Yesterday, no more !!

There are bad days and there are bad days. And there are those days when everything goes wrong. Yesterday seemed to be one of those.
It began with an ominous sign. Involuntarily, I woke up at 6:30 in the morning on a Saturday. It was not provoked by one of those "some people laze around while I have to toil till my bones get pickled" stuff from my wife or my daughter deciding that my reclining enormous body mass is a good for practicing rock climbing. I woke up without any external stimulus and was in a pensive mood, not being able to figure out what was wring with me. 

I made some tea (was a disaster as I was in a contemplative mood and therefore the timing had gone for a toss), roamed listlessly and then tried to make some breakfast (boiled the living daylights out of the instant porridge for my daughter) without any spectacular success. 

I decided to spend some "quality" time with my daughter (for the less-informed ones : it is now considered fashionably metro-sexual to play some "kiddish" games with your daughter as long as you package it with some pithy advises like "your only competition is with yourself; keep trying" or "understand the hidden morality while you apply the crayons on your Barbie"). After several moments of careful pondering, I decided that golf would be a good bet. 

Let me explain this a bit, lest you start imagining that I stay in one of those sprawling bungalow with an attached mini-golf course. Sprawling bungalow, forsooth !! Golf, for me and my daughter, is played in our 12' X 8' drawing room with a plastic golf club which, in reality, is a container for selling jelly beans. The ball is a tennis ball which had appeared on our balcony courtesy some wannabe Sachin Tendulkar trying to hit a sixer. An empty blue can, which, at some point of time, housed an "Indigo" USB stick acts as the golf hole. This is, in fact, the only part of the Indigo USB stick package which is serving any purpose; the USB stick itself had decided to die a happy death within 72 hrs of purchasing the same from a lissome air hostess of Indigo airlines with a brilliant smile (Life's lesson # 32 : Never buy a USB memory stick just because the air hostess has a lovely pair of legs. The sex appeal of the air hostess has nothing to do with the effectiveness of the device in question). 

Coming back to the game of golf; my daughter beat me to it. There are several reasons to it like 
a) She plays in a unique style wherein she uses the golf club like a hockey stick and drags the ball with it till it is about 10 cm from the hole (or Indigo can, if you want to be technical about it).
b) The plastic golf club swaggers like swagging walking sticks which the Hollywood villains of 1940s used to flaunt
c) Playing golf forces you to bend down, a process which causes excruciating pain in the lumbar region. Also the substantial layers of near-permanent fat around the midriff also causes some trouble in breathing. 
After getting beaten thrice in a row, I decided to give it up. This "quality time" was getting on to my nerves and I decided that a return to the traditional tough father was in order. I decided that it is now study time for the kiddo.
Nowadays, there is something called EVS in their curriculum. The full form of EVS has been carefully concealed but from what I could gather, it is designed to teach general knowledge to children. I started with "sense organs" and tried to explain to my daughter that nose is for smell. She promptly pointed out that it is for making noises - the kind I make while I am sleeping. I let it pass, though made a careful note of it for taking up with the missus ("Where is she learning all these stuffs? No respect for parents...blah blah blah). Next were the eyes, wherein she commented that I keep them closed whenever I am at home as I am usually sleeping. She also masqueraded my alleged use of eyes and nose with an astonishing degree of accuracy. 
She seemed to have a more than necessary grip on "sense organs", I decided to switch to "My family". Here I explained her "Father", "Mother", "Parents" etc and the progress was generally peaceful till we reached "siblings". Things started hot at this stage as incisive questions like why she does not have any siblings, how are children born, why we cannot get a sibling next day morning etc were asked. Things really started getting out of hand when she started asking whether the "guard" is a "brother" of the "maid" and why they always hold hands and wink at each other. Enough education for the day, I concluded. Let the "idiot-box nanny" with her unending series of Tom and Jerry take over. 
It was nearing lunch time and nothing to eat in the house. I decided to drive down to a newly opened eatery and check it out. It is a joint called Big Mouth and has some very fancy stuffs like "Chammak Challo" (Lachcha Parantha with dal, curd, pickle), " Kuddi Panjaab Di" (Chawal with Rajma) and similar stuffs. The key offering seemed to be a dish called "Murgi Phansi Jaal Me" (which, simply put, is chicken curry and rice). I decided to play safe and bought a couple of kathi rolls. These were the weirdest rolls I had ever consumed - a thin semi-cooked roti wrapping mashed Chinese style non-veg stuffs and capsicums by the dozen. 
In the evening, I tried another round of golf with the daughter - this time with a hockey stick and in the garage. The results were not dramatically different except that since I was outdoor, I felt as parched as a blotting paper. A dash to the refrigerator revealed that we are in the midst of a severe urban crisis, namely, lack of soft drink / beer / fruit juice in the house. Oh darn! 
I was brave enough (and optimist enough) to think that I can salvage the situation by cooking dinner myself. I sometimes cook on holidays and I always find it to be relaxing. Today being today, I chose a safe dish - Pasta, something which I cook rather well on my normal days. Today, however, things were not quite the same. Despite adding mushrooms in copious quantities, spring onions, capsicum, origano, cheese, more cheese, more origano, can of tuna, boiled eggs, the result was a huge bowl of white bland tasty-as-cardboard pasta!! The dinner was as cheerful as a funeral dinner with daughter giving strange expressions while pushing the stuff down her esophagus and wife munching the stuff with a moody silence. I tried to make light of the situation with a great deal of small talk but this valiant effort on my side was met with Al Capone-ish looks from the feminine side of the family. 
Finally, the night quietly flowed it. The daughter dozed off to a deep slumber, the wife was still  busy on the net and I was feeling drained of all energy and wanted to have a quiet death. Just when I was closing my eyes, my wife spoke with a spine-chilling surety in her voice :
"Hope you have not used too many utensils and have not made the kitchen very dirty!! The maid might not come tomorrow". 
I rolled over to the other side, hiding my face from my wife and trying not to think what her reaction would be when she enters the kitchen the next day morning. Amen!!