Just Kidding

It’s been two decades since I first arrived in this three dimensional world of ours, my entry wasn’t exactly graceful, I remember being very exasperated and using the little strength I had in crying but in my defense a nice juicy slap on my butt was not exactly the kind of welcome I was expecting, the doctor responsible for my predicament was really enjoying herself it’s been twenty years and I still remember the sadistic grin on her face. The first couple of months were mostly spent in sleeping,  I needed some time to adjust to my new surroundings, the next few months were the golden phase I literally didn’t have to do anything it was like I was on auto pilot mode my life moved forward without any effort from my side, what I  enjoyed most was when someone tried to teach me to speak they would keep on saying  “papa” and “mama” over and over again while I would just blankly stare back  trying to conceal my laughter , sometimes when I really felt like messing with them as soon as they would stop I would mumble something  gibberish and they would start all over again. Oh those were some good days.

Now  the thing is, good days are like trial version of a very expensive software as soon as you get used to them they come to  an end and start demanding  unreasonable prices. One fine morning my parents came to a not so fine conclusion that I was too heavy to be carried around and must learn to walk, all my resistance was in vain and just like that my golden phase came to an end. As it turned out learning to walk wasn’t all that terrible. It gave me my first taste of freedom, now I could grab that that distant paperweight kept on that distant table, examine its features, play with it or ‘accidentally’ break it, one of my several ways of getting back at my parents for ending my golden phase. The possibilities seemed endless, one of my favorite vengeful activity was to hide or throw away footwear of the guests who visited my home, apparently if people are leaving and someone is unable to find his/her shoes/sandal the whole bunch gets really annoyed, soon I realized that all I needed was to hide just one of the two not the whole pair.

 Soon my acts of rebellion took a toll on my parents and they began punishing me, initially the punishments were mild like not going out to play or no cartoon, they were a breeze I would always find something more interesting to do that would annoy my parents even more, unfortunately for me my mother soon realized how impotent these punishments were and resorted to more physical ones, I still remember the first time mother slapped me, the sheer shock caused by this action of hers made my mind go completely blank, it was like I had forgotten the art of speech but soon enough fear kicked in, fear of the next slap and it was then I began with the water works, I could see the remorse on her face. There are a lot of great things about being a single child but if one has no siblings one cannot blame anyone else for the broken flower vase or the missing chocolate biscuits no matter how good a liar one is, oh yeah lying was the first thing fear taught me, so the slaps kept on coming but the really frightening thing was that the remorse I first saw on her face was no longer present. Sometimes I would run away from her, in the early days she used to out run me and when she no longer could I realized I had nowhere to go. It’s amazing that it never really occurred to me that I could stop my shenanigans, the only thing the slaps were able to do was generate fear loads of fear but the problem was that fear to a kid is like a bollywood cop it always appears after the screw up has been performed, when it’s too late. All in all being a baby boy was fun, all this writing has made me nostalgic so you better keep an eye on your shoes.