There are many times I am in complete disagreement with my wife, but on this one rare moment we were in absolute empathy. For while you may get an occasional nod out of him, or when pressed, a sound like he's being strangled, but in the two weeks since he has been here, I have not heard my nephew speak in complete sentences. Or even one complete sentence. The preferred choice is monosyllabic responses that don't exactly push the conversation along: Any favourite subjects in school? "No." What kind of clothes may we buy him? "Sporty." What does he want to become? "Cricketer." How did he do in his boards? "Argjhj!"
Perhaps that isn't the whole truth either, for there are times when he breaks into a string of words, if not yet sentences, and that is at mealtimes, when his aunt, my wife, rules with an iron hand. "What do you want to eat?" she'd asked him for form's sake, when he'd first arrived. "Anything," he'd replied, also for form's sake, for it soon became evident that he liked to punctuate any references to food with "I don't..."
So, "I don't eat ice-cream" because it gave him, or so he said, a "headache". Ditto puddings and sweets, though pastries seemed not to belong to this category, nor chocolates, and not mousses either, and certainly none of us saw him suffer from any headaches on account of a surfeit of it. He didn't, he said, like pasta, noodles, chutney, dosas, chicken, fish, rice, rotis, beans, brinjals, spring-rolls, salami, sausages or any of the other things put on the table before him. Unfortunately for him, his aunt is hearing challenged when it comes to the dining table, so, in turns, he found himself not just eating but meticulously wiping his plate clean of any remains of pasta, noodles, chutney, dosas, chicken, fish, rice, rotis, beans, brinjals, spring-rolls, salami and sausage.
"I don't," he said to me, "dance," when I mentioned that we intended to whisk him off to an evening's entertainment by way of our club rain dance, a prominent feature on its annual social calendar. Which, of course, was the wrong thing to have said, for he was promptly taken for a soak under the sprinkler showers by his cousins, and nursed his wounded soul back with an extra helping of chocolate pastry (and not a sign of a headache either!).
Meanwhile, we've been wondering what to give him as a gift to remember us by. "A tattoo," my son has suggested. ("I don't," my nephew's managed in panic, "like tattoos.") "Pierced ears" "" from my daughter. ("No-no!") "Why not bleach the tips of his hair pink?" asked my wife. ("Gosh, awghghgh..." from my nephew.) "Perhaps some books..." this one from me, but, of course, "I don't," says my nephew, "read."
Not that he isn't trying, on his aunt's insistence, who's said he can't go back home till he finishes at least one book. At the rate he's going, he's going to be around till at least the next column.
