Things that fall apart

Everything around me is broken, torn, bent, rent, shaggy, sloppy, unkempt, muddled, messy, dirty, overgrown, dried, dusty, rusty, loose, falling, leaking, shaking, crooked, withered, or old.

My computer table definitely shows symptoms of confirmed Parkinsonism. My laptop has senile dementia. My headset squeaks and my mouse has a mind of its own. My webcam has warning signs of hyperopic astigmatism. My internet connectivity is capricious, to say the least. My toner is always dry. My chair goes down whenever I sit on it – perhaps something to do with my weight, but I would rather blame the chair. A jumble of wires at my feet lies open like spilled guts and leads to nowhere in particular.

If I take a walk around my room, I see a DVD player that does not work, a defunct TV antenna that attracts static, a dozen pens that have run out of ink, a book rack that is overburdened, a dustbin that does not close, a fan that undoubtedly suffers from an acute bout of borborygmus, and at least two burnt-out bulbs.

My bathroom does not have a shower curtain. The flush makes banshee noises, scaring the bejesus out of whosoever has the temerity of touching the lever. The hand shower socket is loose and can leave an indelible mark on your head at any time. The washbasin gets clogged. The door only closes with a bang.

I step out of my room to see a digital clock that always runs 10 minutes slow. The last time I tried to correct it, its alarm started ringing at 2 AM for seven days in a row for no perceivable reason, each time adeptly clearing the cobwebs of sleep from my head. My mobile phone is carelessly thrown on the sofa where it gives desperate beeps of low charge. I shrug at its erraticism. I look out on to the balcony and see a withered curry leaf plant, my foliaceous elixir, threatening to die out on me.

My kitchen tap requires two grease-free hands to open it. The flex box fumes and sputters when there are more than two appliances connected to it. My fridge sounds like faraway thunder, not catastrophic but still threatening. My kitchen stove smells of gas and I am convinced there is a leak although the gas company vouches that it is safe. I run my hand through snack jars that do not close properly, a fruit basket that is falling apart, an oil dispenser that is too sticky, and kitchen cabinets that cannot remain open or closed.

I walk back and I catch myself on the dining room mirror. I see the light from the hanging lamps glinting off my fine gray hairs. There are blatantly perceptible crow’s feet around my eyes. And a new, perhaps not yet immediately noticeable, kyphotic stoop to my shoulders. I try to hold myself straighter.

“Can we dance, amma?” My 4-year-old asks, much to my surprise. My diligent readers might remember my daughter’s lack of fascination for anything that requires rhythm.

“To what song?” I ask.

“Mamma mia.” She replies without even a thought.

I walk quickly past my lethargic clock, my finally silent cell phone, I bang my bathroom door to shut out the shriek, I bend down and manually close the lid of the dustbin, walk past the burping fan to my demented laptop, kick away all the wires, and open iTunes. At least some things work.

And when we jump and dance and laugh, I almost do not notice the arthritic creaking of my left knee.

Vacation Exhaustion

When Ramzan holidays started last week, there was a song on my lips. I counted eight days (including both Sundays) of delectable mornings, lazy afternoons, and exciting evenings with a wonderful husband and an adorable daughter. Even though needling thoughts of my full-time job (I did not have a holiday), an in-absentia cook/helper, and household chores which have a knack of piling up crossed my mind, they did not ruffle the calm waters of anticipatory bliss. And thus the holidays started. I did not have an inkling of what was in store for me.

I learned one thing soon enough. Two is too much of a crowd in the kitchen. My camaraderie with my wonderful husband soon gave way to scuffles over who should cut and who should clean and who should throw the garbage out. When our constant bickering led to our daughter’s insistence that we zip our mouths, we decided to do something about it – cook less and eat out more. That foresight helped us ward off a potential Armageddon.

Holidays are constant reminders of chores not done. This holiday warned us of an imminent inundation of junk if a spring cleaning was not done forthwith. Thus a nerve-racking day was spent on sorting out clothes, toys, books, papers, and other miscellaneous household artifacts, and then finally stowing them all away in boxes for future decision-making, due to emotional, practical and procrastinatory forces at work.

We also realized that 4-year-olds accumulate back-breaking chores as they walk and talk. And a 4-year-old with hyper-affinity towards water is double trouble. Our daughter wanted to swim every day of the holidays. My anticipated lethargic mornings were thus replaced by getting into an extremely uncomfortable swim suit, finding towels, goggles, armbands and floaties, applying gooey sun-blocks, and desperately trying to stay afloat in water and cramping my leg in the process. Needless to say, I am a very bad swimmer. But my exploits at the pool will merit a whole blog by itself and are prudently being withheld from divulging here.

The times that our daughter condescended to remain at home, she wanted constant entertainment. As her present addiction is Monopoly, we ended up playing the rather tedious junior version of the board game at all timely and untimely hours with a total spoilsport who did not fully understand the basics of the game but still stubbornly insisted that all money transactions be made in her favor. I am always unlucky with money (play money was no exception) and both father and daughter routed me with devilish glee in all the innumerable games that we played. This did nothing to my already dampened mood.

Then my dance teacher decided, like a responsible teacher that she is, that extra practice sessions were warranted during these holidays to prepare us for our show in November. As we, the senior students, were doing a mohiniyattam piece along with the usual bharatanatyam items, we, more than anybody else, needed the practice. I am familiar with mohiniyattam, having learnt it during my younger years, and I was only too ready to show off. After a couple of days of intense two-hour practice sessions, I realized that mohini-esque swaying movements might not be meant for a woman past her prime, for there was not a muscle or a tendon in my body that was not sore. I longed to get back to my safe zone of bharatanatyam, an emotion echoed by the other senior students as well, which did help with the pain and embarrassment a little bit.

Holidays, if you get my drift, were becoming a pain in the neck and all the other unmentionable areas.

Thankfully, there were only eight days of it. The cook is not back yet, and with all the fettuccine con funghi and four-cheese ravioli, we might have gotten a little heavier around the middle – I still suspect that diabolic weighing scale of ours – but life is slowly limping back to normal in this household. And if I were to distrust holidays for a long time to come, I am sure you will understand.