World Wrestling Federation, Tamil-Bengali style!

So, after the ridiculously fat me and my even fatter body parts had been stuffed into the horror film lingerie, it was time to say good bye to the hospital and the amazingly helpful nurses and the doctor.

This was an extremely emotional moment, especially for me. Roughly 8.5 months ago, I was laid in the next room, upside down, not knowing whether the baby would survive and come out a happy, healthy and screaming little monster.

And yet, here we were, ready to take him home, all wrapped up, warm and squishy, some what doughnut like!

The car journey was quite uneventful. Just like any new and first time parents, we informed the driver to not go beyond 40kmph, and I think, everytime he managed to get his foot on the pedal, we were quick enough to admonish him!

And everytime the warm January sun hit little P's face, both of us would quickly cover his face, lest he get tanned, or his eyes get damaged, or worst, IF HE WOKE UP!!!

We reached home, and the events that would unfold would lay the foundation for the Civil Unrest that was to follow at our place for the next one month.

War was soon going to be declared between Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, and we had no idea!

All through the pregnancy, the MIL was away, taking care of the other grand kids, and my mother dear took care of me. Now that MIL was here, ehm ehm... those who are married, or better, watch TV soaps, would know what follows when these two women are pitted against each other.

This is basically a gentler version of the World Wrestling Federation, but without the push up bras and oily bodies. Also, it ain't physical, much to voyeurs' dismay! ;)

Any how...

We were first greeted by two bulls, sorry, women, running towards us, a bit like the Spanish San Fermin, or rather the running of the bulls!

A version closer to home is the running of the bulls in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, with matadors in sexy lungis, or veshtis, whichever you prefer. But the men are definitely more handsome!

MIL somehow managed to reach us first (BOOOO! WEST BENGAL!!!) and greeted us Tamil style, of course, turmeric and vermillion and the whole shebang. Very good, we thought!

Runner Up Bengal to follow...

We were greeted, yet again, sans turmeric and vermillion, but edible oil, not ON US, but around the door frame. SAD SHOW, WEST BENGAL! BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME!

The husband and I exchanged some glances. Now, those of who you are married, happily or not, doesn't matter, will know the power of these glances that spouses exchange.

When photographers say, 'A picture speaks a thousand words', they have no idea how many words are silently spoken when a husband and wife share these looks.

The best part is, these glances are open to interpretation! ;)

What we actually "said" was:

Him: Whoop whoop! Amma won!

Solemnly, do you think what I think?

Me: Mom LOST, because I TOLD HER TO BACK OFF, OKAY?! We Bengalis are way smarter and quicker than you Tamilians! Huh! To challenge the descendants of Rabindranath Tagore and Satyajit Ray?!

Solemnly, yes, I too think what you think.

Him: So, basically, for the next one month, till my mom is here, idlis (fermented rice cakes) are going to be  pitted against macch bhaat (fish curry and rice), from morning to midnight?!

Me (to myself): We Bengalis and our maach bhaat ARE SO GOING TO DROWN THOSE SILLY IDLIS! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!

Honey, I shrunk your underwear!

The moment arrived, the big one we had all been waiting for!

Little P was fast asleep and big P was waiting for me to get dressed, while a cab and FIL waited for all of us to pick up our bums and move.

I was quite smug about the fact that now that I had finally given birth, the weight was just going to drop off like the price of mangoes in monsoon, and whoom and boom! I would magically fit into my old clothes now that there would be no bump.

I picked up the lingerie and IT WOULDN'T FIT!!!

It was as if it was 3 sizes too small! WHAT THE FISH?! Not the absolutely unsexy bra, nor the horrendous granny pants! $%^*())&^#@@

The cabbie was honking, the FIL was muttering something in Tamil and the husband was being patient, maybe because he didn't want to mess with the fresh dose of post partum hormones I had warned him about!

I had no idea what to do. I was angry, I was close to tears. I had ordered a maternity/feeding bra somewhere in my last trimester and I was, honestly speaking, very embarrassed when I was placing the order online.

The whole online world and everybody at the lingerie e-store would know my Pamela Anderson bra size! But, I had no choice. I was in desperate need of new (read bigger) ones!

How was I to know that even the biggest size of my life would now suddenly be 3 sizes too small?!

And the sooper dooper big granny pants, the stuff that sexual nightmares are made of, those had shrunk too!

They HAD SHRUNK! Because, I possibly couldn't have become bigger now that the baby was on the outside!

As the honks and muttering grew, I had no option, but to stuff "myself" into the top. At one point, I thought I would suffocate to death, I was that tight!

The underwear?! Gaaah! That's another story!

When you live in a joint family, the older and elder members of the family know a thing or two about what in India is known as "jugaad". That is, an ad-hoc and impromptu solution, that borders on the ridiculous at times!

So, to cut a long story short, I basically just ripped the elastic off the granny chuds as much as I could, and, VOILA!!! There it was, a bigger version of the stupidly disappointing granny pants!

Aaah, those thunder thighs had some new friends, a la old-wine-in-new-bottle kind of friends!

Hello, and welcome to the world of peepees!

I was always pigheaded about the fact that if and when I do have a baby, I would only go for a woman obe-gyn. Not that I have anything against the men, but it was just a preference I had. Luckily, for us, ours was a she. BUT, and there's a but here, the pediatrician at that hospital was a he.

So, I am laid there, everything is out in the open. I am staring at the ceiling, concentrating hard on not screaming, holding onto my big fat thighs for support, because my legs were fixed on the stirrups, pushing with every contraction that wreaked my body. And, in walks HE, coolly looking at me, my stuff like an open wardrobe, and looks at me, nods a hello, and says, "What's up?!"

And, I am like, Not much, Just trying not to let out a poop instead of the baby, because s/he is hell bent on not making an appearance.

At this point, the decision was taken to cut me up and deliver the baby, because I had no strength left in me, given the passage of time, and the strong headed babe I had inside me, who had decided to take permanent residence inside.

The one painful thing about the caeserean operation is the epidural they give in your spinal cord. Man! That's one big syringe! I won't be surprised if it's the same one used to sedate horses, it's that big!

It took forever for me to bend over, and you have to really make a concave out of your back for the needle to go in correctly, because I was so damn huge. After a while, I was numb below the waist, and the painkillers that had been administered before, were still making me quite woozy.

And, the nerd that I am. I kept asking the doctors what they were doing, because, you know, I was a SCIENCE STUDENT once, and came 10,000 in the All India position in some medical entrance test I gave a zillion years ago, before I found my true calling! BAAH!

Little did she know, that all my knowledge came from watching Grey's Anatomy and also because, I read through a million labour stories and watched many more videos before the real thing made me pee in my nightie, pun intended.

I am half asleep, when suddenly, I hear myself discussing episodes from the TV series and the doctors are busy doing their job, but quite taken in by my knowledge. MUST PAT MYSELF AFTERWARDS!

I wake up again, after a bit, and I see what seem like TESTICLES! HUH?! Yes, black, like really black ones, in front of my eyes, against a ball of milky white skin, which the doctor was holding.

At that point, I smile, and, now I am not too sure, but I either said, "BOY!" or "BALLS!" Either way, both go hand in hand ;)

So, there he was, our Sindhi-Tamil-Bengali dude, our little P, all covered in gooey stuff and screaming bloody murder, while the doctor patted his white and pink bottom.

The baby had safely arrived. It was a 'He'. All the stars, the astrological predictions, the pundits whathaveyou, All of you, take a bow, because, Alas! I was indeed mommy to a peepee.

This rent agreement is only for 9 months

All my dreams of having a Hollywood-style pregnancy and labour were crashing. The pregnancy, of course, was now about to get over, with the not-so-cool labour taking over.

Somewhere towards the end of our pregnancy, I somehow managed to get the husband to sit with me and go through hours and hours of YouTube videos of women giving birth.

Yep, we saw it all. The normal ones, the caesarean ones. All the drama, the emotions, the tears, the blood, the screams, the joy, you name it and we saw it. We held hands all through those videos, we were so shit scared!

This was now our moment. No movie-inspired labour for me, thankyouverymuch!

We waited for 3 hours, and then called up the hospital and told them we were coming. It was 0230 hours and we booked a cab and I left home wearing a nightie! Oh yeah, I forgot to change clothes, because the pain was a bit** and I didn't care a tiny rat's ass about how I was dressed!

Soon, our doctor arrived, and before you knew it, I was screaming bloody murder! The pain was now killing me, and I was ready to kill the husband, because, of course, labour pain turns you into murderous evil witch!

All those promises to myself that I will go through this pain and not succumb to getting cut melted away, as the pain rocked my body and mind. This was crazy shit pain. When they say labour feels like you are going to do the biggest poo of your life, IT'S BLOODY TRUE!

Pretty soon, I was all konked out, thanks to the lovely painkillers I was given. I slept off, but woke up every couple of minutes were the pains tore through my body and the husband, poor fellow, rubbed my back like his life was on the line. At the end, I am pretty sure, he wanted a hand transplant and a wife transplant, as well ;)

The clock slowly managed to make its way through the hours, and after five or so hours, the sweet words I so wanted to hear, finally came: you are ready.

We had taken permission for the husband to accompany me to the labour room, but what ensued later would forever go down in history books as a question mark. Apparently, some drama occurred, and the doctor quickly threw both the husband and mother dear out. I shall not elaborate further for the sake of family ties ;)

I was on the labour table, popping in and out of consciousness. I was shaking and shivering like I was a Bollywood actress dressed in a chiffon sari atop the damn Alps lip synching to my heart's content! The shakes were so bad, the darn table went clackety clack!

Next thing you know, I hear myself telling the doctor, I want to pee. So, she says, no problem, go ahead and do it. And before you could say hello, I went! Yep! I peed on the labour table, just like that. No dignity, I told ya!

She told me when to push, and push I did! For 2.5 hours! But nothing came out! This little Sindhi-Bengali-Tamil cheeky monkey was one hell of a stubborn baby!

She tried getting forceps into me, but nope, nothing. Ditto, vacuum cup, a weird little cup that went inside me, did some weird little dance inside me, and came out empty handed. Speaking of hands, she even tried getting her hands inside me to move the baby's head, because it was stuck at a weird angle :o

Ermmm, okay...

I know the womb is a wonderful place to be in, but, hello, baby, are you planning to come out at all?! Our rent agreement lease is only for 9 months, you know!

Should we name the baby Rafael, as in Nadal?

D-Day had finally arrived, much to my glee!

Yes, Yes!!! You guessed it, it was time to EAT EGG AND CHEESE WRAPS again! Make that a double please! I have no shame in admitting I can gobble two at a time ;)

This was our penultimate meeting with the doctor and it was a little difficult to accept that the next time we go there, it would also be the last time I would lay my hands on a egg wrap and not feel guilty about it. sniff sniff!!

Any how, here's another thing about pregnancy. The fastest road to divorce is the one you take in pregnancy when you have to zero down upon a name for the baby, and that's when you know that your spouse LOVES HIS FOLKS more than he loves you.

This moment, when this revelation is out in the open and is there to stay forever, is a time point in a married couple's life.

Of course, like all pregnant women, I had already decided on boy and girl names, probably from the time I got my two positive lines on the peeing stick. And of course, they had to be COOL NAMES, and definitely neither Tamil nor Bengali.

No way Jose! There would be no Muthu or Mishti! Oh nononono! This was my cupcake, I was the oven for NINE FRIGGING months. There's no way I could let the grampas and granmas take away my moment by giving the baby a real tragic name!

The husband, on the other hand, had already decided that he would VETO each cool name I threw across. He knew the real me, he knew I would come up with some Hollywood-inspired or F1 or tennis-inspired name.

Much to my dismay, before I could even suggest those names, he said no to Rafael, Pete, Steffi!!! HUH?! Did he not know who these people were?! Of course he did, but he was having none of them, or rather, their name sakes, in our living room.

This is also the time in your life when marriage politics comes into play. You have to make everyone happy, there's no denying that. And, by everyone, I mean the In-laws. And that's a tough nut to crack, ain't it?!

We have this tradition of naming babies after grandparents, sort of like an Indian version of George I and Louis XV. But my pseudo-intellectual half-Bengali genes were vehemently protesting against being mommy to a Swamy I or a Muthu III.

And neither was I going to be mommy to a Rabindranath junior or a Satyajit junior!

So, in the spirit of secularism, we decided to say byebye to Tamil and Bengali names and just came up with the letter 'P', because, it's mommy-in-law's initial.

But, what about MY MOMMY?!

Husband: And, what about my DADDY?!

Gaaah! Egg wraps, where are you when I need you?!

Mommy and daddy and all kinds of genes be damned, I was in labour already and I had no idea!

The doctor told me, "You are going to deliver in less than 48 hours!"

And indeed, I did!

Goo Goo Dolls give way to Gita, Ganpati and Gyaan

So, there I was, pregnant, albeit along with the damn polyp taking a free ride inside my uterus and possibly squeezing the life out of our rapidly multiplying group of cells, whom we were fondly referring to as "baby".

We had no idea where we were headed. Sure, our strong-headed combination of Tamil (also lovingly referred to as Madrasi by our lovely North Indian citizens of this country) spermatozoa and psuedo-intellectual Bengali ovum had managed to scare the crap out of the darn tiger.  But, the fact remained, that the polyp was weighing heavy on our minds.

The lovely specialised doctors we had earlier met suggested the big A word, but this was our moment, and we weren't ready to let some money-making knife-yielding coat-wearing robot take that away from us.

Phone calls were made to some friends and family alike, and we were nudged in the direction of a doctor who was to become our BFF for the next 9 months.

This new doctor was the miracle we were looking for and her words were the answers to our stream of questions and worried looks. To say that she was God-send remains an understatement.

Any how, mush and sob stories aside! Pregnancy completely changed me, or rather my personality. At this point in time, only our parents knew and 1 colleague and my boss knew.

Gone was the cool, suave girl/woman that I knew myself to be. I took to superstition like a moth to a flame. I started believing in jinxes, started covering up my stomach because I was scared evil looks would harm me and our baby.

Shocker of all shockers, gone was my itunes play list too!! bye bye Hoobastank and Goo Goo Dolls. Hello, devotional songs and audio podcasts of religious texts!

What was happening to me?! This was me, guzzler of tequila shots combined with pints and pints of beer! Driver of a super cool, green-coloured Chevrolet Spark, who only knew the 5th gear!

Coolness quotient be damned! I wasn't barren, I was pregnant, my husband would be mine till the divorce papers are not signed! Who cares about my  newly improved playlist. This was me, Version 2.0!

I should smugly add here that right before this point in time, I had managed to LOSE WEIGHT! Yes, me, whale of all whales, thanks to my adipose tissue-loving half-Sindhi genes, had lost 15 (IN WORDS, LEST THE IMPORTANCE BE LOST, FIFTEEN) kilos! chumbawumba! I was thin, you could finally see that I too had a waist and size 28 jeans could finally be bought!!! MOTHER OF GOD, I AM GETTING GOOSEBUMPS WRITING THIS!

Of course, good things and weight loss don't last forever. The Sindhi genomes were back with a vengeance and my bottom ( I won't say a**, since I am all chic and refined now :p) and other unmentionable body parts were growing at breakneck speed.

Gone were my days of eating frugally. My dear mother had moved base to our city then, and of course, in true Bollywood style, came to the rescue of her pregnant daughter's health. Rates of eggs and carrots were rapidly climbing in our neighborhood, thanks to the speed at which mother dear was buying them.

The baby seemed to be growing fine. Nothing untoward happened. How could it? Considering that I was walking at snail's pace and covering myself up like I was living in a bloody igloo, even though it was sweating hot here.

But knowing my passion for weird luck, there was some pretty scary news in store for us...