I am daddy

The little one has a new fad now. Walking around wearing daddy T-shirts and claiming "I am daddy!" It is hilarious. Caught her on video when she was least suspecting it.
We had fun yesterday at Big Trees state park which was a 3 hour drive away. We also visited a mining town that has been preserved to look like the early 1900's called Columbia on the way back that reminded us of our trip to Ballarat in Australia many years ago! It was one tiring trip for the kids who did 2 mile walks and some steep climbs to get to the Stalinslaus river. Now the little one has a cold and both kids are going through Daddy withdrawal symptoms as I make my way to spend this work week in Austin. Time for her to grow up and be daddy! .

Happiness is..

The first time I actually participated in any underwear purchasing was sometime in high school.

Till then, it was totally done at the parent's mercy, mostly my dad's. They would guess our sizes and buy us underwear. The sizes would be +/- 10% and if lucky we would grow into it within the year! If not, we will suffer through it till a parent or grandpa figured out that something went horribly wrong and correct the mistake.

Around the time in high school, there was one trip to what was Hari Textiles in Mylapore where an old gentlemen who owned the store engaged us in this three way conversation:

Dad : Sir, payyanukku size 70 jatti oru ara dozen edunga. (Sir, get my boy 1/2 dozen briefs in size 70cm)

OG (older gentlemen) : (Looks up and down, it was more like up at my dads face, down at my waist then up at my dads face again. Scratches his chin with style that would make Dumbledore proud and pronounces his verdict) Payyanukku 75 podunga sir! (make him wear 75 at least)

Dad : Ille Sir, 75 romba loosa irukkum. Neenga 70ye kudunga. (No Sir, 75 will be too loose. Give him only a 70cm)

Me : (my happiness literally hanging in the balance) Why don't you let me try it on and I can tell you if it is comfortable!

Dad and OG seem to look at me with disapproval. That worries me because as agreeing adults, they could suddenly unite and come to a consensus. The fact that there was no 72.5cm option to average out their opinions made me even more wary! What if they settle for 70?! So I put on one puppy look for OG's sake.

OG : Jatti ellam try panna mudiyaadhu thambi. Venumna ippidi vachchu kaataren..(you cannot try on a brief. I can place it on your waist and show you). goes on to place the 70 along my waist!

Doing some instant Pythagoras calculations in my head using my waist size, distance between my navel and my you know whats, with some coefficients of elasticity of common cotton fabric thrown in for good measure, horror of horrors, the thing looked like it could be a close call!

Me : I will go with 75cm!

My Dad looked disappointed, either with me for not taking his side or at OG for having the balls to contradict him in front of his son...

Dad: Sure'aaa da ? (Are you sure?)

Me : Yes. Sure!

Dad : Okay Saar. 1/2 dozen kudungaa (give half a dozen). Make sure you give him only dark colors. He likes dark colors. (For once he was right. In those days, there was a strong liking for dark colors).

My dad would treat buying underwear for me or my brother with the same seriousness as he would buy brinjals and okra in the Mylapore vegetable market. Approximately eyeball quality or quantity, start bargaining, purchase!

Five minutes later, after settling for a 10% discount as repeat customer, we both walked out happy! Dad with the 10% price reduction and me with the 6.66% size addition.

Since that day(to the present), 99% of the brief purchasing has been done at the same Hari Textiles store in Mylapore. One thing has been constant. It has always been the same VIP brand with a simple red tag across the front of the waist band which said "VIP" with the size in cms written on the side.

99% because I did stray from being loyal to HariTex and VIP during a three year continuous stint in the US of A. If you are making a trip every two years or every year in some cases, you can predict sizes and purchase accordingly. Three years on the same size with cheese pizza as your main diet can cause some serious issues. So there was a "brief" fling with Jockeys.

The rest of the purchases, all in 1/2 dozen or dozen quantities have been made at that Chennai Landmark. Well, it should be a Landmark, because that place and that man have single handedly ensured that many TamBram boys have retained some semblance of a sperm count, in spite of their dads doing the undie shopping for them during their most important years!

In short, a whole generation of TamBrams owe their existance to that store and that salesman. Now why do we reminesce about those good old days?

The recent India trip in September, was wrapped up with a last minute trip to Hari Textiles. (it is almost always the last minute wrap up purchase item!)

Now that yours truly has almost transformed into his daddy over the years, the conversation went like this:

Me : Sir oru ara dozen VIP kudunga!(give me a half dozen VIP briefs)

OG : ?!?!

Me : Sorry. Size 90 oru ara dozen kudunga. (Sorry, give me half dozen size 90cms)

OG : ?!?! (does a Dumbledore again)

Me : Enna Sir yosikkareenga ?(what are you thinking?)

OG : Endha kaalaththula Sir neenga size 90? At least 100 venum! (in which eon were you a size 90 ? You need at least a 100 centimeters now!)

Was a little upset that OG put me aside like a little puppy and in a protesting note stated..

Me: Ille saar. Naan ippo 90 dhan podaren (No Sir. I wear a size 90 now) and go on to pull out the VIP tag from behind my belt buckle to show him the "90 cms" written in size 12 Helvetica.

OG : Neenga 90cm potta romba tighta irukkum. Not healthy. Sadaa irritatedaa iruppenga.. (if you wear 90cm it will be too tight. you will be constantly irritated)

Me : (looking at San who is about to split her sides laughing, and also knowing that OG ranks somewhere next to Master Yoda on the inter galactic intelligence scale, somewhere higher than even my all knowing dad!) Neenga sonna sairyaa dhan Saar irukkum. Size 100-e kudunga. (If you say so, it will be right. Give me the size 100.)

Some people never learn, and some people here is just an indirect reference to myself!

After coming back from India, a week or two went by before one of the new 100cms was picked at random from the brief drawer.

That entire morning went by with me walking around work with a noticeable difference in my level of chirpiness! So much that at the lunch table a friend commented "What is up with you? You seem to be very happy and comfortable today!"

The "comfortable" word connected a lot of dots in my head instantly. It was noticeably obvious. The secret to the local happiness was found. It was the luxury of 10 extra centimeters of elastic around the waist and Pythagoras working his mathemagic away from the hypotenuse.

Happiness was,is and will be, wearing the right size underwear!!

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Voting for Obama

Asked Jr. why she voted for Obama in her mock election, and the answer was surprising!

The expected answer was "because you voted for him Daddy!".. but NO!

The real answer was:

"because he has two small daughters and he has promised to buy them a puppy if he wins the election!"

and

"also because you voted for him!".

Now that is baffling. As a Obama voter and as a daddy, I had no clue about this puppy business. How she knew this was beyond me.

Looks like he won her vote as a daddy who promised his kids a puppy, or she did it so the two little girls will get their puppy!

I need to teach my girls to vote for the correct reasons!

The good news is, we have another 13 years to work on it.

.

Budding researcher

There is a good chance you will see a Journal paper which looks something like this..

Classification of Fecal morphology in real time

Narayanan L. O. et. al.

you should not be surprised!

The little one seems to put Linnaeus to shame! Never mind the fact that dad can remember Carolus Linnaeus from his eighth standard Botony class.

Why?

L.O. : Daddy, I am done! Wipeeeeeeeee...
Me : Goddamn, she always knows how to call me just when I start eating! Commmming
Me : Pee pee or poo poo?
L.O. : Poo Poo.. Snake and goat!
Me : What?
L.O. : I went snake and goat poo poo!

Now, some of you might think this is a gross post.

The little one might not thank me for this if she actually chooses a career in research.

But, you have to agree, she has the ability to classify things in simple terms, at such a young age!

When this was mentioned to San and the MIL, they were dumbstruck. Not by the Little one, but by the fact that daddy is able to beat with chest with pride because his little one classified poo poo!

Well, I am very proud!

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What is worse?

Three years ago, everytime we would go to any restaurant with a two year old Jr. (and we went to a lot of restaurants because San was pregnant with the little one), we would sit down to eat and just as the food arrived, Jr. would say "Pee pee" or worse "Poo Poo" promptly followed by "Daddy, lets go!".

All attempts by mom or grandma or other sympathetic relatives(when present) would fail. It would HAVE to be daddy who gets to stare at pee and poo before he goes back to the dinner table.

Jr. singlehandedly contributed to my reduced appetite (still does), and in a way kept my weight stable. In retrospect, maybe it was gods way of keeping me healthy, since I was not doing anything else by way of diet or exercise!

Now that we go out to eat with Jr. AND the little one, get to use the "I cannot take a five year old to the mens room!!!!" excuse and make her go with San. Well, almost always! Once in a while if it is a small restaurant with a single restroom, the job bouces back to me.

That said, we went and visited a new Indian restaurant called "Peacock" (I am not going for any pun here. Will write BARR soon). Jr. did the announcement, just as the waiter was walking towards the table with the food, and daddy had to go with her this time.

Being nothing new, just resolved myself to fate and walked to and from the restroom, patiently answering questions on, how come I took her to the mens room and how come there is only one potty but it still got called a men's room, etc.

That part went well. You are thinking "Hmm.. That part went well? How could it get any worse?". The little one just left us speechless!

There are villans in movies who make a lot of noise, overact, do gruesome acts, etc. etc. but somehow they look like sissies when compared to the calm, collected and cold blooded killer who kills without batting an eyelid or making a noise. If Jr. is the former, the little one belongs to the latter category.

She took a glass of water, put some biriyani into it, rubbed the table with a napkin, put the napkin into the glass, pulled it out, then put a few spoons of raita and channa masala into the glass and stirred it, added some more water, threw in a piece of naan, stirred it around with a huge spoon while standing from her high chair and turning everyones gaze towards her as she made the clanking noise with her spoon, and then went on to..

Drink the water(?!) or whatever it was in that glass!

She did all that with no emotion, no smile, nothing. Just sitting on that high chair like Dr. Jekyll and eventually standing up to do the Mr. Hyde stuff.

My mother in law always said "the little one takes after her father for all the bad things". Sure I was a legend in my toddler days. Stories of my target practice on ground floor residents using shoes and chappals dropped from the first floor, or my attempt to convert the living room into a swimming pool by closing all drain holes, doors and dumping buckets of water in the top floor and insiting that my brother swin in three inches of water, are still circulating in Madras.

The little one just makes all that pale in comparison to what she does. Earlier this week, we heard vacuuming noises in the kitchen. When we went to look, the little one was vacuuming the floor with the toy vac and surprisingly the floor was extremely dirty. She had put her hands inside the garbage container under the kitchen sink, pulled out the tea leaves(which were dumped in there after filtering tea), added some other garbage for good measure, and spread it on the floor so she had something dirty to start with!!! Funny thing is that the toy vac does not actually have any suction and it just spread all the garbage, around the tiled kitchen floor!

What do you do, when your house is clean, but you have the innate feminine urge(?!) to vacuum like your mommy? You spread real garbage back on the floor and practice!

Took us 30 minutes to clean up that kitchen floor (Yes, I did think about it.. but it would not have been a good Photoblog!).

Jr. is an angel by comparison. In any case, dad's days as a legend are numbered. A new star has been born!

God help us!

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