Multi tasking at meal time

Halep powers on.... I  took up the sports page to read while I was having my lunch alone and late. Two reasons for me to gulp down food and which habit I am consciously trying to avoid for a change. However the reading didn't make sense nor did I stop wolfing  down the rice.
And then I remembered Achachan who always grabbed a book while having his meal. That gave him a reason not to look at us two pesky lil things sitting in front of him and picking at food. He was our paternal uncle but just older enough to be a big brother.
The train of thought then shifted to my dad who neatly bowled a ball of rice into his mouth while watching tv. The advent of the tv into our home, though late, gave him an excuse to have his meal in silence _ except for the animated voices of the news anchors.
The scene at home here is not much better. Every night the head of the family watches comedy time after comedy time to relax. One kid sits in a strategic position that aids munching while watching. The other one turns her head to catch the scenes. As the lone  one who is disinterested in this daily tickling of the bone, I try telling them that dinner time is family time (enlightened by a whatsapp forwarded message). But there are no takers for my dictum as my face is less interesting than the ones on tv and, secondly, what do I talk anyway?
So I join the crowd and watch  the reflection of the tv screen in the glass cabinet across .😝

Quiz time

On a friend's suggestion, I have started a quiz - off the cuff - at lunch time. It has been a great hit with the kids and now they demand it it the moment they sit down for lunch.
The Olympics gave me some ammunition. They learnt about Brazil, its beaches, mountains and people. About athletes and their achievements and failures this time. About Nikki Hamblin and sportsmanship - it made me emotional as I explained her gesture and the medal she got. The last time I got emotional was when I described Mahabali's benevolence and why he had to leave Kerala. For them, a Hindu legend is alien as they had learnt to segregate people in religious compartments in Chennai. Growing up in Kerala, I had seamlessly imbibed other faiths and their stories.
We meander questions about Kerala's tryst with the south-west monsoon every June, World War II, countries and their capitals, world leaders to birds and animals and the like. Often, while giving the right answers I take the liberty to go a little deeper into the subject in hand.
They decided on giving themselves points for the right answer but day before it led to a tiff and much wailing by Mira. The culprit question was "Where is medulla oblongata", something she is studying this year. It must be in Oman, she said. The right answer came from Ash, which made Mira accuse the quiz master of asking her alone tough questions. I threatened to stop the ritual for good, but yesterday they demanded quiz hour again but without the points system. Now, the onus is on me - to find new questions and not just casual ones that run through my mind.

Our German guests

A lone cockroach - small, dull brown - stepped out of the vent in the mixer-grinder as we unpacked our boxes from Chennai . Even as I snuffed out its life, I worried if any more were hiding in the mixie or the idli grinder I had brought along. Since I was not directly involved in kitchen activities in Chennai and since we were leaving anyway, I hadn't bothered to do another round of pest control before we handed over the house to tenants.
And I had been very happy and relieved to note during my two short vacations to the UAE that our little apartment in Sharjah had no creepy crawlies. But within a month of our domicile, I noticed a few brown cockroaches at night or early morning in the kitchen which scurried away at my appearance. Soon their numbers multiplied and they stopped running away when I came. That the kitchen was dark in the absence of artificial lighting made matters convenient for the intruders. They inspected my cutlery and crockery with abandon and rested in the kitchen cabinets and under the sink. I had no choice but to wash each utensil before using. I bought baits from the store but none fell for them. On a friend's advice I sprinkled boric acid powder on the floor but to no avail.
I surfed the net for information on my unwelcome guests and learnt that they are called German cockroaches. Back home in Kerala, I had seen only the American cockroach variety, browner and bigger, and prone to flying out of the dark recesses of the rice granary into the pale yellow light of the kitchen. They flew around like drones on a mission until grandma swished her broom and brought them down dead on the floor. I hated them as much as the huge beetles that lived on coconut trees and which rushed into our homes on rainy nights.
My fear of  Periplaneta Americana changed to a strange love in the zoology lab during my higher secondary school days. It was the easiest to dissect while frogs and earthworms gave me a tough time.
All that I knew about roaches was that they would inherit the earth in the aftermath of a nuclear war, which I felt was unfair. But now I needed to know more about this little brown variety - what they ate and how they lived, and most importantly how to exterminate them.
I learnt that they lived in nests and colonies and not in isolation, have a funny gait (walking on three legs and dragging the fourth) and do not fly, are gregarious and share food (infecting each other if it is poison), that an adult female roach in its three-month-long lifetime laid over 30 eggs, and loved flour and sugary stuff. That they even ate soaps and gels did not make matters easier. The only hope was that they could not survive without water though they could live without food for over two weeks.
Apart from sprinkling boric powder so that it would stick to their legs and eventually choke them and their accomplices, I made small balls with boric powder, milk powder, sugar and wheat flour, cleared the garbage bin every night before bed, and sanitised the kitchen tops. I threatened to add a couple of roaches in hubby's morning tea to get him to act. He called a couple of pest control agents upon my constant nagging, but left it at that. In the end, I found a person who offered,  for a modest fee, to free our house of the pests for 6 months at least. He came on a holiday and sprayed chocolate mixed gel in the kitchen and bathroom. By evening, we saw a significant fall in their numbers and many lying dead under the kitchen sink. But it didnt eradicate the pests completely since they had more interesting things to eat (the atta flour used for making rotis every night being the major culprit) in the kitchen than bitter gels.
In fact, they grew bolder and came running to the cutting board as I chopped vegetables or made rotis. They walked around in glee through spoons and ladles which meant double work for me - I had to wash each of them carefully before use.
I resigned to my fate, but nurtured a tiny hope in our impending Xmas vacation. Before we left for India, I cleared the kitchen of all food residues save for the boric powder balls and poured cleaning liquid into the toilet bowls to deprive them of water.
When we returned two weeks later, there were still a couple of roaches under the sink. I used my last weapon  - the fly swatter or my rubber slippers - to get rid of any that came my way. Miraculously, I did not see any more and we have been living in relative peace for the past 7 months. If at all any creep past our door, there's the boric powder to stop them at the door itself. Good riddance, Blatella germanica. Touchwood!

Mira speaks

Mira is like her paternal granny speaking her mind and making us guffaw. Like her she often does it out of ignorance and often to extract a laugh.
What's the Milky Way? She asks.
It's a galaxy of stars of which our solar system is a part, I tell her.
But isn't Galaxy a chocolate?
***
The kids have been pestering us to give them a baby brother/sister they can cuddle and take care of.  I tell them I am too old for that now and that there'll be complications. They do not understand or believe it as a family friend who shifted to Dubai around the same time as us, had a late pregnancy (though she's much younger than me) and a baby daughter.
Mira therefore presented the case to her dad: I need a baby sister like that.
V said it's too late and God will not give us any more.
I think you are bluffing, Appa. You are not trying hard enough!
***
Mira slyly gets into the bed with us most nights these days as she's bored with her bunk bed. She gets bored very easily and is always looking to change the order of things in the house. I am just the opposite and doesnt change the position of anything - which is convenient as one gets older and prone to memory lapses.
Fed on a diet of Malayalam romantic flicks, she believes that couples are entitled to moments of intimacy only in the early years of marriage. No touching Amma, she instructs her dad and wraps his hands around herself.
But she's my wife, V protests.
But she's my mother now, Mira retorts.

Alarm

The Ikea alarm clock can wake up the whole building but not Ash. Determined to wake up on time instead of after repeated entreaties by the parents, Mira sets the alarm for 7.25 am and keeps it on the bunk bed ladder. The clock falls to the ground with a thud when Ash decided to come down for a glass of water, and father rushes in to check what the commotion is.
Father: Why can't you keep the alarm on the table instead of on the ladder?
Mira: I will lose my sleep if I have to walk to the table to turn it off. If it's on the ladder I can switch it off and go back to sleep!

Responsibly yours

At the dinner table, the boy gets majorly scolded for failing to remind mother about his afternoon dose of antibiotic. The father begins and mother joins in (she extricated herself from blame citing failing memory) and the poor boy looks almost tearful. He's reprimanded for failing to show responsibility though he's nearing his teens. Having been a sick child and maids and parents taking care of his needs, he has shown little personal responsibility and discipline.
Not so the girl. She's more meticulous, loves to cook and housekeep, and is careful about the nitty gritties. Each time the boy gets chided, she's about to burst in tears which is partly because she's afraid she's next in line for Father's fury and partly because she loves the boy however much they bicker. So she made a checklist in the night for both of them and hung it on the main door so that they would see it before they rushed to the vacation camp in the morning. (The questions are : did you comb your hair/ drink water/ eat your medicine/pack your snacks and water? Then GO!)