Column

Tales From The Locker Room

My house has come to a halt. All systems are down, the market has closed and business has been pushed to the side. The reason for this is my mother’s impending trip to America. Yes, tonight my mom will leave for the U S, where she will be a guest of President George Bush Junior.

Whenever my mother leaves for a tour, complications develop the day before. Firstly, my father gets extremely nervous, like a new born baby who has just been put in charge of a prestigious post in a leading bank. He frets and shakes like the early Elvis Presley and is much more animated than normal. He does what I term ‘The Peacock Dance’. This is a title bestowed on a person who emulates the male peacock, one of the laziest in the history of sports and birds. The peacock makes a big pretence of promising a great spectacle by preening and posing. But eventually after a few seconds, when the female peacocks are ready to sing, absolutely nothing is achieved.

While dad carries out his dance of no consequence, mom will now attempt to pack the whole of India and the more urban parts of China into a suitcase, which formerly belonged to Field Marshall Ervin Rommel during the Second World War.

The poor suitcase, if it could speak would appoint a battery of lawyers immediately and press charges against unnecessary impingement on the fundamental rights of all suitcases—the rightnot to be fattened beyond reasonable doubt. Once the suitcase has been mauled beyond repair my mom starts the paperwork drama. The entire double bed in her room is covered with papers and documents. This brings us to the wonderful Broacha word— ‘xerox’!

As a rule from childhood we Broachas are taught three things— ‘Don’t talk to strangers, be polite to elders and xerox everything in sight.’ Maybe, I’m lying a little bit. The ‘be polite to elders’ rule was never really encouraged. Coming back to xeroxes or xeroci (depending on how much Greek civilasation has leaned on you), my mother will have at least 11 copies of all relevant and irrelevant documents including passports, visas and notes tothe self xeroxed. The list goes on and on and the xeroxes are 11 times of that!

Finally, it’s time for interior decoration. The fridge and the furniture are dotted with names and numbers of important impending dates like the day of the dog’s left ear cleaning.

Every morning as I open the fridge I’ll be staring at the law pasted on the door—‘Xerox everything!’ A reminder that mom’s shadow looms large. Just like her friend Bush Jr, she has an impact on us from far, far away. Now, excuse me while I xerox this article.