in the pitiable space provided to me, I saw an elderly aunty ji sitting opposite me, staring in infinity. As the auto traversed the potholed roads, the aunty ji suddenly realised that her stop was near and thrust her hand inside her blouse. After my initial shock subsided, I realized that she was not trying to seduce me but frantically searching for her purse. She fumbled her right breast first but could not place the purse. Then she took out her left  hand and in went the right one to disturb her left asset. While all this was happening, I was obviously not looking at her but I could comprehend what was happening from the corner of my eye. Finally, she was able to find her purse that was hidden in some remote corner and the trauma ended.

I have also seen men putting hands in their underwear to take out money. Please someone tell me what is so irresistible about rubbing cash on your private parts?

Exercise in Patience

I have realized that writing a book is an exercise in patience. When you are doing research, you are impatient to start writing. When you are writing, you are impatiently waiting for the day when it will finish. When you finish, you are impatiently sending it to publishers. Then you wait very very impatiently for the publishers to respond. After a positive response, you patiently twiddle your fingers and wait for the book to hit the market. So, it you are a very impatient person, try not to write a book unless you have some sort of a mental asylum fetish.

By the way, I have started writing my second book. But now there is a kid in the equation, so it will be a while before I finish it. Deep breaths. Patience.

Mars and Traffic signals

There is a very busy traffic intersection on the highway near my home. Since the last two years for which I have been here, I have hardly seen the signal working on this intersection. Although people living in the country of Uttar Pradesh don’t believe in traffic signals and treat them the same way we treat a stray cow and beggars, I still believe that some day we will find people capable enough to mend the said signal. I know that there is some extremely complicated machinery inside it but I am sure that since we have sent a rocket to Mars now, we will be able to find people suitable to handle the neglected signal. Maybe we can consult a few top scientists at ISRO?

I usually do not write random posts but I had to share the ‘money in the blouse’ story and since I do not want to come across as a pervert, I added four intellectual stories to the post.

Daddy Diaries : The terrorist and the fountain of milk

Dear Diary,

Anika is not well. She has spluttered and splattered throughout the last two weeks. The clan typically went for home remedies which as usual did not help. Finally when the bouts of cough started bringing a crimson tinge to her face, the alarm bells went off and she was taken to a doctor. The poor girl is recovering now and always ends a cough marathon with a ‘Hai’, just like old people. The tribal dances are back with a vengeance.

A few days back Anika was drinking milk from a bottle while Geet and I were bitching about our neighbours. Suddenly, I sensed a cough taking shape from Anika’s throat and removed the bottle immediately. Well, the milk was still in her mouth when the cough finally made an appearance. There was this brilliant fountain of milk that sprouted from her mouth and drenched me and Geet. You could have seen the shock on our faces. We were talking a second ago and suddenly there was this spray of milk on our faces and the bed. It was like one of those days when it is raining heavily and you are trying to cross a road and then a car swoosh by, transferring the muddy water on you.

Now look what have I written! How can I compare a mixture of my child’s cud, saliva and sputum with muddy waters? Let me make amendments by saying that Geet and I enjoyed the spray. It was splendid.

Dear Diary,

During Ashtami, we dresses up Anika all in red and mom bought a red chunni and a lot of colourful bangles for her. Then all of us washed her feet and took blessings from her while she chewed the bangles to we-were-once-bangles shapes. It was hilarious. She was so perplexed and had no clue what was happening. Mom gave her a bit of halwa and she made a disgruntled face and threw it out of her mouth. While washing her feet, I asked her to give me a lot of money so that I could buy her tickets to Switzerland. I think she was excited by the wish.

Image from here

Dear Diary,

Anika is getting very very active. Her hands and feet are constantly moving. Tell me this is normal? There is a four month old girl in our building and she is so quiet and never moves her limbs. And look at our child! I am disturbed because of Anika’s behaviour because she cannot understand that her pulling, biting and pounding might hurt someone. She tries to pull out my eyeballs, my lower lip, Geet’s hair, her teddy’s butt. This little terrorist is terrifying at times.

You won’t believe how many times she has kicked me in the balls. I have been telling her again and again that she is the only heir to the Sharma Empire and Geet and I will never ever have another baby but she does not believe me. She keeps up her efforts to crack my walnuts to make sure that there is no rival. I have never seen someone attacking her own source of existence with such vehemence.

Diary ji,

Diwali is almost here. It has been a year since I wrote the Sita and Draupadi Costa chatter series which everyone liked so much. Anika was a tiny, few centimeters thingy wobbling inside Geet’s tummy back then and we were preparing ourselves for the biggest change in our lives. Now she is here and sometimes this all feels like a dream. She is five months old now and can turn on her tummy. We have started giving her dal and soups. The moment she sees a spoon hovering over her, she opens her mouth eagerly.

A very Happy Diwali to you Dear Diary. I hope you grow fat and healthy.

And a very Happy Diwali to the readers of this blog. I and my family wish success and happiness for all of you.

Anika in her red dress and bangles and a tikka way off the mark

An Unusual Arrangement

Today I am hosting KayEm who blogs at Never Mind Yaar. She is also the author of the novel ‘Never Mind Yaar’ that was recently published in India. I have been following her blog from some time now and she always come across as a very level-headed person who is passionate about changing the world to become a better place. Her posts like Does Multiculturalism breed Intolerance, One of the Greatest Strengths of Social Media, Footpath Vendors and Rape – Where’s the Connection? were insightful. She also writes short stories and collaborated with Abhy (A cartoonist) to create a unique way of telling one of her story – Babhuti, the Barber. You can also read about her journey and experiences of writing her first novel here. 

Over to KayEm

Photo provided by KayEm. Samson is on the right

Mummy Diaries! We named him Samson because he was puny and had the softest of curls. He grew. His curls became stubborn and tight. They were – still are – a nightmare to brush. But when they are and when he’s asleep he looks angelic. 

Sammy is the friendliest of dogs. With his owners. He slobbers all over us. He brings his little toys and invites us to play. He looks at us quizzically when he’s trying to understand the sudden sweep of an arm, an accusing index finger pointing at him and the loud, wailing sounds like no-ooooo barking or go-ooooo away that humans emit from time to time. He sleeps by 8 pm, waking up constantly to follow us around, distinctly droopy, from room to room. But let a stranger pass our fence or come to our door and it changes him completely. He turns into a wild, untamed beast. He barks like barking were going out of fashion. He dodges the owners to reach the door first and usually succeeds. He is impossible to rein in. We’ve tried many things including a dog training school. He holds the equivalent of a PhD but as soon as we have strangers at our door our learned friend forgets all his weighty dissertations. 

That’s where Steve comes into the picture. Steve is our house-sitter. Whenever we go out of town he stays at our house, making it look lived in and taking care of the dogs.

Early this month we decided to meet up with our other kids – the human kind, and asked Steve if he was free to house sit for us for a few days. To our luck he was. Steve had met Kara before but it was his first time with Sammy. We told him how unfriendly Sammy was with strangers but it didn’t seem to worry him. His girlfriend, wanting to reassure us, said that even the growliest of dogs soon became his doting shadow. I smiled weakly, sure Sammy would prove to be the one exception.

Sammy didn’t take to Steve. Our hearts sank. We’d booked our tickets and couldn’t change our plans at the eleventh hour. I felt nervous. Steve seemed confident and relaxed. He had two dogs of his own and took them for an hour’s walk down by the riverside every day. Perhaps Sammy would enjoy that and the company of other dogs. With fingers crossed we handed our dogs and house keys over to Steve and left.   

[We had a super time with the kids. Much refreshed and reassured to see them reasonably happy with life, we returned home to our canine family.]

I’d been worried for Steve and Sammy. At the same time an idea had begun forming in my mind. I desperately wanted Sammy to be friendly with humans. I believed it would enhance the quality of his life – he could be free of his leash when I took him walking, for example. He walked off the leash only with Steve and my husband.

When Steve came by to drop off our keys the next day, Sammy barked like crazy. Oh no. Was it back to square one? Steve tried to give him a little pat but Sammy backed away, still barking. “Forgotten me already?” said a disappointed Steve. And then it happened. Once he was in the house and sitting down, Sammy jumped on to his lap and gave him an affectionate nudge. Oh joy! Both Steve and I felt relieved – he, for having proved Sammy had taken to him and I, for realising there still was hope.

It was now or never. Wondering if it was quite the wrong thing to ask and aware that no one might have put such a proposition to him, I asked Steve if he’d continue walking Sammy along with his own dogs for a couple of months. In exchange I’d cook him and his partner a dish, daily. A desperate situation calls for desperate measures. I waited. At worst, he’d say no.

From the way his eyes lit up at the suggestion I think he liked the idea. What a relief. 

Today was the first day of this unusual arrangement. Sammy came back excited and happy. Steve said he got along famously with his own dog, Charlie. The most telling proof – when it was time for Steve to leave, Sammy didn’t bark. I am beginning to think this just might work.

 

Daddy Diaries : About working hard and Kissing feet

Dear Diary,

I am delighted to announce that the days of the tribal dance are over. As soon as Anika completed her third month, she started adjusting to the fact that a dark room means that she is supposed to go to sleep. Then, my sister-in-law sent her this miraculous gift all the way from America and everything fell into place like a jigsaw puzzle.

Image from here

Now when she has to sleep, she starts rubbing her eyes as if she is hell-bent to claw them out which is a signal to put her in the cot. Then we switch off the lights and switch on the hallucinator (that is what we have named the device) and she goes to sleep within five minutes.

Anika completed four months on Earth on 21st September which means she has completed one-third of a revolution around the Sun. She has started turning sideways. She laughs now and for some spiritual reasons, loves to put her whole hand in her mouth. A few days back, Geet and I took her to her nani’s house. She stayed there for four days. When we returned, my family pounced on her like hungry vultures as they have never lived without her for so long. We were hardly inside the doors when my mom and dad swooshed her out of our arms and started cuddling her. We were scared that she might get crushed between them. Now Anika was confused as they had been erased from her memory in the last four days. Dear Diary, you cannot imagine the ruckus she created. She screamed like the bathroom lady in Psycho for half an hour and leaked a bucket-full of her tears. We were perplexed and kept checking her for any injuries. It took her a day to re-adjust and understand that no one was trying to cook her for dinner.

Dear Diary,

My daily schedule is so tiring that I am hardly able to spend much time with Anika. I leave home at 7 and come back by 8:30 at night. By that time, I am donkey tired but I do try my best to hover over her and remind her of my face. I can see the difference now. She laughs much easily with people who are with her for the whole day. She has difficulty placing me at times. This really scares me. I don’t want to be like those filmy fathers who earn money for the family and are distant from their children. Twenty years down the line, I don’t want Anika to turn around and tell me that I was never there for her when she wanted me, that I was always busy with my work. God knows that will kill me. I have to find a way to be around her and my family, to give them more of my time. I know she will need me more and more as she grows up.

I do not understand the men who say that they are working hard to provide a better future to their children. What is that supposed to mean? Isn’t this what our parents thought too? But we are still working hard, aren’t we? What about the present? What about spending this moment with your child? Diary ji, people might call me unambitious but I will prefer that to my daughter calling me distant.

Dear Diary,

Anika has developed a strange habit. She can’t stay still. At any given point of time, only her head and torso is visible because she is flailing her arms and legs like one of those mutants in X-Men. Now this poses a great difficulty when she is to be fed. Geet and I magically fell upon the solution one day. You have to kiss her feet for her to stop. Keep kissing both her feet and she turns into this obedient entity. I hope this practice does not continue till adulthood.

Time is flying. A few days back we kept aside a few of her clothes that are too short for her now. It was such a surreal moment. She was such a small tiny girl weighing 2.6 Kg when she was born. Now she is 6.5 Kg and 14 cm taller. Isn’t that amazing Dear Diary? She is such a calm kid, laughs all the day and is a perfect recipe to raise your spirits. After my hectic day, all it takes is her smile to drain out all my tiredness.

Life is beautiful. It really is.

Fog Lake

Nani passed away when I was in UK. Geet and I were returning to Manchester from Halifax. I had gone there for a week-long training. I remember sitting in the train when dad called up and broke the news. I remember staring at the hills as they rushed past. I tried to remember the last time I had seen her. It was ten years ago in a cousin’s marriage.

A few days before her death, I told Geet that we will go to Dalhousie and meet Nani as soon as we go back to India. Nani had not attended our marriage that happened a year ago. She was too old to travel from Dalhousie to Delhi. Mom told us that she took out printouts of our marriage pictures and showed them to her when she went to Dalhousie. She kissed the pictures and blessed us.

She died three weeks before the end of my deputation in UK. 

I could never understand why mom and nani cried every time they met. My father and nana looked out of the window uncomfortably as the women went all teary eyed. Later I realised that it was the distance. We were not very rich to afford a yearly visit. 

Dalhousie was the only hill station I had seen while I grew up. For other people, it was Manali or Nainital or Shimla. For me, it was always Dalhousie. It was a home away from home. It meant looking at the lines on my nani’s face and listening to her stories. It meant that intoxicating aroma of pine and deodar trees. It meant the scents of the creaking wooden floor of her house. It meant the flavours of the apples that fell off that tree near the stone stairs of the first floor of her house. It meant the smells of her kitchen, smells of kasrod pickle in a clay jar.  

Dalhousie always brought peace to my mind. There was this deafening silence there that was hard to find in Delhi. You could hear the winds passing through the trees. You could smell the whiffs of earthly smells that came from the fog that rose from the belly of the valley every morning. I could see a few terrace farms below nani’s house. The farms ended abruptly over a cliff. The valley below was a reserve forest full of lush green trees. I could see hills beyond the forest and serpentine miniature roads with toy buses plying on them. The hills covered the whole landscape till the horizon. There were times when I would get up in the morning and sit alone in the balcony of the upper floor. The place smelled of nature. Then sometimes fog would rise from the lake in the forest below and engulf the whole valley. Sometimes there would be clouds and they would turn the whole sky to various shades of deep blue. It was surreal to take in the smells of Earth and trees. I remember feeling as if I had tasted heaven. I remember taking deep breaths and wondering if my parents could leave me to stay with nani forever. I remember thinking that I could die happily sitting forever in that balcony. That is all I wanted from life.

As time passed, life became more and more busy and years passed between my subsequent trips to Dalhousie. There was always some important exam or hostel life or job in another city. Before I realized, I had not visited Dalhousie for ten years. Never a day passed in those ten years when I had not yearned for those mountains, for that smell of pines, for touching that cloud once again that visited nani’s house once. I felt guilty and frustrated at times. I saw nani grow old in pictures. She told mom that she missed me every time mom visited her. The yearning to see her and the mountains was so strong that I promised myself every year to visit her as soon as possible. I knew she won’t live very long. She was bedridden now. Her back was bent. Her skin was peeling off. I knew I had to go and meet her.

And then UK happened. The promise was locked away. I prayed to God to keep her alive till my return. She passed away three weeks before I came back. 

I have visited numerous hill-stations in India. I have seen the highlands of Scotland. I have seen the Alps. And all of them remind me of my nani’s house. Whenever I am surrounded by mountains, I can just close my eyes, take a deep breath and transport myself back to Dalhousie. The smells of a creaking wooden floor of a house in the mountains brings a smile on my face. The smells of winds wafting through pines bring tears to my eyes. The sight of peaks leave an ache in my heart. Whenever a relative brings kasrod pickle from Dalhousie, I can smell my nani’s kitchen in it.

I haven’t been to Dalhousie after my nani’s death. I still have to summon enough courage to do that. I wish I had taken out time to meet her. I wish I had understood how ephemeral life is.

I wish I could go back and meet her once. And then sit on the balcony and smell the fog lifting from the lake. 

[image from here]

This post have been written for Ambipur contest on Indiblogger

Daddy Diaries : Tribal dances and progressive words

Dear Diary,

Anika is three months old now. She has turned into a Bonsai Sumo wrestler. The doctor says its baby fat and we should not worry much. Silly man! He should try picking her up for half an hour. I even suggested enrolling her in a gym and reducing her diet to half but everyone thinks I am crazy. No one pays any heed to her ever growing double chin and her as-thick-as-Qutab-Minar thighs. Her cheeks are like double scoops of butter-scotch ice-cream. 

I do not understand why we Indians cannot bear the sight of our crying child and rush to pick her up. Geet and I wanted Anika to have a habit of sleeping in her own cot without any assistance. Of course she cried a bit but that was natural and we had to give her some time to get used to it. Instead of allowing her to adjust to this format, the whole family (including Geet and I) rush to her aid the moment she releases a high decibel sound. Everyone is falling on top of each other to grab her, just like a bunch of zombies who have spotted a living human after months of starvation. Dear Diary, things stand at such a point at the moment that she is now unable to sleep on her own. Geet and I have devised new strategies because the put-her-in-cot-and-be-done-with-it strategy has failed miserably. 

Now there are two plans available to put her to sleep –

Plan A.  Geet does a very complex tribal dance with Anika lying in her arms. The dance has a lot of squats, jumps and swaying steps. It also includes a weird song that sounds different every time she sings it. While dancing, she looks like Neo dodging the bullets. I am thinking of gifting her with a spear on her next birthday. It will give an authenticity to the whole act.

Plan B.  I am a tyro as far as the tribal dance goes but I have devised plan B in case plan A doesn’t work. I take Anika in my arms and move her rapidly in random directions. So a typical manoeuvre will be up-left-down-right-up-up-down-30 Degrees-120 degrees-side… and so on. The immediate effect is that she feels dizzy and faints, which basically solves the purpose. Everyone in the house is amazed that I can put her to sleep in 10 minutes but they have no idea that she succumbs to a rapid change of frames. It is our little father-daughter secret.

Dear Diary,

Another splendid development in the last one month has been that Anika has started saying a very progressive word. Now I call it progressive because even adults shy away from saying something like this so frequently. The word she speaks is – Akuu. Initially I was not very sure what that meant but then one fine sunny day the bulb switched on in my head.

What she really means is – Fu*k You.

And to say that every time with a smile on her face is no small achievement.

“Anika, would you like to have some milk?”

“Akuu.”

“Anika, why are you so cranky? Go to sleep immediately!”

“Akuu.”

“Anika, why do you have to always wake up when I am eating food?”

“Akuu.”

“Anika, why do you drink so much milk and vomit it out?”

“Akuu.”

“Anika, take your hand out of your mouth immediately! Now! Now! Out!”

“Akuu! Akuu! Akuu!”

She even tell the ceiling fan to fu*k off when it fails to entertain her. She loves to watch the fan and the family rotate above her. I think she will go a long way as she has already learnt the one word that is essential for your survival in the world.

Dear Diary,

I think Anika will become a singer. Her wails are raga based. She always cries in a “Ga” moving to “Pa”, “Ma” and “Ni” rapidly. Her hands and the little fingers attached to them move like those of a seasoned classical singer as she gives her performance after staining her diaper and warn us that we better change it. It is a delightful sight. I can right away imagine her performing in an amazing concert and ending it with an Akuu to the audience. Imagine their faces! They will be shocked out of their skins.

Anyways,

I have to go now. The performance has started and it is a full house. I will have to execute Plan B very soon. 

Anika with her 2 friends. One of them works for the Queen of England.