the lil champ

Last month my elder brother got married. A lot of my cousins had come for the marriage and we had a nice time after a long time.Some of my elder cousin sisters who were married placed official invitations to me to visit their cities. I reluctantly nodded to all of them at once.

Finally the Navarathri festival was upon us and I was wondering whose requests to address first. One of my cousins in Chennai had given birth to a baby boy a year ago, and I hadn't even visited them yet. Feeling bad about that, I decided that I would spend my Navarathri weekend with her. Also, there were already comments that the boy was of the same birth star as mine, and people were talking about how he would now follow my path. This was the fourth such instance in the family and so far the cousins and nieces of the same birth star were strikingly similar in nature. So, I too was curious to see this new avatar nephew of mine, wondering how he would fit the gang...

Dream nephews

I promptly booked tickets and made it to her home on the morning of the Saturday of Navarathri. I was spoke to my brother-in-law for a while. My cousin was nowhere to be seen, as she was bathing the baby. I decided to go inside and talk to her. One seeing me, she waved to me and talked while massaging the  baby who now lie on her feet, with some smelly oil from a red bottle. She seemed to be rubbing and massaging quite strongly. I was worried seeing that and asked her whether it was safe to handle a baby so roughly.

someone was enjoying it..

To that, she replied with a wink- "This will make him strong. How do you think he will be strong like you and climb mountains and ride up the Everest?". I nearly fell for that flattery but making a late detection of mockery, made my escape to the kitchen for a bite. I kept thinking of how a small baby could take such rough handling and what she had meant. I decided she was just pulling my legs, glancing at my 2 year old 'IT' tummy. Automatically my hands took the cue and dropped the biscuit packet, which I was half way through. My legs dragged me to the guest room and I went to get refreshed.

After a bath in the cold water and a hot breakfast of 'Infinite Dosa', I washed the plates and with a burp dragged myself to the drawing room for some TV. Karan, my nephew was now all freshened up too after his rough bath and a tummy full of cerelac(or whatever it is that babies eat these days). He started following me around on his knees. I ignored him for a while, walking at a normal pace that I was sure babies couldn't keep up with.

a jolt to bolt..

But soon I found him crawling between my legs or obstructing me again and again. To play around a bit, I started moving zig-zag making him play catch up. I was sure he wouldn't make it, so I moved around slowly, calling him to me. But I was surprised to see him catch me even before I could finish calling his name. Though it was a 25 yr old adult against a 1 year old baby, I decided I should win at least a round. But he didn't let me and I was tired after a while. Frustrated, I went out for a walk and on returning, I was glad to see him asleep. I somehow spent the rest of the day without going head-on against him. "This wasn't happening!!!". The Leo in me was clearly depressed.

My brother-in-law had the night shift and left for office by evening. The action movie we decided to watch on TV was quite boring. Karan was lying next to my sister who was beginning to doze off halfway through. I noticed that Karan was awake now and was playing with some stuffed toy. My phone rang suddenly and I jumped up startled to check it. My hand must have hit something heavy and it hurt. I pulled back my hand and looked around to see what I had hit. To my horror, the heavy cupboard was tipping over and it was gonna fall straight on top of Karan, who seemed busy kicking his toy out of his cradle. I wanted to scream, to kick my sister awake, and pull Karan out of the way. But my feet seemed frozen to the floor and I couldn't feel even a squeak come out of throat. I closed my eyes and tried not to think what would happen, praying to all the Gods whose pictures hung on the wall behind me. "Why Oh Gods??"

innocence is bliss

After a second, not hearing even a sound, I opened my eyes to see that the cupboard now rested on the cradle. I found my feet were stuck no longer and ran to Karan to check whether he was OK. He seemed to be perfectly OK and in fact was overjoyed and lay there giggling. A wave of relief passed over me. I didn't notice until then that his legs were held high. My eyes followed his legs to see what he was doing and I almost had my heart in my mouth seeing what he had done. The cupboard rested on his tiny feet and he seemed to hold its weight. I was busy rubbing my eyes several times to check if I was dreaming, when he kicked it aside and it landed with a loud THUD on the ground.

Next thing I know, I was wide awake staring at the TV which had started playing some Teleshopping programs and I looked up to see my sister standing above me with a rolled newspaper in her hand. Her expressions told me all that I needed to know. But feeling the dry throat, I craned my neck to check on Karan. I was glad to find him rolling in his cradle, giggling loudly. As I got up and examined the red bottle from which my sister had taken the oil for massaging him, I couldn't help feel something uncanny.

The 'Tail' expert

This post was written as a part of the Indiblogger contest "Traditional Knowledge, Natural Growth".