 |
| Baby Fingers |
Pudgy, pudding-like arms and legs, gummy grins, twinkly eyes
and moods that shift from happy giggles to not-so-happy wails in the blink of
an eyelid – the tiny being (let’s call him Abu, simply because he reminds me of
Abu, the monkey from Aladdin) who has been gobbling up my days and nights much
like the eponymous caterpillar from Eric Carle’s book – ‘The very hungry
caterpillar’, is all this and more. Such is the dearth of time lately that it
feels like I am barely able to catch my breath, let alone ruminate on more
complex ideas of the literary kind. At the same time, though, an existence
devoid of pen and paper has made me uneasy enough to finally squeeze out the
last dregs of energy and invest them in the pursuit of resurrecting my blog and
thereby my personal almanac.
Having been created in capricious Michigan weather, Abu
rightfully exhibits a kaleidoscopic disposition. Ah, Michigan, there is a tiny
bit of you in my baby too! Allow me to digress, albeit only for a moment, to
fondly remember a land that I recently left behind in favour of the comforting
familiarity offered by the motherland. Ochre autumns and chalky winters, Tomatoes
Apizza and The Breakfast Club (our favourite restaurants), gregarious friends
and memories woven with them – Michigan, you will forever be missed. With my
propensity for nostalgia, I seem to have merely gone from pining for family and
friends in India to longing for friends and colleagues in Michigan. Oh, how the
tables have turned!
Farmington Hills, Michigan, July 2015 - Not so long
ago, I remember sitting at the doctor’s office, staring at a faint smudge on a
black and white, Polaroid-like ultrasound image. That this amorphous speck was
slowly but surely going to bloom into a wiggly monkey with a pug nose, a head
full of ringlets and a personality to be reckoned with, sounded pretty
preposterous at the time. Just as I was taking off on the magic carpet of my
outlandish imagination to concoct tales of fantasy about this new development,
the travails of the dreaded first trimester hit me like a sack of bricks, brusquely
cutting my flight of fancy short. For the uninitiated, this simply meant that
my favourite ‘spaghetti and pizza’ binges were replaced by bland bread and
butter to avoid the unpleasantness of acid re-flux and my evening runs suddenly
turned into evening naps to fight a losing battle against ever-building
exhaustion. Consequently I turned into a stark raving lunatic, ready to bite
people’s heads off.
Things weren’t too different at the office either. Imagine if you will, a cantankerous,
carrot-munching ogress stamping her way through the office alleys, decimating
everything and everyone in her path, whilst harried co-workers scurry
helter-skelter, anxious to get out of trouble’s way. Yes, I shamefully admit
that for almost a quarter of a year, I was that ogress. It didn’t help that I
was also growing in size with each passing day. “Is she ingesting full-grown
humans now?” colleagues wondered while cowering in their cubicles. To add to my
woes there was an inevitable trip that had to be made all the way to India in
order to get our visas renewed. Lodged in a cramped aircraft seat for over 20 hours
was an unsavory idea that made my already sick stomach turn. But, what had to
be done, had to be done.
New Delhi, October 2015 – As I debarked on Indian
soil, all my afflictions melted away in the scorching heat. Elbowing my way
into a packed metro-train at New Delhi, it occurred to me that right then Abu
was perhaps forming his very first impressions of this bustling country. Far-fetched
though this notion was, it still tickled me pink. The soaring mercury, jostling
crowds and a mélange of chatter were all welcoming him back to the land of his
ancestors. As if responding to the mad pace at which Dilli-waalas were teeming around us, he too began exploring the joy
of kicking and flailing his newly formed limbs. Soon enough I could physically discern
his shenanigans. It was as if a bottle of bubbly had been popped open inside my
tummy and was effervescing merrily.
Interviews at the American consulate were given and visas
were stamped, ensuring our entry back into what many believe to be the ultimate
hallowed borders - those of the United States. Our primary chore done and
dusted, I was now eager to meet family and friends. After a year of drudgery it
was finally time to indulge in some good, old-fashioned pampering - the kinds
that can only be doled out by one’s parents. Also, this time I carried with me
a license to eat to my heart’s content and to laze around guilt-free and this
was exactly what I did. Deep fried pooris
and kachoris, creamy palak paneer, sugary jalebis and crumbly samosas, fleshy custard apples and plump almonds – I devoured them
all like there was no tomorrow. This was also a time when people around me
loved giving my belly a little rub once in a while to pass on their love to
little Abu. Just when I was beginning to feel like a ‘laughing Buddha’ whose
belly is rubbed to invoke good fortune; it was time to take the plane back to
Detroit.
Farmington Hills, Michigan, November 2015 - 10 pounds
heavier yet 10 times more affable than what I was when I had left, I returned
home, raring to get back to business. We
were just starting to settle into our banausic routines when Arjun heard back from
one of the leading universities in India. They were offering him a permanent
faculty position – something he had been vying for, for long. It was as if all
the major decisions and events in life were piling in front of us at once. Contrary
to what I had naively believed all along, moving back to India wasn’t a
snap-your-fingers-and-move kind of choice. To uproot our lives here and move to
a country that Arjun hadn’t lived or worked in for 10 full years, to bring Abu
into the world in our own country thereby changing the course of his life
altogether but also making him truly one of us, to let go of my job yet again
without any back-up plans – all of this made our heads spin.
In true ‘Arjun Sharma’ and ‘Preeti Sharma’ style, we left
the mountain of choices to be made and the stress associated with them at home to
go watch the latest James Bond flick – Spectre. Decisions could be left to cool
their heels for a bit but James Bond wasn’t going to wait for us, twiddling his
thumbs when he had a world to save using fancy cars and gadgets. A big bucket
of popcorn and Mr. Bond’s antics set Abu off again. As I squirmed in my seat while
he packed the punches in accordance with the action sequences in the movie, Abu
made it quite clear that he was going to be just like his Papa and Nanaji
(grandfather), both of whom are action-movie buffs.......Continued here - Part 2
