The Birthday Party

"Not again. Not next year. Not for my daughter. No." I groaned as I dug my heels in to the carpet to prevent myself from spilling on to the floor. My body didn't want to sit. It was too tired to sit. It just wanted to drip on to the floor in a puddle and then stay there. My whole being wanted to pull the plug and go home. The problem was I was home. It felt as if I had spent my entire life on my feet. And when I did try to sit, I found that my sitting muscles had atrophied. My body yearned for some rest. There was still work to be done, for my wife believed that the house was a mess. I believed we should toss it all and go to sleep. My beliefs did not get much traction.

You see, we had just finished our son's fourth birthday party that day. It was an afternoon of mayhem for us, something akin to jaywalking through the charge of the light brigade with kids volleying and thundering around us. There were thirty of them, give or take a couple, between the ages of ten months and seven years, all with a reactor inside them supplying inexhaustible sources of energy and throats lacking decibel control and arms that waved about while speaking as if they were trying to get both their thoughts as well as themselves off the ground. My contribution to this population of boisterous children was two - a ten month old daughter and a four year old son. The party was possibly my son's idea of how it would be just inside the gates of paradise. My daughter caught the excitement as well and demonstrated it through much of the afternoon by giving considerable voice to her opinions in a language known only to her.

All afternoon we had been smiling, me and my wife. While she is somewhat of a natural - being a serial smiler, such afternoons of being on not even civil but positively convivial behaviour takes its toll on me. My lips were so tired they had curled up and gone off to sleep nestled on my chin.

Birthday parties are as much for parents as for the children - in fact the first two or three birthdays are entirely for parents. The kids couldn't care less. Sometimes, the child has to be kept awake (my eldest lost the battle to remain conscious about half-way through his first birthday) for key moments like cutting the cake or else you would have a very irate one year old, who, incensed at being woken up is now refusing to have anything to do with the cake or the cutting of the same. Sometimes, on the other hand, the birthday child has to be kept away from his own cake since a child is often under the misconception that he has first right over his own birthday cake. In the modern world, the first right is of the camera, and through that medium, of facebook.

Birthday parties follow a set routine: Children enjoy them overtly. Moms enjoy them overtly and covertly. Dads drink beer.

For reasons I have been unable to fathom, I have seen that mothers always find stuff to do at birthdays that is directly relevant to the party itself: Organizing games, cutting the cake, calling order, feeding people, making play dates, in short, running the show. Fathers, in the absence of beer wander about like lost souls in a desert on the lookout for an oasis. The only useful things that I have seen a father do (your truly included) is to ferry pieces of cake around and spring to action when chairs or tables need to be moved. The same happened in my son's birthday party as well. In my wisdom, hence, I had told my wife I would take care of the drinks and so I made sure the cooler was well stocked with beer and wine. An hour before the party she came on her customary tour of inspection.

"Where are the drinks?" She asked me. I proudly showed her the neat rows of bottles and cans in the cooler.

"What will the children drink?" She asked me again.

I was stumped, but I handled it well. "Juice!" I said, inspired.

"Where is it?" She queried. Years of experience have taught me that the words "Trust me" are deemed to exist in the English language only as long as the woman in question had not married me. Ever since our wedding day, "Trust me" has been gobbledygook and that too gobbledygook in an extinct language.

"At the back." I said, praying I would not have to show them.

"Ok." She said and went away to take charge of the food and entertainment section.

I quickly made myself scarce and went and bought juice and cola. Of course I had to think of an excuse in case I was asked where I had been gallivanting moments before my only son's birthday party was due to commence, but the question never came. Here is where smokers win out. They don't have to account for a fifteen minute slot of time as long as they come back smelling of stale smoke. As you can see, even crap has advantages once it is not on your side.

I don't know if you have ever noticed, but a young child's birthday celebration is a study in organized randomness - Adults (almost exclusively grown up women) insist on sticking to a mental schedule of passing the parcel, pin the tail, pulverize the pinata, musical chairs, give alternating dirty and perplexed looks to husband throughout the party while the children follow some sort of 'grouped' Brownian movement. There are always bunches of kids running randomly across the room with their paths impossible to predict. Never is it a lone child. It is always a scattered group. And everybody is in a state of constant motion and constant speech.

It requires great skill to ferry beer across a room such as this, but my wife thinks this talent is overrated.

I spent most of the evening skillfully avoiding collisions while making sure the other dads had beers in their hands constantly. I was also reciting "If" to myself since it seemed to give me hope. My wife was running around as well. She was like a whirlwind - here, there, everywhere. I thought I would offer her some words of wisdom as support. The next time she passed me I said "If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs.." She gave me a funny look. "Nobody is losing their head," she said. "This is how people have fun. I think you are losing your head." She said quite pointedly.

I realized that the only thing that my wife and I had in common post the birthday party was the fatigue. Hers tinged with happiness and hope that this would happen again, mine tinged with relief that this was over for another few months.

Boys and Girls

If you have children, have you ever thought which one has been easier to raise? Let's face it - both kids can't be a dream to raise. Even if marginal, one must be easier to raise than the other. Some people say that parents fuss more over the first one and that everyone fusses over a lot over the youngest one and that the middle ones get short shrift. Some people say that it is a personality trait - some children are alpha children and therefore are more difficult to raise (are all children beta adults?). Some people give the view that every child presents her/his own challenges.

Based on my two children, I put forward the hypothesis that it is not about the first or second or third child, that it is between girl and boy. In my experience, boys are easier to raise. And I have a girl and a boy, plus have seen, in close proximity, two nieces and one nephew growing up. I think that is also the reason why we have 'Mama's boys' and 'Daddy's girls'. Fathers get the thin end of the wedge.

I'll start with an example. My son and daughter both used the same playpen growing up. I remember when he was a few months old and had started to stand up in his playpen, my son would call out when he got bored. I would throw in a ball and he would keep himself busy for the next half an hour. Cut to three and some years later. Same playpen, daughter replacing son inside it. She gets bored, stands up and calls out. I throw in the same ball that has served me so well with Tiger. She looks at me as if I were slightly stupid, but still likable. She bends, picks up the ball, throws it out and looks at me expectantly. I learnt the hard way that this is not the beginning of a game of tossing the ball back and forth. Her tossing the ball out was terminal. It had been dismissed from her presence. She did not want the ball back. She wants to be talked to.

I still have not come to terms with this 'talking' part. My son shows great restraint with language. Just because he can use it doesn't mean he does use it. When he does use it, he doesn't expect too much of a response. I am rather proud of this. My wife says he gets it from me. My daughter, on the other hand, wants to talk. Ever since she was three months old. She still can't speak, but loves to talk. Or loves having me talk to her. I don't know what to talk to her about. We have very few common interests. She doesn't watch cricket. She has not read anything of note. Our musical tastes are poles apart - except for Indian Classical (she likes to sing along with Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan Sahib).

Whenever I hold her, she turns around and looks at me, expectantly. She wants me to say something intelligent. She is usually disappointed. She gurgles, coos and makes assorted vocalizations. Her expression says it is a story she is telling, one that I am hopeless at interpreting or responding to. She reaches out for the mother and complains about me. To her credit, she doesn't give up and tries every day.

Take babysitting. Watching over my son when my wife was away was a dream. If my wife went away for two hours, it meant I needed to toss a ball or some other toy into his playpen between four to six times between her leaving and coming back. She almost always came back to find a happy baby and a happy father. It gave me enough time to take naps, watch movies, surf the internet - enough time to do whatever I wanted in half an hour instalments. And if he wanted to sleep, he went ahead and slept.

No such luck with my daughter. Wife now comes back after a shopping soiree to find a worn out father and a daughter literally pulling my hair out. Yes, because I am trying desperately to get her to sleep. Her favourite mode of sleeping is to suck her thumb while trying to pull my hair out. If she can't get a firm grip on my hair, she can't sleep.

Take feeding. When my son was as old as my daughter is now, all I had to do was put some white liquid in his bottle and he would wade into it with enthusiasm. Buying formula for the son was the easiest thing in the world. Walk down the aisle and pick a box. Any box. My daughter, on the other hand, is picky. She has settled, after much trial and error (blood, toil, tears and sweat for the parents), on one particular brand of formula. All others she rejects by spitting them out. A six month old baby is not supposed to be able to spit. I guess the folks who wrote the book on what six-month old infants are supposed to do did not try the wrong formula.

Take clothes. My boy wears what's on top, unless of course it does not have a car, truck, train or airplane drawn on it. In which case he goes to the next item of clothing and so on till the 'automobile on front' condition is satisfied. Girls choose. Clothes that match. And Shoes. And Socks. And hairbands. And nail colour. And bags. And if what they want is not done, they will get it done. Even if it means war. This is also borne out in life. Go to any shop that specializes in children's clothes. You will typically see three pitiful racks with boy's clothes, including all sizes 12 months to 12 years. The rest of the two thousand square feet would be girls' dresses and accessories.

With boys, I have seen that their major aim in life is how to injure themselves in newer, more innovative ways. There is stress when boys are growing up, but it is a uniform kind of stress:

"What has he done now?" and "I guess I'll pay for that," being common lines to keep in handy along with keeping the family doctor and dentist on speed-dial.

Girls are different. Their objective is to prove that their fathers are 'simple'. I can never forget that at age three my niece knew in numerical terms, more shades of pink and purple than I knew colours in toto, counting any colour that ever crossed paths with me. She would tell me detailed stories about what she did. Even if she went to the zoo, she'd tell me what the animals said, give me a brief character sketch of the individual giraffes and give me gossip that the zebras and lions did not get along. It was she who first informed me that lions were 'tawny'. I thought tawny was a port with lions being yellow or orange depending upon whether you used rich colour settings in your TV or not.

The problem I think narrows down to the fact that Girls Know Too Much. That in itself is not bad, but what really compounds the problem is their willingness, nay eagerness to 'Share' what they know.

I am not against this 'sharing' per se, but I get enough of it top down from the wife. I don't see why I should get more of it bottom up from the daughter as well. And I know that I am not alone.

A few days ago, we went to a park that had a play area for kids, featuring two large slides. The entry to the slides was up in a tree house. My son was busy throwing himself down the slide in various ways, running back up the ladder as soon as his feet hit the ground. There was a gentleman there with his twin daughters, who were about six or seven. Somewhat reluctantly all three of them trooped up to mouth of the slides using the stairs (the long way) instead of the ladder and stood there, uncertainly. The father made ineffectual attempts at getting the daughters to slide down. The daughters considered it, then effectually refused. This gentle tug of war continued for a few minutes till one of the daughters spied some chairs made of driftwood nearby. "Let's have a tea-party!" was the dual proclamation. I saw colour visibly drain from the father's face. He had unwittingly entered a domain wholly unfamiliar to him and one that was likely to remain thus. He had possibly brought his girls to the tree house so he could spend time with them his way and some nutcase had put furniture there. I wished I had a bottle of beer I could give to him to help him through the tough time he was due to face, but I didn't have one. So I did the gallant thing and withdrew.

In another six months my daughter will be walking and talking. I have a good mind to write to the people running the park to get rid of the chairs in the tree house.

Gardens, Mice & Cats

Recently, I changed my job. I had been thinking of 'moving on' as they say, and finally came a time when I could turn this desire into action and dutifully told my employer of my decision. That was when I realized how well the company knew me and cared not only for me but also for what was mine. They knew things about me that I didn't. For example they knew I had a garden. Where exactly in my small apartment on the fifth floor of a building was this garden secreted, I had never managed to find in the two years that I lived in this place, but then two years is hardly enough to truly know someone or something as complex as an apartment. The short of it is that my company knew. In fact, not only were they aware of my garden, but they were also congizant of my neglect of this garden. My garden, as they put to me, had gone to seed. So, to help me get my garden back on its feet, as it were, they decided to help me. I was asked to proceed on gardening leave from six in the evening that very day, for there was not a moment to be wasted.

I woke up the following morning with a very specific mandate: that of tending to the roses. Even though I had never ever set eyes on my garden, I felt inside me, that I grew roses. Or at least should be growing roses.

Sunlight was streaming in through the windows when I woke up (regained consciousness was more like it). From what little I knew of a farmer's life, the day has to begin at the crack of dawn. I would prefer mine to begin at the crack of ice - and that was very nearly how it came to be the previous night, but then one can't have everything. I take no mandate lightly. I sprang out of bed with as much enthusiasm as two-hours-and-a-bit of sleep would allow me and I went outside the room.

My wife of many years was there, sitting at the dining table, wearing a restrained sort of smile, not the sort that prevents general mirth from overwhelming oneself, but one that restrains the user from using other darker emotions.

“Had fun?”

“No, not exactly, just a couple of people...from the office...you know...talking shop..you know...” I offered. It wasn't the strongest explanation, but at the time, it was all I could come up with. And anyway this must have been what happened since I only had a vague recollection of much of the evening.

“You know how these evenings are with the office crowd, you just seem to bring work to a pub.” This was better I thought.

“Four hours after midnight is generally classified as early morning.” She offered as a fact. “Evenings typically end sometime before midnight.”

I must admit she had a point.

“Anyway, now I will not be talking shop for a while. I have been given gardening leave.” I said this to change the topic and to swing things over to my side a bit since I could now offer maybe an additional quarter of an hour to help around the house, for the next few weeks anyway.

“That's what I wanted to discuss with you.” She said. “I am going to be traveling for the next few weeks. You will need to hold fort here. My mother is coming over to help us."

It was as if decreed by God. My gardening leave would overlap almost exactly with her business travel. And for those few weeks, I would be in-charge. 

To help you understand the situation in its entirety, you first have to understand the political environment of our household. It is not simple to explain, but I will try. 

My wife runs the ship and I am the first mate. My four year old son is the leader of the rebellion and I am his lieutenant. My ten month old daughter runs her own free state within this set-up, much like the Vatican, even though enclosed by Rome, is a sovereign nation. If I were to forsake mixing politics and the navy, then in an extremely simplistic manner, my wife is the cat, my son and I are the mice and my daughter is whatever it is that takes her fancy at that moment in time.

Coming back to situation at hand, I was to be in-charge. 

I nodded my head gravely to make her believe that even though the burden was onerous, I would discharge my duties with care and diligence. The ship shall be run as she would have liked it to be run. In my head, I rubbed my hands with glee. I am a closet anarchist and for the next few weeks, I was going to declare our apartment to be the closet.

Day 1 

I awoke to a general feeling of pandemonium in the house. House of course is a misnomer here - we live in an apartment, suspended in the ether, it would have been, but for the column of apartments above and below us that the construction company had thoughtfully made.

As I was saying, I awoke to a general feeling of pandemonium in the house and I found out soon enough that feeling was well justified as pandemonium did reign in the house. For starters it was a half past five. That in itself was reason enough for an excellent day ahead. My son and daughter were awake, clamouring to be fed, comforted, played with and seeking assurances that school was, once and for all, finished. 

"Why?" was my first thought. Then I remembered. Today was the first day.

It is a commonly accepted fact that when the cat is away, the mice shall play and today, as my memory served me, the cat was away. Usually I would be very fine with that - but this time, I remembered to my chagrin, when she went away, she made me an interim cat. 

The day only got better. By late morning, my son had already missed four meals and been late to two schools. 

By afternoon I had torn up my list of things to do while on gardening leave (e.g. reorganize my song collection and create copies in two different formats, digitize all documents and create different back-ups of all data etc.) while my daughter had spent her first nap-less afternoon and wanted to issue her own currency.

By evening I was convinced my wife was running a scam - there was no way a single person could run this show. So either there was crucial information denied to me or that there was more than one of her. I settled on the latter and spent the rest of the evening looking for her clones.

Day 2

Clone search was unsuccessful. The wires I had discovered actually belonged to my own computer. I think my wife has taken her clones with her. Mother-in-law tells me my son was awake for two hours after he tucked me into bed. I think she was being funny. I resolve not to fall asleep in son's bed, especially since he kicked me to the floor very early in the morning. 

Daughter tried to eat my mobile phone. Timely call by unknown guy selling insurance scared her into spitting out phone. She has added demands for a flag along with the earlier demand for her own currency. 

Wrote to wife asking her if she was fine. She wrote back asking me if everything was fine. I hope she doesn't know. I hope she gets a bad dream and comes back home.

Day 3

I need to outsource myself. My son and daughter have taken over the government. Threats that my wife used have ceased to cause any dent in the activities of my son. 


"I will get mama to give away all your toys if you don't finish lunch!" I threatened. 


"But mama is not here..." he countered. He has successfully called my bluff and I had to back down. He has decreed a diet based almost exclusively on chocolate and it's derivatives for four year old boys in the household. 

I was better off a mouse. Being a cat is no good. Worst of all, I need to decide the menu - what gets cooked when. The whole thing is a mess.


I discovered today he has a device inside him that turns mass into energy. He eats a spoonful of something and can run on it - literally run, crawl, jump, shout without a nap for the rest of the day till bedtime. When I go to office, I see him at the fag end of the day for a couple of hours when his batteries are running low. Spending the whole day with him means I nod off before he does when I tuck him into bed. School for four year-olds should be longer than three hours and it should involve 'logging for new lumberjacks' or some such activity that can tire him out when he gets home.


Day 5
I discovered a small something of what it takes to be a cat and regained some sort of governance over the household. I told my son I would give his toys away if he did not eat his dinner. He realized I am very much here and not traveling. Dinner was finished in record time. 
Maybe I can do this stuff.


Met a friend for a drink later when kids were asleep. He told me there is a school of thought that believes one should keep news of gardening leave to oneself and leave for office every day. It is good for one's morale and indexing one's song collection and digitizing all documents.


I thought it felt like cheating.


He countered that it was akin to good cheating, like conning someone into donating to charity.


It still feels like cheating.


Day 6
I am finally getting the hang of being a cat. My son gives me confused, reproachful looks as if I have gone over to the dark side. So now I have to deal with his rebellions as well. My son and daughter have reached some sort of a pact - I am sure of it. He runs me to the ground during the day and she keeps me awake for large parts of the night.


Everything is a blur.


I want to go back to work. Corporate life seems a dream compared to raising children. Wife also manages to do a job somehow. I am convinced there are more than two of her. She should have left a couple of clones behind to help me. A few more days before she is back. Then I'll take a nap.