Sep 29, 2010
It's a daily routine.
As soon my daughter gets up in the morning, (mind you at times that morning can be noon too), she starts her computer and we have a chat. We live in the same place and the same house, and most of the time in the same room - I can only afford to have a one-bedroom house in Abu Dhabi - still, without a chat with me at the office and she at home, the day is not complete. After all, what is life without chatting?
So I started:
"Tell Mom, I love her very much" (actually it should have been “Tell My Mom,” as I had written in my recent article on Daijiworld, but in the urgency of chatting I missed the word “My”).
And that did it. My daughter did not wait to read the next line; she told her mom, who happens to be my wife of 24 years, “Mom, dad says he loves you very much.”
That was it!
My wife was waiting for the past 24 years to hear these words from me, but all of a sudden the words come through our daughter. Nothing short of a miracle. My shocked wife threw a gracious look at Mother Teresa's picture, and wondered if it was a sign of her sainthood, or if the Wonder Saint, St Anthony had anything to do with it. My wife happens to be a very religious person, though of course if a good TV programme is on, she very well knows how to change prayer timings, trim or even skip prayers altogether. God is very understanding, she explains with pride.
So when she heard those words from our daughter, she showered lavish praise on God. "I must call Kamakshi (the neighbour) and ask her to take flowers to the temple and make arati," she said.
And then she turned to our daughter:
“Putha (son – as she calls her lovingly), you know, your father is a kind of introvert, but I always knew he loved me - he was just nervous about expressing it. You know, men are very difficult to understand (can you believe that....)."
She continued, "He must have waited for a long time. Maybe he was waiting for you to be back home after your graduation. And now that you are here, he would have thought it appropriate to express.”
With visible emotions and tears rolling down her cheeks she went on, "You know, he is very honest... I am so happy…So Happy…Happy…(singing started, and continued).
I must say, my daughter even if she is of this era, understands elders very well. At 23, her sister who is just 18 calls her 'old lady.' Well, to tell you about my second daughter who is studying in Mangalore, she is one person in the world who is always busy with no time for anyone. Except when she needs money, and she feels it's her birthright to ask her father. And if the last statement of account is not there, it ought to be considered that the statement she is giving now is correct and accurate (it is in line with the Indian law - you are not guilty unless…).
One thing my elder daughter does not like is her mother singing, or for that matter, even her father singing. Once she said to me, her dad, "You know what dad, if you had proper training, probably you would have been the best." I was not sure what she meant by 'best' but from that day on I stopped singing in her presence. Diplomacy, for sure, she has learnt from her father. As they say, diplomacy is someone telling you to go to hell in such a way that you look forward to it.
But now with her mother singing so loud complete with tears and emotions, my daughter did not know what to do to stop her. So she did the next best thing - she dialled her mom's number from her own cell phone. Naturally, the singing stopped, and her mother went to answer the call.
This allowed my daughter to continue the chat.
All this time, unaware of what had transpired between the two of them, I had been really frustrated by her delayed response. At office I cannot just chat, I am paid to do office work too. When will this young generation understand that?
My next sentence and our subsequent chat followed:
I: Please read the above article that appeared in Daijiworld today...
Daughter: What?
I: What… What? I am asking you to read my article
Daughter: You mean…you do not love Mom?
I: What??
Daughter: I mean… you did say... you love Mom?
I: What?? You are nuts... are you OK…you had some wine in the morning?
Daughter: No dada...
I: Then why are you bringing your mom into this chat?
Daughter: Not like that...dada….
I (really annoyed now): And like what?? I do not have time to waste on a stupid chat with you. Bye.
End of chat and back to work for me (remember I am paid to work).
The daughter at home, having created all that confusion, decides that she won't tell her mom the latter part of the chat discussion between her and her dad.
Back home after a hectic day at office, I could see a lot of difference in the house. It was spotlessly clean, full of nice perfumed scent, and to make it worse, the aroma of my favourite dishes flowed from the kitchen. It was as if I had done the cooking. Had I missed something? Was it someone’s birthday that I had forgotten? Not really. Could this be the anniversary of our maid in India? I really didn’t want to know.
What’s the celebration for, I asked. The only answer I got was a mischievous smile from my daughter and a very strange look from my wife (I thought it was strange, she explained later that it was a sexy look - 24 years of married life really takes out the zing from your life, doesn't it?).
After dinner it was one-to-one time in the bedroom. Let me be very honest here. Since the invasion of diabetes in our lives, what we basically do is follow our doctor's advise. No, I don’t want to tell our personal physician's name. We have a very few selected people close to us in our lives, like the priest and the doctor. We know both of them are required until our end, and one of them (the priest) is required even after we are gone.
“Darling... you love me soooo much...“ my wife murmured/muttered as I lay on the bed.
Is there someone else in the room? Are the couple of gin pegs I had tonight giving me trouble? Is my end near? Is it the end of the world? The questions came to my mind at the speed of light.
I could not make out, but NO harm in telling the truth. I said “yes.” I cannot lie with a straight face, especially when I am face-to-face with the person.
“Wow… I knew it... Praise be to St Anthony… I think Mother Teresa needs to be made a Saint, I will write to Pope tomorrow… we should have a mass movement…maybe I will call Panduranga Shenoy (a very close friend of mine) tomorrow, and he will have a puja on our behalf....
I pulled off my best trick - I started snoring. And I succeeded.
Only the next day could I understand what had taken place between the mother and the daughter at the cost of the poor dad.
Reminds me of reading Muddanna – Manorama Sallapa during my early school days.
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