In remembrance of the simple but fun things that color our
daily lives at home and the little events that make a mark on us and define who
we are.
I sometimes feel my mother would have better fitted the role
of Spike, the bulldog that Tom and Jerry made so familiar to us (Wink). She wakes up early in the morning with a
typical sleepy yawn and walks, still zombie-like in the semi-wakeful state, to
the bedroom window. There, on the meshed portion of the window, she flattens a
few unlucky mosquitoes who are either too drowsy from the effect of the
mosquito repellent or too content with blood to move. This is a sort of morning
house-wide mosquito hunting spree that has, somehow, become part of her routine
– something to energize her and freshen her up. Her final stop is the kitchen
(Sniff, sniff). Now she’s awake; her small eyes as wide as they could be,
scanning the area after her perimeter patrol.
What she does next is why I liken her to the bulldog -- her
talent to sniff up an anomaly in the environment coupled with her subsequent
exercising of authority over the rest of us, topped with the accuracy of her
judgement and guesswork. I admire this ability of hers, but it doesn't suit me.
It doesn't favor me or my poor teenage soul’s destructive wants and needs. I
can never get away with anything! If the army knew about her, they might just
give up their sniffer dogs and train her! Her sense of smell isn't just one of
the five senses. It is THE SENSE. Beware. It doesn't take a whiff of ammonia to sharpen
her mind, it takes mischief.
Recently for about a month, she would regularly sniff up missing
or tampered artifacts, some of them being a few cloth pieces from a stack in
the kitchen storeroom, and cereal and gram packets scratched or gnawed at with
evidently expert teeth in the cupboards. Predictably, she would yap and bark me
into searching for their whereabouts. I would, in these rare times when I
wasn't intimidated by her presence, imagine that she was an adorable white
Pomeranian. Persistent dogs, those! Kept up their high-pitched bark till they
got their way!
The quest was not so much for the affected things as it was
for the prime suspect of the case, a mouse. The imp had successfully evaded her
for weeks now. It was a talented, well-trained enemy!
However, one afternoon, as my mother headed towards the
refrigerator, who should confront her but a mouse! It ran out from under the
fridge and stood there staring at her, unfazed, perhaps even smirking or
giggling. Well, after glaring back at it for a while, my mother decided to
proceed with a peace pact. She simply opened the front door, which was a few
feet from the site of confrontation, and walked away. But the mouse made a
deliberate dash for it in the other direction; inevitable destination – kitchen
storeroom. This first act of defiance on
its part that became the official war cry. A new routine of events commenced
henceforth, both mouse and mother too stubborn to give in (sigh!). Both were
ready to take the other on with sweat and dust. A tiny creature, the mouse, but
it had the fiery combat spirit of the bulldog.
Such was the frame of events in our home when one evening,
on the sofa opposite a very exciting Indian Premiere League (IPL) cricket match,
sat my petite parents and a bowl of popcorn.
My five foot five father, an otherwise serious man who generally sits,
facing the TV, at his “there-is-absolutely-nothing-in-my-head” relaxation mode
in the evening, was rather animated that day; his commentary overshadowing the
one from the field. His almost round
cheeks and humble moustache would give him an additional advantage while
throwing his unfailingly hilarious one liners that he let loose from time-to-time,
even during some of his most serious moods. Beside him sat my mother. The popcorn was one that wasn't enjoying the
show. It was being gobbled up just because it was there and the hands were
working in reflex to the excited brains. It liked to be the center of
attraction. It preferred movies to cricket matches, where it would be shown a
bit more interest in! However, there was another present, squatting, unnoticed,
on the sofa back. Well, our uninvited guest was definitely not honing his
cricket skills. I am, thus, deducing that he had his eyes on the dejected
popcorn – or, wait a minute, was he admiring my mother again?
This is the precise scene which greeted me and my opened
bottle of water into the room. A split second later it also boasted spilled water
on the floor, a bottle enthusiastically rolling about and a stupefied, gaping
teen. There was a slight technical problem, though. I was directly facing my
mother, two inches from whose ear sat the mouse. Two seconds later, I realized
I was in the same boat as Tom up against Spike with Jerry smirking beside him.
(Uh, oh!) Except now, it was Jerry who was going to be in trouble. It was my turn to smirk – or not.
Cricket, popcorn, excitement forgotten, “Close all doors!
Trap the mouse!” mom shrieked. “Pomeranian” didn't fail to cross my mind even
as, in the brain-freeze state, I hurried towards the farthest bedroom which “Jerry
the Grey” had made a dash for. Mother followed us and on the way slipped on the
wet floor, poor thing. This, however, didn't interrupt her momentum, fueled by
her determination to teach the little devil a lesson. She probably didn't even
register the fall, with all the adrenaline, because she was behind me in a
jiffy! And a moment later, at least it seemed like a moment to my mind-in-a-trance,
she and the mouse were almost playing dog and the bone across a small corner
table opposite the door.
“Hang in there, Ma!” I said as I hurried to the back exit
and fetched a broom that was kept adjacent to that door. Before I knew it mum snatched
the broom from me and began to thrash at the mouse with all the energy she
could muster and missed her mark every time. He was a well-trained burglar,
this one! She had followed Grey Jerry through the passage leading to the back
door. Dad, having closed all doors on the way, had forced the imp along the
passage and right out of the house. She slammed the door shut and stamped her
foot on the ground as she let out a huge puff of air. That was that. Or so we
thought.
With deep sighs of relief, the neglected popcorn was once
again brought into focus. Dad went back to his cricket commentary and mom to
being Spike asleep on the sofa, content at having been reinstated the upper
hand. The mouse was out. Peace and tranquility was restored to the ambience of
the household. I dutifully mopped the living room floor and returned to my room
wearing my usual mopey face and resumed wasting time on YouTube and Facebook. There
was, in addition to this renewal of the mundane, a certain sense of lightness
in the air, a cheer in our demeanor. At the dinner table, even mum was being
all bubbly and sweet.
Happiness was sprinkled in the air and food was all the
tastier when, suddenly, “What’s that under the center-table?” exclaimed mum
with a frown. It was our Jerry who had by then begun darting across the room.
Mother was up and about to take a leap at him when he made straight for the
back door and disappeared. That stopped her in her tracks. “Where did he go?”
she wondered aloud. And as though to answer her query, Mouse popped right back
in, perhaps gave a two-second giggle and vanished again. That was when mum went
down on her knees and squinted through a point in the bottom right corner of
the door where it didn't fit perfectly into the wall and left a paltry opening.
She immediately retracted; her nose scrunched, and said, “It’s hopeless. We've
lost.” The mouse wouldn't leave through a wide open door no matter what but,
enjoyed free and unrestricted passage via a secret pathway of its own
discovery. Oh, the irony!
That doesn't mean the war is over. It only implies that she
would take care of the rest in the morning. She had decided to give the issue a
pass for the night. She had hurt herself a bit by the fall. Besides, we were
all heavily tired after the action packed evening; not to mention I had a
permanent thumbs up for sleep time anyway.
Now, if this were a kids action movie, which it surely
seemed to be, next morning would come and there would be a series of events
where every time mother would seal the opening or thrash about the house or
devise any other setup to keep Grey Mouse at bay, he would find another way to
thwart her efforts. But as it happens, this was real life.
It was 11p.m. and everybody went to bed. I was out like a
fused tungsten bulb the moment my head squeezed onto the pillow and I had
plummeted into deep, sweet sleep before I knew it.
Loud shouts and shrieks and crashing noises woke me up. I
switched on the light and looked at the clock, letting out a continuous murmur
of curses. It was 3a.m. I figured the racket was in my parents’ bedroom.
Couldn't whatever this was wait till the sun was up and I’d have to leave the
bed anyway? Wait a minute. Why was there a commotion in my parents’ bedroom at
this time of the night? That had never happened before! I made my way there,
drunk with drowsiness, and froze in the doorway. This time Dad was thrashing
about with a mini-broom while my mother was on her knees shouting out
instructions! All this was happening, astonishingly, within the confines of the
mosquito net that covered their bed. Jerry the Grey was frantically scuttling
around the bed trying to escape the fatal blows from the broom. He was,
however, trapped. He took blow after blow until, finally, he was forced to surrender
by death. Grey Jerry was martyred in this war between the two sniffers. I must
say he put up a brave and witty fight.
This time, a sense of triumph didn't come over mother. Her
intention never had been for the feud to end in death of a party. It was simply
desired that each stay out of the other’s territory. Mouse deserves respect and
admiration for having successfully evaded my mother’s nose and taking position
on the bed unnoticed.
The mystery of the course of events triggered by Mouse’s
behavior still lies unsolved. The mosquito net was a new one and remains new.
No signs of breach were discovered on its investigation. Cause of death was
boiled down to fatal impact from the mini-broom due to his failure to escape
through the opening in the mosquito-net-house that presented itself when Dad
left the bed to get the broom; the failure was attributed to anxiety and
confusion. It’s no fresh knowledge; confusion can take
down the toughest of them all.
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