Whoever talks of woman empowerment and feminism should come to my house. The small house in one corner of a lone street,where dogs sleep peacefully during day and bark aimlessly during night, in Bangalore is occupied by three ladies of three generations – my mother, wife and daughter and yours truly. So, feminism rules. One against three is no match for my voice to get heard. So, even if I try to roar at times I end up more like purring.
My mother wakes up at 6 AM. After somehow spending an hour opening the door for the maid, boiling milk and preparing my tiffin, she gets busy with the iPad. And that goes on till the late evening. When we sit for dinner she summaries the news that she had been reading the whole day.
The day after demonetization, the Times of India was full of stories of different flavours and aroma from the nook and corner of the country,
"You know what,,,this news is so horrible...", she began during dinner.
I had already spent most of the day reading news from different portals.
"Which one?" I was eager to know if I had overlooked anything.
"A boy was murdered in a village near Kolkata and the police are on a whodunit investigation. They suspect its a love triangle!"
Come on, ma! The police might be busy stashing their hard-earned labouriously-toiled money into the banks and their wives might be taking out their jewelry from below the mattress and kitchen cupboards. How can you expect them to search for a criminal so soon. And to top it, its West Bengal, where by the time people reaches government offices, its already lunch time!
She keeps a tab of which boy eloped with which girl, which actor is seeing which actress, which mother-in-law committed suicide and which actress is expecting…She became so up-to-date with the details of the Sheena Bhora murder case that every evening she used to explain the twists and turns of the murder mystery. One evening, tired from the countless meetings, follow-ups and escalations when I returned home, she came to update me on the case.
”Why don’t you write you application form to the CBI to include you in their team of investigators?”, I suggested.
And then is her special comment on food. And I would be very polite when I say, she is not known for her culinary skills. “The cook should have put more sugar in the dal, less chilly in the chicken and should not have made the curry so dry. You see the potato...they are half boiled. Amader cook ta na….”
Ah! Potato! Like there is no other vegetable in the world. Like most Bengalis her diet so far had been primarily on potatoes - potato this, potato that. No wonder the Bengali men develop a round potato-shaped belly by the time they in their thirties. Recently I realized that almost all subzis that Bengalis cook have 50% potato and 50% of the other vegetable. And when you have some potato-patron around, like my mother, the percentage of potato can be skewed to near 100% such that it becomes no better than a lady finger-flavoured or cabbage-flavoured potato subzi. One of her patent questions when she started staying with us “The chicken curry is without potato?” It took me almost 2 years to make her understand that its chicken curry and not chicken potato curry or chicken-flavoured potato curry.
Last weekend when I was about to leave for office picnic at eight in the morning, she asked me
"Around what time will you return?"
"Äround nine"
"In the evening?"
"Eh? I thought that was obvious. I wont be back from picnic in an hour!
And then there is my wife. The home maker as also the 50% home financier - be it the EMI or household or holiday expense. An ideal modern independent woman. She knows to cook well and manages her office equally efficiently. Just like the balancing act God (or whatever!) did with the date 28th September. The great singer of India, the Nightangle of India – Lata Mangeskar – was born on 28th September. And so was my wife – 28th September. Of course, the years were different! One was in the year 1929. The other one…okay lets leave it and come to the point. One has a melodious voice and the other just needs to whisper in the ground floor to be heard from the first floor of our house. I am sure the neighbour’s kids start studying attentively when she scolds our daughter during studies. But of course this talent is largely hidden when we have guests around.
Whenever she returns from official work or from her parents house in Kolkata for a few days (another benefit of having in-laws staying far away from you!) she has the same expression entering in:
“Look how unorganized you are! The house is in complete mess. Why are the pillows in the sofa are not in the correct position? Why are all the water bottles are half empty (or half full) - cant you fill them? Why are your undergarments all in the hanger – are they showpieces? And look at the bedsheet…its so crumbled up.”
After organizing the house, she walks like a teacher in an examination hall, inspecting how many plants have died. When she took botany for graduation, I didn’t realise that she had so much interest and affection towards plants. Only after buying this house I discovered that. Now there are almost 50 potted plants in our house, some on the ground floor, some indoors and some on terrace. Once she has done her rounds, checking each plants minutely, she comes back with a grim face. I know a storm is brewing.
“Do you realise you have killed 10 plants this time – 7 in the terrace and 3 in the garden. Why don’t you water them?”
“Actually I do. (Ummm….Do I?)”, I respond feebly.
“No, you don’t. Last time you killed 12. The time before it was 14!”
“At least its decreasing.”
"Not funny! By the way, that reminds me, last time I had asked you to accompany me to Shopper’s Stop, you didn’t take me. It was a weekend. You don’t take us to movies. You don’t take us to a restaurant…”
“But I have got Amazon Prime for you – 24 hours shopping. What more do you want? And you know I cook well…the hotel will charge the same dish two three hundred rupees”
“Kanjush !!”…She walks away.
My daughter and I have fun in the evening since my wife comes late. One day she arrived quite early when our house was almost the way the earth was during the creation of the universe. My wife almost fainted when she walked in. We felt we saw a ghost at the door. My daughter ran upstairs pretending she had lots to study. I was left alone, facing the music.
My daughter is only seven years of age. And yet the most formidable of the three. Its difficult to win against her in words. She always has the perfect reply and that “don’t care” attitude. And I wonder what I was doing when I was seven. May be still figuring out how to zip my pants properly!
The other day I asked her to stop studying so that we can play cards. She boldly replied “When you read books, do I disturb you? So, don’t disturb me!”
I just had a severe headache one day and she, like a pro, advised me “Read light-hearted books. The heavy books you read are causing this problem”. She has lots of questions and they are as different as an Indian meal. A common question she had, which I had too when I was small was “Why am I not in the marriage photos of you and mummy?”
“Because you clicked the photos! There was no better photographer around!”
Since we keep travelling she thinks we can go anywhere. So, she points to some random wallpaper-type photos and says “Can we go there?”
She teaches my mother, who is supposed to be her teacher in the house, how to click photos and send in whatsapp.
One day we went to see the movie Dhoni. The protagonist's (Dhoni's) first girl friend dies and he meets the second one in fifteen minutes screentime. “Look how Dhoni gets another girl friend so quickly”, she whispered in my ear. It was dark and there was none to see my expression. But if anyone asks who is my favourite girl friend, its definitely her. When my wife and mother gang up against me (there common problem is I don’t listen to anybody), she stands up for me. And when they gang up against her, like complaining about the leftovers in tiffin box or need to put more hours in study, I come to her rescue.
She is recently confused whether she should become a fighter pilot or a tennis player – a situation much better than her confused father. Her father didn’t know what to do with life. Then did engineering because he happened to crack the entrance examination and everybody said everything in life would be “settled” after engineering. Then he got a job in IT industry. Felt confused within a few years. So left everything and went to UK to study MBA, only to land up again in the IT industry. He loves blogging, cooking, traveling and ,of course, reading non-fiction “heavy” books. And if that’s not enough to add confusion to life, he has recently joined weekend guitar and swimming classes. And when there is still some time left, it is spent with the three ladies of the house. Amen!
