Dear family on the train,
It was a real pleasure travelling with you from Chennai to Bengaluru on Sunday. I don’t know how those five hours would have passed had it not been for the three of you. I mean, sure, I was planning to read a book, but what’s fiction when you have real life drama in glorious technicolour with surround sound playing out right before your eyes?
Parents, your son was adorable. Adorable. You on the other hand… well where should I begin?
Mr. Dad. It was a delight watching you loudly berate your wife as she attempted to put your child to sleep.“Ei! Don’t hold him like that dee.”“Don’t you know how to put a baby to sleep dee?” I’ve heard that children like some quiet and less yelling when they are about to fall asleep. But I could be wrong. Since you clearly knew so much about getting kids to sleep, it would have been wonderful if you’d backed the theories up with a practical demonstration. I mean, it’s such an easy thing to do right?
I can understand why you gave up on the idea, once the breakfast trolley came around. Food is a great way to distract kids. But first, you have to get them to sit still. I know how hard it is to keep a young child in one place on long journeys and keep your sanity intact too. Sometimes, a drive from home to the local cinema can seem like unicycling across the desert with no water and baby scorpions on your back. But the trick is to get the baby scorpions to listen to you. I just realised this analogy doesn’t work because I don’t know how to get baby scorpions to listen to people.I don’t even know if they have ears. What I do know is, that if baby scorpions had ears they probably wouldn’t respond well to being yelled at. “LISTEN!” “LISTEN TO ME!” “HRRRRMMMPPH. I SAID LISTEN. STAY STILL.” Plus, if you’re holding the baby scorpion in an elbow lock, chances are high it will sting you. You kind of had that bite coming Mr. Dad.
Once you’d stanched the flow of blood, you made the most excellent decision to give Junior your phone to watch videos. The only thing was the entire carriage had to listen in too. Except my husband, who had noise cancellation headphones which he refused to give me. I tried to do things your son’s way and kept kicking him in the shin, but he just went and sat somewhere else. If I’m honest, I really did enjoy listening to Doraemon. The voices weren’t shrill and annoying at all. But when you grabbed the phone from your son arbitrarily right before the end of the episode, I felt like crying along with him too. Now, I will never know what happened at the end of the episode Floating Through the Sky with Nose Balloons. It will haunt me forever.
Travelling with your family made me realise that children aren’t always the brats on long journeys. Sometimes it’s the parents who need to be firmly strapped into their seats and sedated with a triple dose of Benadryl.
Best wishes, The person in the row behind.
Menaka Raman
Twitter@menakaraman
The writer’s philosophy is: if there’s no blood, don’t call me