A new baby

When my wife was expecting our second child, one of our prime concerns was how will the existing apple of our eye deal with having another apple to share the eyes with.

We had talked about having a second one for a while, Tiger was over two, grandparents were gently pushy again, dropping hints of the "I think it is time for you to have another child" kind. The time seemed just right.

All through my wife's pregnancy things progressed smoothly, thankfully, except the boy who was mystified by his now unwieldy mother. Gone was the person who would conduct pursue and capture operations vaulting over the sofa, gliding under the dining table and who upon securing her quarry would hoist him up to take him to his room. Now these were more instruct and delegate operations "No, Tiger, no scooter in the house. PJ catch him and make him stop before he breaks the TV." (Wives and mothers are eerily prescient - they know exactly what the kid will destroy).

A few weeks before our bundle of joy was to arrive, we started preparing ourselves and Tiger. "Talk to him" was a common refrain. We thought of telling him that he was going to get a little baby soon. This posed a problem, since till that point of time, we were both in the habit of referring to him as our little baby. Now overnight, he would need to become our 'big boy'.

"You are a big boy now" I told him. I thought about telling him that there was a little baby inside mama's tummy. I remember when my nephew told his younger sister that she came from mummy's tummy, she went over and asked her mother in shock "Mommy you ate me!"

Tiger takes most news stoically, maybe his experience says that the information we feed him from time to time doesn't always measure up in his experience, take "spinach and cheese is yummy," for example. He has never indicated that he has discovered any truth in the statement.

Till then, for him the most interesting thing about babies was that they came in prams. He loved to push the strollers around, navigate them about the playground and have fun. It did not necessarily require a baby to actually be present in the pram. He was happier with an empty pram since we allowed him freer rein with it.

We were pleasantly surprised to see Tiger genuinely excited when we told him that he would be soon getting a little sister of his own. We also told him Little Sister was in Ma's tummy. He liked that too. So he would spend a bit of time every day talking to Little Sister, saying hello in the morning, saying bye when he left for his playschool. Sometimes he would get a bit impatient and ask us when Little Sister would put in an appearance (I want Little Sister to come out now!). Soon was an answer that doesn't satisfy most three year olds. Their concept of time seems to have only two phases: Now and God-knows-when. We told him Little Sister would come and play with him and talk to him and lots of other things that would happen once she came involving ice-cream, biscuits, picnics and train rides.

Tiger has a fondness of running full tilt and launching himself at you, expecting to be caught, cups of tea or half-full wine glasses that you might be holding notwithstanding. He calls this game Boom. "I want Boom" is generally the only warning you get before the missile is on it's way. The imminent coming of Little Sister precluded his mother from this activity, so I took over slack. He didn't seem to mind.

Finally the day came when we were able to tell him that Mama needed to go to hospital to get Little Sister. Our daughter, Tiger's Little Sister was delivered and my wife and she were to stay in hospital for three days. Ana was small compared to her brother, about three-quarters of his birth weight - and she looked much more delicate than he did when he was born. Tiger was a bigger, robust baby, but Ana had a bigger voice...she could really put her lungs to good use.

That evening I went to fetch Big Brother Tiger to see Little Sister Ana. There was a box of chocolates in her crib when Tiger came to see her - a present she had brought for him. He was thrilled to say the least - both to see her and the chocolates.

"Hello Little Sister!" Little Sister did not respond.

"Little Sister is sleeping!" He seemed a trifle disappointed, but the chocolates proved to be a handy distraction.

The next day brought a similar story.

"Little Sister is sleeping."

In fact the first few weeks, Little Sister was hardly ever awake - sleeping about eighteen hours a day. We heard "Little Sister is sleeping" and also "Little Sister is still sleeping" a few times a day as Tiger went to see his hyped up sibling. The disappointment was higher when she was awake and it was all our fault since we had oversold Little Sister: will play with you, have so much fun, will go on picnics... and so on. The first few weeks were summed up by "Little Sister is sleeping" or "Little Sister is crying" and once, when he walked in to find Ana being breastfed, "No, no Ana, don't eat Mama!" he was genuinely concerned. It took a while before it became "Little Sister is having milk".

He seemed to think we got a raw deal, we should have got a better, working model, one that could at least talk and walk and sleep less, but he was still very fond of her.

He took all of it in his stride - and in his inimitable way he took upon himself her instruction in the way of humans.

"Good morning, Little Sister!" He'd come over first thing in the morning to see her. Silence, she looks at him in the curious unwavering way that babies have. "Must say Good Morning, Ana." When she cries, he tells her, "Must not cry, Ana, must speak." and "Why Ana, why are you crying?"

As time goes by, he gets more and more used to dealing with her. His pats on her head to get her to sleep have become gentler. He is generally the first one on the scene if she is crying. Earlier he didn't know what to do, but now he pats her and speaks to her and coos to her, just like he sees us do. She, for her part gets a lot more animated when she sees him - smiling, arms and legs flailing furiously trying to get her four month old body into the air somehow. Her excitement is infectious.

They get along well, both of them. I am glad.

On Clothes and Demons

It was not a dark and stormy night. It was just another evening. We had put the tykes to bed and were getting ready to go out for dinner with friends.

I picked up the car keys and my wallet and was ready to go.

Then I realized that I am supposed to change my t-shirt since this is the same boring shirt I always wear when I go out. I was supposed to wear a new shirt, which I duly managed to find and wear after a few false dawns. This stop-start situation happened largely because of the variance in the definition of 'new' that I follow as opposed to the one my wife does.

For me, anything bought after I got married is new, as is anything bought later than something else of the same species. For example, a pair of shoes that I bought two years ago is new, while the pair I bought three years ago is not new. It is old.

My wife, on the other hand, applies the term 'new' exclusively to very recent (tending to immediate) acquisitions that are unused. For example, an article of clothing bought 4 months ago, albeit not worn, would not be new. Merely unused.

On my third attempt I got the correct 'new' shirt. I was ready once again.

Or so I thought.

"You aren't wearing that!" I wasn't sure whether this was a question, a statement, an exclamation or an instruction, since I was, quite evidently, wearing that.

"You wore those jeans yesterday too." While this was true, I did point out that typically jeans were worn more frequently than once. That's what made them jeans.

"But you also wore them last weekend."

This statement was neither here nor there though I declined to point out that I had been wearing these jeans for the better part of two months, as I did not deem it to be relevant to our conversation.

"These have marks on them."

This statement was wholly accurate. The left leg of the pair I had on had a fine specimen of one of the first doodles of our toddler. If he ever joined the league of Picasso et al., this pair of jeans would be worth a packet. Plus I thought such marks added character to jeans.

"These jeans are old."

This one really had me foxed. When we went to buy me a pair of jeans, we paid good money for this particular pair that looked like it had been lived in for a few years by a cowboy and then discarded, upon which, as a practical joke someone hung it up in a showroom to 'see what happens'.

What happened was that my wife loved it and we came back home with it. My protests that for this kind of money I should at least get something of which I am indisputably the first owner fell on deaf ears. Apparently wearing old, worn and cuffed jeans makes one look younger and hip-er.

My feeling that since now this pair was older, more worn and more cuffed, it would be better, was misplaced.

I duly re-attired myself.

At last, I was ready to go.

"I have nothing to wear." My wife had the wardrobe doors wide open. Inside, huge stacks of spun, woven and stitched yarn teetered dangerously.

'I have nothing to wear' could mean many things. It could be a question requiring reassurance, to answer which, one would need to delve into the arcane arts of female fashion and might entail pulling out chunks of the afore-mentioned woven, stitched yarn and show them to be 'clothes' or even 'nice clothes' that were appropriate for the evening; it could be a gripe, that would require one to come up with immediate plans (or plans in an as immediate a future as possible) for shopping expeditions to nullify it; it could be a grievance that would require one to admit one's fault on how the evening's excursion should have been better planned in order for us to have had the opportunity during the week to go to shop for something to wear for this particular evening.

Saying "You have so many clothes, wear anything." is just being callous. No one could say what the consequences could be if one were to say this. Even saying "Wear anything, you look pretty no matter what you wear." is inappropriate. While it may preclude one from incurring physical harm, it is widely understood to be of the same callous ilk as the previous statement.

No, the situation needs to be managed. I need to demonstrate some activity. I need to make suggestions. I need to be perceived as intelligent and knowing and above all caring.

There is more to this problem than meets the eye. It is a knotty one.

Women remember every item of clothing they have ever worn at any occasion. They also remember who was present at the said occasion. And the female law for wearing clothes is that no person should see you wearing the same clothes (or combination thereof) on more than one occasion. 'Person' here is described as any physical entity outside of your own body.

What I do to ensure we go out to dinner is to pray that in all the frenetic activity, the situation resolves itself for the evening.

Anyway, to ensure closure, we went shopping during the following week to prevent any similar happenings in the immediate future. We shopped, we returned home.

Upon returning home we noticed that things had changed. My wife opened the cupboard and saw that the old heaps of spun, stitched yarn have been transformed into clothes, a lot of which are wearable and some are almost new! We have come a full circle.

"I have too many clothes," she says. "Really! You should have told me and not let me buy anything today." She chides me, "While these are very nice, I don't actually need them."

Suddenly her shopping is my fault. My bafflement knows no boundaries. For years I was perplexed with this problem.

Then I realized. There is a shape-shifting demon that eats clothes and regurgitates them later sharing our domicile. A particularly vicious creature when it comes to putting husbands in tight corners, it takes sadistic pleasure in playing games on sensitive male minds - what with perfectly good clothes disappearing to reappear later innocently when the occasion had passed. For years I denied its existence. Now I know better.

You might think it is fanciful on my part, but then you must remember that when you have eliminated the impossible, what remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

"I must really stop buying clothes. There is no place to keep them. I think you should help me rationalize my clothes."

But that is another story.

Too early..?

I slowly floated up to the ceiling to see better what was going on in my room. The view from up here was much better. I was lying on my bed below with my eyes closed, because of which everything I saw had a very dreamy quality. I was not sure I saw everything, but I felt it. Memories probaly recorded it as seeing. Easier on the mind. Easier to remember later.


Pids was standing at my desk with his back to the bed keeping time on a drink can to Comfortably Numb the song that the music player on my desk was playing. It felt as if the music was coming from far away. It sounded like a symphony, maybe something out of Amadeus, something ethereal, but undoubtedly Comfortably Numb.


I saw a note appear over his shoulder.


Each time he touched the can, a big green note came over his shoulder and broke over me. It broke into thousands of small droplets, each in the shape of a note. I was wading through a river of notes of different colours. There were jungle streams. There was a lush green forest through which these streams were flowing.


I reached a lake.


In the middle of the lake, a man played a guitar standing on a rock. Streams of different colours of notes came out of his guitar. He formed the lake. All these streams that I waded through came from his guitar. He wore bright clothes, a blue and red jacket and had long hair. He wore dark glasses.


I open my eyes. I briefly return to myself - body and soul together. Reality is here again. I can feel the bed underneath me. The ceiling is empty but for the slowly whirring fan.


I close my eyes.


The sun is bright. I am walking through a desert now.


I am thirsty. My throat is parched. My mouth is very dry. In the desert once I saw a bit of paper stuck in thorns. I took it out. It caught fire in a few seconds under a magnifying-glass. We were only using someone's glasses.


I was that thirsty.


I opened my eyes. I took a sip of water. It was water.


Another drag and the thirst is gone. For now.


Pids rolls. He rolls like there is no tomorrow. We always roll the stuff here. We all take turns.


We are in a circle.


Fats is with me at one end. We roll. There are six of us in a circle. The lamp in the corner is the only light. Comfortably Numb is the anthem again. Locks is emptying pre-rolling. We manage the ratios. Fill and roll. Lick twist repeat. We won't start till we are sure we don't need to roll again in the middle. No one knows what the middle is. We are never sure.


A sound tells you there is a light. It has started. It is a sound followed by a smell. Just like you see lightning followed by the sound of thunder.


Peace.


Lightness.


I go up again to get a better view. The 'take-off' my friend calls it. He never takes off. He just stays there.


I can see so much more. I can feel. The wind in a closed room. There is no need to talk. Everyone is in his own private world. Everything is peaceful.


Even the desert that I am walking through.


It can only mean I am really thirsty. I hope there is water around. Having to go out to fetch it would break the spell.


I take a sip. The desert changes I am going through a valley now. More like floating. I am still, the valley turns around with me at the centre to give me views all around. It is beautiful. There are flowers.


We have an exam to write the next morning. Locks had saved two from last time. Not enough but will have to do. Saves us the trouble of rolling.


Maybe we started too early. In a four hour exam, we awoke after the first two.


We both scored B's. More than average for us.


We weren't the first, will definitely not be the last.

Maybe an hour later we'd have had A's.

Maybe we started too early.

Lizards and pe(s)ts

"PJ!!"

I would recognize this tone anywhere. She has seen a lizard. Or a cockroach.

"Please!!" It is a lizard.

Against cockroaches she sometimes fancies her chances, especially against the small ones. The 'please' then is more peremptory, less request than command.

Against lizards, it is well and truly pleading.

Plus, in the case of cockroaches, she calls the thing by name. The first indication that trouble is afoot might be "inarticulate scream!" followed by an articulate "Cockroach!". She doesn't refer to lizards by name. It is always me she calls out to. She believes I am some sort of beastmaster by virtue of watching Discovery Channel. I can make lizards disappear.

The first time it happened, I thought she found a body in the bedroom. I rushed inside, she was there, pale, quivering, cowering against the wall, pointing vaguely in a manner that could mean almost anything in the room. I asked her what happened - she wouldn't say. I looked around for something (I had no idea what) in the room: in the cupboard, behind the door, on the shelves, in the bathroom and came up with nothing. At the best of times when I do know what I am looking for, I can't find it. Even if sometimes it is right there staring up at me.

She started screaming "There it is! There it is!" as I went across to the bed to look under it. There was a small gecko next to the bed on the floor, staring up at me. It wouldn't run when I approached, I figured it must be stupid. So I moved it gently aside with my foot to look under the bed. She screamed again. Louder. Shriek-ier. "Is it dead?"

"What is dead?" I asked. She opened her eyes and saw me move the lizard.

"I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!!"

"What happened?"

I was getting a bit bewildered. For the life of me I could not figure out what the furore was about. The lizard thought it had heard enough. It decided to leave the room. This action took it directly towards my wife.

She screamed again. "DO SOMETHING! IT IS COMING AT ME!!"

"Its not coming at you. It just wants to go out. Let it pass, its minding its own business."

She went purple. And then the penny dropped. The root of said furore was this 'harmless' lizard.

She let me have it.

"IT IS A LIZARD! IT IS DANGEROUS!! IT HAS NO RIGHT TO BE HERE. THIS IS MY HOUSE. I DON'T WANT LIZARDS HERE AND HAD I KNOWN YOUR EVERLASTING LOVE FOR THESE PESTS I WOULD NEVER HAVE MARRIED YOU!!!"

So this is what it came to. A small reptile could lead to the termination of the eternal vows we had taken. Apparently 'For better or for worse' does not include lizards anywhere in the package. I thought she was being querulous. I told her not to look at the vows literally, but to look at the spirit of things. She was having none of that. The ultimatum was delivered: either the lizard or her and I had three seconds to decide.

I have never managed to figure out how someone could be so scared and yet drive such a hard bargain. And so fast.

I tried to reason with her, I tried to buy time. I told her how lizards had been around on the planet for longer than we had. I told her how lizards ate other things she did not want around the house like moths, mosquitoes, spiders and cockroaches. She said she didn't care and in any case she had never seen a lizard eat a cockroach. The fact that she had never stayed long enough to see a lizard properly was neither here nor there. The fact that I brought it up revoked my sleeping-in-the-bedroom privileges.

The lizard apparently found this conversation boring and sauntered off. It was nowhere to be seen.

We launched a hunt for it. I moved the furniture and kept a rolled up newspaper in my back-pocket for use as a weapon. ("What will you do once you find it? I don't want you touching it. Take a newspaper.")

She climbed a stool and from that vantage gave directions.

The lizard had disappeared, which I thought was a good thing.

I told her I thought she had scared it off. She did not think it funny and accused me of harbouring it somewhere in the apartment. I pointed out the impossibility of it since I was under observation all this time as she directed operations from her HQ: the highest point in the room.

She didn't believe me, but after a while she did come down from the stool. Thankfully we saw no more lizards for a few weeks. I genuinely believed that she could get to know and accommodate these animals. I tried to understand what she has against them and started to educate her on these wonderful animals.

No they are not slimy, they are quite dry and scaly.

(HAVE YOU ACTUALLY TOUCHED ONE?)

No, they are not poisonous, only two are poisonous anyway, with a suspected third.

No, they do not attack humans, at least the ones in our house don't. They are scared of you.

No, they don't creep, they walk on all fours just like babies crawl. COMPARING BABIES AND LIZARDS? ARE YOU NUTS?!

I thought maybe because they were small she felt uncomfortable. I took her to the zoo and showed her the Komodo dragons at feeding time. Bad move. It is amazing how people will watch with awe big cats do something and turn away with disgust at big lizards doing exactly the same thing.

Well, I thought familiarity would get her more comfortable. I was wrong.

A few days later we saw another lizard. Another scream, another 'situation'. The Beastmaster was called in. I tried continuing my education programme and told her it was a gecko. She accused me of having made it a pet (YOU EVEN HAVE A NAME FOR IT?!).

I did manage to chivvy it out the window. I assured my wife that it had plunged five floors. She was sceptical, but came down from the stool.

Thankfully, the lizards have come in only infrequently and I have not been required to take any drastic steps so far. Chivvying them has worked. I have put in lizard traps (they never work) to assure the General-Officer-in-Command that defences are in place and robust. I even inspect them periodically and move them around.

Plus I toe the official line.

A lizard is a pest.

Getting rid of lizards has added another positive entry to the meagre list under my name of things I can do (flattening toothpaste tubes from the bottom up and changing light bulbs being the other important items on that list).

So the next time we have a free and frank exchange of views, I fervently hope for a lizard to show up to deflect attention and make life a bit easier. I sometimes even leave crumbs behind the TV.