The naming ceremony

"It looks like a pig from the front"

When split second reactionary impulses of the human brain are instantly transcribed by the tongue into audible creatures without fear or falter of post-transmission hostilities, you can be sure my wife is around. It's a completely different thing that what actually is blurted makes complete sense. It's about the fact that every unexceptional, ordinary, pedestrian mind is given to a phenomenon called "instantaneous juxtapositioning". Your nervous system considers various real, live and incarnate impulses affecting you like, mood, temperature, libido, hunger, pain, anger, presence of friends, bosses, in laws, bowel condition, bladder condition, etc. and makes corresponding adjustments to your world view. Consequently, this canvas, projected by your mind becomes decently palatable by every other unexceptional, ordinary, pedestrian mind around which also processes similar inputs. So, most views settle around the best average mean that is most acceptable and sensually comfortable. The problem is here is that "most acceptance" and "sensual comfort" do also bring in factual contamination and conceptual scum that alters the absoluteness and actuality of the fact in front of each of those unexceptional, ordinary, pedestrian minds.

This makes my wife, an un-ordinary representational genius, also an impromptu evaluation-cum-sentencing apparatus with a live- with-my-judgment-or-act-deaf attitude.

It was the usual eat-work-eat-work-eat-sleep routine. A silent, peaceful, floater-ed evening walk to the neighborhood store. We didn't have a vehicle for ourselves. So we were carrying the vegetables back home. Man proposes and wife disposes if the prevailing and customary convention in our family. I didn't want to act crazy and break the rule. So I said, "Why don't we put in a lakh and a half more and go for the Ford Ecosport?" 

Disaster Ensued.

Next morning, we were traveling to Office in our employer provided car, when I caught sight of the vehicle I was talking about last night. The white flag - waving doctor, sitting in the left side of the brain was telling me, "brother, to recover from yesterday's disaster, you need tantric healing and psychological counseling, permanent damages have been made to your psyche. Why do you want to rake up the issue again? Want to be beaten in to beetroot batter?" The blood - sucking opportunist in the right side of the brain was telling me, "Beetroot and Batter are not more important than your libido and lust for that car. Go ahead. Convince Her. Your bones might be served tonight like almond cookies to the neighbor's dog by your wife today. But doesn't matter. You might end up being awarded the "Death for having tried to convince wife - Best Sacrifical Goat" award, posthumously. Be a martyr, man. Be passionate about your convictions!" The opportunist's ideas sounded unsafe, unhealthy and threatening. But they also showed hope. So, I went for it. 

"That's the Ford Ecosport! Doesn't it look good?"

There was silence through out. The quiet rumble of the engine beneath our butts and the stifled honks of scooters outside, were my only companions. The driver was blissfully disconnected from the developing spectacle. I was caught within a four walls and a few inches of a hungry hallucination that seemed civil and sympathetic till now. The sweet smell of a tempting dish met her. I was getting ready to be devoured, when the  impromptu evaluation-cum-sentencing apparatus comes out, "It looks like a pig from the front. If it ends up in our garage, we'll call it Piggu." I breathed.

Long Time

"Time and Tide wait for none"

The virtuous innocence of this sweet little verse makes it a tender classroom maxim repeated over and again before and after noon in schools all across the globe. I realized that this apparently "like"able quote languishing in the many trivial corners of most sixth-graders' essays can unleash a crazy feeling of godforsaken desertion only today, when I'm on the hem of turning Thirty.

Thirty. I find the number strange and confusing. This confusion is a result of the shock value that the number packs. More than shock value, "Thirty" also packs with it, snooze value. Thirty, to me, represented baldness, back pain and bladder problems. Not because I had examples of thirty-something convalescents in my family, it was because 30 was an age that was too distant and too dystopian for me to believe in. Thirty years was always like a pocket of sand at the oblivious Horizon, in the middle of the ocean, too far and too unlikely to turn up. I was comfortable with the thought of thirty, tossed, pitched and mummified in the hindmost stratum of my brain.

So, I did.

I had forgotten about this thought until I started to feel "thirtyish". It's a feeling worth describing. You wake up with a slight sensation of discomfort in your right shoulder/knee/back/elbow. This sensation serves two purposes. One, it wakes you up. Two, it smacks into your head the realistic thought that "Son, you are approaching thirty, so don't try funny things like Rappelling or Mattress-WWF even if your childhood chum challenges you today". You get out of bed and look at yourself in the mirror to see that a few more strands of protein have gone extinct on your head. You pretend that it's not balding but only a problem with the barber who tends to be excessively desirous to own those particularly rickety filaments of hair that grow out of the balding zone. Understandable. You use the comb to conceal the scandalous revelation. You fill your mug of coffee and the mug reminds you of your distinctive eminence and place of prominence, [read: incessant obligations and relentless complaints] "World's best Husband/ Universe's most hard working employee/ Most struck-dumb listener to a wife, Ever!/ Most efficient Nappy changer ever to have lived on earth/ etc." Filled with pride, you plan to wake your wife to share your thoughts, when you realize that there's still a few micro seconds to go and if you still plan to wake her up, a cannonade of scorching slander follows. Filled to the brim with content, having received the daily dosage, you walk to the balcony only to see human beings younger by decades, stronger by miles and smarter by ages whiz past your unenergetic, insensitive and bear-like body towards schools, playgrounds and colleges. You feel low. So you look at yourself again. You can't find your feet. You rub your eyes and focus and re-focus. No outcome. Your feet are just not there. You might be imagining that your jasmine-light body is floating thin air. False. Use your hands to squish the inflated bloat in the centre of your chassis and then your feet come into sight. Fat. Unregulated and shameless. This is thirty! You have arrived.