The Rat and the Raj

This is a blog that I am compiling after ages, not many people actually asked me why I had stopped blogging, so nothing prompted me to write a blog apart from my guilty conscience which haunted me daily for wasting a chance to torment the rest of mankind. So finally I decided to relent and set forth with my new blog. Let me first tell you what this blog is not before explaining what it is. This is not an attempt at humor, I have never been a funny person with my words or my keyboard. The blog does not impart a moral or a message to the humanity. It is neither the story of an adventure, nor the illustration of an escapade. My new blog, on the other hand, is just another insignificant episode of a normal day of a mediocre human, which happens to be me.

There are a few characters and mannerisms that I would like to explain first before beginning the actual thing. This story involves 4 living things, 3 humans and one animal to be precise. Since the mode is narration, it would be a natural conclusion to all the serious readers that I am one of humans in consideration. The next one is my shadow at home, the person who relentlessly chases me around in the very little time when I am home and not chasing my incessant dreams, my daughter Siddhi. The next one, the protagonist of the story, would be my husband and Siddhi's father, Rajeev, hereafter addressed as the Raj. Leaving very little to your imagination, the animal in the story is a Rat, as the title signifies. Apparently, Raj and Rat rhyme, which is perfect! For any other animal I would have demanded a new husband, like a Drake for a Snake or a Calvin for a Cat

Another major observation that invites a mention here is the attire of the protagonist, the Raj. Its called 'Mundu' in Malayalam, which is nothing but a longer loin cloth, much longer infact. It makes the already attractive men of Kerala even more hot(What was I thinking I wrote this? or was I thinking at all!!!). Anyways, our men are extremely proficient in precariously managing this piece of clothing which more often than not is the only piece of cloth they have on their body, when at home.

So on this pleasant Good Friday morning, I was inevitably given the responsibility of feeding Siddhi, by my sadistic mom, who had a crooked smile on her face which could have meant only one thing, 'let me see how you do it'. For details on 'How to feed Siddhi and kill yourself', please visit my previous blog, 'Our world, being turned around'. To update you, Siddhi had acquired a new-found interest towards her father's car, which is again a very pleasing development, so all that I have to do now is to lock the two of us inside the Punto Emotion, turn on the AC, play the radio and wait for those invaluable moments when she opens her mouth. One of these days, I know that the battery would die and that would be a day when Raj might annihilate his family out of anger. As we stepped down to the courtyard, I saw him for the first time. Oh, not Raj, I see him all the time, I mean the other one, charming, attractive, naughty and nude, the Rat. I usually don't give out that typical girlish shriek when I see a mosquito, cockroach, lizard, house fly, honey bee or an ant. But rats and snakes and the ones in the higher echelons of the food chain do scare me. However, this particular specimen elicited no fear out of me, partially due to the fact that I had a the choice to running back into the house or forward into the car without the rat observing me and partially because the rat had excited Siddhi whose mouth was now open for a blob of Puttu and Pazham to go in. I quietly moved into the car with my girl, closed the door and soon forgot the rat and its nudity.

It was then that Raj materialized from nowhere, well not nowhere exactly, but it was unusual for him to be awake at 8:30AM on a holiday. Raj, as I mentioned earlier, was clad in his mundu and was walking around without a care in the world. It was precisely at this moment that he set his eyes on Rat. The events hereafter can be flavored with some deadly, threatening music. Try something on if you are game!

With or without the music, this is how the events progressed. Raj was doing all sort of funny and fierce acts as I looked at him. He was looking at me too, but I could make no sense of what was happening. It was then that I realized that he was trying to talk to me and the car windows were rolled up. I lowered them. Raj was calling out to me and was asking if Siddhi and I were safe. I passed a cursory glance at the world around me for any imminent threat to our lives, and finding nothing significant, replied that we were indeed safe. Raj slowly moved on, put on his shoes, which clearly was the only footwear he could find. I leave it to the imagination of the readers to visualize how a sleepy, hairy man, wearing just a mundu, adorns himself in a pair woodland shoes, all looking ready to go for a war. The rat was now alert and had realized that the husband of the sweet woman who had looked at it with adoring eyes, was onto him, perhaps for eyeing his pretty wife. It was then that Raj started a series of tap dance steps that made me and Siddhi gape at him for a few seconds before we started laughing out. Raj would tap his feet a few times, look at the rat, challenge it, and the rat, sensing danger would run a few steps before stopping to enjoy the rest of the tap dance. This went on until the rat reached the gate. But he was not one to give up so quickly. The rat turned around, footed himself and stared at Raj. The world stood still at this moment. Raj looked around, made sure no one is watching him(except his wife ofcourse) and stared back at the rat. Two strong living things, in a point of indecision! Raj concentrated, rat concentrated harder, I concentrated the most and Siddhi concentrated on the steering wheel of the car. After those precious moments of concentration, when the man and the animal looked exactly the same with Raj progressing to look just as cute as the rat, when I did not know which side the cheer for and when Siddhi did not know which button would turn off the indicator that she had just managed to turn on, the world lost interest in everything mentioned above. The rat quit and moved out, Raj looked around once again to make sure that he did not leave any witness of his valor behind and Siddhi turned on the wiper of the car. For those who have the music on, you may turn it off now, the story is over.

As I said in the beginning, this is pretty much it, no morals, no lessons to be learned, except that life at times leave events which may not last for more than a few minutes, but which can be recalled in the rest of our lives just to smile :).