Subir Roy: Middle age angst

OFFBEAT

I'd had enough. My daughter had been at the computer for what seemed like aeons. So I called out from the other end of the living room that she better shut down before her wrists dropped off from endless keying. But instead of immediately getting up, she replied with as much aplomb she could muster, Baba, I am researching my UN speech!

Not that I didn't know about that. There was to be this mock UN session with role-playing by school children in Delhi and she and a couple of her friends in senior school had been chosen to go along.

She was to be the representative of Belize, and could I please let her get on with her work. There were mountains of documents to pursue on the net and after that she would have to go and meet her friends to draft a few resolutions.

Thoroughly chastened, I returned to my reading. After a while I though it was time to quickly check on my son who was in hostel in Chennai and needed more tracking than when he was at home. Not wanting to start a conversation with something like, I hope you are not up to no good, I began with an innocuous, is it raining there?

Baba, if you got nothing important to discuss, can I go along, he replied. Go where, I asked cautiously. To Pondicherry, of course, he said. That also I was officially aware of.

There was this youth festival of sorts and he and a batch of his college friends were pushing off to participate in a plethora of debating, music and other competitions.

If he kept talking to me he would miss the bus, he said. Not that young people don't talk on the cellphone while walking but not when someone wants to ward off the sort of question that I would have eventually come to: How did you do in your Sanskrit test after faring so miserably the last time? But he was busy for a legitimate reason and I hung up.

I turned off my cellphone and waited for dinner to be served. Then it struck me that I had not spoken to my wife for two days now. No, we had not had a serious fight, she was travelling on work and tried hard to keep her cellphone bill down by minimising unnecessary calls. Even an SMS saying that she was fine would have done the job but she was obviously too busy chasing revenue targets.

So there was I on my cellphone waiting with some trepidation for the reaction to my call. What is it you want, was her classical opening gambit. When she realised I had nothing specific to discuss, she asked if she could talk later.

The sound of merry chatter flowed in from behind her. Was she at a party, I asked. No I am with your best friend and his wife and if I could ring off they would get into the car to go to this new Chinese restaurant that was the talk of south Kolkata.

Ring off I did, momentarily ruing the days decades ago when I had no family of my own. Confirmed bachelorhood would have been heavenly, compared to the lot of a family man in late middle age whose family has no time to speak to him.