I’m just into my second mug of coffee; my mom’s eyes follow the coffee jar to my nervous hand pouring it. “Look at that color; you want your skin to become black like that coffee?” I hate Baba Ramdev for instilling that notion in her mind.
Ardent fan of Baba Ramdev and his yoga treatment; my mom wakes up each morning twitching her tummy with the loud inhaling and exhaling of her breath. I wonder how she could see my coffee mug with her fingers covering almost everything near her nose and eyes area.
Silently I pick my coffee and head out on the verandah. “Did you put on your sunscreen?” she shouts over her respiration exercises. I head out turning deaf ear. What would few minutes in the early morning sun do to my skin?
I return inside to find her sitting cross-legged and with her lanky limbs flapping like a helpless bird. I pull my laptop, wanting to just look at the pictures of my daughter. She gets up instantly. Baba Ramdev’s asans do work I think, look at the vigor with which my mom got up. “Don’t you dare open that thing!” she warns. I pout and crease my forehead but do not reply.
“You people are turning into lazy pigs with those gadgets keeping you hooked for hours!” I don’t know if she is more angry with me for spending hours with the laptop or angry with the people who designed laptops making people using it ‘lazy’ as she calls it. I shove it away and look at her, a look that says, “you are busy with your breathing, what am I supposed to do?”
“Let’s go out for a walk,” she pulls me up from the corner of the bed, where I’ve made my niche. “Walk?” I almost spit out the last dreg of coffee I had just put in my mouth. “What’s wrong in taking a walk?” she snaps. Reluctantly I drag myself to cover my face with sunscreen lest she find another verbal missile to attack me with.
The dirty, smelly lane is filled with bovines she is too pleased to see. “Cow’s milk!” she smiles happily. “I think we get a lot of cow’s milk around here, look at all these cows.” Before she replaces my early morning coffee with her milk, I stop to talk to a lady groped in front of her doorstep making a design of a sort. I ask the lady the meaning of her design but inside my head I hear my mom telling me, “Milk will make your skin healthy while your black coffee is making you dark, just like this lady here.” I chuckle at the last phrase. Indeed the lady in front of is as dark as the moonless night but I know for sure that coffee has nothing to do with her color.
“Ama, lok dekhey,” I plead. My bowels longing for the hot seat back in our room. I find her eyeing the coconut vendor. “Bhiaya, two coconuts,” she hands over thirty rupees. “Drink this instead, this is healthy.” There she goes again.
Finally after consuming much dust and dirt she decides it’s time for our return but not before venturing into a shop nearby. “Let’s buy a toner and bleach.” I follow her in without any argument. “Maybe we should also take this coconut oil to massage our hair.” She has already picked it out of the shelf. I raise my eyebrows to ask the shopkeeper the amount. I dread the ordeal I’ve to go through with these products.
Oil massage, cleansing, toning we do all after a drink of the coconut milk. “Are we preparing for a modeling project?” I laugh at my own joke while my mom just stares blankly at me. She doesn’t find it funny. “The more we age; the more we have to do all these,” she reasons out.
“Let’s go to that Punjabi dhaba we saw yesterday,” I suggest my mouth watering at the thought of sarson ka saag with makhe di roti. “You want to look like a pig with all that dripping ghee?” Another attack. I silently go out to buy the cucumber she had planned for the healthy salad for lunch.
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