One, two ka four
Four two ka one
“Appa” Amlu said to me a few days ago on the way back from her school.
“Yes chellam?”
“Did you know that 48 and 48 is 96” she said as she jumped in a puddle
“AMAZING” I gasped, while taking off my glasses to get the rainwater off.
My enthusiasm for this mathematical proficiency is one of my strongest genetic markers after my ear hair. This used to be a recurring theme in our road trips growing up. Driving to some hill station or temple town, my dad would pass the time by asking us quick fire math questions.
“What’s 43 x 37”
I’d get the odd one first but my brother was a lot quicker on the ball than I was. And this would also extend to whatever athletic activity we would indulge in to pass the time. Badminton, Tennis or most often because that’s what was on offer, Table Tennis.
After 2 straight games of a scoreline of 11 to 0, I would give in to baser instincts and begin to throw my racket in frustration. This is when my father would intervene by offering to play with one of us. His game was heavy on spin and cutting the ball and he had a mean serve.
The score line didn’t change much, I would lose to him instead of my brother. He would repeat the score at the start of every point, while tossing the ball up.
“6-0. Fight”
It was only when I got older and I realised that he said ‘Fight’ even when I was leading, was that he was giving a pep talk, not to me but to himself.
When I contrast this to his demeanour as a grandparent, I have to pinch myself to remind myself that this is the same person. Like the holiday we went on in December where during a game of Uno he voluntarily draws 8 cards on being given a ‘Draw 2’ by Amlu.
It was our first holiday travelling with 2 kids but with grandparents and an uncle and aunt, it also meant windows of childcare. Which meant rare treats for Mali and I like being out together past 9 pm or getting to take a cat nap on a flight.
Also since it was happening after ‘Imooni’ as the baby is called by her sister (after that phase when she called her Pupu Sultan) had turned 4 months, she was beginning to flash previews of what the new family dynamic was like.
One was the introduction of a distinct personality. Someone who for an infant, was surprisingly chilled out and uber social. She seemed unruffled by international flights, meeting elephants and being passed around like a joint by family members at a reunion .
This may also be our new dynamic as being second time parents. We were blasé about things like her eating beach sand and drinking pool water. Things that I would have wrung my hands over or rushed Amlu to a doctor were we to witness it. Or it maybe the reality that all second children grasp intuitively that their default is not undivided attention but benign neglect.
Any such dynamic, I do not remember myself as a child. Partly because like Amal, I had more facetime with my grandparents after they all moved to Bangalore. But also because of the army of people, my brother and I got accustomed to having around as a byproduct of our new found affluence. Sometimes, while discussing something from that time in the presence of others, others get a glimpse of the bratty existence we experienced as children.
“Macha where did we go da, for swimming class?” I asked Kau at dinner.
“Bangalore club?”
“No da that hotel where we went when Appa lost his corporate membership for a bit”
“Le Meridien”
When Mali spat out her drink, I realized this was one of those moments.
If Amlu had been present, she would have probably asked where she was when my brother and I were in swim class in the 90s. Or corrected my pronunciation as a french immersion student.
“Appa, it’s Luh Mer-id-yaan”
Even though this was our longest trip back since moving to Canada, Amlu had no problems making it feel like she had never left Bangalore. From family visits to Basavangudi to baking classes in Cooke Town, she stayed busy and never mentioned Canada. Also the warm weather gave her a Joie De Vivre that disappears when the temperature drops below 10 degrees. Like every trip, it was like a glimpse of what her life could have been like had we not moved. Or me trying to unpack what the move had really meant for her, like that time I was talking about it to a childhood friend over beers.
“How long has it been”
“4 years almost da, will be 4 by this March”
“Do you feel like you’re in the money”
“Bro do you know what diapers cost-“
“No da its a poker reference, do you feel like its been a win”
“Oh, Ya da. As a parent, definitely”
I know that was not my initial assessment of moving. Within our first day, a bug that Amlu had picked up enroute had taken us to the emergency room. It took a while for her to get back to normal. I still remember that constant worry in the back of my head- “have we made a mistake”.
10 days into our move, we went to the park behind our friend’s house and Amlu who was in a blue snow suit began to giggle as I pushed her back and forth in the swing on a chilly but sunny day. I will never forget that toothy smile and the visible breath in the cold as she laughed.
And somehow we’ve made it from there, through 4 winters, 4 addresses, 2 schools and 1 baby making Toronto- the longest I’ve stayed anywhere outside of JP Nagar (20+ years) and Nagarbhavi (5 years). As a parent, this window has taken me from crying at Amlu’s first day of daycare to recently tearing up at her first gymnastics showcase.
The emotion was brief when I had to be back in the moment to stop Imooni from trying to swallow anybody’s keys.
If you had told me in 2021, that I could simultaneously heat milk, feed an infant and carry her around like a knapsack while following the first child around with my phone camera as she was traipsing around a gym, I would have laughed. I lasted one day as a solo parent in India when Mali had COVID and I was distancing with Amal. At one point I surrounded her with suitcases so I could keep her entertained while taking a hurried bathroom break.
Now I have to entertain her with different dosa shapes while feeding an infant that’s exercising her lungs like Usha Uthup warming up for a show.
“Appa I want a heart shaped one”
“I want a cat”
“I want a rainbow one..with a sun”
I think I am only a few years from a request like
“I want a Daliesque metaphor for the crumbling social order in late stage capitalism appa”
“You want a Cafe Rameshwaram dosa chellam?”
Being back in the thick of it, or parenting on hard mode as Mali calls it, I think this is one of the few things that makes me feel like “I’m in the money”. Even though the daily grind of cleaning, feeding and dressing is the constant, I have gotten much more time with these brats than I would have in Bangalore. Be it the mundane stuff like taking them grocery shopping or taking advantage of the weather going above 15 to go to a park. While Amal was busy playing with her friends, Imooni, in a blue snow suit, was giggling as she tried the swing for the first time. She’s now just a few months shy of the age her sister was when we moved here.
And a lot of this time, with baby #2 is spent in preventing voluntary injury or illness. Her mobility and her personality are blooming in parallel, causing us to have to rush to pull her away from the stairs or from plugs that she wants to eat or shoes that she wants to lick. Mali has even gotten her a helmet that makes her look like an infant mutant ninja turtle.
Where her sister was more sedate, I have had to make this goof crawl in building hallways and restaurant floors just for her to burn some of that energy. I have never had to excuse myself from a sing along or circle time because my child was disrupting it, up till now. Like the host of a Japanese restaurant who came upto me when she saw me wiggle earphones on the ground to have Imooni crawl 5 feet towards me.
“Sir, I would not advise it, our floor is not that clean”
“It is now, look at her pants!”
She also is more vocal in sharing her feelings- which now extends to annoyance if she does not get her way. Like that time I had to pull her away from a table tennis ball and she let out a loud yell/cry. Amlu instead of lecturing her as she has in the past, looked at me to resolve it.
“What’s she saying appa?”
“I think she’s saying, Fight.”