Mommy Dearest

The progenitors are back. I can see a pattern developing. As they grow older the pater is growing more childlike and grumpy and the mater is growing more carefree and naughtier. I mean it is uncomfortable to hear stories (albeit funny) about your parents (mis?)adventures with er... *nudge-nudge* creating progeny. Mom insists on relating some embarrassing story and I don't know if it is polite to laugh uproariously or just smile and look the other way. Does she do it to make me uncomfortable? Also the thought of your old and greying parents indulging in hanky-panky is somewhat disbelievable. I mean I know they must have indulged in a lot of it to produce three strapping adults, but the thought is still a bit discomfiting.

I got a lot of loot as I always do when the parents return from their foreign jaunts. Most Indians have this thing of shopping until they drop when they travel abroad. My parents do it too. My mother even takes advantage about the fact that she is on a wheelchair to squeeze excess baggage in, which is very embarrassing if one has to travel with her. My father has a totally different excuse for it - he normally carries practically half his library when he travels and in his innocent absent-minded professor way tells the officials at the airport that he needs his books and is a professor and nine times out of ten is let off the hook. The one occassion on which he is made to pay-up for excess baggage, he exclaims in an outraged manner, "Nobody respects science anymore!" The glee on my (normally law-abiding) parents' faces when they don't have to pay for excess baggage is so amusing, it seems as if they've successfully pulled off the great train robbery and it also leads me to believe that most people actually like breaking tiny laws just for the pleasure of cheating the system.