Georgie became 5 years old last week. It was a hot and dry day and I decided to water my kitchen garden before Georgie woke up after his short afternoon nap. It was quite unusual that he sleeps immediately after he reaches home from school. Now that he has become all the talkative over the past 6 months, he has at least 10 stories to share about his playmates and teachers at the school before he dozes off for less than an hour or so. He isn’t up even as I finished watering the kitchen garden and the flower garden too. It’s over 2 hours and I started wondering why I haven’t heard him chirping as yet. That was when I heard my husband ending some stressful phone call as he walked past me into the home without even smiling at me. I am puzzled to see him reach home after work before sunset. Involuntarily my eyes started scanning the sky to spot the position of the sun to reconfirm the time since I have no access to a clock from the garden as I was finishing my garden work. My sun-dialing skill assures me that the time is somewhere around 4 pm.
As I go around the house to enter through the backdoor I could vaguely hear the father and son chatting as they were climbing down the stairs from the first floor. The first thing I looked for as I stepped inside the home was to validate my sun-dialing expertise. It was exactly 4:20 pm and that was reason enough for me to be elated beyond measure as I quickly planned to talk about it when Jacob sips his tea. I was pretty sure that I would get a kiss from him as is his usual style of appreciating his wife even in public. Georgie’s stories had already begun but Jacob was lost in some thought as he was staring out of the window. I could easily sense that he has lost his mood. He smiled at me but wasn’t very comfortable about something. We finished the tea and yet he didn’t utter a word and I knew that the best thing for me to do was to wait attentively until he is ready to speak. Georgie is right in front of us on the floor busy with his slate and building blocks. It’s 5:15 pm and we are still staring at each other but that’s not odd since we usually ensure not to speak about anything worrisome when Georgie is around. I didn’t want this to go on for another 10 mins so I asked Georgie to bring his pencil box so that she can sharpen his pencils. He runs up to take it from the first floor and I ask Jacob to quickly spurt it out. “Konnu kalayum njaan (I will kill you)”, that’s what Georgie told me when I tried to wake him up sometime back. Jacob was furious at me as he said that as if it was I who taught him such language. He toned down immediately as he came back to his senses and realised that I have never used such language ever in my life. I was literally shocked to hear it and was sad that one odd day Jacob reaches home early but couldn’t enjoy a few minutes happily with his family.
to be continued…