101st Dalmation

I woke up one day covered with spots. Red itchy ones.
Measles, I think. Finally, I get to sit back in bed while everyone pampers me.
No, said the doc, it’s an allergy. NO bed.
What am I allergic to, I ask? Doctors – HaHa.
The doc is not amused.

I go through 2 months of tests.
Pin pricks, punch pricks, a patch test (which makes me look like a robot, because I have this huge patch full of 30 little spots stuck onto my back). I tell the nurse when she comes to pull it off - So now, you’re going to open up my back and replace my batteries.. Haha.
The nurse is not amused. She yanks the patch off, and I yell.
Mental note : Add nurses to my allergies.

3 months of spots over… no diagnosis. 5 more doctors consulted.
Dermatologists, Derma-toxi-tolgoists, Derma-I have a degree from Scotland-tologists.
A lot of my money goes. None of the spots go.
Says the Derma-I am dead serious about this -tologist – You need a skin biopsy.
I dissolve into tears. I have Cancer. Then I remember, that if I have Cancer, I have precious little time, so I must not waste my time crying. I must make a Will.
I realize I have less money in the bank, and more debts to pay – that is not a good thing to Will someone I love. No Wills. Back to crying.

4 months – Don’t be an idiot. Go to a Homeopath, say All the Wise Ones, in my life.
I flush out all the pills. And go to the Homeopath.
No, No, You have done it all wrong, says this doc, You are poisoning yourself. Allopathy kills. Drink water, don’t drink coffee, don’t kill yourself.
I take lots of sweet little white balls. I get a new red spot for every homeo ball I take.
I also have huge migraines from not having coffee.
Bye to the Homeo, Back to the coffee.
If I am going to die, I want to die happy.

It’s now been 6 months of spots.
Take Safi to clean your blood, says my Mother (Mothers know best?)
Take bitter gourd juice in the morning, says another Wise One.
You are allergic to your dog, says another doctor. (Poor Marco goes through 5 weeks of tic-tac medicinal baths and doesn’t know what’s hit him.)
You are allergic to dust, pollen, bugs, mosquitoes (say docs numbers 5 to 8).
You have spotted swine flu, says someone who has been watching too much news.
I have now done so many tests, that I can google myself as a case study.
I can never wear shorts again in my life – booo hoooo !
I will never be cured of my allergic cancer to dogs and dust mites and doctors. Boo hooooo !

Woke up this morning to even more spots.
Mama, says Neel, you look amazing ! You’ve turned into a leopard.

I LOVE YOU, NEEL !

Who let the cat out?

Today, I drove out and stuck my car into the worst ever traffic jam.
A narrow street, half of it being dug up, and cars stuck at strange angles which would make it quite impossible for anyone to go anywhere, unless some cars were to suddenly sprout wings.
So I stepped out of my car and plodded over to find out what happened. This is what I was told.
A black cat crossed the road.
The red car about to cross jammed on its brakes. The white car behind it and the 2 bikes behind that all went and smashed into the red car. A black SUV van from the other side of the road also refused to cross after the black cat, so it turned into a 1-way-road, and jammed up a dozen peace-loving vehicles on that road. Another bike with 3 people on it tried to get in between, and got in STUCK in between it all.
Everyone was arguing with everyone else. Like the Tower of Babel.
The red car had an angry woman screaming in Bengali. The white car had a driver screaming in Hindi. The auto drivers (from 11 cars down the road all came to pass loud judgement in Kannada). The black van had a teenager hurling choisest abuses in Punjabi (I think).
In the midst of this all, some smart guy on a moped thought he’d squeeze in between and get out, so he passed.
THE BLACK CAT SPELL WAS BROKEN !
Some auto guy yelled out to him and told him he’d crossed the black cat path. The moped guy now came back to push the black van driver, who took a swing at someone else who had just stopped to listen.
Soon, it was back to Square One. Or by now, Octagon One.
A yellow school bus conductor had come out to join the fight. All the school kids were out playing in the dirty drain. Some guy came selling American Sun Shades. A woman with a kid drinking milk out of her came to beg for money. Some auto drivers left their autos in the middle of the mess and went to drink tea. A foreigner started taking photographs. And the black van driver threw him a punch too.
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40 minutes later, by some miracle it began to rain. Everyone got into their own cars and started their engines. As the first car was about to pull out, the black cat, who had been sitting on a wall watching the entertainment, decided to saunter across the road again.


Learning : I am not superstitious, but probably really stupid. Because I cannot understand why I can’t cut hair on a Tuesday, or marry someone born on a Monday. Or why walking under a ladder, or crossing the road after a cat, or breaking a mirror will cause me 7 years of bad luck. Unless of course, the cat decides to stop crossing the road, and comes back to scratch me to shreds. In which, 7 years of bad luck will be the least of my worries.

The Birds and the Bees

What’s a good time to give your kids their first hint at a topic that will fascinate them forever after? At 14 or 10 or 6 ?
Some snippets from discussion with friends :
Mom 1 : Whose lil daughter thought that women grew boobs when their babies blew air into them.
Mom 2 : When asked about what a condom was said it was a small balloon, and had her son yell in a birthday party that he wanted a condom NOW.
Dad 3 : Whose 3 year old son asked him whether he’d found his fucking car keys yet.
Me : My son at 5, is still happily innocent. He thinks women have 3 ‘belly buttons’.

In our house, in our attempt to bring them up naturally and healthily etc… we let them get their sex education from National Geographic and Animal Planet.
So Neel sees the wilderbeast “pottying” out a baby, and I’ve caught him once or twice sitting on the pot, and sneaking a peek to see if he was producing anything living himself.
He has no clue of course where the baby comes from, and still threatens to send his little brother back to the hospital gift shop that supplied him.
Mom 4 is mightily worried when she read about a 13-year-old boy fathering a kid, since her own son is that age himself, and she is struggling enough with being a mom, forget being a GRANDMOM !

The last time I was inspired to tell Neel about the birds and the bees, I chickened out, and just told him the difference between eagles and hawks. But the world is changing quick. And kids are getting smarter than their old pops and moms.
So one day pretty soon, Neel’s gonna sit me down and tell me : Now Ma, I think you’re grown up enough to understand this. I hate to tell you this but Niks did not come from a hospital gift shop. He came from a dinosaur egg.