A Post For My Favourite Uncle: Of Banana Peels & Dog Poop

My Uncle A passed away recently. It wasn’t unexpected for we saw him deteriorating slowly over months – a losing battle with cancer that he’d fought valiantly well for a long time. But that doesn't make the loss any easier. With his demise, I felt the loss of a kindred spirit though I often joked that he had to be my favourite uncle only because he was my only uncle. Of everything else, the things we shared most in common was a penchant for good humour, a weakness for practical jokes and a fondness for beer.  

And so it was that several years ago, we decided to prank my Cousin U and his wife AP when we went to visit them at their house. Amongst Uncle A’s many talents was the ability to mould squished, blackened banana peels into the most remarkable likeness of dog turds. Before our visit, we sat at home, laboriously crafting these fruity ‘turds’ under his expert guidance. Once done, we left them to air dry and blacken nicely. 

AP, ever the hospitable hostess, fussed over us at their place. It was the first time she was meeting this uncle and she was determined to ensure everything went well. There was excellent food and drink and general bonhomie. Brandy, their delightful Golden Retriever, bounded excitedly around us. 

As the afternoon wore on, Uncle A discreetly placed the ‘turds’ on the floor, very close to where Brandy sat with his tail wagging furiously. He then sneakily veered the conversation towards Indian cities and pollution. Cousin U and AP agreed that our cities were dirty and pitiable. 

“Bangalore really stinks, doesn’t it?” said Uncle A. “In fact, I can smell something shitty right now.” 

I agreed and shot a disgusted look out the open windows even as I battled an awful feeling of laughter bubbling up inside me. 

Uncle A continued sniffing the air theatrically, a revolted expression on his face. Then he looked directly at the ‘turds’ and exclaimed, “Oh! Your dog has pooped here!”

Cousin U and AP were horrified. Brandy looked even more thrilled that everyone’s attention seemed to be directed at him and became more boisterous. Cousin U tried to reprimand him for his indiscipline, but Brandy just looked pleased as punch, showing no remorse for the crime he’d been accused of. 

AP looked stricken and prepared to clear up the mess, apologising profusely and insisting that this was very uncharacteristic of Brandy. “No, no, don’t worry about it,” said Uncle A reassuringly. As a harried AP approached to clean up the mess, he added “We really love dogs, don’t worry”. And then, without any further ado, he leaned over and picked up the ‘turds’ with his bare hands and proffered them to her. AP visibly blanched in sheer horror.

At this point, Cousin U had caught on and began to laugh, as did everyone else in the room. 

Uncle A, wherever you are now, I’d like to say “Rest in peace” but I know you’d find that terribly boring. Instead, I wish you well and hope you are surrounded by plenty of banana peels, dogs, and gullible people with intact funny bones. I’ll catch up to you when my time comes. It’ll be easy I think – I’ll just follow the trail of laughter and sheepish souls slapping their foreheads in realisation. Keep our cold beers ready like you always did, okay?

What Is This Platonic Nonsense?

If you want to test the intelligence of a dog, throw a dish towel over his head and see how long it takes him to shake it off. If you want to test the genuine progressiveness of an Indian Baby Boomer, throw platonic friendship at them and see how they deal with it – they’ll either lap it up quite normally, spring away from it in absolute horror or chew on it a while and then spit it out in complete confusion. Judge accordingly.

I've been regaled by stories of suspicious parents of women in particular. They’re constantly eyeing up the male classmate or colleague who turns up at their doorstep to hang out with the daughter much too often. There’s a definite stiffening of stance and wiggling of nose when a certain male name crops up in general conversation more than twice. An alertness creeps into the eyes when a male pronoun is mentioned. It's almost endearing that they’re so oblivious to the fact that their progeny has caught on but chooses to carry on anyway, turning a deaf ear to the tell-tale higher pitch in the parental voice as they report to another blood relative about “some colleague of hers” or “some friend” with a knowing emphasis.

This general perceived acceptance of platonic friendships is convenient to those parents in denial, unwilling to accept that their homely, domesticated, convent-educated daughter could be so bold as to be in a *gasp* relationship with a boy *double gasp*. I had the misfortune of being seated next to one such mother on a bus. She proceeded to tell me, unwilling listener as I was, minute details about her two daughters. One had been an absolute letdown to the entire family, having brought much shame to her mother for marrying a man of her choice and, horror above all horrors, not from the same community. Ooh, taboo, taboo. I clucked my tongue and pretended to feel her shame and pain.

The younger daughter was clearly her mother’s favourite. Her mother painstakingly listed out all of her myriad achievements, including marrying a “very good boy” from within the community. She then hastened to assure me that it was not an arranged match. “We are very open-minded, you know,” she gushed and I looked downright impressed. “This boy was a very good friend of hers, okay. They were friends for many, many years. They were JUST FRIENDS, okay? Just friends. There was nothing more because she is not THAT type of a girl. We told her, ‘Why not you marry him only? He is the perfect boy.’” I nodded sympathetically, concealing my amusement. “So she agreed and he also agreed and now they are very happily married!” she cooed, clapping her hands happily as I dabbed my teary eyes. 

Because that’s what truly platonic friends do, right? They leap at the opportunity to marry each other without so much as a second thought. Unfortunately for Bus Aunty, I knew the girl in question. And I also knew that she’d been seeing the guy quietly for a long while, slowly getting her folks - adherents to the arranged marriage norm - to envision him as the perfect boy. It helped that he was from the same community unlike her harlot sister.

I frowned on the girl for ruining it for the rest of us. Platonic friendships seem to be a more modern, urban phenomenon seeing as we’re a culture that is rather zealous about gender segregation, arranged marriages, female chastity, women of virtue and whatnot. The concept does not quite sit well with a lot of the older generation.

All this marrying of “just friends” business does not bode well for the rest of us who are genuinely just friends. It’s gone and muddied the pristine waters of platonic friendships. All the self-professed “progressive, open-minded” Baby Boomers think it’s perfectly okay to coax us into settling down with our good friends. Very little credit is given to our intelligence – if we thought the person was perfect for us, wouldn't we have embarked on a romantic relationship in the first place? Oh, no. The Baby Boomers are certain the scales will fall from our eyes only when they point it out. By the same token, I've seen people shake their heads in absolute consternation as they mull couples who have split or divorced and yet remain the best of buddies. “If they are such friends, why did they split?” they marvel, trying to wrap their heads around it.

I remember being asked why I hadn't hooked up with my friend Krazy Frog. At that suggestion, Krazy Frog looked like he’d smelled something really rank while I collapsed into peals of laughter at the absurdity of the notion. How could I possibly explain to someone daft enough to make such a suggestion that what I had in my heart for Krazy Frog was exactly what I had for my gal pal KO without sounding vaguely bisexual? I couldn't bring myself to form those really corny words “He is like my brother” which women from very traditional backgrounds would use to vehemently deny any sort of romantic relationship that would sully their good reputations.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for settling down with someone who is your best friend. It’s the best kind of relationship to be in. But there’s got to be some sort of “spark”, a romantic interest, thrown into that mix of friendship and perfect togetherness. Call it chemistry or attraction or whatever. It just seems completely wrong to settle for someone you’re great friends with but feel absolutely no “spark” for. Sparks do not ignite magically later.

Oh, as a footnote, anyone reading this who is thinking of turning down some arranged prospective groom with the line “Oh, we could be just friends but that’s about it” because there isn't a socially acceptable enough reason to say "No", please don’t. You’re playing right into their wily matchmaking hands because that is the perfect basis to arrange a marriage. "All that spark-shark, love-shove nonsense will come later," they’ll say. Trust me, it doesn't. It may have “come” 50 years ago, or something like it blossomed at least. It doesn't “come” anymore. Why settle for the cheap imitation?

My blood relatives thought they’d hit pay dirt with me when I reconnected with a childhood buddy and then proceeded to be good friends with him for several years. Knowing how terribly fond I was of Jatin (not his real name) and vice versa, they figured it’d be easy to convince us to throw a couple of garlands around each other and settle down to wedded bliss. Imagine their disappointment when I snickered every time it was suggested, balking at the very thought of being his missus. I was at a loss to explain to them how it didn't work that way. Yes, I was very fond of him (and still am) but the thought of marrying him made me want to retch.

I hung up the telephone after one such call, rebuffing a relative who figured it’d be a brilliant match. Chuckling I told my mother what had been suggested before breaking into laughter. "Ha ha ha!" she chimed along. "Yuck! I had to say it’d be like settling down with Scion," I shuddered, still amused and making a mental note to mention this to Jatin so we could giggle over it. "Ha ha ha!" said my mother. I joined her at the table and we proceeded into five minutes of silence - me shoveling food into my mouth, while she contemplated the table.

Finally, she looked up. Her expression was deadly serious. Very somberly, she asked, "But why not Jatin? Is it because-- is it because he is..." Her eyes widened in the certainty that she’d hit on the very painful truth and struggled to bring herself to finally say it: "Is it because he's bald?"

Gobsmacked, I sighed and gave up. Progressive Baby Boomers seem to agree on a number of things, among them: Lal Bahadur Shastri being the best prime minister, Sean Connery as Bond, reusing disposable containers and plastic cutlery, the reversibility of platonic friendships and, apparently, my complete and utter shallowness of being.

A Flock Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

While filling out a form recently, I stopped short when I came to the column titled “Who to contact in an emergency”. This was a tough one. I pursed my lips, quite stumped. Pen still poised, I considered my options.

Let’s see, there’s family. Obviously. That’s what most people put down. People who don’t belong to the Blah family, that is. Let me elaborate.

One evening, Cousin Binky, the blood relative I call my mother and I were peaceably watching TV together. All of a sudden, a swarm of bees swooped in. There were hundreds, crawling in through the half-open windows and thronging around the light bulbs. My mother is highly allergic to bee stings. So I quickly bundled her into a bedroom. Just so we’re clear: I was more afraid she’d swallow a bunch of bees as she stood squealing, “Aiyeeee! Bees! Oh! Oh! Bees! Ahhh!” than actually getting stung. 

I then shut all the doors and windows and switched off all the lights in the house, save one. The bees now hummed over to the single light, sounding like the starting grid of a Formula 1 Grand Prix. 

“Quick, Binky, grab the insect repellant!” 

I looked over at Binky. Binky was running all right. She was grabbing all right. Only, she was grabbing a long green banana from the fruit bowl. Close on her heels was my excited dog, thrilled at the sudden action around the house, trying to nip her bottom. 

That sort of response clearly ruled out Binky as my emergency contact. My mother, too. I mean, if her open-mouthed reaction to the bees hasn’t convinced you, consider the evening of the exploding water heater. 

There was a loud “boom” followed by an angry hissing of steam. My mother, evidently displaying complete and utter faith in my clairvoyant abilities, kept screaming, “What is it? What is it?” even when we were three rooms away and unsure what the noise was.

Besides, my mother has a warped sense of what constitutes an emergency. Her recent panicky phone call to me went this way:

- "Thoo Ja!"
- "What?"
- "Thoo Ja! The cow has got warts on her teats!"

- "Eww! Ma, I’m eating!"
- "It’s the name of the homeopathic medicine the vet recommended."

- "Ahh-ha!"

- "No! Thuja!"

- "Okay."

  

Then, there’s my father and his belief that WD40 is a panacea for all ills. For the above-mentioned wart-on-teats problem, for instance, he’d recommend WD40. My brother Scion? In his world, he claims birds deposit checkered pajamas on his balcony in the middle of the night. Is that really someone one should risk putting on as an “emergency contact”?

I then considered my close friends. 

KO! KO is a gem in an emergency. When BC’s parked car began rolling down a slope, she yelled out to KO to “pull the handbrake”. KO leapt into the car and brought it to a quick stop. There was just one tiny problem with her modus operandi though. Our girl leapt into the car and pressed the FOOT brake with her HAND. Trust KO to bring a bit of Hollywood stunt action to everyday life.

Bin? Bin has a history of confronting possible watermelon thieves with a bottle of Barcardi Breezer, and, most recently, inadvertently walked off with a wannabe cult leader’s bedroom slippers. Bin IS an emergency herself. 

Krook? MW? Krazy Frog? Krook has a tendency to declare, “Don’t worry! I will find your marbles!” under duress. MW’s idea of a travel first-aid kit is hemorrhoid cream, a steel spring and a ring. Krazy Frog very reassuringly says, “No worries! I’ll call you in 5, okay?” and disappears for the next 5 months. 

With a sigh, I realised I had little choice. I quickly filled in a name and number and handed in the form, fervently praying that I would never face an emergency situation. So, whose name did I put in? I'm going to have to leave you guessing about that one.

Missing the Woods for the Trees

The blood relative I call my mother has begun taking driving lessons. After years of driving everybody around the bend and notorious backseat driving, she has now ventured behind the wheel. I watch the proceedings with a certain amount of skepticism tinged with amusement.

For years, my mother claimed she was fully capable of driving. This after learning at the most popular driving school in the hills I call home. 

This school boasts of an ancient Wilys jeep with just a single gear. There is no ignition. They teach you to start it by rubbing two wires together. There is no horn. The British probably stole it along with the Kohinoor. Instead, students must stick their heads out and yell. There are no wipers. One must stick the old neck out and drive during a downpour. They list a raincoat as compulsory safety gear in the school’s manual. The instructor has no dual control. In fact, he has no control. He chooses to nap while the jeep careens all around town and over the hillside. 

So you can imagine that a real driving school car with a real instructor and real driving came as something of a surprise to my mother. She’s learnt that cars can have as many gears as she has fingers on a single hand. Keep the car on the road, not the kerb. “Ooops, sorry!” doesn’t quite cut it when you nudge an old woman off the kerb. Don your seatbelt and not a raincoat when you step into the car. 

Not too shabby for twenty days of lessons, eh?

And before people begin chastising me for mocking a blood relative, let me tell you – I have high regard for my mother’s decision to get behind the wheel when others her age are getting on wheelchairs. Of even more significance is the fact that my maternal side of the family would not qualify, by any stretch of the imagination, for excellence in driving awards. 

While the younger lot have driven their cars into hedges and unwittingly parked their luxury sedans atop coffee bushes, my maternal grandfather earned the dubious title of “The Flying Thatha (grandfather)”.

His cars ran out of clutch plates faster than his house ran out of milk. He didn’t think it necessary to keep an eye on the road. Being slightly hard of hearing, he’d twist his head all the way around to listen to his passengers in the backseat while zooming up the winding roads. He’d lean out his window and wave – with both arms – at the innumerous people he knew walking along the road. 

However, his moment of fame came when his brakes failed and he flew off the side of the hill, crash-landing on trees in the valley a 100 feet below. While the car was a total write-off, he emerged quite unscathed with just one regret: “I lost my gum boot.”

What else would you expect from anyone who survived a near-fatal crash?

Where there's a wheel, there's a weak heart

Too much has been said about bad drivers. I wish more were said about bad passengers or navigators.

Now if you are someone who has had to drive around a new city or an unfamiliar part of town with an absolute waste of human flesh sitting in the passenger seat trying to give you directions, you’ll get my drift.

Take my mother, for instance. As I approach a busy intersection, I ask her (well in advance) “So do I turn right or left here?” She answers with “meep” or some other sort of sub-human noise until I find myself having to stop in the middle of the busy intersection, blinking in absolute confusion, as she swivels the old head around 360 degrees and then says, “Stop…. I think you have to go back”. By this time, of course, the traffic cop is clicking my picture, annoyed male drivers are yelling unkind things about my gender and a fruit seller is having a minor meltdown trying to convince me that the thing I need most in this dire situation is a pineapple.

Then there are the finger pointers. “Take a left here” they say while the alien hand confidently points right. Or there’s a confident gesture saying “straight ahead”, which wouldn’t be a problem if I wasn’t at a sodden T-junction.

Now, let’s not jump to conclusions and figure that only directionally challenged women make bad navigators. My friend G2 could prove you wrong in a jiffy. Before setting off on our recent road trip to the coast, we picked him up from a part of town only he was familiar with.

- “Which way now, G2?”
- “Just go straight ahead.”
- “But it’s a one way!”
- “(Gasp) Where did all these one-way signs come from? They weren’t there last night!”
- “Now where do I go? This says ‘no entry, roadwork ahead.”
- “THOOO! Just go through this. Idiots simply put signs up for nothing.”

Two minutes later, we found ourselves in the middle of what was once a road with mounds of mud and open storm water drains all around us. There was nowhere to go but back.

Once we finally made it to the highway with G2 still holding onto his place in the navigator seat, I instructed him to warn Cheddar, who was driving, about any upcoming speed breakers. “Of course”, he said matter of factly before jamming his peak cap down firmly on his head and donning his aviator sunglasses. I kept quiet for a reasonable amount of time after we unceremoniously hit our heads on the roof when Cheddar failed to see a few speed breakers. When I was certain my cranium was about to split open after a third bump, I voiced my protest. “G2! You are a useless navigator. You cannot sleep! Warn Cheddar about the speed bumps!”

“Ok.” G2 turned to Cheddar, “Hey, just look out for those dark patches on the road. Those are bumps. Try not to hit them.” And with that, he was asleep, awaking only to ogle packets of buttermilk being hawked on the road and to argue with Smitten that the mini-truck with carrots was, in fact, carrying papayas.

That brings me to the sleepers. On a road trip, I insist that everyone stays awake throughout. It helps keep the person driving alert, while the constant conversation can break the monotony of a seemingly never-ending highway. Easier said than done. Case in point: KO, who thinks nobody will notice she’s asleep even if her only contribution to an ongoing conversation is “Zzzzzzz.”

The sleepers, however, are a tad better than the shriekers. The aforementioned mother is a prominent member of this group. While I carefully make my way through a crowded goods-laden street, my heart leaps into my mouth as I hear a piercing scream from the backseat.

- “Oooooooh, wheeeeeee wheeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

I slam on the brakes, clutching my chest where my heart used to be, fearing that I might have run over that little lost puppy that was in the middle of the road.

- “What?! What?! What happened? OH, GAD! DID I KILL IT?!”
- “Blue potterrrryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!! It’s soooooo pretty!!!”, she trills back in response.

I’m throwing in my keys, I tell you. I am not driving anyone anywhere. I am being driven up the wall.

The Doorable Blah Vocabulary

I have more or less established by now (assuming you’ve been reading my blog for a while) that my family is just a little bit cuckoo. And by family, I mean my immediate family – not including the likes of an aunt by marriage, who dreamt one night that her husband had swallowed their wind chime. She awoke in the middle of the night and attempted to push her hand down his throat to rescue her beloved wind chime, while he, rudely awoken from a deep slumber, gurgled for help. There’s a fine line between stark raving mad and quirky and we, the Blahs, have yet to cross it.

If a Blah were convinced of a prized possession being down a man’s gullet, he/she would tell him he had sheer “gumption” sending “bumf” down his throat. Now, while the dictionary shows “gumption” to mean “the quality of being sensible and brave enough to do the right thing in a difficult situation”, the Blah dictionary holds that it is the “quality of being cheeky, brazen and having the sheer gall to do the wrong thing in any situation.”

My mother’s vocabulary would be down to 50% if the word gumption were taken away from her. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with Gumption, and the Word was Gumption. A phone call from my mother is filled with anecdotes about the sheer gumption of the drunken woman labourer who ran amuck in the nude, the gumption of my boisterous dog who gave her a black eye and the gumption of the person who left a single slipper on the road and disappeared.

“Bumf” in a normal (archaic) dictionary refers to unwanted or uninteresting printed matter such as governmental forms, legal documents, The Times of India, junk mail, promotional pamphlets, Bangalore Mirror's Sexpert column etc. The Blahs have adapted the word to explain away any otherwise inexplicable junk. Bumf is a very handy term. It saves you the time and energy of having to supply long explanations about say, the contents of a drawer. “What’s in the drawer? Oh, just some bumf.” Nobody ever attempts to question any more. You never question bumf. You just accept it. “Some bumf” is good enough. It effectively qualifies everything from a speckle of food on someone’s chin to the putrid carcass the dog dragged in to the strange greeny-grey mold on an abandoned vegetable in the refrigerator.

Bumf is not to be confused with another Blah word “bum fluff”. Bum fluff refers to a scraggly pre-pubescent-type mustache. This word belongs to my maternal uncle, who maintains that such weak attempts at a mustache resemble the “hair on a bum”. I have never worked up the courage to ask anything further.

And if you happen to touch some bumf (or bum fluff for that matter), make sure you wash your hands with the “bum soap”. That’s right. The bum soap – the bar of soap placed on/near the wash basin meant for washing of hands. I’m not sure just how it came to be referred to as “bum soap”. I suspect my father coined the term and we children, thoroughly amused, adopted it. My mum faced the embarrassing consequences of such learning when my brother Scion once hollered from one end of the supermarket, “Hey, Ma! Do we need bum soap?” He remained oblivious to the stunned expressions of fellow shoppers while my mother tried unsuccessfully to bury herself in a sack of wheat flour while muttering something about God smiting firstborns. When he, convinced his mother was hard of hearing, shouted again about the lack of enough bum soap in the house, my mother responded with “Grr Wolf! I heard you the first time.”

“Grr Wolf!” for the Blahs is an expression of extreme exasperation. Attaching a growling animal to the otherwise meek and mild “Grr” sort of drives home the point apparently. No vulgar expletives for us Blahs. Grr Wolf usually works for just about any sort of aggravating situation. The need for stronger or cruder cuss words or commonplace vulgar expressions does not arise. However, for a particularly sticky situation, we do resort to the much harder hitting expletive “Shit ‘n molasses”.

Now, I am not sure how exactly this expression came about. But I suppose having shit in your molasses or shit and molasses are both bad things. “Shit ‘n molasses” is a Blah Code Red.

A “shit ‘n molasses” moment would be the opposite of a Blah “door you” moment. “Door you” is an expression of affection. Now, we aren’t exactly the most emotionally expressive family. Everyone keeps a stiff upper lip during any sort of upheaval, which would leave normal families blubbering a bit like the ones in Indian television soaps. However, as a kid, this was the one expression of affection we resorted to. When I was four, I would exchange “Good nights” and “Door Yous” with my folks last thing at night and then spend the next few minutes staring at the door, wondering what that plank of wood had to do with anything. It took me a few years to realise it was just a Blah way of saying “I adore you”.

The expression works for us. In fact, they all do – all these somewhat unique expressions. I door them all and no one can tell me any differently.

Relatively Speaking

If there were de-addiction centres for blogging, I’d quite possibly be one of the first ones to be presented there, kicking and screaming my protest in a straitjacket.

I realise that my obsession with blogging has reached unhealthy levels. I am constantly on the lookout for interesting subjects (and by that I also mean annoying, stupid or just regular amusement on two legs) to blog about.

When my sibling Scion kicked his leg through the seat of a dining chair in a bizarre accident while reaching for rose cookies, giving himself a nasty bruise on the chest, my immediate reaction should ideally have been a concerned, “Oh, my God! Are you all right?” Right?

No. Instead, yours truly looks at him quizzically, wondering at the mass of arms and legs entangled in what was once a perfectly intact dining chair. Then, as he hopped over to a sofa to nurse a wounded knee, to my horror, I felt the stirrings of an awful giggle fit.

Because in my head, all that I could think of was, “With bruises like that, people would think the hero had been out rock climbing or rappelling. Instead he earned those black and blue hues reaching for rose cookies. I wonder how I can incorporate this on my blog?”

With that, the damage was done. I burst out laughing. Luckily, my family has more funny bones than an elephant graveyard and pretty soon, Scion was chuckling away while still groaning with pain.

A few weekends ago, I had a couple of social functions to attend. A cousin’s engagement and a friend’s wedding reception. While I quite looked forward to the latter, I was in two minds about the former. Family obligation and all that jazz is not a reason that sits well with me since I do not feel guilty remorse at skipping one of those. I only view events in terms of “boring” or “not-so-boring”.

And then I looked at my blog. Uh-oh. If I did not act quickly, A Touch of Tabasco would soon belong to the World Wide Cob Web.

A community gathering, eh? Perfect. With some luck, I could find some material there to blog about. And so, with a much willing heart, I went - ears flapping and eyes peeled. I did pick up a few perils of wisdom such as how one must always place potted palms on a veranda as they prevent old people from falling. Don’t you just love illogical data of that sort? It gives me something to try and attach logic to while in the company of coma-inducing individuals later.

I found myself having a surprisingly enjoyable misandrist-oriented conversation with a very well-spoken, witty old lady with an in-your-face attitude. She did not have anything to say about the strategic use of potted palms, but she did have a lot of rather amusing observations, collated over several years, about the males of my tribe and their general attitude toward us alien non-resident types.

However, one cannot spend an entire evening in the company of an octogenarian, maverick or not. I soon found myself surveying the room again with an uninterested eye, slightly disheartened that I had no material for a new blog post after all.

Blame it on the heavy rain that evening. But suddenly, a bunch of cousins came crawling out of the woodwork. Now, I have this thing about cousins. I always thought that Cousin Binky, her brother Cousin I-don’t-think-horror-movies-have-enough-bloodshed A, Cousin I-am-also-your-uncle-because-of-rampant-in-breeding-bordering-on-incest Whisky and Little Miss Britain were the only cousins I could relate to. We are all social outcasts of sorts - what with our tendency to converse in English all the time and such.

Most others, (and I say “most” because there could be exceptions who do not spring to mind at the moment), are just too old or too young or too... well... different. I am barely past the initial polite conversation about coffee, hockey, rainfall and work before they mentally stick a skewer through me and roast a misfit-cousin-on-the-spit while chanting in a tongue I do not comprehend.

So you can imagine how pleasantly surprised I was to stumble upon second cousins who were well, in the same generation, and more importantly, quite “PLU or people like us” as Bin somewhat snobbishly puts it. A bunch of previously undiscovered cool cousins? I think my luck’s finally beginning to turn.

I came looking for blog-worthy snippets and I stumbled on flesh-and-blood smarty-pants company. It also means I can finally ditch the octogenarians. And that’s not such a bad thing even for a snooping material-hungry blogoholic.

Of Hallucinations and Hospitals

My apologies to my regular readers, the nosy busybodies, the stalkers, the Belgian and the visitor from Ouagadougou seeking “tabasco cupcakes”.

Amidst the decision to switch jobs and a health scare courtesy my father, I had little time, inclination or inspiration to blog. However, as everything seems to be settling down now and general good humour appears to have returned, here goes.

This piece is yet another about my family since every other crazy I know has taken refuge from the sweltering summer sun (or incontinent rain cloud if in Bangalore).

Dad often considers himself a poster child for Murphy’s Law – and rightly so. How else would you explain how a simple hernia surgery could land one in the ICU?

Dad caused the family and his surgeon – who is now undoubtedly questioning his career choice – some anxious moments when, while coming out of a simple hernia procedure, he suffered what they call a “cardiac event”. “Event”? These medical types are nuts. How is something like this an “event”? They might as well call it a “spectacle” and sell audience tickets and dole out refreshments. George Bush Jr. goof-ups, Halley’s comet, la Tomatina, Aerosmith live in concert, the WillKat wedding – those are “events”!

Anyhow, long story short, the hospital kept him under anesthesia for a further 48 hours while monitoring him in the ICU with all the requisite life-support systems in place. While things seemed like they could go either way for a while, Dad pulled through and came out all puns blazing. While his old ventricles took a beating, Dad’s sense of humour or more aptly, his ability to cause much mirth and amusement around him appeared stellar.

As Dad came out of his 48-hour induced nap, he gestured frantically at my sibling Scion. Still attached to the ventilator along with other tubes, it was impossible to speak. Thus began a game of dumb charades.

Dad gestured and signaled while Scion – who is not exactly the best person to have on a charades team – kept guessing. “You have digital power!” he declared. No, signaled Dad. “You feel like you have swallowed power!” Scion ventured again. No! “You feel empowered? You feel powerful? You feel invincible? You feel like Superman? You ARE the MRF Man!” No!

Finally, Scion deciphered “I swallowed a digital thermometer”. That’s right. That is exactly what Dad was trying to say. Serious.

Dad kept pointing to a spot in his stomach saying the errant digital thermometer had parked itself there. He was only convinced otherwise once the tubes were removed and the hallucinogenic effect of the various drugs administered wore off.

While I made a mental note of the episode as well as Scion’s useless guesses, it struck me. This sort of thing runs in the family. Years ago, while I recovered from an emergency appendectomy, I was convinced that the surgeon had left a pair of scissors inside. Then I decided he’d left two wads of cotton. Once I reasoned that wasn’t the case, I suspected he had robbed me of a kidney. After a recent ultrasound where my gall bladder apparently turned invisible, I am now convinced they nicked that too. I haven’t got the gall, quite literally.

So anyway, after a turbulent few weeks, things appear to be settling down. Dad says those 48 hours were like an acid trip. From being carried off in an auto rickshaw to an Indian Oil petrol bunk baring his behind in a hospital gown, being subjected to medical experiments to sitting on a bench with some old men, he had the strangest of dreams. Even the despicable Ducky put in an appearance. Dad, in his dreams, saw the fellow pottering around the ICU looking for something called “an umbilical cap” for his “wife’s hernia”, which he later triumphantly declared he found at the Meerut cantonment area.

Dad’s only regret? He couldn’t reach out far enough to hurl a bedpan at the moron.

As for the rest of us, we’re now consciously watching what we eat, steering clear of Robin Cook books and keeping a keen eye on the whereabouts of that digital thermometer at all times. And of course, we’re laughing again.

The Blahs Must Be Crazy

“Is there a history of mental illness in your family?”

Humph! That was ripe coming from Terror #1. You know, the little pipsqueak of a boy, who, along with his younger and brattier brother Terror #2, supplemented his childhood diet with little chunks bitten out of me. All because they believed they were vampires - a delusion that lasted a few years, closely followed by another few years of forcing me into playing mud-ball cricket with them.

Anyway, I digress. Mental illness in the family. Right, let’s see.

Paternal grandfolksies

Grandpa would physically place a bowl over his head before instructing a barber to cut hair only along its rim. The proverbial “katori cut” of the Indian army. He did not believe in stopping the practice even when he lost most of his hair in his dotage.

Grandma thought the ideal snack for a long-distance car journey in sweltering heat was a boiled egg. Actually, make that a bunch of boiled eggs (wrapped in an ever-dry nappy) that she would choose to open with all the windows tightly rolled up. The vicious onslaught upon the olfactory senses of the unfortunate occupants of the car made them think something had died - and the maggots within now celebrating puberty in gaseous delirium.

Maternal grandfolksies

Grandpa was one of the earliest proponents of gender equality. He vociferously stood up for women’s rights. However, when it came to sheep, his views were exactly the opposite. He was blatantly sexist and racist when choosing mutton at the local market. Only a male white sheep would do. No butcher could hoodwink him. He would insist on inspecting the tail of the sheep before buying his week’s supply of mutton.

Grandma was clear evidence of the serious lack of wealth-management knowledge in our family. She insisted on transporting tins of sand - collected by her slightly mental kids at the beach - around with her, for dozens of years, believing them to contain something of great value. She never opened them to check. Just hoarded them. OK, so if one were to argue that it was, perhaps, some sort of misplaced sentimentality, how would you explain her throwing away boxes of rough rubies? Yes. BOXES. She thought them to be worthless stones collected by her slightly mental sand-collecting kids, who had also supposed the reddish stones sieved from a river bed were just reddish stones to be hoarded for a rainy day when the world ran out of reddish stones or something.

Folksies

Dad thinks the answer to all the problems in the world is WD40. That spray for squeaky, rusty hinges etc. Crackling telephone line? “It will clear up now. I gave it a squirt of WD40,” says Dad in all seriousness. Ulcers, rodent infestation, head lice, noisy neighbour, irritable bowel movements. My Daddy says there’s nothing WD40 cannot alleviate.

Mom has a distinctive sense of interior decorating style. For reasons best known to her, she left two rotund apricot seeds and a phallic-shaped smooth white pebble strategically arranged in a little glass bowl. It was hard not to look at it and see a bizarre representation of the male genitalia. It may have been her way of explaining the birds and the bees to yours truly of the young and highly impressionable mind.

Sibling

Scion believed that throwing salt on a sparrow’s tail would render it flightless. OK, so even if I do admit that I might have planted the idea in his head in a moment of mischief, explain why Scion concluded that a bird dropped a giant pair of ugly chequered pyjamas on his balcony? He tends to overestimate the physical capability of birds and underestimate their aesthetic sensibilities.

By process of elimination, it would appear that I seem to be the only sane one in the family. Or am I?

Note to self: Quick, start coming up with rational reasons for having called out to random men on the street thinking them to be valet parking attendants, groping people inappropriately whilst fainting at the sight of blood or having an inexplicable need for Gummy Bears as soon as the power goes out (vis-à-vis a torch).