"Papaaa, will you have cold coffeeee?"

My mother has escaped. She has left the building, the city, the heat, and whatever else to go chill with her sister in the hills. My father and I meanwhile are still here, soaking in the solitude, roasting in the heat, and trying to not always keep both air-conditioners running.

In the week my mother is away, I am expected to run the house – “you’re old enough, for Chrissake”-- give instructions and generally see to it that the dusting is done properly. All this is ok. I don’t mind. It makes me feel important.

But our cook doesn’t like me all that much. He tells my mother this every chance he gets; that my brother – baba – is a whole lot more pleasing and temperamentally sound than me – baby. My mother in turn, given the fact that my brother doesn’t live here and is therefore more partial to the notion, agrees with our cook wholeheartedly and will shove this in my face every chance she gets. “See! Even Bahadur thinks you’re always criticising the food in this house!”

Stuff like that.

So by default, it’s bonding time with my father this week. We will do our own thing mostly. I will shoot instructions to the cook. Send for vegetables and create a ruckus about why I wasn’t told there’s no bread for tomorrow. Pa and I will meet mostly at the dinner table; breakfast, if I’m up before he rushes to work in time to find good parking. I’ll ask him a question or two more about his golf game. Did you win or lose? He’ll ask me what article I’m writing this week, how my day was, and to darling, please get some exercise. Start carrying lunch to office, he’ll say. Annoyed that he doesn’t know I sometimes do, I’ll say tsk okay Pa, don’t spoon feed. Three hours later, I’ll feel call him on the pretext of tax papers or some such. Then I’ll feel better about myself. Less mean. I’ll ask if mama called. What news from the hills? We’ll talk about my mother for a bit and then little things, affable things. The price of Tintin comics in his day. About how when the rupee fell, book prices soared to something like thirty bucks a paperback, (deeming them instantly unaffordable). But libraries have their own charm. So maybe we can go pick up some books on Tuesday.

I will offer to lend him White Teeth after I’m done so that he can finish it before mommy returns. And read out some deep quotes to him. “The shit is not the shit (this was Mo’s mantra), the pigeon is the shit.”

He’ll smirk, lower his glasses and ask me who the author is. We’ll have a TV dinner. Maybe catch a rerun of Friends. He’ll get some writing done, and continue to, in peace for a few days, learn the newspapers by heart.