Winging home
by Zephyr • November 24, 2010 • The L&M and the brats • 27 Comments
I was sleeping the sleep of one who has completed a duty — deep, undisturbed and peaceful. We had at last seen our first born into engineering college, a very prestigious one, got him settled in the hostel and returned not ten days since. And there I was, rudely being woken up by the harsh peal of the doorbell.
Groggily, I looked at the timepiece which proclaimed the hour as a few minutes past midnight. My first reaction was one of fear. Who could it be at this unearthly hour? The L&M was snoring loud enough to frighten away any unwelcome visitor. Taking heart from this fact, I went to open the door.
The apparition that stood before me had my stomach churning in terror. Bloodshot eyes sunken way into their sockets, clothes looking as if they had not been washed for at least a millennium, one hand holding up his trousers and hair that fell into untidy locks around a dishevelled face. Ah, but the face! It looked vaguely familiar.
Strange words of welcome greeted me — at least I presumed it was greeting because I espied white teeth in the unwashed face. The voice did it. Why, it was my very own first born!
You couldn’t blame me, could you, especially since it was not only his physical appearance that had changed, even the clothes he wore were unfamiliar.
“Why are you holding up your trousers? Did you forget your belt?” I asked him as I opened the door.
“It has been confiscated along with all the others in the freshers’ hostel,” he informed me laconically.
“Confiscated?” (He told us later that as part of ragging the belts had to be ‘surrendered’ to the seniors).
“Is there some grub?”
That set me scurrying and I produced some leftovers from dinner and before I finished serving it, it was gone.
“Anything else to eat?” he asked.
I was startled. Was this my son who had to be begged, bullied and boxed in the ears before he would eat a few morsels to ‘satisfy his old woman’? Shaking my head in wonder, I rustled up some more stuff. What I was witnessing was the beginning of the ‘transformation’, as I was to realise in the next couple of days.
“Next time, give me a ring before you come over, so that I can have some food ready.” There was no reply. I peeped out of the kitchen to find him, hunched over his plate. He had fallen asleep.
The L&M was still snoring, only louder. With a sigh, I managed to pull and shove the prone creature (not a mean task considering my five foot nothing figure and his almost six foot frame) to bed and pulled off his shoes. He was dead to the world.
Before I had shut my eyes, I was being shaken awake by my younger son. “Mom, someone is sleeping in my bed.”
“It is your brother, son,” I wearily replied. “That was what I thought but this person actually wished me good morning, instead of punching me in the nose!” I had to agree with his assessment.
May be I had rejoiced too early over the change in him. For the next morning after breakfast, he simply vanished as if from the face of the earth. Ah, I forget the meal times when he landed up to gobble up whatever was put in front of him and the time he spent with the phone receiver cradled in the crook of his shoulder. I was run off my feet answering calls from strange voices, both male and female that most of the time didn’t identify themselves.
“Where is our son?” asked his father in the evening. “You said he has come, but I haven’t had a glimpse of him till now.”
“I think he is home. If you follow the telephone cord you can find him,” I answered, having become wise to his ways. And so it continued till the penultimate day of his departure.
It was Saturday and towards afternoon, he was home, clowning around with his kid brother, showering lavish praise on his old woman’s cooking and offering to help in shifting some furniture. His father walking in just at that moment was touched. Only he didn’t realised that his wallet would be touched soon.
During dinner my son joined us, which was an honour — for us, that is. Later, he made himself comfortable on our bed. He actually replied civilly to his father’s queries about his studies and his mother’s inquiry regarding the teaching, his friends, the condition of his room and food. He even answered his kid brother’s questions about ragging, regaling him with the hilarious and not so hilarious details of the said convention. We were all enjoying each other’s company immensely when the cookie crumbled.
“Dad, I need some dough,” he began innocuously.
“But I just gave you enough when I left you ten days back!” expostulated his father naively.
At this, his son produced a long sheet of paper. “Here, these are the expense details. You will see that I have had to borrow some money from one of the seniors.” The last was said in an accusatory tone, which made his father squirm for having been so stingy.
It was his brother who noticed that the entries were awry. “Hey, what’s this? You have written “Food” and then again ‘Eating out’. The amounts are the same too! And here! What did you photocopy for Rs.300?” The paper was snatched forthwith by his elder brother. “You stay out of my affairs, do you hear?” forgetting his new sugary image for an instant. It was an audible gasp from me that made him recover enough to explain about the figures most convincingly or so he thought.
Whatever it was, he managed to get his way and the money. The moment the money changed hands, he vanished like a streak of lightning. I mean, one moment he was there and the next, ‘poof!’ Just like that!
It continued to be like that; he still made unannounced nocturnal entries, but I began recognising his friends’ clothes soon. In fact, when he came back in his own clothes one time, I actually enquired as to whether he had quarrelled with his friends. And that bag of laundry that needed to be washed!
On one of his visits he sampled some of the baingan bharta I had made, and made a pronouncement: “This is not a patch on Bittoo”s” Now, during the course of my life, my culinary skills have been compared favourably and otherwise, with sundry people. But Bittoo? I only relented when I came to know that he was the one who fed the hungry hordes of Thapar’s and soon found myself anxiously asking, “Is it as good as Bittoo’s?”
“Why are you wearing the new jogging shoes at home and the tie with your pyjamas?” I asked his father during one visit.
“To prevent then from being flicked, that’s why!”
His visits were tension filled for his father and brother, whose possessions were routinely ‘borrowed,’ but conveniently not returned, leaving the duo hopping mad the day after he left.
My first born might have begun treating baths as an occasional affair after going to college, but his sense of humour had become even better than before and he had acquired a oodles of charm. He also spoke in complete sentences when addressed and actually deigned to eat at the table with the rest of us.
So what was I complaining about?
It has not been said without reason that absence makes the hearts grow fonder; and distance brings people closer in heart.
I so remember when i first went to college .. The ragging, the new atmosphere.. and yes, askin money time n again frm parents …. some good nostalgia
Pretty good descriptive post
I am glad the post brought back memories of your own college days. I am sure your mom would share my views too
Giggles..Giggles..
this certainly did bring back memories of my first few weeks in college
Nice to see you back here Sumit. I am glad you relived memories of your college days
I generally dont take take time to read such lengthy blog posts. But this one…I could not close without completing. What a choice of words and the wit in the whole thing! I greatly appreciate your writing and thinking skills. It was outright hilarious with a sense of realism init. Was able to understand what my mom went through when I did all these
Best wishes!!!
Thanks Nandhini. Life is so much easier to live if we see the humour in situations. The series is all about that. Thanks for the appreciation.
hahahaa aint u happy that both are out of college and working responsibly??
You bet!
There’s quite a life change when they leave home. You narrate it in a fun way. Enjoyed that.
Yeah, nothing remains the same anymore, does it? Thanks for the appreciation.
You are in your element when you write about the L&M and the brats. What a delightful post. Hope the elder one reading this. Elder one, YOUR MOM ROCKS!
And my husband has a life long aversion to beans, rajmah and karhi thanks to his hostel days.
Thank you Purba. Oh yes, they all read them and keep threatening to sue me for defamation. Wait for the one on me. How they will all love tp provide the dope for that one
Ha ha! Quite enjoyed this post! Many parents will be able to identify with your experience, I think.
I went through something like this with both my children. I particularly remember the bags of laundry….
Oh do you? Well, they sometimes needed to be quarantined
LOL had a lovely time reading this post and made me nostalgic too thinking about my hostel days
I am glad you liked the post. Nostalgia is great isn’t it? How i wish I could get back some of the time so that I could do things better and may be differently!
Lovely!!I enjoyed the post.Am sure all the parents would be able to relate to this post. My lil one would turn an year in few more months. But I can already figure out wts gonna happen after sometime
))
Nice to have you comment here, Zaira. More even than knowing what you can expect in the future, I am sure you remember what nightmares you might have given your mother
the return of the prodigal son indeed!!!!
great read!!
Thanks magiceye. I can’t wait for his duaghter to grow up to have some fun
lost in ma flashback…. it remembers the college days……i guess everyone has the same time……
Welcome here Mag(m). I am glad you could relive your own college days! Visit again
My mom would so identify with this
She loved it when I came home after the first semester at hostel and ate everything she made – no complaints – at all. I think she had never seen me eat that well in my life 
But I never had a Bittoo to compare my mom’s cooking to
Earlier it used to be said that a girl appreciated her mother only after she got married (since she left home), but today it has been advanced since they go out to college
You might have found a Bittoo had you rebelled against hostel food like my son had done
Or maybe you discovered that no Bittoo could equal her culinary skills?
Aah…am so happy…:) Sweet post of something that is sweet, maddening, engrossing and yet again sweet. It coats my heart and makes me smile…can’t wait to go down the memory lane with you, L&M n the Brats!!!!