The Nasty Little Kidney Bean!

Two days ago my three year old came home from the Montessori with a kidney bean lodged in his ear canal. He had found it on the floor of his class and for some strange reason decided to put it into his ear. Thankfully his teacher called me to inform me about the incident and that they could not see it in his ear. When he reached home he was his usual active self and happy to be home. However, when I looked closely into his ears I could see a portion of a kidney bean protruding from his tiny ear canal. Instead of trying anything at home I called up my husband and asked him to come and take us to the hospital and get it removed safely. While it was a cause of worry I did not think it was too serious a matter and believed that a doctor would be able to pull it out easily with some specialized instrument.

At the multi-speciality we were referred to the ENT specialist. He had a fancy chair and a lot of shiny instruments but not the skill to pull out the partially visible kidney bean from my son’s ear. Our son resisted and cried while we held him tight so the doctor could fish it out but on the contrary the doctor failed miserably and he made the situation worse by pushing it further into his ear. We ended up with an agitated child in greater pain. He cried inconsolably for twenty minutes while I held him in my arms in the waiting area of the hospital. Irrigating his ear with water to coax out the bean only ensured that the bean now had lots of moisture to grow, soften and cause more pain by pushing against his ear drum.

The doctor smartly went on to suggest a minor operation the next morning to retrieve the bean for which we were asked to admit the child for a day. Since the whole procedure was expected to cost up to thirty thousand rupees we were asked to reach out to our insurance provider and make the necessary bookings at the hospital immediately for the next day. Blood work was also required and I had no heart to prick a needle into my already crying child’s arm. For some strange reason all this did not feel right and seemed to be a business move to me. I wanted a second opinion for sure before jumping into this.

After giving it some thought and discussion we called our trusted paediatrician for advice who referred us to another ENT specialist. We left the hospital without making any booking or doing any blood work since we simply could not trust this doctor’s intentions. In the evening we visited the other doctor in his not so impressive clinic in old Gurgaon. The absence of any specialized instruments and a small cabin in a local market complex did not do much to build my confidence in him.

Since our son had already been traumatized enough in the afternoon he used all his force to prevent the doctor from touching or putting anything in his ear. My husband tried in vain to hold his limbs still. Our son cried at the top of his lungs and begged for mercy. The doctor was able to pull out only small specks of the now softened kidney bean. He prescribed an oral sedative to relax him a bit but that too did not seem to do the trick the moment his ear was touched. There was no choice left for the doctor but to suggest that anaesthesia be used to keep him still.

Soon he was admitted at a small nursing home nearby. Our son slept under the influence of the sedative and we waited for the doctor to arrive along with the anaesthetist. I observed him sleep and wished for a way to transfer his agony to me. I was willing to go through his pain a hundred times over only if he could be spared from this trauma.

The operating room was nearby and soon after our son was carried into it we heard him scream, shout and cry for his father to save him. His blood curdling cries were unbearable. May no mother have to hear her child cry, while she stood there helpless. My husband knowing what a softy I am, expected me to cry and put his hand on my shoulder but I did not. Slowly my son’s cries and calls for help turned garbled and he fell silent indicating that the anaesthesia had taken effect.  Only when I could hear nothing but the constant beeping of the monitoring machines and not my son did a tear escape from my eye. For the first time in my life I fully understood what it really meant to have a heart outside of your body.

He was returned to the room after the longest twenty minutes of my life. The doctor showed us the nasty little culprit that had to be extracted part by part. My son now lay on the bed unconscious with a large oxygen mask on his tiny face, a clip on his finger to monitor his vitals and a canola taped to the top of his wrist in case any emergency medication needed to be administered. I called his name after twenty minutes of his return to the room but there was no response. He woke up only after about an hour and I used the time to write a mail to his school principal strongly advising against the use of kidney beans for pouring activities.

An innocent looking kidney bean had not only cost us eight thousand rupees, but caused immense trauma to our child and a lot of heartache for us as parents. Thankfully, the bean was out of his ear and his ear drum was not damaged, only swollen. He was sent home after two hours with some medications prescribed. On the way home he sat in my lap and asked for his latest green toy car. I was happy to give it to him and gave in to all his demands. I was grateful and glad to see him back to his normal self the next day.

I write this post to request all parents, teachers and caregivers to be extra careful and keep away any small beans, beads, toys with small parts or sharp objects (even sharp pencils) away from small children. Seemingly innocent, harmless items could become dangerous or even life threatening in the hands of small children. We can only try and prevent our children from getting hurt. For me, my belief that the parenting is a roller coaster ride on which I learn every day from my little Gurus grows stronger.

You may also enjoy reading The Naughty Boys! and The Parenting Roller Coaster.

The Naughty Boys!

Every morning, once my husband and elder son leave, I play with my ten month old, enjoy the baby smell that I get every time I cuddle him, tickle him to hear his cute giggle and see him smile, revealing his four tiny teeth from between his tiny pink lips. I just love the way it feels to hold him, press my cheek against his, kiss him on the chin, rub my nose behind his ear and converse in babbles. I can feel my heart overflowing with love, warmth and happiness every time he laughs reducing his twinkling eyes to slits.

These moments make me wish that they never grow up so I can hug and kiss my boys whenever and as many times I want to. To endlessly watch them play, smile, giggle, laugh and hear them say words and sentences for the first time. However, there are plenty other moments when they drive me up the wall and I wish they would grow up by the next morning and leave me alone so I can enjoy my morning coffee and newspaper in peace, travel the world with limited luggage and once again have the luxury of time for myself.

My little one is at that stage when babies test gravity and he loves to drop things to watch them fall and make a sound. He tests to see which one makes the most sound and prefers those objects. He would drop one of his toys and expect me to pick it up so that he can do it again. I pick it up for him every single time just so I can watch him shut his eyes tight in anticipation of the crash just as he opens his grasp to let the toy fall. If I happen to catch it before it falls thus preventing the sound he opens his eyes and looks around as if questioning why there was no noise.

Yesterday, he was playing on our bed with his feeding bottle. Since he cannot open it I was comfortable with him holding it, hoping that would entice him to drink some milk a few minutes later. I was wrong. He managed to drop the bottle over the headboard, behind the bed. Since there is a tiny gap between the wall and the bed, I thought that I would fish it out of there. As I peeped behind I was surprised to not see the bottle there. I learnt yesterday that our bed touches the floor from all sides except that one which my baby chose. The bottle rolled under the bed and I had no way of retrieving it since the bed is too heavy for me to shift.

Later in the evening, while I was getting ready to leave for a toddler's birthday party my three year old managed to pull out our family photograph from one of the photo frames that adorns a cabinet in the dining area. Previously he had never shown any interest in them, but for no obvious reason he pulled it out tore it and flushed it down the toilet! I was a little annoyed with him since that was one of the few photographs we had of the four of us together with my elder one sitting still. It is unbelievably hard to get a picture of me with the three men I love since my elder one is too fast for the camera and gets captured as a hazy little ghost most of the times.

I questioned him why he tore and threw the picture. He in his sweet and innocent voice calmly replied, “Naya photo ayega” (new photo will come). That did not make any sense to me and I put the empty frame in a drawer. Soon after we were at the birthday party and the kids had a ball of a time playing and running around. It was an evening well spent watching our kids enjoying themselves. We had our picture clicked at the party and got it as a return gift. When we came home I did indeed have a new picture to replace the old one. I was reminded of what my son told me earlier in the evening and wondered if he has intuitive powers. At that moment my feeling angry at him felt so meaningless.

They are so tiny but they make me learn and discover new things everyday inside and around me. They make me see beauty in places I never imagined, to feel the kind of love, joys and anxiety I did not know existed. They teach me valuable lessons of patience and perseverance the most, which my parents and teachers would have tried to instil in me but may not have succeeded as much. My children are my best Gurus, they teach me every day.


(Printed in the January 2015 issue of the White Print Magazine)

An Ice-Creamy Story!

This incident is from the time we had been married for a year or so. We were both working full time, leaving home in the morning and coming back only in the evening. Since we were just the two of us we lived in a simple house in a unique locality which had been built on land that originally belonged to a village. While the builder had managed to acquire most of it, some of the villagers had refused to give up their land and chose to continue living there with the result that the otherwise well planned locality with three storey houses all over had a village right at the heart of it.

Our house happened to face this walled village and large piece of fallow land which had not been used by the builder due to its uneven shape and probably with the hope of buying the remaining land from the villagers sometime in the future. Since this was next to a village we would sometimes find buffaloes, donkeys, pigs and dogs roaming around on this empty piece of land. I did not mind it since I preferred to see them instead of a concrete structure. In the monsoons it would turn green with wild grass and shrubs. It wasn’t a bad sight to wake up to except if you decided to go into the balcony, you may have to bear with the smell of dung occasionally.

Once it so happened that we had a huge brick of ice-cream sitting in our freezer for months. It had become so hard that it could compete with a brick used for construction purposes in its frozen form. It was way too old to be consumed and thus had to be discarded but I had to put some thought before simply chucking it into the dustbin. Had I thrown it into the dustbin in the evening there was a good chance that it would melt overnight and leak onto the kitchen floor by morning. The garbage collector usually came much after we had left for work and I could not leave it in the outdoor dustbin either again to avoid any mess outside.

 

After another few weeks of procrastination I finally decided to discard it and thought it would be best to leave it at one corner of the empty piece of land across the road from our house, where it could disintegrate into the soil. My mister felt he could do better and told me to stand back while he would toss it with all his strength far away and out of sight. He took the package into his hand and flung it like an expert shot put thrower. But, what happened next was not what we expected. He got the angle wrong and that brick of ice-cream landed with a huge thud in the backyard of a house in the village!

He and I looked at each other for two seconds. My face had the what-the-hell-did you-just-do expression on it. What if someone was to come out of the house to check what made such a loud landing into their house? I did not know what to expect from a native Haryanvi villager, what if they came out with a “Dando” (Haryanvi for stick). The next second I grabbed his hand and ran into our house. Once I bolted the door I burst out laughing at what he had done. I was thankful that it did not land on anybody’s head and laughed till my stomach hurt.

In retrospect I feel that it is sometimes these small insignificant incidents, random stupidities and emotional impulsive decisions that made us laugh or happy is what we remember for a much longer time compared to all those times we did the ideal things and walked the beaten path. So go ahead do something crazy. Make memories that will make you laugh for a long time. Have fun today, because it will be gone tomorrow.

Enjoy Life! Happy Weekend!

Mister of Spices!

It was the beginning of summer this year and I was learning to manage two kids, a toddler and a baby...learning on the job! It was a tough time for me since I was staying up nights and barely got to rest during the day too with a toddler running around the house. I was coping but small things could make me lose my cool and snap.

With the onset of summer I felt like having some Punjabi kadhi one day. It’s one of my favourite dishes, but it needs to be made well and with the right ingredients to bring out the intoxicating aroma and the flavours especially of Dhania and dried red chillies. With the right consistency and sourness of curd, it can be the best meal ever accompanied with rice. I realized I needed those key ingredients to get the right kadhi, the way I was imagining it to be and just thinking about it made my mouth water.

We were on our way back home from somewhere and I asked my husband to stop at the grocery store to get the ingredients. I just had to have the curry that day. Since our baby was sleeping in my lap I asked him to get sabut dhania and sukhi lal mirch. It had been a few minutes that I was waiting in the car when a private security guard came and asked me to park the car somewhere else. I told him that we would only be a few minutes and I could not move the car right away since the baby was in my lap. He did not seem to like the answer and continued to stare for a few seconds. It really irked me and I ended up arguing with him for staring at me like that.

Another few minutes passed and I was getting a little impatient wondering what was taking my mister so long to purchase two simple things. I finally wrapped our baby into a bundle and walked into the store to find my husband looking clueless as he looked up and down the shelves in the store. In his basket I saw a bunch of fresh coriander leaves and glossy red fresh fat chillies. These items were not what I expected to find in his basket and asked, "Why are you buying these?". He looked at me and confidently said, “Why, as you said, I got Dhania and Lal mirch.”

I was on the verge of having a meltdown at the store itself, cursing myself for not getting it myself and for believing that my husband could pick up these ingredients on his own in a jiffy and come back. I was really mad at him that evening. But, now whenever I think of it I laugh at how even simple things could be misunderstood and how unfamiliar Mr. Dutta is to kitchen ingredients.

I at times wonder how people think of comedy scenes in movies and I guess some do stem from real life instances like these. There was this another time he tried to show off his masculinity in the simple task of disposing off some ice-cream. I will tell you all about it, in another post.

Incase you are wondering...yes, we did have kadhi that day.

Want to read about the ice-cream incident? Here's the link: An Ice-Creamy Story!

The Parenting Roller Coaster

My elder son is three and a half and over the years I have noticed how there are these phases he goes through, especially since he was one and a half. He was the cutest baby I had ever seen with big expressive eyes, long eyelashes that would hold his tears, small pink lips concealing tiny white teeth, a button nose and curly black hair that fell around his face. In my eyes he is the cutest since he is mine as would be for any mother.

Once he was two I began to realize why it was called TERRIBLE Two and indeed it was. He had these phases of fascination for a certain type of things. Firstly, it was water bottles. Whenever and wherever he found then, he would unscrew the cap and pour its contents on the floor, on the bed or table. Then came the love for make-up, largely nail paints and lipsticks, which were often found smeared on the floor. The day he had his mundan I noticed him admire himself in the mirror and touching his head. The curls were all gone. He generously applied talcum powder on his head and kept rubbing his rough scalp.

I still remember one evening, when he was around two and did not speak a word, I found him struggling to open my eye shadow container. It was a circular container with four shades. Its lid had to be unscrewed to be opened. He being a child had not figured it out and was pulling at the lid with all his strength. After watching him struggle so hard, I told him, “Gol kore khulte hobe” in Bengali (It needs to be opened in a circular motion). While I told him I did not accompany it with a hand movement and I wasn’t sure if he understood since I had no idea of his level of understanding of language. He in response held the container in one hand and moved the container in a circle around his face, eyes moving in a circle with the container, lips pressed together in concentration. I burst out laughing watching him and realized that he indeed understood more than I thought. I happily opened the container for him to demonstrate how it opened (then took it away and hid it to prevent destruction).  

When I used to leave for office every morning and took him along with me in the car to drop him at my mother’s house for the day he preferred to sit next to me or on my lap, knowing that his mother would disappear soon. In the car he carefully watched me apply lip balm and if I asked him if he wanted some he would pucker up his lips in response. He felt extremely happy as soon as I applied some for him. Once I dropped him, I had to tiptoe my way out of the house. Waving or saying good bye would make him cry. The days he happened to see me leave he would cry loudly with tears streaming down his cheeks. It took all my strength to hold back mine.

Anyway, coming back to his phases, next came his love for lotions, balms, creams and oils, which he loved to smear on his hands and then liberally apply to the bed sheets or table tops. Once I even found him massaging his favourite toy car with cream. He calmly told me that he was cleaning the car when he noticed my presence in the room. His unwavering focus was commendable, an artist was busy at work. Once he turned three and began to speak sentences the carnage reduced and he entered into the “drama queen” phase much like the Bollywood heroines from the seventies and eighties.

Often when we caught hold of him to take a bath in winter, he would say “Chod do mujhe” (leave me), which would sometimes be “Chod do, mujhe kuch nahi pata” as if he was being tortured to give out some secret. When he was happily enjoying a bath in his tub and it would be emptied so he came out he would cry and say “Yeh tumne kya kar diya?” (What have you done?). Lately, if he is told not to do something, he doesn’t cry, but straight away goes to bed reminding me of the way Asha Parekh would run to her bedroom and cry on the bed with her face buried in her hands and derriere moving in tandem to her sobs.

There are many of these small things that make me fall in love with them more with each passing day and that is what makes the journey of parenting beautiful. My children are indeed the greatest love of my life. It’s not always fun, it’s not only about love, it takes a lot of patience, perseverance and hard work to bring up a child. They test your limits of energy- physically, mentally and emotionally even at the moment when you would wish for a moment of solace. While they look like angels themselves, they have the capability to tease out the devil in you sometimes.

Personally, I have found it to be a lot more pleasant when I take it easy and force the perfectionist and cleanliness freak in me to take a backseat. At times it’s best to let go even if your make-up is destroyed, bed sheet ruined, room scattered with toys and things are not running as per plan to be able to fully embrace the moment.

I often think of parenting as a roller coaster ride. The best and the scariest in the world, but thoroughly enjoyable and absolutely worth everything! So hold on tight and enjoy the ride Mommy and Daddy!

Enjoyed this? You may enjoy reading related posts: Oh my God! and I will save you!

A Quaint Love Story

During my teens, we lived next door to a couple deeply in Love. A love so unique that I enjoyed watching them when they were outdoors in the veranda or garden. An extraordinary flavour of love that I have not witnessed anywhere else and is very hard to come by in today’s day and age. Only when you watched them closely over time would you be able to gauge the depth of their love. It is nothing like the love we have grown up watching in movies, reading in books or the kind we usually imagine in our mind.

I am talking about the love shared by a couple who had lived together for more than sixty years as man and wife. They were parents of four, grandparents to several grandchildren and had recently become great grandparents too. I am talking about the time when Thatha (grandfather) was in his eighties and Paati (Grandmother) in her late seventees.

In spite of her age Paati was far better dressed than any other woman in the vicinity. She looked beautiful in her bright, colourful Kanjeevaram sarees. She would wear shades of bright yellow and scarlet reds that women half her age would shy away from. Her grey hair was usually tied up neatly in a bun, with sindoor and a red bindi in place. She loved jewellery and choose to adorn herself with several gold chains, mangal sutra and bangles even on a regular day at home. She even wore diamond nose pins on both sides of her nose. To me she looked gorgeous, a picture of beauty and grace. Paati could only speak in Tamil so I never really had a conversation with her but her cheerful smile was enough to warm anyone’s heart.

Thatha on the other hand was tall, lanky and forever dressed in a simple white shirt and a cotton dhoti, even during the winter months. He was simplicity personified. Instead of wearing sandals or shoes, he chose to wear a pair of rubber chappals and tied a string (nada) to the two rubber thongs to keep it from coming out of his foot. I found his “jugaadu” sandals amusing. He could speak fluently in English and possessed the memory of an elephant. He always had pearls of wisdom to share whenever you met him.

I would often see them sitting outside on the porch every morning. Thatha would read the English daily while Paati would enjoy the Tamil magazines. They would sit there for hours, have their coffee together and intermittently speak to each other. When Paati would get up to walk inside, Thatha would hold her hand delicately and help her, even though he himself could do with some help. When Paati would go to a doctor Thatha could not stay inside the house. He would sit in the porch with his head turned towards the road, restless, constantly on a watch out, patiently waiting for his beloved to return. As soon as she returned he would ask what the doctor said.

They, in their decades of companionship may never have said “I Love You” to each other but if you saw carefully you would see it in the their eyes when they looked at each other, the gentle holding of hands, the concern on their face for each other and the fact that they were never a few feet away.  They had been companions for so long that it’s hard to picture one without thinking about the other. The strength of their bond was such that even death could not keep them apart for too long. After Paati passed away, Thatha followed her within the year to join her in their heavenly abode.

This kind of quaint love is hard to come by, so I shall keep their memory etched in my mind, treasure it in my heart, cherish it forever and hope to come by another exceptional love story akin to theirs.

One for the Road!

Fifteen years ago Gurgaon was not the millennium city it is today. There were no shopping malls, no mega office complexes, few schools and hospitals, hardly any hotels, limited eating options and no flyovers. It was the city people from Delhi made spacious houses in to retire peacefully or even for investment purposes since property prices were enticing. The roads were so empty that people who were learning to drive could practice with ease and it was no surprise if you spotted a snake or a mongoose outside your house.

Within a decade Gurgaon transformed to become a hustling bustling independent city with its famous malls, massive office complexes, luxury condominiums, several multi-speciality hospitals, dozens of schools, plethora of restaurants, metro connectivity, busy intersections and flyovers filled with fast cars. It is no longer a haven for the old and those keen to stay away from congested Delhi. It is now home to people from all over the country and the world, all thanks to all the multinational companies that choose to open shop in Gurgaon. Just like any busy city, Gurgaon has its own set of problems, but it’s the unique set of cars and the people behind the wheel that attracts my attention. If you look carefully, here is what you would find.

1)      The Cabbies: They are hired by the many ITES companies and BPOs to ferry people to and from office one batch after other. Drivers are usually red eyed, sleep deprived and working multiple shifts a day. The drivers and the engines of their cheap so-called SUVs are overworked. They stand too close at red lights and won’t think twice about brushing past. It is best to keep yourself and your car out of harm’s way.

 

2)     The Nouveau Rich: Often an indigenous Gurgaonwala who become rich by selling his agricultural land to a big builder. They are the ones with deep pockets and political connections. They are rich enough to buy the top line Audis and BMWs and powerful enough to stay out of jail even if they killed someone. They carry guns too and would not hesitate to shoot you. They are Gurgaon’s version of the fast and the furious. Watch out for them especially at night.

 

3)     The Office Crowd: The top brass usually has a chauffeur driven luxury sedan so they don’t have to waste their energy in changing gears and pushing pedals. They sit at the back, read the newspaper or discuss business strategy on the way to office. The other corporate commuters in middle management do not have this luxury but do not take the cab either. They drive their small or mid-sized cars to office and have to worry about petty things like parking.

 

4)     The Mommy Drivers: They mostly drive their children to school and various other classes, go to the gym, spa and the mall. The size of their car can vary depending on their husband’s occupation. They are smart enough to avoid the traffic hours.

 

5)     The Two and Three Wheelers: The delivery guys on bikes, the triple riders and scooters transporting families dangerously zigzag through the traffic maze and frequently bump into cars for the lack of keeping a safe distance and not using brakes appropriately. The three wheelers go at a slow pace impacting everyone behind them, they often compete with each other, take sharp turns and seem to be unaware of the trouble they cause to others.

Additionally, there are cyclists and pedestrians who are often found in the middle of the road even when the signal is green. This unique mix along with everyone’s “me first” attitude is a deadly one that can damage cars, injure people or even prove fatal, shattering many lives in the process.

Drive Carefully, Stay Safe!