To make it convenient for them, I’d drawn up an Excel sheet for the family to list their highs and lows of 2010, and set their goals for 2011, with a request that they fill in the slots and post the information in time for me to frame their New Year resolutions. But when I looked at my inbox, it contained nothing but spam. “I don’t have the time,” my daughter grouched when I shook her awake at midday, “and who makes resolutions any more anyway?” There was little point arguing since her brother shared the same view in distant Goa (while wishing – cross his podgy fingers – that he made it back to the Sunburn festival this year and every year), and their mother protested, “Who are you to make resolutions for us?” What I wasn’t about to say and have my head chewed off was that if they were capable of making their own resolutions, I wouldn’t have had to concern myself with their affairs in the first place. So, anyway, here’s my resolution wish list for the clan.
Figure out whose teeth and toothbrush match: This one’s for my daughter who, fearing curfew timings, has chosen to tag dozens of toothbrushes and leave them at various friends’ homes so she can spend the night wherever she happens to be without having her mother yell at her about deranged drivers running amok behind the wheels of murderous sedans. The flipside is that there are dozens of toothbrushes in our bathrooms that belong to her friends for when they spend the night over — but how do they know which toothbrush belongs to whom?
Stay home or don’t stay home: This habit of inhabiting spaces not her own has been inherited by my daughter from her mother who is a serial stalker, appearing at neighbours’ doorsteps every morning with gossip and a cup of tea in hand, which is abandoned for a cup of coffee that travels to someone’s else’s home, from where a cup of tea is taken across the landing … till everyone’s cups and mugs are all mixed up. But every few months they find their way back to their original owners, but only for a short while since nothing can hold back my wife’s diurnal visits peppered with slander and hot brew. Ideally, her resolution ought to be to spend more time at the casa, but since that would only result in our squabbling even more, mine would be to ensure she spends more time away from home and hearth. (“Your resolution,” adds my wife cheekily, “ought to be to keep out of other people’s affairs,” which, coming from her, is the most ironical thing I’ve ever heard.)
Less frequent flier miles: He’s barely left for college in Pune before our son’s back in Delhi because he wants his clothes laundered, or is missing home food (really? in three days?), there’s a killer party he just has to attend, he left his books behind, or he’s missing us (strange, then, that he spends so little time at home). So, sonny boy, stay put in Pune unless you want all pocket money privileges withdrawn — and stop smirking, I’m serious.
Quit smoking: I don’t smoke, my wife is a party smoker, and our sniffing them up and down when they come home from attending parties gives us hope that our kids don’t poison their lungs either. But recently, one of them brought home a hookah with various flavoured tobaccos that has everyone puffing at all odd hours of day and night, and strangers ringing the doorbell saying they’ve stopped by for a smoke, so what if none of us appears to know them. Can we say goodbye to smoking in 2011, guys, right after this first puff of … peppermint tobacco?
