Twiddling Thumbs

She has a basket full of toys. Dolls. Lego blocks. Trinkets.  Press-Me-I-Make-Noise stuff. Windup toys. Etc. Some of them are broken. Some of them have been used many times over. Some trampled and deformed permanently.  Yet others, preferred. But all of them share the single basket. 

Like today, we often guide her to the basket to interest her to play. She takes to them for a brief while. Plays with a few. Tosses away a few. Largely leaves the majority alone. And then, perches at the vantage point of her most favourite toy.  

I mean, she climbs onto my shoulder. 

‘COMMM’ she says. 

‘Come’.  It means. It is said so very nicely. 

Her ‘Come’ (pronounced as COMMM) roughly translates to “start walking”. “Crawling”. Whatever.  It means, as they say in English movies, ‘MOVE’! It doesn’t matter what I am doing. Working on the laptop. Cleaning shoes.  Reading a book. Having food. 

If she says, ‘Come’, I bloody well drop everything else and move. I am only more than happy to do that. That however is beside the point. 

Sometimes we step out for a walk & carry session. She looks into the sky and beckons the Sun, and the moon and waves at the stars. At other times we roll on the grass or she slides down with a zing or just about manages to balance on the swing.    

When you drive around town or walk the Powai promenade, if at all you spot a bulging balding man, fill his cheeks with air or walk on all fours and carry a young cute toddler on his shoulders across the streets, stop and say hello. It could well be me.  

At other times, when work saps my sinews silly or if it is an odd hour of the day, we stay home. Doing similarly exciting and exacting stuff!  The unsaid expectation is for me to come up with games that will occupy an ever so energetic mind.  

Her most favourite game however is devoid of any crazy showmanship. It has the following procedures.

• Stick the left thumb up. 

• Take a pen and with four markings, make a face. 

• Do the same to the outstretched thumb of hers.

• She looks at my thumb and calls her name out. I look at her thumb and call my name out. So in a quick jiffy, her thumb transforms to ‘Papa’ and my thumb morphs to ‘Baby’!  

The thumbs dance. They kiss. They chase. They tumble. They hold each other well. That is the game. In-between insane cackles and hysterical laughter that you could only think laughing gas had the power to produce. 

I call it Twiddle Thumbs. 

Yes. That’s that. That is the game.  I am astounded beyond belief at a new mind operates and is easily excited by such a simple thing.  But that’s the way it is and it does rather well too. 

The other day, we stay up late. Sitting and chatting. Me & the missus. The daughter is fast asleep. We look into the moon and the stars that she was beckoning some time back.  It’s rare that we get to chat up at all these days. 

“What do you think we will leave behind for her?” asks the missus. This is like a scud missile that came from nowhere. 

The coffee that I am sipping sputters out of my lips as I laugh. ‘You mean, something like a legacy?’, I ask. I haven’t thought about it. I have been engrossed in the joy of the present, that the future seems beyond outer space.  Perpetually arraigned to the wilderness that is beyond imagination, requiring a laborious labyrinth of years to get there.  

The reality of the years just swishing by quickly often strike me hard. Not thinking about the future is my way of dealing with it. 

There is a slight tension in the air. After the missus has popped the legacy question. I think humour will defuse it. ‘I have nothing to declare I say. Except my writing’. I say.  Remembering the famous Oscar Wilde remark to a customs official:  ‘There is nothing for me to declare except my genius’ 

The missus jumps on it. “Writing?” She asks.   Muted in the intonation of that singe word questions is this: “You-write-a-clutch-of- incoherent-blogs-not-Nobel-Prize-winning-epistles”.  

Silence moves from a punctuation mark to become the mainstay of the conversation.  “I don’t know”. I say. 

Frankly I don’t. I nurture no desires of chasing pots of gold, packets of money and the ominous luxuries that the world offers. My desire revolves around the daughter learning to choose well when the choices present themselves every moment in life. If that happens, I would be a happy man. But ‘legacy’ I would leave her with, I haven’t the faintest clue. 

I sip the last remains of the filter coffee.  

“I don’t know what I’ll leave behind for her”, I begin. “But I can tell you, if at all I get to old age I hope to clutch with dear life a ton of memories. Of spending time with her. Of being present. And of course playing Twiddle Thumbs endlessly”. 

The missus laughs. She thinks it’s a good answer.  I am all chuffed.  It’s not often that my answers pass muster as ‘reasonable’ with her. But beyond that, the answer seems to have answered some other unasked questions in my own mind as well. 

In sometime we hit bed. 

I realise that today, me and the daughter have played Twiddle Thumbs for an incredibly long period of time. And she sleeps like a log. I watch her sleep. It is then that the missus spots it: She is holding her playing thumb with her other palm. Almost as if caressing a baby.  

The eyes that I drew on her thumb stick out and stare at me.  And from the safety of her palm, those eyes seem to implore me to leave behind nothing but a bounty of memories. 

My thumb twitches. I am barely conscious as my thumb kisser her thumb 

There is peace in the world. 

This is a replug from my post for Parentous.com

Twiddling Thumbs

A worthy delivery!

There are many jobs that don’t get the attention they deserve. Or maybe a disproportionately minute attention. Often dismissive.  While several may come to your mind, sometimes starting with your own job, may I please request a temporary focus on the job of a newspaper delivery chap!

Watching him at work on the road is an exercise in joy!   And if you are half as clumsy and absent minded a bloke as me, the seamless efficiency that is a default expectation on this job can cause you to want the world to cave in and take you along with all that goes inside.  That’s the degree of shame that is distinctly possible. 

The permutations on the job are insane.  

First of all, there are a heap of brands of newspapers. And ofcourse two tonnes of supplements to each one of them. If you thought that’s the end of it all, well, then comes the language question. Especially so, if you stay in a big city like Mumbai which plays home to every conceivable inhabitant on planet earth. And his mother tongue. And his newspaper in his mother tongue too.  Ok. That may be a slight exaggeration. But only slight!

Well just as you are applying work up some math around the multitude of brands and the plentiful languages that are there, add neighbourhoods and neighbours. Neighbourhoods can be confusing. Should we say, ‘daunting’ to a rookie newspaper vendor.  Numbers, crosses, streets and of course sometimes complete with idiots residing in them.  

Plus of course neighbourhoods come packed with their assortment of watchmen, auto and taxi drivers half asleep in their places of work. In the wee hours of the morning. Waking up with a start. Rattled. Irritated and ready to pull out a AK-47. For a moment.  Thank God for the gun laws. For whatever they are worth. 

In a minute the old familiar visage of the newspaper vendor, and the rattle of the mudguard that’s hanging loose from the time Jawaharlal Nehru was prime minister, makes them get to wave weak smile and an assortment of curses loosely translating to ‘useless fellow’, before dozing off. Perhaps to relive dreams where they are romancing a beauty queen laced with riches!  

If the chaps outside the neighbourhoods weren’t enough trouble, the folks inside can sure finish you off. For instance, there is a good friend who buys a different assortment of newspapers on different days of the week.  Either business must be real bad or customers delight taken too seriously for such crazy demands getting met.  A grand plan to save some ‘60 odd rupees’, he had said. Like it was an amount to pull India out of financial trouble! 

Now, now, hear me out. Imagine you are a newspaper vendor. You have to have the ability to sort out what newspapers people have asked for(and if you include that friend like mine, you also have to remember which day of the week the morning leads you to), slot it accordingly and carry it with you on the bicycle. 

You pedal around like a champ, pull out the most relevant sets of newspapers and toss it with an arch to ensure it lands at the right doorstep at the right time. If you are a few minutes late the very real prospect of facing a customer with disheveled hair and dried drool from yesterday night plentifully populating his cheek, awaits you!  Worse, he could casually ask why you couldn’t do a better job. Which is when you would want to throw the bicycle and all the newspapers in there, at him. 

Ofcourse, we haven’t broached on aspects that could become seminal topics by themselves. Like the pet dogs in homes that would want to scare the wings out every passing fly. Leave alone a small chap in a bicycle with some paper that in the later course of the day are used to parcel dog poop to the dustbin! 

To pedal that distance is enough of an ask for three quarters of people of the world to opt out.  And finally if ever you would sit back and read the crap that gets into newspapers these days, wont you wonder whatever your multi tasking was worth! 

The next time you see the newspaper chap whizzing, say something. A hello. A good morning. Whatever. He may yet not deliver better news for you. It may not even prompt him fix the rattle of his broken mud guard.  

Perhaps, just perhaps, it would help him get by with a smile!   

A worthy delivery!

Eye & the door !

That every city has a character is like stating every walking being on Earth has a life.  Sometimes the character is hidden. Many other times, there are several aspects of the city that stands out that nuances and shades of what a city possesses go unnoticed. 

Say ‘Mumbai’ to a non-Mumbai chap and check out what comes to their mind, for instance. It usually is ‘trains’, ‘commercial capital’, ‘busy city’ and the like with a tinge of ‘how-do-you-manage-top-live-there’ expression. A small tinge. Occasionally that tinge is also laced with envy! 

Of course, asking a Mumbaikar would get very different answers. But somehow such views and opinions grow on to create an impression of a reality. 

In a place where ‘utility’ outruns ‘aesthetics’ by many pot hole ridden kilometers, well represented by ugly high rises that zoom into polluted air with nonchalance and flyovers that seem to come up with such and distasteful ease, causing every sane person walking to wonder what on Earth were Mumbai’s urban planners chewing on.  They could well chewing on ‘data’ on the burgeoning population and the exacting firmness of land available. They could well have a point there. 

But all of that is besides the point for today's post. The story is this.  The other day, we were having a filter coffee in Matunga when a friend nudged my attention to the closed door of a mattress store. It was a Sunday. And the store was yet to open.   

The colour pattern on the door was arresting.  The colour contrasted rectangles within rectangles and the paddled locks on the door redeemed the apology of a filter coffee that was served by the chap next door. 

We clicked a few pictures and moved on. 

Many days later as I scanned all the images clicked that morning, this snap remained a personal favourite of sorts. 

The fact that the existence of the doorway had to be pointed out to me while I was sitting right there,  was not lost on me.  The fact that this was a simple mattress store and that this the store would soon open concealing the yellow & blue rectangles came alive as well was not either. 

To not have a keen eye is a different story. But to have had it and suddenly discover that its been missing for a while now, brings to bear the question: “where the hell did it go?”

  

Eye & the door !

Stress Busters

“You mean the yellow ones with the smiley?” I ask. Half open-mouthed. “Do they work?” Mildly surprised that what sounded like a global endemic was sought to be ended with a TV news anchor’s sound bite. Or so it seems. The simple solution befuddles me. Imagine asking Sachin Tendulkar what the secret of his success was, and he saying ‘Brinjal. Two in the morning and one at night’. Or something like that.

“Yes. I carry them to meetings”, he says. I stay silent. For a long time. Long enough till it’s about time to get going.

‘Oh’. I say. That’s all I can muster. You see, he is a successful bloke. The cars. The houses. The degrees. The titles. The gadgets. All hang well on him and his belt clip. The fact that this idea didn’t strike me even as a remote solution, disturbs me no end. “Sounds like an idea to try”. I tell him.

That evening, I buy one of those yellow smiley stress balls.

I carry it in a bag and leave it on the dining table rushing in for a shower and change. I am looking forward to the evening with my daughter. She soon will be all over me, I think. Thoughts of our conversation around the Napoleanesqe at the workplaces disappear within minutes of stepping home.

For her toys are strewn all over home.

“Pappaaa”. She says. And runs in.

Our games begin.

The elephant game where she becomes the mahout and I the elephant. That is a tough game requiring me to balance her, my weight and call out like an elephant with one hand doubling both as a leg of the elephant and its trunk. We can play the game till the end of time or till my knees hurt. Whichever is earlier.

The ball game, where I become the ball picker. The building blocks game, where the building blocks are to broken up with an ease that would have done a US drone proud, while I keep building them. And a few other variants of other games. She is cackling away.

And then, her eyes rest on the stress ball. She lets go of a charming smile. The next I know, she is at ease with the yellow stress ball is in her hands.

She finds it infinitely fascinating that a smile can be perpetual. Or that it can return to the position after all the twitching that can be done. That smile coming back on the ball’s face livens her up no end.

I am immersed in her joy. The stress ball in the hands of the little wonder is doing a world to my stress levels! I smile and close my eyes for a bit. To take everything with a measure of curiosity & joy and to remember that no joy is small and no discovery is tiny etches a silly smile on my face.

The phone rings.

Someone calls. It’s from work. Something to be done. Someone needs to be spoken to. I speak. Sort things out. And hang up soon. Pleasantly.

I see the little wonder is more fixated on something. She has her back towards me. I presume it’s the stress ball. She has moved a couple of yards away from me.

The quiet fortitude of her single-minded focus unsettles me. She surely is upto something. I think. I shout out. She turns. And sports a genial smile. A smile that could launch a zillion ships. I melt. I clap my hands to excite her.

Half relieved. And half guilty that I had imagined she was upto mischief. Here she was as pretty as pretty can get, working up the stress ball. I have to be more positive, I tell myself.

In a fleeting moment of boundless joy she laughs out loud and claps her little hands that are still clutching the stress ball.  And as she is closing her mouth, I see a tiny shred of yellow saying hello to her alimentary canal. My eyes dart a little and find the stress ball in her hand, sports a crater. Bitten off and chewed silly.

I leap across the room. If only there was a video recording of this dive across the living room. Alas. If only that were possible, Jonty Rhodes will be an ordinary man and the video would have gone viral. For even as I land with a thud on the tiled floor, my outstretched finger reaches inside her mouth.

With the mastery of a special services commando unit that pulls out a hostage from the clutches of bad guys, the fingers pull out yellow rubber that was part of a nice stress ball till a while ago! Just as it is being dispatched with such seamless ease into the inner recesses of a tiny body.

She smiles. I heave a huge sigh of relief. I smile too.

In a bit, I call up my friend. ‘Do you need another stress ball but with a crater on top’, I ask. We laugh. I narrate the story. “Pass it to me, he says. It reminds me of someone with a crater up there”. He says. We laugh again.

“I don’t need no stress ball”. I tell him. “Come home sometime. Anything to do with stress gets chewed away”!

This is a replug from my post for www.parentous.com 

Stress Busters

Firm Footing !

“Anklets.  She would place her foot firmly. For she would love the sound they would make with each of her steps.”  We were told.  

I didn’t know if she would like it.  I knew I would! 

They were ‘fancy’ to some folks.  ‘Traditional’, to others.   ‘Beautiful’ to me. And it was plain ‘utilitarian’ to the missus. For it was a rough equivalent of a sophisticated GPS system. It always announced which part of the home the little feet were prancing about in. Often causing our minds to whirr and think of possible objects there that the little hands that came with the little feet, could be exploring. 

Today, the little feet are exploring a stack of paper in a corner. She turns around and looks at me.  Her year old legs reveal their age with the stutter of the unsure step. Each with the jingle of the anklet.  Usually, she lets out an incoherent shout of joy, blissfully oblivious of the next lurking danger. Like a bowl of water, the edge of the cupboard or the end of the bed!  Unmindful, she usually stutters on. With obvious results.

Today is no different. She is soon atop the stack. It’s not a tall stack. But it perhaps is a Edmund Hillary moment for her.  Her shouts of joy punctuate the air. This time around too, I stay a good distance away. 

Her mother’s heart beat almost shakes up the building with every one of the little stutter in the step.  Growing louder, as the stutter of the small feet reaches very close to the end of the stack. One more step and she would fall. Not a plunge across the Grand Canyon. But a small fall.  Similar falls are part of her routine.     

Her mother lurches forward to hold her, anticipating the fall and all the crying later. I lunge and catch hold of her mother’s hand stopping her midway. We are a few feet away from happy feet. Her mother squirms in my grip. Reserving the choicest of ‘are you a nutcase’ look. I hold firm.  I hiss ‘Quiet’. 

I stay calm. On the exterior.  With the countenance of a sage who has been in meditation since the time dinosaurs roamed the planet.   Grey butterflies adorn my stomach lining. In hordes.  

“Will she fall?” An inner voice asks me. 

“I don’t know”, I answer. Inside me. 

“Then let go of her mother, who atleast will hold her in case she falls”. My inner voice tells me. 

“I can’t”. I answer. In a fledgling moment. 

“Why?” The voice persists. 

“The stuttering feet have to learn. She will”. I tell myself. “She will learn what causes a fall. Perhaps how to fall.  Or perhaps how not to. Even better, she will gradually learn about her options, choices and consequences. In any case we are at hand to pick her up and let her know that its ok to fall”! 

The inner voice stays quiet with the rapid fire conversation within me. A conversation that lasts not more than a second. 

Nano seconds appear like hours today. The sounds the anklet produce, reach a spot where one more step will mean a slip and a fall. The hundred butterflies have morphed into two hundred and make their way all the way up my alimentary canal. 

I notice that the speed of her mother heart beats could get Usain Bolt’s heart cowering in the bushes.  I still continue to hold her mother.  Firmly. 

The stuttering feet take the next step. Almost. She changes her mind at the last minute. And turns around.  To find her father holding her mother’s hand, and her mother struggling to jump out of his grip and both of them ready to jump.  

The clinks of the anklet stop for a minute.  A look mixed with bemused curiosity loads up on her face. It could have asked, ‘you idiots thought I was going to fall, didn’t you’?  Her usual arrays of celebratory sounds are released perhaps at the sight of an unexpected audience to an event that didn’t happen.  

The cutest of smiles escape her perky lips and she stutters off in a different direction. The seeming search for new objects, shapes and spaces to explore, exposing an intact confidence announced by the pronounced anklet. 

Her mother frees herself from my grip. ‘She could have fallen’. She says calmly. 

“Could have”. I say.  And smile.  

“But she will learn.  Awareness. Choice. Freedom to choose. Doesn’t come easily. But will eventually come.”  

 Her mother looks at me. “Look, you can continue to be Gautama Buddha. Or whoever.  I am just going to be a simple mother to my daughter”.   

It takes a while for the heart beat to slow down. 

She smiles. I smile.  

We both know each other too well.  

To stay distant enough to give space for her to exercise choice and face the consequences head on, yet staying close enough to pick her up incase she falls. It’s a thin amorphous line there. 

I realise, that’s going to be a lifelong quest.  Today we have shiny anklets made of silver.  In the days ahead, the time that we spend with her should help her do the job: Place her feet firmly! 

This post first appeared at www.parentous.com 

Firm Footing !

Happy New Ear

“We have to. Its part of the tradition”, says my mom.  With so much love. 

To fact that our one year old daughter will be tonsured and have her ear pierced is something that we were reconciled to, but haven’t been able to come to terms with. 

“Will it hurt?” Asks the missus. 

“Well, you are the one that wants it and besides, wears the earring. Some recollections would help”. I quip. Half in jest.  But only half.  

For the missus has already bought a variety of fancy earrings just for the little one.  Each purchase warranting a special trip and intimate analysis and design that if it were applied to other matters like economics, for instance, would have won her a Nobel Prize and pulled the world out of recession! 

 ‘We’ll do the ‘Gun-shot’ thing’. The missus adds. “It’s quick. Non messy. And relatively less painful”. 

I can say for sure that the missus has done the research, looked up the web, watched countless YouTube videos, checked with the doc and is ready to go.  Yet, the notion of pain is difficult for her to take. For me too. 

“And may I ask”, I persist, “what does ‘relatively-less-painful’ mean”? Silence engulfs the room.  And returns whenever we discuss the topic. 

The tonsuring is something that we think will go off easy. The ear piercing is a different matter altogether.  I am all super duper anxious. Mildly put.  So is the missus. 

That was a month ago. 

Today, in the morning, the tonsuring was done.  A small family ceremony. Ancestral home. Eager beaver relatives. Garlands. Prayers. And such else. She wailed and wailed. Seated on one of her grandpa’s laps and under the watchful eyes of another, locks of hair kissed the stone floor as a practiced hand worked to perfection. 15 minutes was all it required. 

Her wailing continued till the time she discovered that her head was indeed a nice round thing to touch, play and laugh!  She was ever so cheerful after that! Its evening now.  We are now at a beauty parlour for the ear piercing business. The traditional way of piercing ears has been negotiated out of.  This one, we were promised ‘would be over in a minute’.  

“Will it hurt”. I ask. Tentatively.

The young lady at the beauty parlour smiles, as she walks in with a small contraption and a set of other instruments. .  “Are you her dad”, she asks. I nod. 

She smiles. “Slightly”. She says.  She has handled many fathers, I can tell. 

“But then, she will have a new pair of ears”. She adds and surveys the ear. Cursory instructions are passed on how to hold her. She could well have been saying ‘one more kilo of potatoes please’. But her confidence had a calming effect. 

In a brief while, the first shot is fired.  Screams engulf the room.  A lump that is larger than the rock of Gibraltar sits in my throat.

In a jiffy the second shot is fired.  She lets off another volley of wails. She is in pain. Or maybe the discomfort. Or perhaps she wasn’t held well. Whatever. Tears well in my eyes. 

I notice that the missus is in tears already.  The beauty parlour lady smiles. And says, ‘done’.  

I am glad it’s over. I grab our little girl and whizz out of the room. On to the road and let the others do whatever else remains to be done like settling the bill and such else. She is still wailing.  I try to calm her down. I sing. I show her the bikes and cars on the road. I even pull my tongue out, which mildly amuses her every time.  She is in no mood to be amused today.  

On a whim, I peep into the rear view mirror of a parked bike. 

For the first time, she sees her ears. And the new additions to those lovely lobes. The wailing gradually stops.  Curiosity makes its stealthy march. After an elaborate fifteen seconds or so, of intense staring into the mirror, a smile escapes her lips. 

I shake my head and say, “Congratulations on a new pair of ears”.  A few babbles and cackles escape her mouth. I have a strange feeling she understood what I said. 

I sigh. A big sigh. Of relief.  I hold her and say, ‘Happy New Ear’. She still is looking into the rear view mirror. 

I wrote this post for www.parentrous.com. It first appeared there ! 

Happy New Ear

Donkeys!

It was quite a sight. A sight that is not a regular one at that. You can see a parade of cars. A convoy of jeeps. A bevvy of bikes. But then, what do you do when you are walking down a road and you see a set of donkeys walking by. In big city Mumbai!

First the eyebrows arch. Then seeing the number, the mouth goes open. But the sight of them all being deployed to carry construction material gets the mouth to stay open. 

As an city dweller who has been part of the technology revolution, the mobile phone is phished out from the pocket and a couple of snaps result. The sight of construction workmen with harnesses, helmets walking in near formation with a set of donkeys was something that the camera could barely manage to capture. 

Growing up in a smaller city, the sight of donkeys carrying sack loads of clothes to the laundry was common.  These days the donkeys with four legs are a rarity. 

As the donkeys walk by, there are a set of people having the tea break from work. Fashionable. Young. Creative folks, perhaps. At the local tea stall.  They sit and watch the donkeys pass.  They watch the donkeys unmindful of the pair of eyes that are watching them watch the donkeys. Erudite people. One of them asks, with a pronounced drag of a half done cigarette. "What is the collective noun for donkeys"?

A discussion ensues. Pride. Convocation. Army. It continues. They laugh. Giggle. One of them offers to look up Google. But then, the cigarette is done. Last  droplets of tea to wash down the conversation flows down their alimentary canals. Dusting their behinds they walk off towards their work places. 'Forget the donkeys. We have to face the asses now'. They say. Grim faced, they walk away. The world is ruled by sign off lines. 

If any of them is reading this post, well, the collective noun for donkeys is : 'drove'. Or 'herd'. Or 'pace'.  

Of course, this  piece of information on collective nouns, is useful to all of us in the country at this point in time. There are so many donkeys all braying out aloud, that reminding ourselves of a collective noun will well help us bunch them together, complete sentences properly and get on with life. 

No, there isnt anyone particular in the mind. There are hordes. Oh no. There are droves of them.  

Donkeys!