Wednesday, March 09, 2005
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Baby Sitting
In all these years, I have never tried (and have never been to allowed to try!) my hand at baby-sitting. It happened when my cousin and his wife had to go out and the baby's grandparents (my uncle n aunt) werent in town. We lived a few blocks away from them and they were more than happy to entrust the 3 month old under my care...!! I was delighted to see my niece, peacefully asleep, with that occasional bewitching smile that only babies are capable of..I hoped she'd play the 'good kid' for another 4-5 hours until her mom arrived...
I left her on the bed and closed the door gently so she wouldnt get disturbed..! I settled down with a book and soft music...Within 20 minutes, the phone yelled..It was my cousin..'Is she fine?!! Any problem..?!'..'None at all..cool it Karthik..I'll take care..'He mumbled something about me 'updating him on her status every half an hour..''Sure..Will do..'I quipped...I heard her crying and went to check what was wrong...The phone in the bedroom had awoken her...I gently patted her and she resumed sleeping...I disconnected that phone..just in case..!
Things were fine for another hour or so..With calls from all relatives who lived in Chennai, wanting to know 'how she was doing..' All of a sudden, my niece let out a heart wrenching scream..and continued modulating it at different pitches...! No amount of pacifying helped..'Must be hunger'..I thought and thrust the milk bottle into her mouth...Her wailing stopped..She was then awake for a while..and I tried amusing her with all those toys that my cousin had brought..!! She wasn't impressed...She looked at me with small, sharp eyes that seemed to predict another wailing session...!
Sure enough, the next round started..I took her out of the bed and held her for a while..! She showed signs of regaining her composure...and then I took her out to the balcony, hoping some traffic out on the roads would distract her...My timing was bad, for, there was a huge water tanker on the main road..honking terribly. This scared everything out of the baby and she screamed all the more...I quickly took her inside...
It took ages to make my niece smile..SMILE...it was worth SO much..basically making a big fool of myself...I 'talked' to her animatedly...Am sure she didnt understand one bit of all that I blabbered...I lifted her up and down, tried playing some songs, played all the ringtones I wished were never composed in the first place and many more...At the end of it all, she took pity on me and treated me to one of those angelic smiles reserved for great occasions...! I let out a sigh of relief..!
She decided to let me rest for a while and fell asleep right on my lap...I sat still, scared to put her on the bed, lest I had to go through the smile-exercise again...After what seemed like a decade, the calling bell rang and I picked up the kid to get the door...My mom had barely walked in, when I thrust the about-to-wail kid into her hands...
I left her on the bed and closed the door gently so she wouldnt get disturbed..! I settled down with a book and soft music...Within 20 minutes, the phone yelled..It was my cousin..'Is she fine?!! Any problem..?!'..'None at all..cool it Karthik..I'll take care..'He mumbled something about me 'updating him on her status every half an hour..''Sure..Will do..'I quipped...I heard her crying and went to check what was wrong...The phone in the bedroom had awoken her...I gently patted her and she resumed sleeping...I disconnected that phone..just in case..!
Things were fine for another hour or so..With calls from all relatives who lived in Chennai, wanting to know 'how she was doing..' All of a sudden, my niece let out a heart wrenching scream..and continued modulating it at different pitches...! No amount of pacifying helped..'Must be hunger'..I thought and thrust the milk bottle into her mouth...Her wailing stopped..She was then awake for a while..and I tried amusing her with all those toys that my cousin had brought..!! She wasn't impressed...She looked at me with small, sharp eyes that seemed to predict another wailing session...!
Sure enough, the next round started..I took her out of the bed and held her for a while..! She showed signs of regaining her composure...and then I took her out to the balcony, hoping some traffic out on the roads would distract her...My timing was bad, for, there was a huge water tanker on the main road..honking terribly. This scared everything out of the baby and she screamed all the more...I quickly took her inside...
It took ages to make my niece smile..SMILE...it was worth SO much..basically making a big fool of myself...I 'talked' to her animatedly...Am sure she didnt understand one bit of all that I blabbered...I lifted her up and down, tried playing some songs, played all the ringtones I wished were never composed in the first place and many more...At the end of it all, she took pity on me and treated me to one of those angelic smiles reserved for great occasions...! I let out a sigh of relief..!
She decided to let me rest for a while and fell asleep right on my lap...I sat still, scared to put her on the bed, lest I had to go through the smile-exercise again...After what seemed like a decade, the calling bell rang and I picked up the kid to get the door...My mom had barely walked in, when I thrust the about-to-wail kid into her hands...
'Couple'd Reactions
I am not completely against couples expressing their affection in public . But, they need to draw a line somewhere...An overnight train journey with 2 pairs provided first hand experience on 'couple behaviour induced discomfiture'.
The older of the two pairs had a cute and confused 2/3yr old daughter who kept insisting that there were mosquitoes inside her mouth..! The younger pair showed signs of having tied the knot recently. They would have made an excellent subject for a fevicol advertisement. From the moment they boarded, till long afterwards, they were glued together...This got to a point when it was quite embarassing for the rest of us...'Why do you have to even look at them?!'you might ask..I couldnt help it...Basically, there was nothing else to do..and they sat right in front of me and I couldnt look anywhere else!!! When I tried not looking at them, I ended up hurting my neck !
The older ones, didnt want to be left behind either...They were sitting beside the window and facing each other...Every now and then, the two leant over and talked something in hushed tones and threw their heads back in wild laughter...All the while their kid was making polite conversations with me (LOL!)
Hoping the ordeal would end as soon as the tickets were checked...I waited...The TTI arrived and the older husband deftly handed him their ticket...There was something wrong with the numbers under the 'Age' column that drew my attention, almost intuitively. The lady's age was printed as 22...and the man's 35...Isnt there a limit to these excesses!?!! She looked atleast 27, if not more!..Any Day..!!!! I struggled to hide a chuckle..! I tried making some crazy and quick calculation on approximating her age..(not that it really mattered to me...but, as I said, there was nothing else to do!!!)and decided that she could definitely not be 22..After all, it was HER age...!
I was happy it was all over, when everyone went to sleep...Early morning proved me wrong...At about half past three, the older wife, rudely kicked me while alighting from the middle berth...I decided against letting out a high-pitched, all-awakening, scream, mainly out of consideration for other passengers...She landed on the other lower berth, where poor Mr.32 was snoring...She shook him awake...Their muffled voices interspersed with her soft laughter did more than disturb my sleep...It made me feel like an incurable insomniac!
It was 6:00 in the morning, I jumped out of the train and looked around for my dad who had promised to pick me up...Dad usually came to pick me up whenever I landed early in the morning....knowing fully well, that I mightn't even get up at that odd hour..On a couple of earlier occasions, I had been sleeping in the berth, even after the train came to a halt, when he'd come around, woken me up and dragged me home..! He was surprised to see me totally awake...'No sleep?!' he asked..'Not much of it.. There were a couple of disturbing instances...' Despite the irritation, I was amused at my attempt at intended puns!
The older of the two pairs had a cute and confused 2/3yr old daughter who kept insisting that there were mosquitoes inside her mouth..! The younger pair showed signs of having tied the knot recently. They would have made an excellent subject for a fevicol advertisement. From the moment they boarded, till long afterwards, they were glued together...This got to a point when it was quite embarassing for the rest of us...'Why do you have to even look at them?!'you might ask..I couldnt help it...Basically, there was nothing else to do..and they sat right in front of me and I couldnt look anywhere else!!! When I tried not looking at them, I ended up hurting my neck !
The older ones, didnt want to be left behind either...They were sitting beside the window and facing each other...Every now and then, the two leant over and talked something in hushed tones and threw their heads back in wild laughter...All the while their kid was making polite conversations with me (LOL!)
Hoping the ordeal would end as soon as the tickets were checked...I waited...The TTI arrived and the older husband deftly handed him their ticket...There was something wrong with the numbers under the 'Age' column that drew my attention, almost intuitively. The lady's age was printed as 22...and the man's 35...Isnt there a limit to these excesses!?!! She looked atleast 27, if not more!..Any Day..!!!! I struggled to hide a chuckle..! I tried making some crazy and quick calculation on approximating her age..(not that it really mattered to me...but, as I said, there was nothing else to do!!!)and decided that she could definitely not be 22..After all, it was HER age...!
I was happy it was all over, when everyone went to sleep...Early morning proved me wrong...At about half past three, the older wife, rudely kicked me while alighting from the middle berth...I decided against letting out a high-pitched, all-awakening, scream, mainly out of consideration for other passengers...She landed on the other lower berth, where poor Mr.32 was snoring...She shook him awake...Their muffled voices interspersed with her soft laughter did more than disturb my sleep...It made me feel like an incurable insomniac!
It was 6:00 in the morning, I jumped out of the train and looked around for my dad who had promised to pick me up...Dad usually came to pick me up whenever I landed early in the morning....knowing fully well, that I mightn't even get up at that odd hour..On a couple of earlier occasions, I had been sleeping in the berth, even after the train came to a halt, when he'd come around, woken me up and dragged me home..! He was surprised to see me totally awake...'No sleep?!' he asked..'Not much of it.. There were a couple of disturbing instances...' Despite the irritation, I was amused at my attempt at intended puns!
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