Back from the dead!

Well.. almost! The annual fever fest is currently on in the Jain household, yours truly taking the lead this time though every one in the family would eventually get to savour his/her fair share of illness as we take turns. Last time, we even dragged the poor maid in it. Just to put things in perspective, last time it was pani puri at Calcutta chat house that did the trick while this time it was the ordered-in chicken from the adjacent TFC('exactly next to Calcutta chat house') that bought the virus in. Not that it will deter us from eating again at either of the places, the husband is a sworn TFC lover and their fried chicken will continue to make its way to our plates. We are incorrigible, plain and simple! And my old man has a strange strong logic, for every illness that we get from eating out, he lists me 100 other instances when we got sick after eating at home. And so we continue eating out, twice a week, and keep falling sick, twice an year, each time before our CMH membership expires. So much for the trade off.

Anyways, I am almost through with it, just one more day of medication left. The husband is somewhere in the middle, but in a much better state than me. As soon as he displayed the symptoms, I administered him exactly same medication as mine and saved him the trouble of roasting through 103 degrees before being diagnosed and prescribed. In fact, I had insisted that we buy some extra medicines when the doctor had precribed only a week's dosage. I could see it coming and you can't ignore a girl's intuition. The sad part is that the little one has also joined in, she woke up with a temperature today. It is going to be a long long week...

Conversations..

Conversation with Pari this morning:
Pari : Mere papa kahaan hain? (Where is my Papa?)
Moi : Papa bathroom me hain. (Papa is in the bathroom.)
P: Papa bathroom me kya kar rahe hain? (What is Papa doing in the bathroom?)
M: Papa nai-nai kar rahe hain. (Papa is taking a bath.)
P: Kaun nai-nai kar raha hai? (Who is taking a bath?)
M: Papa nai-nai kar rahe hain. (Papa is taking a bath.)
P: Kiske papa nai-nai kar rahe hain? (Whose Papa is taking a bath?)

Aaargh.. kill me now! I so pity stay at home moms. What is with these kids asking useless questions that they already know the answers for, one after the other in the KBC fashion with only more questions for reward. To be fair, she does ask other questions too, probably reasonable for a child but they get my goat. Sample these -

1. Where is Paltu's mumma?
2. Where is that man going? (It can be any random person on the street.)
3. What is Golu doing at this time? (Golu is a friend's daughter.)
4. When will Lucy go to school? (Lucy is a girl teddy bear, if you can imagine that!)
5. What does Papa do in the office? (Hehehe... that was easy... I replied 'nothing'!! But then there were followup questions, sigh!)

And so on and so forth.. and her montessori Principal says, we should not discourage children from asking questions. I remember Pari asking the Principal, 'where are the children?', when we went to collect her progress report, and the Principal taking pains to explain it to her. But honestly, despite trying really hard, I sometimes lose patience with her never ending questions. At the same time, I have a strong feeling that it is only a few years before we start asking questions that Pari would find senseless and unworthy of her time!!

Excluding questions, conversations with Pari are growing increasingly interesting these days. There are so many that I wish to put down here, just to preserve them for eternity. I'll put the most recent one here, before laziness seeps in and I forget it. This one was last Sunday.

Pari: What is this mumma?
Moi: A cockroach.
P: ye mar gaya hai?
M: yes(wondering if she really knows 'marna')
P: Papa ne ise 'maraa' diya hai?
M: Hmm..
P: You don't worry mumma. I will tell the cockroach. Cockroach, you don't bite my mumma. Tum 'already' mar chuke ho!

The last sentence really cracked me up, specially the use of 'already'. Post this, we went out to get some groceries. By the time we came back, the cockroach had somehow managed to turn over to be back on its legs, and started running just as we turned in the key. Pari immediately climbed on the bed, and started screaming.

P: Mumma, cockroach is running.
M: Wait, I'll get Hit(pesticide, sprayed some of it on the poor thing till it died)
P: Mumma, tumne ise 'maraa' diya?
M: Yes.
P: (Climbing down the bed) You don't worry mumma.. I will tell the cockroach. Cockroach, you don't bite my mumma, tum 'phir se' mar chuke ho!

Thank you my child.. I really need protection against dead cockroaches!

Because I wish to share..

..I am posting this at the risk of being bullied by friends and family. Thankfully, friends don't follow the blog, and family would anyways find out sooner or later. I was caught by the traffic police today for talking on the phone while driving. Actually I had stopped at a signal, when the maid called up, and since she calls from a public phone, I simply could not afford to miss the call. She would have happily hung up and walked off, while I would be left wondering till eternity as to why she had called up. Moreover, she calls mostly to notify an absence, and this is 'the deciding factor' which determines what our day would look like the moment onwards, and who between us would take off from work and suffer the child. Digression over, the signal turned green while I was still on the call and almost immediately, the cop appeared out of nowhere. I think he saw me talking while I was still waiting at the signal, and with little luck with the traffic light, he made it. Anyways, I was taken to the other side of the road, and he demanded that I pay up. I asked for a challan, to which he cheekily replied - 'Madam, challan ka 200 lagega'. I was already irritated with the maid and the sequence of events, so pulled out 200 rupees from my wallet and handed it over to him without another word. He was taken aback a little, but then hurried off to get me a reciept which I just threw in without even checking. After I reached the office, I took out the reciept and realised that he had charged me for 2 offences, one was offcourse 'talking on phone while driving' and the other was lane indiscipline. Since the penalty for the actual offence was only 100 rupees, he added an imaginary one to make up the amount to 200. He probably thought that for 100 rupees, people might not be even interested in bribing him. But what really disappointed me was the penalty. Taking calls while driving can have terrible consequences, and 100 rupees is all you get fined for it? And tell me, who really minds shelling out that amount these days? My maid doesn't mind if I do not pay her for the day she takes off without prior notice, and continues to do so with delight. Her daily salary is more than 100 rupees, and she doesn't care. I spend an average of 100 rupees on petrol every day. It just doesn't sound like a fine, and the purpose is entirely lost. I have pledged not to recieve calls while driving because I know how wrong it is, but I know people who would not be deterred till they are made to pay for it. And paying it with a fine is a zillion times better than paying it with somebody's life. My cousin got fined for $250 for speeding on the freeway in Texas, and it was a lesson learnt the hard way. I so hope that they raise the penalty for all traffic offences to a reasonably high amount. However, given the state of affairs here, with the cops being so lowly paid and people so willing to bribe, it might just backfire and government may just lose out on the collections even more.