Morning tidbits

Now, here is what I’d like to understand – why do children, the kinds who have moon faces and no teeth, drop everything on the ground? And then look down? And then drop things again? Why? What are they trying to figure out?

Maybe it is not so much the connection between the falling object and the floor. Maybe, instead, it is the falling object and some hysterical adult (mainly female) that unfailingly appears while the object is getting dropped.

It’s a theory I will work on some time in the future.

In any case, here’s what I see on my way home from my jogs. (I do go jogging – that is ‘ogging’ with a ‘J’ and not ‘ogging’ with an ‘H’. The latter has been put on hold until my upset tummy gets settled.)

There’s a little kid who sits in a wicker chair in the balcony of a building I pass by. Usually, a harassed lady is trying to get him to eat something. But the child has other plans. He throws orange quarts outside the balcony and looks down. This occurs some ten times. The harassed lady is now on her knees with an extremely supplicant expression. The child probably misunderstands the intention and proceeds to pelt the lady with oranges. Now, moving targets are more interesting than stationery targets, therefore the child is merry when using projectiles.

I find the whole thing really cute. So, from down below I yell, ‘Hellloooo baby!’ in a cootchie-coo voice. The child looks down and smiles…and then, throws an orange quart at me.

Well, I appreciate the familiarity but perhaps an introduction was in order before hitting me. The tangerine lands wetly on my nose and I decide that I must be on my way. So I wave a quick goodbye, and hurry ahead. The child is extremely taken in by how an immovable target can suddenly become mobile, so I hear another orange quart splunch behind me.

Hmm…definitely a place to avoid during Holi.

Then I come home to find my mother awake and abuzz with the excitement of several children with several peeled oranges. As the morning progresses, we have a small argument about how the nail polish I want to wear should be ‘tomato red’ and not ‘tomato pink’ as she’s suggesting. Father intervenes with ‘ There are also green tomatoes.’

Ma then asks me, ‘You still want to get married?’ pointing towards Papa.

Papa replies, ‘If we wouldn’t we married, how would you have got such excellent children?’

Ma re-thinks and asks me again, ‘You still want to get married?’

And that’s how I know it’s going to be a wonderful, wonderful day.