The Chasing Iamb

(To the people I told this story to before I wrote about it: Skip ahead, turn away, forgive me.)

My nephew is a couple of days old. His mother is Hmar. His father is Malayali. His grandparents are anxious and his aunt is feeling loopy.

On Day 2 I am enlisted to help out and hang about clumsily in the hospital room. His mother is dozing and so is his grandmother. I look towards the cradle covered in gauze nervously. There is no sign detectable to me that a human being is in there.

After a while I can't drive away thoughts of crib death anymore so I tip-toe over and peer at him through the gauze. This doesn't work really well so I lift the gauze and peep at him. The kid looks like he is made of plastic. I bend over double, put my head really close to him and see if I can detect a breath. A minute passes and I am utterly terrified. Then the damn kid snaps his eyes open like the beast in a Korean horror film: THWUNGGGG!

I nearly scream in fright and my hair turns white. The moment the kid is old enough I am going to beat him up.

Before that I might beat his father. The father, my one and only, much adored brother suddenly became an adult and decided to get married. In a panic I asked him, "Are you sure? You have not known her long?" To which he replies with great kindness, "We are not like you. We don't think too much."

Subsequently I have become the great bumbling South Indian stepping carefully trying to make sure I don't offend by idiocy or intention. Cut to this week in the hospital room. It is filled with guests and baby clothes and flowers. A woman is crooning in Tulu to the bite-sized baby. A Mizo girl is complaining about 'these horrid Manipuris always speaking in Meitei'. Both grandmothers are nodding and giggling at each other since they don't have a language in common.

Meanwhile, my brother is near the window on the cellphone loudly declaiming, "No man, I can't make out whether the baby is chinky. All the babies in the nursery look chinky at this stage."

We all sighed/groaned/moaned according to the level of our lady-like disposition.