Tutor

Ash has a new tuition teacher since last Friday to engage him for an hour in the evenings. An engineering student, he comes to our place soon after his classes and the long ride home. He is yet to do it the way we want - goading/helping him to do his homework, and prepare him for the almost daily tests and so on - but I hope we can make use of his skills especially in teaching Tamil, which I do with difficulty right now.
Hakim, who we hear is a bright student, belongs to a family that is hard-up thanks to a drunkard father and an ailing mother. The tuitions at our place and the ones he takes in his shack for other kids supplement the family income or takes care of his college fees.
We have advised him to be stern with Ash or else he would drive him up the wall like he does to me.
Mira, who is utterly bored of being at home the whole day (she has been advised 2 weeks' rest), doesnt buy my theory that H is a teacher. "He doesnt look like sir, he looks like a chetta (elder bro)," she tells me.

Our braveheart

The moment Mira landed on a bed in the emergency ward of Apollo First Med, she was thrilled. The state of her finger least bothered her. Apparently, she hadnt cried when it happened and it was Ash who alerted the nanny, who was in the kitchen at the time of the accident. 
Her bigger concerns were if she would get a TV in the room she stayed, that we inform 'Ashinkuttan' (which is what she calls him now) that she wont be home that day, etc. And that I neednt stand on guard at her bed, that I draw the curtains and let her remain there on her own. And when the nurse asked me to wait outside while they jabbed  the needle on the back of her palm to administer the IV line, I worried if she would cry as unlike Ash, she was not used to such hospital procedures. I was surprised when the nurse told me that she hadnt. Mira told me she felt no pain, the chill in the room bothered her more. The nurses, who insisted that she remove her clothes, took their own sweet time to provide her the hospital gown. And the ones that came were meant for an older child, and reached her ankles instead of the thigh/knee.
The plastic surgeons gave us a 50:50 chance,and said we wait 4 hrs after the last intake of food for the general anaesthesia. The anaesthetist was a Dr. Meera, who carried her in her arm into the operation theatre at 10.30 p.m.  At past 11.30, we were told we could see her in the recovery room. By the time she was shifted to the female general ward (owing to lack of rooms), it was 2 am. I snuggled on a corner of her bed while V slept on the floor in the floor below.
And when they removed the IV line and she was free to venture to the loo, she found them not clean enough for her tastes - until she discovered an Indian toilet. She instructed me that I not let anyone else use it (!) By evening she was beginning to enjoy the ward with its beautiful green curtains bustling with patients, attenders and nurses and told me that we stay there for a month - but that I not share her bed and find another bed for myself.
By night we got a semi-private room which she took an immediate dislike to as the plaster on one wall was beginning to peel and the curtains were not a healthy green but a deathly yellow. She loved the loo anyway. The next day she was her old energetic self and couldnt be kept inside the room. There was a just-born baby in the other half of the room that filled her interest. And it wasnt long before she began suspecting a baby in each slightly bulging tummy including mine. She was discharged on Sunday afternoon.
As he changed her dressing on Tuesday, her doctor told us that it was good she hadnt complained of pain right from day one.
However, she is becoming a little difficult to handle now - all the extra attention at home has got into her head. With the result that mother and daughter just could not get along by Wednesday and she wanted me to return to work at the earliest! Today and tomorrow, her dad stays at home.
When he last called me, V told me that she preferred her father sitting at home since he let her see the TV and also play with his laptop. She now wants him to leave the laptop behind everyday so she can relieve her boredom at home.

Freak accident

1. Just before entering the op. theatre 2. A day after.

Mira is back home after the reconstructive surgery for her right hand ring finger - the tip of her finger had got cut after it got caught btw the door on Friday evening while playing with her brother. The surgery - by a plastic surgeon - was done 5 hrs later.
She is fine and cheerful - all excited about the hospital stay, her first. And she was more interested in posing for the camera (on my mobile) than anything else.

Healing

Just as I apply cream on his damp skin, Ash asks me: 'Will Jesus cure my skin?'

We had let him skip school today owing to a little crusting on the forehead, part of the flare-up that has dogged him since Mira's birthday and the occasional taboo food.

'Well, if u pray long and hard enough,' I tell him, not really sure.

"What if Jesus falls sick?'

"He will have to pray to his father Jehovah. And you can pray to his father or to his mother Mary too." 

(My memory fails me and I am not able to recollect the exact Q&A round today)

The questions come like an avalance most times and I am sometimes stumped. Or I have to search for a suitable quip for his each "... and then what happened?". 

 

 

Tooth fairy

Ash lost the first of his milk teeth yesterday night in a sudden, unexpected move by his father. We noticed that the lower incissor was a bit wobbly - actually a little late since its permanent version had already taken root and we didnt want him ending up with more teeth in his mouth than he could handle :)  

Just as dad did the honour of plucking out our baby teeth (though my brother's were rather resilient and had required a dentist's assistance), I am leaving it to V to handle the business. I am grateful to dad for constantly reminding me to push the growing permanent teeth forward with my tongue, and brush it with my bare fingers so that they set themselves in a nice neat row. I must pass on the instructions to Ash now, who is all excited about the missing tooth which has gone into safe keeping in his Baby Record Book.

Under-12

The kids have a week's vacation but unfortunately the parents are busier than ever. It means they have only their nanny to keep them entertained, and of course the television. And when we forcibly switch off the tv, they run to the computer. So in the end, V told them that had to be 12 yrs old to operate a PC on their own. Ash is now using the 12-year deadline to not do other personal chores.