Mon Enfant Terrible

A lot of mommies, especially mommies to little boys, have come up to me and told me that I have it easy and that I have such a darling of a child. Like just the other day, I was talking to another mum, my chest swelling with pride, as she told me how I'm doing such a great job raising my little angel.

This is what I recollect of the conversation. Let's just call the other mom the house-favorite variable, X for the sake of the story.
Me: Hey X! How's it going?
X: Oh hey you! Just the usual, going nuts chasing my boy here and there. I need a break!
Me: Yea, I hear ya. So do I!
X: No, you don't. I mean I've seen you. You're so calm and collected around Saanvi. She's such a darling.
Me: Oh, come on. I lose my temper too, you know.
X: No, you don't know the half of it. Saanvi's such an angel. You know, you're very lucky. I wish I could also be as laidback and cheerful as you are.
[I'm drinking in the appreciation. At the same time, from the corner of my eye, I see my sweet little angel climb on the slide, shoving and pushing other kids aside. She gets up there, removes her dirty sneakers and bam! They go trickling down the slide onto the kid happily lounging on the edge of the slide, busy showing off his brand new watch to another kid.]
Me [gritting my teeth but managing a smile]: X, you know that's not true. Saanvi's been giving me a hard time too. I can totally relate to what you're going through.
X: Oh yea? She gives you a hard time? Like by doing what? Pulling out her ponytail and messing up her hair? Please! Baby girls are the sweetest damn thing on earth.
[Saanvi, meanwhile, who has clearly crossed that kid, is now jetting down the slide. She's kicking the boy, testing his patience a little more. She lands and directly moves on to her business of coaxing her arch-rival off the swing. That goddamn swing, which when is empty, has no takers. Of course, one thing leads to another; they're wrestling each other and screaming on top of their lungs!]
X [totally oblivious]: And then you have such a sweet temperament too. You know that helps. Hey, are you ok?
Me [ losing all my "sweet temperament", flashing my teeth bare]: "SAANVI! Stop that nonsense right now! I'm coming for you!

What happened next wasn't pretty.

And now I know what they mean when they say I have it easy.

Correction. I've had it easy. I think the terrible twos have finally caught up to me. My voice is usually croaky from yelling. My hair's frizzed out when I come back from the park. No, not from the cool breeze in my hair. But from scratching my head so hard in contemplation of the darndest messes that kids can find themselves in - everything from walking straight into a swing rocking high and hitting that sweet spot of a chin to petting dead birds lying in isolated corners.

As a new mum, and I know most new mums are prone to getting frazzled and overcautious, I never took any extra precautions. My house was never that baby-proof. I have a glass-top centre table. With wheels. I have a glass top many things. I have a water filter on top of a bookshelf. When other first-time mums visit me, I can say that they're thinking I'm like a crazy woman. One even told me that I still live like a teen. I smiled and told her that Saanvi knows her limits. To which she laughed. Really hard.
But that was pre-November. Before she turned two and half. We had the most adorable, happy exchanges in my mild tones and her sweet munchkinny voice. She responded positively to all my instructions. She took her own precautions. To watch her climb down the stairs was like being in a really slow time warp, where you could literally see all her cute pink toes make contact with the floor. She made the cutest, most hospitable host. I let her help me serve and she knew she was not supposed to go near a piping hot bowl of dal or rice. One time she felt so bad that everyone was eating and her Uncle Vicky wasn't, she went into the kitchen and got him two chapatis on a plate. And everybody gasped. It was pretty awww-y.

And people continued to look at me like I'm a weirdass mom. That something isn't right. All this while, I was wondering why're they so uptight. (Lame attempts at poetry continue.)
The onset of a wintry November must've probably brought in a rebellious wave with it. Maybe, my sweet daughter woke up one day, and said to herself, "Hey, ofcourse I'll continue to be told what to do, probably till I'm 18 and beyond. But wait a minute. What if I choose to ignore that once in a while?"
"What's the absolute worst that can happen if I choose to ignore mommy and daddy's explicit instructions?"

And so she test-ran that idea. She scanned the house for inaccessible objects. She chanced upon a beautiful glass bowl. Her eyes zoomed into a polka, stringy headband peeping out of it. She'd built up towers of anticipation about reaching out for the bowl herself. Maybe a dim warning danced briefly across her mind, "Do not touch that bowl on your own! Ask mummy." But then she had to assert her new-found independence. She disregarded the warning bell and tugged at the string ever so hard, consumed by a sense of adventure untameable. The bowl came shattering down with a screeching sound crossing every acceptable decibel level in a crammed apartment space. I almost had a stroke but I managed to come to her rescue. What? Why? How? I looked at her puzzled. She was inconsolable. But luckily, she was scratch-free.

After some therapeutic cleaning-up and calming the f*** down, I realized maybe I'd been making too many assumptions and I had better get started with some child-proofing. So off went the glass-top possessions and out came the wheels on the glass table. But Saanvi, ingeniously, found new games on her own that created bigger mysteries to unravel. Like playing an elf and scrubbing every corner of the house clean....each time with a new tissue, TP-ing the entire house. Or using the stool to get her tiny hands on every forbidden item in the house, including knives. Or even poking her hand into the elevator door when it's closing.

And then the crayons. There are crayon marks everywhere! Everywhere but her coloring books. And it doesn't matter how many times I show her how to color. She finds her inspiration in real forms. Like real expensive forms! If it's not art and craft projects, it's DIY make-up tricks. Did you know you could conceal under eye circles with scarlet lip color? I saw this video and thought wow, who'd have discovered that?  I mean who in their right mind would put some bright coral lipstick under the eyes?  Until make-up artist Saanvi thought that neon, traffic-stopping orange kohl art will bring out the color of my eyes. (By the way, the concealing trick - it really works.)

The past few months have been like scientific experiments and there are a lot of things that I've witnessed and gone, "Now, what in God's name is that? Oh, sure that could happen...Hmm...."
These things include:
1. Abandoned cream biscuits on the corners of my futon - after months of people rubbing their ample bottoms all over them.
2. Knitting yarns entangled into spider webs. (OK, I may have been responsible for that.)
3. A suspicious looking bowl with a pasty white powder. And a crocodile next to it with paste smeared all over its mouth. (Thankfully, it was only talc.)
4. Pieces of ripe tomatoes in my lower wardrobe shelf fermented into ketchup. (Experienced moms, explain that.)
5. Missing idols of ganesha and bal krishna mysteriously found days later resting on the arms of her plushy teddy bear.
6. Shrikhand icicles - it's what you get when you have undiscovered swabs of shrikhand under the table.

I get it. She's changing. She's discovering the world on her own. Maybe I'm not changing fast enough. I'm only growing old and weary and irritable.

And thank God for pre-school! I'm so happy to get my little demolition woman out of the house for two hours - that time of the day where my cleaning efforts are not futile and the house actually looks livable.
I couldn't agree with Oscar Wilde more when he observes life imitates art far more than the other way around.
Mine resembles a freakin' video-game right now (an educational one at that.)

But then I speak to other mums and I'd have to agree; it's still set to a moderately easy level.