Lapses of lingy…

Was just telling a friend that there was a positive side effect to dad’s ulcerative colitis episode  — I got to spend some quality time with my sis. While growing up we never got to spend much time together. I went to school in Muscat and she went to a special school for children with disabilities in Goa.

She’s 75 per cent deaf in one ear and 50 per cent deaf in the other, and when she speaks it doesn’t sound anything like most of us (which is not such a big deal because most people I know sound odd either way). She uses a hearing aid to boost her hearing levels.

Post Class X, I moved to Goa for further studies, the primary reason being that I could now be closer to my sister. However, she lived in a boarding school and I lived in hostel, so we did not meet that often. We have always been close even though we are quite different from one another in both looks and temperament.

Like many people with a disability (or without one too), she can be very stubborn, and dealing with these stubborn spells can be a very exasperating experience. However, I’ve learnt a little trick on how to handle stubborness. If she says no, I just let it go. But she’s quite impressionable, so I sneakily try to impress her with a new idea so she will buy it And impressions must be made –  just until she steps outside of her shell. She fears the unknown immensely as wells as social situations, because she does not want to make communication mistakes in front of people. BTW a recent survey indicated that more people have a fear of social situations than spiders.  

I know that sometimes she feels lonely and underconfident. But she MUST learn that it is okay to make mistakes, and these are the only stepping stones to independence and maybe, self-discovery.

One of the communication problems we faced during my dad’s hospital days was communicating with her when she was at school (she works as a volunteer at a school for mentally challenged kids) because she cannot use the telephone. But thank God for SMS. Now, she has her own a mobile phone and it’s given her a tremendous amount of confidence. Cousins and friends who would communicate with her only so far and no further, (I think they just did not know how) now text her regularly to find out what she is doing and vice versa.

I want her to live a full life, strive for more, be independent, be confident and understand that the world is her oyster, if only she wants it to be.

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My mum returned home from the Christmas service with a heartwarming tale to tell. She picked up from the sermon.

Just a few days before Christmas the priest (who delivered the sermon) went to inspect the crib outside the church and noticed that Baby Jesus was missing.

Just a stone’s throw away, a little girl was riding a bicycle. When he looked closely, he noticed that the missing Baby Jesus was strapped to the back of her bicycle! He summoned her immediately and asked her what she thought she was doing.

The little girl explained that her mum had promised that she would gift her a bicycle — if she stood first in class.

So, the little un’ asked Baby Jesus for his help and promised that if she fared well, he would be the first to get a ride on her new bicycle.

Right enough she came first in class and took Baby Jesus for a ride. The priest was rendered speechless

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Pop is coming home just in time for turkey and wine

The doctors gave him a clean chit. When the surgeon who operated came for his daily round, my dad looked at him and said: “You are my saviour”.

To which the surgeon replied: “God is your saviour. I am only an instrument.”

Another classic post-operation line from my dad to mom: “O my God(dess)” (in lieu of her spending every waking hour with him). What poignant lines from otherwise undramatic beings.

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Have just understood a universal truth about men, women and relationships.

Men don’t lie when a relationship goes awry. They just put off telling the truth. Not because they are mean or malicious. Many are actually nice, scrupulous beings (with exceptions of course)who ‘don’t want to hurt’ the lady in question. So, they put off breaking the good news, while the girl has to confide in girlfriends for enlightment about his odd behaviour. Or if she’s lost in love, she won’t even notice. Cliched but true.

A couple of months back this chap I know, the kind of guy who seems perfect to take home to mom — well-groomed, polite yet not boring, charming etc — confided in me that he had met another woman while still in a relationship. So, obviously you’d expect him to break-up with his current girlfriend before getting chummy with the new girl. But no, he was afraid to hurt her, and so he kept up the charade for a while. Eventually he had to spill the beans of course and they ended breaking up anyways.

Then there’s the ex who’s mother wanted him to marry a girl, custom-picked by her from their own community.  He did his best to persuade her to change her matriarchal attitude and have an open mind. This state of affairs continued for a while. But his mum was like an invincible fortress (looked like one too). The question brewing in my mind was – if push comes to shove, what will the eventuality be. I had to drum his thoughts on the subject out of him. Post dissecting his long-winded take on the subject, I understood that mum was his priority.

But er…he didn’t want to hurt me and hence kept putting off the inevitable. Of course I would get hurt either ways, because the decision was already made. Eventually we were finito. .

The irony is that most women emerge from relationships that do not work out, a little emotionally scathed but definitely stronger and wiser (with exceptions of course). You learn a thing or two and then move on. Which is why men should not be ’scared of hurting women’, because the only thing such delays in communication achieve is that men feel guiltier by the minute, women waste energy trying to dissect the guy’s mixed signals. And eventually you break up anyways.

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Every time I see Sabrina Lall looking very pleased with herself on television, I feel satisfied. That woman has gumption and persistence. She’s a role model in a way, someone who bucked heads with the offenders and upholders of the law, head-on. What a woman.

On a different note, I took a local bus into town this morning and sat next to this rather flaky looking chap, for lack of more empty seats. Ater a while I felt a pressure on my arm; this chap was sneakily jabbing me every few seconds. I jerked away from his arm and hoped that this feirce response would put an end to his little cheap thrill.

From the corner of my eye it looked like he was tugging at something. My curiosity got the better of me and it was not a pretty sight. The lowlife was tugging on his whatchamacallit, right there in broad daylight and on a public bus.

I was shocked more than repulsed at the audacity of this chap, going about his business so casually, as if he were stroking his cat. I jumped up and yelled to the conductor in Konkani: Do you know what this man is doing?

To which conductor saab looked at the chap sheepishly and asked him to behave himself, as if he were admonishing a miscreant child. No one on the bus, male or female reacted. It was as if they were all dead and disinterested. Sigh! I got off the bus and went about my business.

If he had dared to touch me I would have made his life HELL, that’s for sure.

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I remember once picking a fight (in a mean fit) with a colleague who went on eulogising (rather loudly) in the next cubicle about Jim and The Doors so much so that it made me want to puke. 

I suppose the groupie act was just the trigger. I found her quite annoying and patronising and a bt of a pseud. She was wearing a T-shirt with a very saturnine looking Jim sprawled across it. And her desktop had Jimbo’s pics sprawled across it too. And she kept using the word ‘cool’ one too many times.

I know it’s a free country and all of that but…The next thing I know, I swivel my chair around and ask her: “Do you really like The Doors or do you think it’s cool to like The Doors?”

Obviously she was pissed off and after that never spoke to me again! But maybe I was (pissed off) too. 

How often is it really about the music as it is about the hype surrounding it? Not doubt Jim was a creative chap. But underneath the hype, he was struggling to find something to believe in and simultaneously trying to spread a message that he hadn’t yet comprehended himself. And he tried to escape the thoughts swirling about in his head.

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The doctor felt it was finally time for pop ‘to see the world, again’. So, we helped him into a wheelchair and took him on a tour of the hospital.

Throughout the SOS phase I feared for his physical health and sometimes, life too. But I never quite imagined the beating it could take on his mental well-being. What was he thinking whilst lying in that hospital bed, often staring vacantly into space? It would scare my mother to bits. She and I tried reassuring him that everything will be okay, but I’m not quite sure he actually believed us. I’m not quite sure any of use believed it. But it had to be said nevertheless.  

His health has been steadily improving post the surgery. But he still seemed emotionally disturbed, days post the surgery. Mama and I racked are brains trying hard to find the right words to say, which would inspire him to make a fresh start, begin life with a clean slate, that sort of thing. It seems to be working since yesterday, slowly but steadily.

On a different note, post weeks of hastily bunching up gangly tresses into an unbecoming knot, I decided to have a haircut. So, Jen and me went to this new place called Papilon. Not a good idea. The ’senior hairstylists’ are these  chaps from Delhi with bizaare haircuts and bad colour jobs. The place is brighly lit (with an overkill of Christmas decorations) and looks all done up. A case of neat book cover but terrible book.

I suppose that’s the difference between a ’salon’ and a ’saloon’. Sigh!

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Pop has finally been moved from the ICU to a private room and is recovering slowing but steadily.

The big challenge now, is to master the art of the pouch.

Thankfully, human beings, especially Indians are such malleable things, we adapt to any life-altering phenomenon, with exceptions of course.

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Had two encounters with gurkhas today. The first chap stopped me at the hospital entrance and asked to check my bag — for food, not weapons. Apparently you can’t take food inside the hospital, which I think is a stupid rule.

If you have to be there for months (or even weeks), you can get weary of the cafeteria menu. It’s not that the food is bad or even expensive. You get a healthy, balanced meal for Rs 25, a figure I don’t ever come across in Mumbai. How long can you stomach outside food? I remember telling people during my college hostel days: I can eat even home cooked mud.

Coming back to the gurkha, I got all defensive and asked him why he was checking my bag, when no one else bothered to all these days, which of course was a stupid thing to say. He replied: That could be because I was not there all these days. 

I dramatically stomped towards the rack where miscreants like me, who get caught sneaking in food items, have to deposit their ‘illegal’ food packages. I took out a loaf of bread and a box of chicken curry and said in a genuinely frustrated voice: This is home cooked food for my mother who has been living here forever. She is sick of eating the horrible cafetaria food.

The poor chap who was just doing his job felt guilty. He said: Okay, take it in. Please take it in. I gave him I best smile ever and thanked him profusely.

When I returned home, the colony gurkha asked me how my dad was? Apparently he went to Hospice, a government hospital in town, to pay my dad a visit. Of course, dad was there because he was admitted elsewhere. He asked for the name of the place and said he would be visiting him. 

Gurkhas can be kind.

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Sherry’s dad has a cast on his leg, that should hopefully come off in about a week and a half. My dad is about to have surgery.

I truly hope that by Christmas both of them will be up and about. It would be wonderful to have a party, with all the cousins and dozens in attendance. Most of them are coming down from across the globe.

I feel like one of the March sisters, awaiting a good Christmas.

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