My Guardian Angel(s)

From a very young age, when my mother sat with me and made me repeat dainty lil kiddie prayers after her, she used to make me pray to my guardian angel to be with me always and to keep me safe. As I grew older and started saying my own litany of prayers I began to forget my poor little guardian angel. Not that I stopped believing, oh no… I still ardently believe in that angel who grew up with me, constantly at my right side, urging me to always do good and crying softly when I wouldn’t heed.
But now, as I sit at home expecting my own child to come into the world any day and spending hours reading or embroidering or sleeping while waiting for the D-Day, my parents attend to my every iota of need.
My mother: Ghee in the morning (“it’ll help during labour”), kurunthotti kashayam at night (“it strengthens mother and child”), carrots to munch on (“cos it’s good for the baby”) and chocolate cake (“to keep hunger pangs at bay”), and all this without a single hitch to her daily routine of preparing breakfast, lunch, dinner and what not.
My father: Ensures there are fruits in the house at any given time of the day or night, battles traffic and rain to go all the way to the madding city and buy health drinks for me, minute by minute enquiries as to whether the baby is moving and how I’m feeling…
It’s been more than a month now since I’ve come back home… And every night I thank the Lord for giving me my dear guardian angels—my father and my mother.

PS. But brothers are of a different league… If it’s not to call up and enquire whether I feel like eating anything special, it is to bug my head off about resting my hand on my bulging tummy—“It’s harmful for the baby,” insists my ‘kid’ brother!! Brothers will remain brothers, I guess.

The genuineness of it

Most people who are lauded as saviours of the world; people who apparently go about doing good for others; who selflessly work their butts off making others happy, do it because they like the praise and the gratitude that invariably follow such actions. Take away the glory and the admiration and they start grumbling. Peep into their houses and the very act that they claim to do selflessly is preceded by a long list of complaints, grumbles and curses. Behind the beatific smiles that adorn the lips of these selfless personas lie a household submitted unwittingly to a heap of verbal and non verbal show of irritation. The servants get a brunt of it, the children get it, the spouse gets it, even the curious fly that buzzed in to see what’s going on gets hit with it.
But the beaming smile that shines at the praise and adulation that invariably follow acts of good deed—now that’s genuine.
Disclaimer: This view is totally and entirely intolerant and prejudiced and that’s how it’s gonna stay for some time.