Never in my wildest dreams would I have envisaged a scenario in which I wouldn’t see my parents for three years and my sister for four. But that has been this pandemic. And yet, I have to be thankful – that we are all alive, that we are to varying degrees unscathed by the worst of Covid.
And that this trip happened – and in the best way one could hope for in terms of Hong Kong’s pandemic restrictions, which were almost all dropped by the time we returned. As for India, even filling the Air Suvidha form had been dropped, though ironically just after we arrived, there was talk of reinstating it – and other restrictions – for arrivals from China (including Hong Kong).
V was not for the entire family going to India in December. The dream of us moving to India this year is alive, and if we don’t he would have rather taken the kids in July/August for a longer time.
He suggested that I go myself. But leaving the kids for Christmas was not something I felt comfortable doing, despite the urging of a couple of friends, most of whom were also converging in Bombay for Christmas. Also, my sister was bringing her kids, and they have already missed so many meetings.
After the usual agonising, I decided to just.do.it. Then the tortuous negotiating of breakdown of time, made more complicated by the fact that flights have not resumed to full capacity, so getting certain dates out of Bombay/Bangalore was challenging. I insisted on Christmas and more time in Bombay seeing as we had Christmas the last time in Bangalore, and while there was every chance the kids could make another India trip and see family in Bangalore this year, not to mention moving there, the same is not true of seeing my sister, niece and nephew. It’s been a while, but negotiating the city breakdown of our India trip is still akin to the Middle East peace process.
I am also always stressed about asking for leave in December, but I didso as shamelessly as possible (two weeks entirely off, even though my boss had a daughter coming down). I still worked two days, and frankly would have rather not, but I just couldn’t find the gumption to ask for three weeks at a go in prime time.
So tickets booked well in advance – in August (my wake-up call was a colleague telling me they were booking their CNY tickets to Singapore in July) – and then in November, I had a panic attack when I realised that Nene’s exams were not before the holidays as I had assumed, but after. A few harried emails later, it turned out that we would be back in time for the exams (whew), though we would have to study over the holiday.
I planned in advance and spent several weekends in the run-up agonising over gifts for the significant people back home. I even took an extra day off before we left to pack/do last minute shopping, so for once, I was not in a flurry on the day of travel.
A few days before we were set to leave, the weather turned super cold, and Nene, Mimi and finally I fell sick with a cold and sore throat. I kept the kids home from school – we could have left that weekend then, though maybe it was all for the best because I got to make all the significant dates in Bombay – and we just inhaled/gargled/rested like fiends, so we were in some sort of shape to travel.
Our flight landed in Bombay at a reasonable hour, but we still only got home around midnight and to bed at 1am, and then the kids got up at 4am. The time on my watch hadn’t switched to India time so I thought it was 6.30 and time to wake up. My nephew E was jet lagging and woke up too, thanks to a bit of noise from the kids, though my sister swore he would have woken up anyway.
E – who had up till then following my dad around like a puppy – fell in love with Nene and the rest is history. Basically, E simps for the male gender, and except for his mom and sister, isn’t into women at all. He was basically obsessed with Nene the entire trip, and while it did get too much for Nene at times, I was pleasantly surprised bt how well he dealt with having a pint-sized stalker for the most part.
My resolution for this trip was to focus on my parents, sister, niece and nephew, and not, as my mother often complains, go gadding about. This was made challenging by the fact that the much vaunted friends reunions that had been planned and cancelled since 2015 was finally happening, not in an exotic destination, but in our neighbourhood in Bombay.
However, I recognise that my parents are old, I have not seen them for years, and apart from spending time with them, I need to help around the house. And then I did choose to bring the kids along, and while I had V for support, I also knew that there was an end to his patience.
I was pretty good for the first couple of days. The day we landed, friends made a lunch plan, which I copped out of. On day 2, we took the kids to Juhu beach. The tide was up so the usual plastic was not visible. The nephew frolicked in the water like it wasn’t filthy. I bought a plastic ball and Nene went to town with it. Mimi attempted to give me a sand pedicure. A girl from out of town spotted me in shorts and came over to ask where she could buy some, gesturing ruefully at her jeans (alas, I could not help, and she ended up getting her jeans wet). We ate roasted peanuts and drank coconut water. We turned down offers to do water sports, get our photograph taken, and get henna designs on our arms. I bought channa and fed a flock of pigeons (then as my throat started to itch wondered if I had contracted bird flu).
See, I doubt I would go to Juhu beach if I lived in Bombay. But it’s become something to do with the kids free of cost, and despite its many flaws, we almost always have a decent time there.
By afternoon my throat was hurting so badly I could barely swallow, but I went for a pedicure. I proceeded to let my dad dose with with something from his medicine cabinet (in addition to gargling with Betadine, which I’m becoming skeptical about because on two occasions, I’ve ended up really sick after), and headed out to the local gymkhana to meet my college friends.
Many laughs, chicken lollipops and four whiskeys later, I was properly sick. Despite much urging, I begged off the afterparty – which I am told involved six rounds of shots – and headed home.
The next day, I was at my family doctor getting a prescription of antibiotics. My aunt, uncle and cousin dropped by that evening and I realised that my mum wasn’t the only one who had aged and was chronically ill. My aunt was in a shocking state, not so much physically but mentally.
By December 24, I began to feel better, and I got a serious case of Fomo with regards to what my friends were up to. I had a lovely one-on-one chat over coffee with CurlyGirlie while Mimi and my niece were getting a pedicure, which helped.
My dad and mum had a big fight on Christmas Eve, during which my dad appealed to me and I didn’t take his side, so I was in the doghouse too. Which meant that I had a fractured night’s sleep, though I managed to make everyone make up in the morning.
I went for Christmas mass with my parents – it was nice but also very low key with no proper choir (all the best singers having presumably exhausted themselves at midnight mass) and the priest chose to lean into some creationist nonsense in the sermon (seriously, why?). I realised my children do not have any formal clothes because while I could find something appropriate for Mimi to wear, Nene had nothing but shorts and t-shirts, and my dad was getting stressed about him wearing that so even though the kids to my surprise expressed a last-minute interest in going to mass, I ended up leaving them at home with V.
We didn’t have a maid that day so I ended up sweeping and swabbing the entire house, something I haven’t done in at least a decade. But with that many people in the house – including kids – the sheer amount of dirt was too much to ignore. My dad kept trying to take the mop from me, and pointed out that he had been doing this duty for weeks during the pandemic.
I tend to like big Christmas lunches with extended family, but these days, Christmas at my parents’ house tends to be on the small scale. I got everyone playing travel pictionary for a bit and it was fun, until it fizzled out. I can’t remember everything there was for lunch, but the pork was outstanding.
At some point in the run-up to December, a very enthusiastic friend suggested we go for a Christmas dance. Like mopping the house, this is not something I have done in over a decade, and not an activity I’m very keen on either. But in the spirit of Fomo, I asked V if he would go and to my surprise, he said yes. Then I asked my sister and she said yes too! So I had no choice but to go.
The dance we chose ended up being quieter than the usual gymkhana Christmas dance affair that I’ve usually been too, but better organised. There were enough tables for everyone, snacks circulating, a good dinner and a bar where one could actually get a drink and even water if one wanted without having to do cartwheels to get the attention of the bartender.
Going into the dance, I had pledged to try to stay past midnight. Then it seemed that everyone would only get there at 11, though in the end, we managed to herd ourselves in by 10ish. Although the event was supposed to start by 9pm, I wonder if even the organisers would have been there if we’d turn up on time. In the end, V left at 3am and I left at 4am, when the lights came on and the music stopped. Not bad for someone on antibiotics.
There was talk of someone sort of gathering of the friends’ kids on Boxing Day, but everyone was too exhausted to plan anything. I woke up from an afternoon nap with a call from a friend who wanted to drop by and see my mum. It ended up being an extended chat on the swings downstairs, followed up by another extended chat in another friends’ house.
By which time I think V was truly sick of me. Gave him a day off on December 27 and took the kids to a trampoline park and arcade in a massive mall in Malad, where I spent two hours roaming about while the kids played, and ended up buying one comb. But this is how I shop these days. But I did manage to avoid going on a roller coaster with Nene – a rollercoaster inside a mall, imagine – and so I consider it a day well spent.
The next day, the sister and I snuck in coffee with a cousin at a quaint cafe that has become something of a tradition for us, then massive family lunch in another cousin’s house, unplanned coffee at one more cousins’ house where I reckoned with the dog-shaped hole in my life, and then my aunt’s 80th birthday shindig. Because of said birthday, my mother’s brothers had descended so I got to meet them too, in addition to lots of friends of my parents who I had not seen for ages.
The final day of our Bombay stint was my mum’s birthday. Descent of the uncles redux, this time at our house.
V had gone into his annual Christmas season sulk, for reasons unknown, rattling me completely. I ended up shouting at him in front of my cousin, waking my dad up from his nap and unnerving him with our display of marital disharmony.
And then we left for Bangalore.
for whom the bell tolls 