So I like a kid...

In fact I love them. Only I have this decided partiality for good
looking babies. I know it sounds shallow and disgusting, but there it
is. On Sunday, P, N (P's flatmate) and I went out for a quick dinner at Pizza Hut. It was anywhere near quick. There was a queue outside the place (That's one thing I detest. Waiting for food or being asked to leave because there are others waiting). By the time we had the good fortune of getting a table, N had to leave. She had to meet her beau(boyfriend sounds decidedly schoolgirlish).

When we sat down, I noticed this little boy with chubby cheeks and little cupid lips working on his portion of garlic bread with a fork very earnestly. I kept turning around to look at him. P's reaction: 'I was convinced that day at Maurya that you are a paedophile.'

I had met this cute little firang kid a month back on an assignment. He was bouncing about in the swimming pool at Maurya Sheraton along with his little elder sister and fat lardy father in tow. He was the baby of the shutterbugs who instead of training their cameras on a bikini-clad model gave our little friend their full atttention. And wasn't he lapping up the attention! He posed for them, grinned, rolled about with pleasure...I stood at the edge of the pool smiling indulgently at him. Now whenever the dad happened to look at me, he caught me looking at his kid and he shot me suspiciously looks henceforth. Each time the kid tried to run towards our side, he caught him and dumped him on the lounger. I wonder if he thought along the lines of P.

I think I want to adopt a kid. I suggested it to my mom. She freaked
out. One of our tenants had their twin grandchildren from Bombay
visiting them. The visit was a long one. When they arrived they could
just crawl around. By the time they left our place they could walk. They were fraternal twins - Haloushka (the gal) and Hriday (the boy). This happened to be during the final year of my college.

With the exams looming in front, my mom became very hyper whenever she would find me playing with the kids. She warned me: 'Just wait till you drop one of them and land in jail.' I would say bah and steal down every afternoon. Till evening I would be with them. Hriday was a confusing guy. Very chubby and cute. The moment he would see me standing at the door waiting to be let in, he would gurgle with happiness and come running on his unsteady legs and fall. Then five seconds in my lap and he would die to get back to his nanny. Very tiresome.

Haloushka was always content to be with me. She didn't like it one bit when I tried to be pally with her naughty brother. She was a pretty little girl and very winning in her ways. When she smiled a toothless smile and rubbed her cheek against mine I would feel on top of the world. Then one day she drenched me. Feeling the wet thingie on the front of my clothes, I freaked out. I put her down and started telling her naughty she was. She in the meantime kept tugging at my clothes asking to be taken back. I didn't. After her nanny changed her clothes and brought her back and after I had changed mine as well, she refused to come to me. She sat on the stairs and played by herself. Only when I had tried placating her and pleaded for a good 10 mins, did she come running to me. At that point, I felt like she was my baby. I again told my mom I wanted to adopt her. She told me off saying I was out of my mind.

Anyways one evening I was out with them in our driveway as usual. I took hold of the pram in which Hriday loved toodling off with his nanny. The latter asked me to take care of him for a while. I was walking him around, when after five minutes as usual he started getting very shifty. He kept moving till suddenly I saw him toppling out of the pram (that too right in front of his grandparents' doorstep. Thankfully it was shut). As he let out a earsplitting wail, I picked him up and ran to his nanny who advised me to get some icecubes. Now when I tried to put an icecube on his head, he shrieked even louder.

What his nanny did put my heart in my mouth. She popped it into his mouth. The little guy just wouldn't take it out of his mouth after that and was very happy with it. I was shit scared. The icecubes were particularly big and even I couldn't keep them in my mouth for long. What if he choked? Nothing doing. He wouldn't take it out. I remembered what ma had said. I panicked and called up my friends. Of course my mum never knew. She still doesn't. She would have killed me. But the next morning Hriday fell off from the bed and hurt himself on the head again. (okay okay I was being terribly mean) I heaved a sigh of relief .