All fall down

I recently told my dearest friend that she was one of the weirdest people I knew (which probably says a lot more about me than I want it to.) Point being that weirdness qua weirdness is not necessarily weird. It can be someone's normal.

All kids are weirdly normal in that sense. In my case, I used to shamelessly brag about my impressive collection of falls, fractures, and fevers.

The memory of a hot summer afternoon in Jaipur is etched clearly in my mind. Restless as usual, my 4-year-old self trotted up to our terrace and started swapping tales with the boy on the other terrace (which was linked to ours by – of all things – an 8-inch-wide cement plank) One thing led to another and as we bonded over sand and water on our respective terraces, he shared his dream of building a sand-castle, if only he had enough sand. He did have water on the terrace, but no sand. I had some in the corner of our terrace and decided to contribute to this noble vision by ferrying some across.

The only trouble was that we were both on terraces of first floor apartments, which meant running up and down several flights of stairs with a handful of sand. I figured that the smarter thing to do would be to take a shortcut and use the cement plank to cross.

Did I mention that it was a two-storey drop to the ground below the cement plank? No? Ah well.

So me being the sucker I always was, (You have the sand, you bring it across. I can’t carry water.) I carried sand in one hand and slid my bum across the plank with the other. And then slid back for the next handful. Except that I got cocky and impatient after just a single round of this. I ventured out with a double handful of sand – which of course, meant that I didn’t have a hand free to hold on to the aforesaid plank with – and promptly took a tumble to the ground.

It was probably thanks to the diligent fauji fellows who had watered the ground that day, that I still have a brain (of sorts). That, and the fortuitous miss – there was a massive stone about half a foot from where I landed. Of course I yelled my head off. What four-year-old wouldn’t?

However, I had calmed down enough by the time we were on our way back from the doctor’s, to sagely inform my worried mother, “Don’t worry. Bachchey toh girtey rahtein hain (Kids are always falling down)” After which I acquired bragging rights based on a black tooth.

Then there was the time I was showing off my general fearlessness of water to a younger kid and jumped into the shallow end of the pool, twisting and cracking my foot. This one did damage my street cred "HOW did you manage to get a fracture in the pool?" Like I was trying for one or something...

Or the two times when I forgot myself in a daydream and found my foot squished within the spokes of the rear bicycle wheel. 

Or the one on the badminton court or the one on the basketball court or... (yes there are more...)

So why is it that when K has a fall, I am alarmed out of all reasonable proportion? Yes, she is is still an infant. But that doesn't explain why the sight of even a little blood anywhere near that tiny terror stops my breath. How did my parents keep calm when I cycled back home (twice) with what turned out to be a fractured foot? How did they not go completely bananas when I fell from the terrace? Or ran a fever of over 106? Or came down with asthma attacks so severe that I was in the ICU for days together? Or any of those things that seemed to happen to me with alarming regularity?

When she tumbled from the bed while playing recently, I was outwardly calm but completely panicked on the inside when PP pointed out the nosebleed. She settled soon enough while PP and I checked for concussion, vomiting, responsiveness and the usual hysterical drill that we go through every time she has a fall and hits her head. She was fine and we harvested the bloody booger a couple of days later (yeah, I know, gross! But why are you reading this if you're not up for a little baby poo and mousies (our word for boogers).

Keep calm and parent on. And admire your parents anew every day. And thank them for not raising you to be paranoid. 

Chaandi ki saikal (sic) soney ki seat/ aao chalein darrrling/ challlein (sic) dubble (sic) seat

Ahhh - just a great feeling to just go (sic, sic, sic - bam dhishoom wham) after an exhausting few days between travel, work, the bumble bee, and whatever else I do to regularly lose my sanity. 

So the song (yes, the title of this blog really was a song - back in the day... which day, might that be, you ask? I stare down my regrettably non-patrician nose and say: the day - and think to myself in parentheses [you boor!])

Ah yes, the song... talks about a silver cycle, with a seat of gold and Romeo inviting his beloved to ride "double seat" with him. Very hummable it was too in a distinctly earworm-ish fashion... From the 1991 film, Bhabhi, starring none other than Govinda. 

The reason it came to mind recently, was because of K's current obsession with cycles. As she was spinning the pedals on our family cycle (PP went and bought a car-cycle rack and all - how sweet... especially when I spent two hours trying to figure out how to fix the damn thing and we almost never cart it around with us) it came to me that just like a cycle wheel, which goes round (Yes, I am Einstein, before you get clever) our lives pretty much spin in the same way. 

No matter how much we think we have left our childhoods behind, and how there is never any going back, something happens to trigger a memory and there you are, mentally flash-backing through a speeded-up time-lapse. Things change but still stay the same. 

When I was a kid (admittedly a cocooned one thanks to a childhood spent in Army cantonments across the country), public transport was not even a blip on the horizon for me. Sure, there were holidays where we all piled into cycle rickshaws and autos, even ikkas and tangas and the like on the way to Ye Olde Ancestral Village, but it was never something to be factored into one's daily life. The bicycle ruled at home, else you walked, or got a ride with Dad or tried to look pitiful while doing the 3-km trek back from the sailing club into a headwind, wearing wet clothes and squelchy shoes, hoping that some kindly student officer on a bike would offer you a ride home... 

The sailing club at the College of Military Engineering, Dapodi, Pune

So, virtually no exposure to public transport, because the need wasn't there. Moving to Delhi was a different matter. I clearly remember how a lot of other officers would commandeer army staff cars for school pick-ups and drops or even if they had to visit a friend's. Dad was a made of a different metal. 

School was walking distance initially and when we moved to Central Delhi, there was a school bus. Delhi also meant that nearby swimming options were limited. I had turned up my (admittedly non-patrician) nose at the then bean-shaped pool in the DSOI claiming that I refused to swim in a "puddle", so I was carted off to the Talkatora stadium with its Olympic-sized pools, where I had to pass a swimming test. That done, I ventured to ask Dad (who had done the carting off) about my daily commute to the pool from Dhaula Kuan where we lived. Would he drop me? No, I don't have the time. Would he give me auto fare? I can't afford it. Then? Take the bus. A bit daunted (I was 14 and something) I asked him which bus? I don't know. The bus stop is conveniently located just outside the enclave. Find out. And thus began my love-hate relationship with the Delhi Transport Corporation. By the time I was 15 and had my first summer job (another story - jisme drama hai, humour hai, magar koi romance nahi hai) I was a pro. I travelled all over Delhi in buses from the then unimaginably remote Anand Vihar (this was a quarter of a century ago, people) to Kishangarh village which was so deserted, it could be downright scary - no Vasant Kunj existed in those days. 

College meant yet more buses to and from my college hostel in North Campus. And to visit the parents at home over the long weekends, there were the long-distance buses from the Inter-State Bus Terminal.

So when a lot of people look horrified that I prefer to take the Metro over driving a long distance, I am a bit taken aback. I have even heard condescending statements like "That's very brave and err... ecologically conscious of you - I can't do it," accompanied by "poor thing, she can't afford it" looks. I ignore those. But when it comes to insinuating that I am being a careless mom for taking my toddler on the Metro, I am honestly in two minds about whether to have a hysterical laughing fit on the floor or blow up right there. 

Really? Even the PP agrees with me on this one and he is as paranoid as first time Papas come. Our daughter is not going to be some wallflower who has to be driven everywhere. She will learn to cope with public transport and not see it as a form of slumming. Yes, it's not safe. Our world isn't. So, I put it to you, should I equip her to deal with it? Or should I just shut out the big bad world? For how long? There are no easy answers. 

But while I am trundling around the little pampered miss in her car seat at the back or toting her in a carrier in the train or elsewhere, those decisions are mercifully still a while away, even if the questions aren't.