"Silent Night, holy night..." caroling all the way with riotous childhood memories from school

 'Christmas in the air' carols - Childhood memories sleigh all the way from the North(N.Delhi - home of my alma meter)

As part of the school choir, we practiced Xmas carols, under the tough vigilantes of the nun(s). Well, the annual ritual did not see rhyme or reason with the truth that not all in the choir were gifted with a nightingale's croon. But it was the choir or dramatics or volunteering for some unknown cause, as part of extra curricular activities. While I was gifted with a good voice, my interests vacillated between theatre and choir. Theatre , because I could be emotionally melodramatic, as entitled, without having to feel awkward about it. 

So, there we were, as the infamous poet Vikram Seth's band of frogs and nightingales, in the same group, croaking and crooning in full-throated ease. Under the supervision of Sister Jemella, we were to maintain a lady-like composure - which meant, no giggling, whispering, nudging  ( and you were to keep either austere expressions or a smiling face - but mind you, the smile could NEVER translate into a 'grin like a Cheshire cat'). Sister Jemella's notoriety for straitjacketing the convent-bred girls, had seeped in through our overwrought nerves. While many in the choir group loathed with helpless silence, the mention of 'J', there were few rebels who were ready to cross a few boundaries. So, the ones of the like forged a bond and hatched a conspiracy to dethrone Sister Jemella, for the rest of the season.

We the group of  four( the four feisty  rebels without a cause) decided to give a twist in the tale of Xmas and teach sister J a lesson that she would remember for the remainder of her life. 

The plot was to smuggle in a couple of the lab rats and let them loose in the vicinity  of Sister Jemella, during one of the practice sessions. Our devious plan was hatched in 4 phases and to be executed at the earliest- as Xmas celebs at school was nearing.

Phase 1: To clear the coast for stealing lab rats. Two team members who fit the profile of carrying out flawless espionage were assigned the task of surveying the biology lab, specifically to monitor the schedule of lab usage and the exit and entry timings of the lab assistant. This lab was designated fit for operation the following day - in exactly 24 hours.

Phase 2: Sneaking out tiny white rats - our potent biological weaponry. Now, this was tricky, as the rats' supply to the school was done as per a weekly schedule. So, we had to extract little nuggets of critical information - from none other than our grumpy yet chatty the lab assistant. This task was assigned to me through general plebiscite,  the reason being that my reputation for being nerdy complemented by my guileless appearance, will just strike the right chord with the lab-assistant. So, I dispatched myself to the mission,  the next day, when I had a biology lab hour. A casual banter  with our lady, on the lines of: how the white rats looked cute, and whether the chloroform snuffed the life out of them or whether the autopsy was carried out in in a comatose stage or confirmed death stage, and how she was doing a marvelous job of taking care of rats, while helping out the students at the same time(teenaged girls + rats are as menacing as a ticking time bomb which can wreak havoc on anyone's mental being). At the end of the conversation,  she looked, as I vividly recall, aglow like the Christmas star, which had risen on the birth of baby Lord Jesus. 

Phase 2.1 : Getting the armory ready. Our "armory" had to be gotten ready on Wednesday, as I gathered, that the deposit and stock taking happened on Wednesday. So, I volunteered to help the lab assistant with the stock-taking exercise. She readily agreed. Who would not do with an extra pair of hands, with pesky mice and even peskier mice suppliers.  The comatose mice came in carton boxes, which were later to be transferred to the specially prepared steel cages - wherefrom they would be headed for mass crucification - of being pinned up on trays and cut open. While transferring a trio of these white creatures, to their cages,  I noticed that our lab assistant  was preoccupied with a heated argument with the supplier. I grabbed the opportunity and squeezed the trio into a perforated and gnawing-proof cloth bag and swiftly pinned it to the inside of my blazer. That done, I had to then dislodge myself from the 'scene of the crime'. I let out a whimper, with a look of alarm on my face. The lab assistance pivoted to 180 degrees from her current position. "What happened? she asked. "I just remembered that Miss Rose had asked me to come and meet her about some assignments.  And, I totally forgot about it" , I replied. "Sorry, Ma'am, but I need to rush now. Hope you can do the rest on your own?". "Yes, yes, you go. I will do the remaining" she responded, not without a note of annoyance(My unexpected pitching in for the mice stock taking must have proved to be a breather for the lady. Who does not seek, from the routine of lab-work, hovering nuns and well, the perennial chloroform  odour? My  abrupt departure was justifiably not taken in the right spirit)

Phase 3 - Caching the weaponry

The 'weapons' we had amassed,  were transferred to a well-cushioned tiny cage(the accessories and props for our mission, were the courtesy of our friend - whose family member was into the 'Rat-control' business - dealing in rat poisons, traps, baits and sorts. She was the outlier who refused to conjoin the, to quote her "rebels without a cause" but we invoked the covenant of friendship to make us help her at our hour of need). Thereon, the cage was placed in a readily accessible air vent of our locker room. The mouse-feed was kept ready, just in case, the teensy brats woke up from their comatose state.

Phase 4 - Mission Deploy 

The D-day had arrived to exact our tyrannical revenge on Sister Jemella. Our weaponry was safely concealed beneath the layers of my woolen clothing(For a change, I was thankful that my mom had purchased an over-sized cardigan and blazer - I could cache a good deal of 'stolen treasures' without being conspicuous). As per clock work, the bunch of 20 choir girls assembled in the auditorium for the practice session. We assumed our usual positions in the group. While we did, I sensed a wriggly thing moving up and down  rendering a ticklish effect in my abdomen - the left side of it, to be precise. I held my blazer flaps tight. To an outsider, it might have evoked suspicion. Imagine someone clutching hard their abdomen, which gives the impression that the inhabitants are  boxing with the neighbors, in a fight over boundary walls and what not. So, my act of holding tight did catch the attention of the girl standing next to me. She asked worriedly, "Are you ok? Do you have a stomach pain or something?". I assured her that I was absolutely fine, with no twinge of sorts in the area, she was now staring at.

"Silent Night, Holy Night"

SILENCE!" - Sister Jemella's voice boomed in the auditorium. We all stood in attention, while I retained my composure, with the concealed tiny brats  fooling around in  the limited space of my cardigan pockets. "So, girls let us begin our practice with Silent Night", commanded the Sister. The drummer started her beats, while Miss Mendonca, our piano teacher, fingered through the keys. The humming started, and we kicked in with "Silent Niiight....Hooly night..." . It was at the second-time rendering  of this line, that we heard a ear-piercing squeal that would have broken the window panes of the auditorium to smithereens! I can't render sound effects to the scene that unfolded here but it went off like "Hoooly................Molllyyy there is a mouse there Sister, there is a mouse!", screamed one of the girls in terror! Realizing that our plan was hatching before time, I felt my coat pockets, sensed the bump, and freed the remaining from their prison. So, what followed could never be described in words. We got to witness the sight of 3 white mice running amok in our school auditorium. While Sister Jemella was trying to make sense of the commotion, we the school choir, were trying to find our foothold on the steps, which was specially arranged for us, to stand in a group, at different elevations .  While shuffling our feet and attempting to maintain a strong footdhold, one of the mice came homing back to where I was standing and ran over the feet of the standee next to me. It is one thing to watch mice from a safe distance and totally another, to have them gravitating towards you, and groping you with tiny paws and whisky whiskers. What followed the close brush with the mouse, was not only hilarious but totally chaotic. The victim, tried to hop, skip and jump to the next best refuge - the floor level to the exit door. In doing so, she tripped and her tripping had a dominoes effect on the rest of us. We lost our foothold and came tumbling down those four steps, like Jill from the nursery rhyme, who just goes rolling down a hill. We gathered our wits and were caught by Sister Jemella bawling her lungs out, to maintain calm. Well, an elephant in the room would not have evoked such a reaction. but mice, they are deadly scampering brats! What would Sister Jemella know about it! More than that what caught our attention was something that would remain in our hearts and minds forever! One of the lab mice was seen hanging from the hemline of the Sister's skirt and another was holding on to dear life, clenching her wimple, between its teeth. It was a sight to behold. While I was praying to Jesus that Sister Jemella makes do for a fulsome meal for the rats, one of the teacher's pets from the group, cried out, "Sister, watch out, the rats are all over your dress!". 

The 3 blind mice who ran after Sister Jemella

Hearing the 'war clarion', Sister Jemella sprung into action. She did an unexpected buck and wing dance, twirled around to loosen the grip of the rats on her person. Little did she realize that her merry-go-around with the mice on her being had only brought her within close range of the furniture and the large piano. So her blindfolded hopping, first made her crash on the piano keys. The girls(including me) who were running helter skelter, paused to check as to who was rendering the music(At other times, I would have happily hummed '3 blind mice, see how they run' without inhibitions. But the current situation demanded that I look for ways to save my a*se. Despite the chaos, our rebels' gang had coalesced once again)

While we pretended to be shepherding everyone to safety, we stalled at the music that filled the air. Tracing the source, we noticed that Sister Jemella was trying to regain her composure after heaving herself up from the keypad of the piano. No sooner, had she risen to full heights, the rats' duo,  crept out from the hiding of her layers of clothing, and were now clearly positioned on her crown. This was the last straw for the sister. She let go of the last skein of grace and composure and let out a scream for help, all the while trying to brush the brats aside, and stumbling every step - the major stumbler being her foot-high favourite chair - her throne from where she would pronounce her miserable judgement on us. This move not only made her fall backwards, but stretched her skywards, the legs were caught in suspension, in that vertical state for lack of momentum to do a somersault! It was a typical Tom 'n' Jerry scene, where the burly mistress of the house, trying to escape Jerry, gets on to a stool, loses balance, with Jerry shaking it to the moorings. The mistress in the scene invariably falls backwards, throwing open the layers of underclothing - from laced petticoats to colourful bloomers, which come to light(At that sight of Sister Jemella immodest unraveling, I could not stop ogling at the fineries that hid themselves under the drab clothing of nuns. I muttered to  myself  Ah, Sister Jemella, you double-faced #*&").  

Nevertheless, the spectacle threw us in into convulsed laughter. And had it not been for one of the alert gang members thwarting us, we would have rolled on the floor loud, trying to laugh our stomachs out! But the alert one, reined us in, we packed our a*se our from the epi-centre of turbulence, leaving Sister Jemella spreadeagled on the floor. Mother Superior and a couple of other teachers had rushed to the scene, tending to poor sister Jemella. As for the white mice, they seemed to have escaped from the clutches of their crucifying destiny, as they were not reported to be caught even later.

But what was in store for us, as the mystery behind the 3 white mice let loose, started to unfold? I was the first one to be caught.And knowing well, that it would not have been the brainchild of a single entity, I was grilled to reveal the names of the co-conspirators. But we claimed equal responsibility of being the master mind behind the 'devious' plan. That way we upheld the spirit of comradeship(we would have made the Russians proud, with our demonstrated camaraderie) 

As Mother Superior was admonishing us, in her 'gas chamber'  like room, with her glassy stare and stentorian voice, we could hear the rendition of  "Silent Night...", with the choir rising to a crescendo "...Sleeep in heavenly peace.....". But with the detention for a week, no lab-hours for a month, followed by no extra curricular, (plus incessant laments from the Mater, who was aggrieved that even convent discipline could not wrest out my tomboy instincts) we did not sleep in heavenly peace but we took heart over the fact that neither would our dear Sister Jemella have!  

"All roads lead to 'Rome' when you want to reach home" - Journeying through Bangalore Roads

 

Bangalore's roads with their disemboweled outlook(with metro work bringing out the nether of the roadways, reducing pliability to a narrow strip, with dangling encroachments, which threaten to spreadeagle out of nowhere when you are passing by ) and choc-a-bloc traffic, round-the-clock, are the pathways to a pilgrim's progress.

Either you lose your mind or attain the Zen-like state, traveling on these roads which can turn into hellholes during peak hours.

Imagine getting caught in a time-warp where the stilled motion traps the din of blaring horns and concrete motors. And when the traffic gets going, you are taken by surprise by the crater-sized manholes or the drop-off to low-level planes(The 'roadwork in progress' sign is in a perpetually bent out of shape condition to get noticed). And let us not ignore the uncalled for adrenaline rush while humping and bumping with "peer" vehicles, the 'juggernauts' in the way of concrete mixers and water tankers, the jaywalking pedestrians who wrongly perceive themselves to be the 2-D life models of their own beings! (Beyond the size-0 or slim n sleek notion vehiclers have of their own vehicles, what encroaches upon the roadways is the Indian sense of driving treating these as FORMULA - 1 racing tracks).

The city offers free rides, for off-roading adventures, where you ensure to fasten your seat-belt, with other life-saving essentials- there is not more than mile-long road at a stretch, you see!

The treacherous trails turn even more slippery during the monsoons, sporadic summer rains or cloud bursts(the city's weather conditions could be compared to the mood-swings of a hamstrung woman in her PMS - totally unpredictable!) The roads turn into waterways - but alas, it is not the Venetian gondolas or Alleppey houseboats which ply on these waters. The made for the 'tough-concrete-terrain' vehicles lie stranded, choking the already clogged road - But the bright side is, it is during the rains that Benagluru's concrete jungle beholds the sight of the aquatic life that manage to eke out a living.

in the city's fresh water bodies.

Where on the one hand, hassled up commuters, in knee-deep water want to lug their way out to reach their destination, there are others who stop by and join hands with the animal rescue team, while sneaking in a pic or video of the seasonal aquatic zoo that comes into existence, with the rains! Well, now you know why the not-so-recent bengaluru floods' videos were going viral on #socialmedia(with ludicrous memes trying to dig up a lighter vein)

Come rain or sunshine or the thick mists that predominantly keep the city under veils, the roads of Bengaluru never make it to the next phase of 'concrete' development. It is like a visit to the dentist - there is never a permanent root canal treatment - once dug up, the exposed nerves will always throw you off-gear, either into unknown trails or complicated roundabout routes (with 'double-assurance' from Google Maps).

The travails of commuting in Bengaluru city is like making your way through the crisscross lines of destiny. It would be Providence-sent, if you escape the journey unscathed!

What of the VIPs and political bigwigs who trip to the 'Silicon Valley' of India - I wish our PM during his visit to Bangalore(in the recent past), had had a glimpse of the roads - the outer-ring-road, than getting the swift n smooth rides, in a city notorious for its traffic woes- How else would he be able to understand the plight of the common man or the aam aadmi?

Or, the next best alternative would be to keep the skywalks on this choc-a-bloc roads reserved for the #internationalyogaday celebration for the year 2023. Files of yoga enthusiasts lined up on these skywalks doing asanas and meditating(pranayama - which is so required for B'lore's smoggy weather conditions) would stand true-blue testimonial - that you can find breathe in your space, despite the chaos that surrounds you. It will be killing two birds with a single stone!

To #Microsoft #teams with "LOVE"

Using #microsoftteams app for #workfromhome during the #pandemic became a muse for many of my #satirical jottings. IT is pretty lifeless to engage in a #virtual meeting, when we are forced to curtail our 'human' tendencies. Even more lifeless when we are to present our work or showcase, as reading out Thomas Grey's elegy( With just voice-modulation as a cue, I am sure most of us would have painted vivid pictures of the person(s) at the other end of the call- beyond the pulsating icons of their initials, You need to crack the puzzle of who is behind the 'apparently' disembodied voice!. Well, some of us developed extra-sensory abilities to decipher/decode many meanings just with a voice!)

The Awkward moments - You cannot zone out, beware!
Just when you thought, it is safe to daydream, you get impromptu cues to turn on the video during virtual meetings, especially when you have just fooled around with the "The West Wind" (P.B Shelley's poem), and your mane resembles the 'fierce Maenad' . Or the ascetic get-up of men, who had bid farewell to their grooming kits and felt it right to sport a Veerappan-style moustache, Even better the Mahakumbh-inspired- beards(You might have witnessed those saadhus of Mahakumbh, trying to perform antics with their 'gifts'. ), which transported you virtually to the haven of 'Rishikesh'. Not to mention, the pepper 'n' salt make-over used to project the 'intellectuals in the making' and the gleaming "गंजू पटेल s" whose 'crowing glory' could have replaced solar reflectors! Let us be fair here. The fairer sex proved to be no less of a shocker with their crooning voices behind the screen, unraveling like the epic character 'Draupadi in exile' - strife-torn, unkempt tresses, raring for the war clarion(comparable to the modern-day flag-bearer feminist who is a rebel without a cause!). Ah, the men bow out in humility 

What the confines of #remotework hid behind its remoteness, Microsoft #teams brought it to light by capturing it all - the many personas that we had adopted behind the walls, enjoyed their share of publicity, though unwittingly

"Quick?" We take our own sweet time to buckle up!
But the best of all, is #microsofteams never disrupted the 'night PJs' life. It was so in sync with the grogginess- or morning blues, the app always functions in 'retro-mode' (like caught in Einstein's distended space-time) - hanging, hiccoughing like a wayward drunkard or jet-lagged traveler, who wants a prolonged sleepover! And when it does awaken it is like the monster Mothra(from Godzilla) who just wants to eat into all your system's resources like an insatiable larva!
To the many avatars of teams and to the many forms that manifested in us through the virtual mode- Are we progressing towards the close-to-realtime virtual world or digressing in our human ways of connecting with our fellow beings?  Is #metaverse in the offing? Or is it a Frakenstein's monster in the making?

The FINAL DECLARATION - (When Math slumped 'n' staggered in a student's life)

 

Coordinates 28.5517811 N, 77.2073502 E,

277, Hauz Khas, SFS Flats, New Delhi - 110016

Circa 1994 AD (March 31st)

Prologue

The 15 years of my life in Delhi shuttled between 857, Laxmi Bai Nagar (my grandparents' home for 40 years), and 277 Hauz Khas(my home for 14 years), with a brief stint in South Extension, in between.

'857' featured the halcyon days of my life, with the vast open play grounds, and story-telling from grandparents about dug up trenches during war times and Sanjay Gandhi's visits to the area + his misguided zeal to curtail India's over-bloated population, with 'surgical' strikes .

But it was the years spent in '277' which are punctuated with such dramatic episodes of my life, that they are enlivened everytime I visit my Mater's (now in Chennai).

 

The Unravelling - solving the Math Magic Squares

Hailing from a traditional Tambrahm family(not to deride any subsect, or play traitor to my community), the motto n mission is always driven towards academic excellence - the onus on acing Mathematics.

The cast-ironing of this belief was due to the blueprint factor, ingrained by both the paternal & maternal grandfather - who happened to be Math professors 'n' scholars., with a legacy of students(from PUSA polytechnic, Delhi and Loyala College Chennai)to testify their teachers' prowess. So, the assumption was always that the grandchildren(me included) must/should/will have to have inherited the Math gene.

When the time came for the litmus test, to prove my mettle in Math - in the 9th grade, the results proved it otherwise.

With more than a fortnight passed, since the beginning of the school's summer vacation post the annual exams, the family was eagerly awaiting the arrival of my FINAL report card through post-(the Indian Post was the old-reliable bearer of good, bad n the ugly news, during those days).

When it did arrive(half-way slipped into a wooden post box, weathered out in the corners), I rushed to pluck it out from the moorings - gave it to Mater- who kept it in the shrine, with a prayer on her lips 'Bhagwan, let her math come out with flying colours..." . But what ensued was not the benevolence of her Bhagwan, to bestow upon his Bhakt, the desired grace marks. It was an emotional melodrama of suppressed emotions, on seeing the number that featured against 'Mathematics' the meagre 65% as against History(which was outstanding at 85%).

 

The Mater invokes the ancestral spirits

With hands trembling beholding the sight of holy sacrilege, Mater dashed off to the life-size portraits of both my grandfathers and lamented. "You have left behind the mortal world, and taken away the riches too" - "Riches" here meant the math quotient. While the lament manifested into frantic calls to my Pater, the Uncles and well, the drama lasted for the next 24 hours(I was the dopey teenager, oblivious to the drama, gloating over the fact that my history teacher would be really impressed). I am not sure whether either of the grandfatherly souls decided to take pity on Mater, but what buckled up was the spirit to moot me towards Math Excellence- to ensure my 10th performance broke the records! A private tutor was settled for - (with an outstanding record of alleviating the Math-sub-par students), which meant commuting from Hauz khas to Sanjay Gandhi Park bus stand in पाँच सौ बारह Red line bus, on a bi-weekly basis.

When the Math Guru took over

The rigour and patience of the tutor finally awakened the latent Math potential in me + plus the competitive sprit to outwit my peer cum bestie in the subject. I managed to score a whopping 98% in my boards, went on to take up Science with Math in higher secondary.

I cracked abstract Math with aplomb – from calculus to algebra to trigonometry- those were my forte. With firm belief  in the “you learn better when you teach” formula, I shared my new-found Math streak with no restraint – to the extent of coaching peers in calculus.

 

...Thus began my Math-honing journey.

I grew up to like Math in later years- to the extent of acing the subject, taking up coaching and well, passing on the enthusiastic streak to my children as well. But, at the back of my mind, the unanswered question, which prods me is : "Was I cut out for it?", "Did nature actually choose me to be a Math brainiac?". Did the inheritance from my ancestors actually bear fruit?

Well, there is never a stop to the learning and unlearning, is there?

BURNING HEAT, burnt popcorns and a bowl of thayirsaadam!

Who would have thought that the garden city of Bengaluru would take on a Rudra Avatar – or manifest as a fire-breathing dragon, bringing in summer in its fiercest form? And yet summer it was in Bengaluru - the once popular getaway for sun-scorched people of the neighboring states, who would fancy the ‘green’ city as their safe haven, gently afloat on a wisp of a cool breeze, even during the harshest of summer-months.

A decade back, the soaring mercury of mornings in the city would bring the clouds  together in a rain-dance by evening; but the heat wave in present-day Bengaluru only showed signs of burning everything to a crisp. So the city that was once bestowed with an aura of the old-world charm was heaving  like the desert whose inhabitants had just had a narrow escape from the desert king cobra!(What was the city escaping from – the summer heat, the man-plunderers who had razed its green cover to the ground, or the chain smokers – vehicles, factories, humans or the smog that hung thick, never showing any signs of dissipation?)

 Reeling under the heat wave, Mom, Sanzi and Bro(Sanzi’s brother, who was referred more as “Bro” than by his actual name) were fidgeting about, their tempers frail. Mercurial Mom was dragging herself from point A to point B aimlessly. Under pleasant weather conditions, Sanzi and Bro on watching their Mom, would chime in chorus  “Mom, walruses can drag themselves faster”, followed by a guffaw. Mom would usually laugh it out, for she knew that despite age and Mommy-hood, she had managed not to look expansive around her waistlines. She prided on that and therefore dismissed her kids’ ‘juvenile’ remarks. But at other times like the one at present, she would  glower so hard at them for letting loose such a remark that had she been gifted with a third invisible eye, she would have  annihilated everything around.

To break the monotony of the simmering day, Sanzi decided to break the silence, “I am hungry, is there something good to eat?”. Now, the relentless heat was piled on with endless demands from the kids, whose 24*7 presence in the home-space threatened to convert sweet home into a helter-skelter arena. Two years since the pandemic struck and schools shut down, home-bound children had turned into blubber balls(Remember the absent-minded professor’s ingenious creation blubber that would send its wearer skyrocketing in all directions- wreaking havoc everywhere? Children’s containment during the pandemic had turned them into these dangerous blubber balls who would go flying and crashland in no time).

 So, when Sanzi’s hunger-pangs struck at odd times, Mom  would talk at length about how irregular eating habits and binging, can lead to acid reflux (Pittha)with long-term effects. Reiterating this time, Mom replied in a stern voice “You just had your meal, being bored does not mean you have to keep chewing cud like cattle. How many times do I have to keep telling you!” But Sanzi , unperturbed by Mom’s lectures would persist “I am hungry”, and bound off to the larder to find something to munch on. Driving an already frenzied Mom up the wall, Sanzi would happily sport the ‘hidden treasures’ retrieved from the cabinet – which never fared well on the health quotient! Mom’s attempts at caching  junk food in the hidden nooks of the house were foiled by kids-turned-investigators, who would sniff the trail of forbidden food from any distance, anytime.

 While the crunching of Pringles was happening at one end, Bro was fast zoning out, in one corner of the couch, with his iPAD.  The droning commentary of some whacko gamer ran in the background, and that seemed to satiate his hunger and thirst, basically control his other bodily functions as well for the rest of the day. The sight of Bro cocooned in a corner always made Mom bawl out with so much lung power that had the builders of her apartment not installed the right iron pillars; the window panes of the house would have broken to smithereens. But for Bro, he remained unfazed – and as for the window panes, the rest of the  family wondered when those would succumb to Mom’s amplified sound effects and the shockwaves.

Gadget-addled Bro always left mom and Sanzi exasperated, who were sure that even an earthquake or a Tsunami would not budge this fella from his gaming spree. Mom would swear, lash out with choicest expletives in all the possible languages known to her but Bro would remain non-plussed till the gadget was wrested out of his grip. Post the confiscation, Mom would stomp on an verbally-abusive trail: of cursing the gaming apps, the “weirdos” who develop such apps, the unaccountable parents whose kids wielded a wrong ‘n’ strong influence on Bro for his gadget-craze and not to mention, the country’s arch-nemesis China whose products (especially video games)were infiltrating into the mindspace of youngsters, sucking their minds too(Mom’s decisive conclusion was a looming Chinese conspiracy to create a generation of Frankenstein monsters for sucking out every bit of human intelligence from the rest of the world).

 Mom would have continued to unleash a flurry of lava -  but had to hold back as her phone buzzed. It took a while for her to switch tracks – from the “war trumpets ” mode to “moonlight sonata” mode -  especially since she sensed that the prospective caller was a Recruitment Consultant.

So, while prepping to refuel her energy reserves, she answered the call, and at the same time turned on the gas-stove for popping corn. After hanging up, she realized that she had missed an interview call.  She placed the cooker, on the stove hurriedly, dashed off to groom herself a bit, calling out to Sanzi, “ Sanzi, I have a call. Expect you both to be considerate and not act like JUNGLEES. I don’t want my recruiters to feel that we are living in the amazon forests” .No sooner did she settle herself in front of the laptop, her TEAMS app started to blink, indicating the interviewer was online. By that time, Mom had totally forgotten about the cooker on the lit gas stove. But it all came back in a flash, when she was apologizing to her callers for being late for the call. She realized the gas was on and the slit pop corn packet was delicately balancing itself against a dangling oil can in the kitchen. So,  while facing the same old drill of questions, Mom signaled to Sanzi with her right hand to turn off the stove, ensuring that her flailing limbs did not get captured by the web cam. She did not want to project a lost-in-space as well to be caught by those who were trying to assess her in the virtual mode(Mom could only wish that had she been  technically adept with using filters and frames, she would make-do with a freezed frame for situations like this).

 On any other occasion, her wishful thinking about still frames and stilled characters would have drifted away to the hilarious movie scenes of “Jaane Bhi Do yaaron”, where two amateur photographers tailing a corpse, run into a theatre enacting the Mahabharata scene, featuring the game of dice. To fit into the settings, the corpse is dressed up  as  the epic character Draupadi. What unfolds therefrom is a comedy of errors, sending the audience into a fit of laughter. 

But in this instant, neither did Mom go adrift, nor was she tickled to laughter. That was because she sensed the smell of burning corn. She realized that her hand-signals were misread.  Sanzi had not turned off the stove but instead emptied the contents of the corn sachet into the cooker and happily drifted away to her den. The smoke and the burning smell were slowly filling the air.

Mom made desperate attempts to look composed in the  camera but the smell was making her cough. Her voice changed into a croak.

(In any other scenario, crooning voices turning into abysmal croaks in a video call would have made Mom guffaw with no restraint had she been on the other side - the witnessing end of this drama! For her, it would have unfolded a fairy tale with a twist - a princess turned into a frog, with the sleight of the virtual?).

Excusing herself at this moment  would create a bad impression, she felt. Before she could embarrass herself further by clearing her throat and twitching her nose repeatedly, Sanzi appeared out of the smokescreen(in the current state of affiars, she could have been compared to  a day-dreaming demigod who snoozes off despite the morning alarm, and wakes up late for the mission ahead). However. she took control of the situation in the kitchen. Mom released herself from a state of stupor and told her interviewer that she needed to switch rooms because of lack of bandwidth. She carried out the switch nervously, settled in, cleared her throat and proceeded with the call.

The call over, she stepped out of the room, bewildered, demanding explanations from her kids. Sanzi went on defensive “It was just two minutes. I had gone to the loo. Bro – he was HAPPILY sitting and playing”. Bro retorted, while fingering on the touch screen – which without doubt was for a video game, “HEY YOU could have told me before you went to the loo”. MOM hushed them in the tenor of a foghorn “ENOUGH!” Bro and Sanzi knew better than to keep arguing – they quickly retracted into their shields of silence. The three of them went to the kitchen to check out whether something could be salvaged of the popped corn. To Mom’s dismay, nothing. The cooker was blackened, the corn, not even sparing a couple, were all charred. She threw away the remains of the burnt corn  into the bin. With hunger pangs making her dizzy, Mom decided to settle down for a fruit or two – for her snacks.

Mellowed down- with her HULK-like manifestation receding into her normal self, she mulled over the black residue left by the popcorns. She could not help thinking whether she was biting more than what she could chew – with the children, the family duties and the ambitious job-hunting. Should she take a step back? Was she adding more than necessary to an already plateful?  While munching on the fruity snacks, she felt her hunger appeased no less than what a bowl-of-popcorn would have achieved. On the one hand, she was relieved that her acid -reflux would not go out of control but on the other it irked her that it was not just the wasted popcorn, the episode pointed to an issue that was more deep-rooted than what it seemed.

 A general lack of contentment, the hankering for more than what is required and the excesses that had pervaded the modern lifestyle, was seeping into theirs too. The daily pursuits seemed to be centered around hoarding and cramming, like a glutton feeding on anything available whether hungry or not. Ruminating whether she should disembark from this train of excesses, she set off to make dinner. To wind up an absolutely chaotic day that sounded in no less than a simmering kettle, Mom decided to keep the dinner simple with the ultimate comfort food-Thayirsaadam(seasoned curd rice). Afterall, dousing the fire in the gut would mean less bowel disturbance which in turn control the greenhouse-gas emission – atleast from the four readily  bloat-able human species at home. 

Mom was definitely NOT on a launchpad of  a Greta-Thurnberg endeavour to spearhead climate-change missions for the planet). She  knew that one-meal-thayirsaadam a day, will not keep the planet ’s accumulated pithha away. Neither would it  put an end to global warming, all at once.

All she wanted to get started with was a detox regimen – to calm and sedate the living system to preempt any eruptive volcanic tendencies, spewing gases all the time, just like Mt Vesuvius that wreaked havoc… Here Mom’s  thought processes came to a grinding halt and just in time too. The mustard seasoning for her curd rice had started to crackle, turning a deep shade of brown, and she noticed that any bit longer on the stove  would have charred it! So, she took it off the stove and mixed it with the rice, adding generous spoonful of curd- the aroma of this plain meal was irresistible and at the same time soothing. She looked forward to savouring morsels, while feeling hopeful that Sanzi and Bro would gulp it down with the same gusto.

After dinner, she felt satiated, even though the burning ire of summer grimly reminded her of the charred popcorns and global warming adding fuel to the fire. But  the sight of a donnai of Thayirsaadam flooded her with hope of summer showers ever in the offing, to douse the heat!