I came home last night and didn't allow my mother to see my
face, lest she see the mild reddening in my cheeks due to the effect of being
hit by a girl in office. But I couldn't hide it for a long time and she caught
me at the dinner table.
Mother: What happened to your right cheek? Why is it
reddened? Did someone hit you?
She was clearly getting too excited and tensed, so I didn't want
to prolong the discussion.
Me: Yes, someone did hit me.
She got agitated and asked who it was. I had to tell her
that it was a girl. Needless to say my mother got more intrigued and asked who
that girl was? I had to tell her that it was a girl in my team who had hit me.
I then showed her my left cheek and admitted that she hit me there as well.
My mother was now almost livid. Her emotions ranged from
feeling sorry for her son being hit, angry that someone had actually hit him
and worried as to what her son would have done to a girl for her to hit him.
She asked me if I had teased that girl.
I told her the fact that I hadn't teased her at any stage
and such thoughts never enter my mind.
Mother: Then why did she hit you? I can clearly see finger
lines on your face.
I told her that she actually asked for my permission before
hitting me. Seeing the lines of confusion in my mother’s face, I clarified
further that she even hit my friend after taking his permission.
Now my mother was basically flummoxed. She was getting
clueless about what I was telling her. Then I decided that it was time I told
her the full truth.
Me: Amma, it is Holi today and we had a celebration in the
campus. The only North Indian girl in my team took our permission to colour and
she used the pink powder to hit our face with it.
My mother laughed out loud at herself, for getting so hyped
up over this silly event and the sillier narration.
Long-time readers of my blog would be aware that I work out
of two different offices in this city. Of course, I have used the word “work”
in a very loose manner, but as long as I am employed, I guess I am entitled to
say so.
And that brings me directly to the topic of this blog. You
see, for the last 6-7 weeks, I have been working out of the office closer home
and in fact, I haven’t visited the one near Chengalpet in almost 4 weeks now! The
reason why I am doing this is because I don’t have a team per se for this said
period and am doing a fair amount of pre-sales work – both of which allow for
location flexibility.
Anyways, a couple of days back, my mother asked me if I was
still employed. Quite shocked by her question, I asked her the logic behind
that query. Her simple reasoning was that I must have been fired and in my endeavour
to maintain an “image” at home and to society, I was pretending to go to office
daily. Pretty much what the great Thangavelu did in Kalyana Parisu as a Manager
in Mannar & Co. You can check that comedy scene here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRwJu2jROLc&feature=BFa&list=PL3432E88AF6BBE40D
Things have reached the stage where she has started calling
me Thangavelu!
With the arrival of the Blue Eyed Boy at home, 3 months back, my Baleno has been relegated to the front parking spot at home. This evening, a small crow suddenly fell down between my car and the wall of the house. In our attempts to shoo it away, we only succeeded in making the crow take refuge underneath the car.
The next thing we did was to try and scare it by spraying water from one end of the car, with the hope that it would then totter over from the other side. But the poor thing got scared and somehow, managed to rest on the axle of the rear wheel on the right side.
I then tried kicking the tyre and shaking my car, hoping that the crow would budge, but it didn't I then took a rather long broom, reached in from the back of the car and tried to poke it out. And all that I managed to do was to bring out the best manoeuvre of the crow, which somehow squeezed itself on to the tyre of my car. As seen in the picture below:
I now hoped that since it was technically on the outside of the car, it would jump out. I continued to shake the car, albeit this time it was from the back. Again, no movement. I brought out a torch and checked whether the crow was caught somewhere in the gaps and had probably died. But even the dim ray of light from the torch showed that the crow was alive.
I gathered courage and tried poking the crow using the broom. Somehow, the crow didn't mind all this poking and I started to suspect that it probably liked the poking. Maybe it was getting a crow's equivalent of an acupuncture treatment.
I then called up my friend who is generally quite knowledgeable in all matters under the sun (also in the sun, over the sun and to the sides of the sun). But for some vague reason, he seemed to be more interested in talking to his brother in the US than even trying to find out why I was calling him in the first place. And in a twist of fate, his brother didn't continue the call and so, he called me back to find out the problem. And his solution was to start the car or honk it or both or for good measure, try moving the car slowly. I was quite petrified in doing any or all of it, but as any trusted disciple would do, followed my master.
I started my car and released the parking brake, with the hope that the little movement in the wheels would get the crow going. But no. So, finally my parents and one of their senior citizen friends who was talking to them at our gate, strongly advised me to simply walk away from the car. The reasoning behind that idea was that the crow was bound to get bored and walk away.
I accepted this option and lo behold, the baby crow started cawing in a couple of minutes. This attracted a couple of bigger crows in the vicinity and finally, one of them bigger ones came down to ground. It inspected the source of the caw and from the manner in which it was running around the car, cawing back and forth with the younger one, I am strongly inclined to think that this bigger one was the Mother Crow and right or wrong, I am going to refer to this crow with that title for the remainder of this post. The usage of words like Mother Crow and Baby Crow may make you think that I am reading too many children's book, but rest assured that it is not the case. You can see the Mother Crow's work here:
The cawing continued and the Mother Crow started jumping towards the Baby Crow's perch, to try and pull the Baby Crow out. It didn't really succeed and moreover, the Mother Crow also started getting quite concerned that I was standing in the vicinity.
Initially I was only trying to take a video of the whole rescue operation. But I felt that with the darkness increasing, the crows may probably not be able to execute their rescue plan correctly.
So I took the torch and started shining it towards the wheelbase, though I was at least some 5-6 feet diagonally away from the front-right side of the car (as should be evident from the pictures). But the Mother Crow somehow didn't like me acting like the Nightingale With The Lamp and started approaching me with louder caws.
Communication, as you may have heard in multiple forums, is not just about what you convey in your language, it is quite often about what you convey without saying anything, using your body language. Similarly, in this case, while I didn't understand what the Mother Crow was cawing to me, I sure did understand from its rather aggressive approach towards where I was standing, that it didn't want me to shine the torch at it or its Baby.
After a couple of more attempts, the Baby Crow finally decided to budge out of its hiding or resting place and actually jumped out of the wheelbase to the cemented ground below. The Mother Crow came close and somehow egged on this Baby Crow to fly up, though the flight was just a high jump of 3 feet, into the branches of a tree nearby. You can see this video here (Apologies for the poor quality video):
All in all, it was a rather interesting evening for me. I found the drama that unfolded in front of me, quite charming actually!
