Talking to my mother over the phone recently, I reported the
current status of my son Nevin’s movement capability. Well, he is still
crawling (rapidly like those very hungry alligators or crocodiles or whatever
if you can tell them fucking apart) and haven’t started walking yet.
He can hold on to furniture or wall and walk, and actually
stand for few seconds on his own. But the weight of his diapers surrenders to the
gravity and its back to square one which happens to be crawling to the TV decoder
and speakers that he keeps terrorising at no end.
Nevin is one years old today and still yet to start walking.
My mom said that I myself was a late bloomer. I was one years and three month’s
old (Christmas day, little would I know that it coincides the most important
festive event my-would be wife would celebrate) when mom first saw me walking,
after which she was immediately whisked away to deliver her second baby, my
brother and my best friend, Balan Kumar, the next day.
I think it was the dismay of my mother not relishing the
“first walk” moment, that a year later I pushed Balan off the bed onto the
floor causing hairline fracture on his shoulder bone (we still have the X-Ray. He
ain’t heavy, he’s my brother..
Currently, Nevin is making lots of noise. We are trying to
get to call us mom and dad in Malayalam, “Accha” and “Amma” (according to my
family’s tradition; wife’s folks are referred to as Daddy and Mommy, which I
feel is a tad too overused in American sit-coms). Unfortunately, “Accha”
through his mouth becomes “Attta” a local Indian Muslim version of “bro”
and his version of “Amma” sounded like
“Hanna” a possibly name of a Malay girl.
We confronted him and he never revealed the reasons for
those pronunciations, especially the Malay girl part (I have a Malay colleague
by the name of Hanna who actually has a cute baby girl….but that’s a different
matter).
Anyway, not much progress o report here. He just crawls
around, terrorising the living room, bedrooms, store room and….kitchen.
Kitchen is becoming important to him. If one of us are in
it, he doesn’t want to miss the moment, especially Accha ruining another dish.
And if Amma is having her meal, he has to have it no matter how baby unfriendly
the dish is.
Right now, we are already thinking of his future, of what he
should be one day. Like most mommys and
daddys with failed aspiration, we really love for him to become a musician or a
singer. One of the relatives, during Christmas got him a
tiny piano-toy, shaped like elephant.
He started plonking it and joy we felt. Will he be the next
Ilayaraja? Or Danny Elfman? Or Jimmy Page? Well, it was not until second day
when he started to beat the shit out of it on the floor and ruined it. Looks
like he’d be the next Pete Townshend.
But damn, he’s one year old now. Every morning I wake up to
see an extremely tiny man sleeping next to my wife and I ask, “Whoa, how did
that happen?”
And how he changed our life.
Everything is now centred around him, or behind him when he
does his extreme poo-poo. One years passed by and looking forward to many more
years, especially when I don’t have to buy diaper anymore.
Happy birthday Nevin Shankaran Kumar, accha and amma love you so much.
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| Nevin, when he is in good term with the toy piano. |
