And there are evenings when the day leaves you tired and tardy. Yet, you do your best to show up at the mall at the insistence of your first born, and choose to play her moral wallet, paying for her retail sins. Some call it therapy. On your way back, you buy all ammunition needed to whip up a tasty pasta. But 10,000 steps in the mall call for instant gratification. And a sugar rush is what you instantly crave. So you lead your teen to Bengawan Solo, an eternal favourite. You end up picking a slice of fruit gateau for yourself. The calorie conscious child chooses a banana bread instead. And demands a local favorite for her Dad – Ongol Ubi! Now I won’t get into recipes. But the ingredients include glutinous rice and coconut milk, I hear.

Moving on, we strut our way back home. And since we are all happy, I choose to bring up a more serious conversation that revolves around grades. In a casual way. But teens are smarter than they seem. It is no surprise that I am politely declined the opportunity to lead the way and the conversation is axed out completely. Period. As we move onto other trivial topics, taking big steps to reach home in time, we are stopped in our tracks by a woman placed by the universe directly outside our condo gate. She claims she works for a government department and her job is to get people to complete surveys. No points for guessing who the scape goat is this time around.

But I am hungry. I have been shoved out of the door at the first attempt of leading any serious conversation, I am in a rush to cook pasta, for daughter number two is to arrive in the next thirty minutes from her sports class, famished. My maternal instincts turn my face into a poker face and I give the woman doing her job, a tough time. I want to head home. But she is not just persistent, she is creative too. One look at my daughter’s school uniform and she uses it as an ice breaker and claims her daughter just graduated from the same school this year. As my teen queen and I exchange suspicious glances, she utters the keyword VA, meaning her daughter took visual arts. We are now forced to display trust and oblige. And there is a sales lesson hidden for me – ice breakers!

I choose the same policy that Brits used on India – divide and rule. I divide and conquer instead. I let my daughter escape government duty and ask her to set the pasta to boil, lest her sister suffer from starvation. The woman responsible for nudging me has also made sympathy evoking statements like her not being able to eat dinner unless I complete the survey.

With one human life depending upon my responses, I decide to increase a good deed, get done with the job as soon as possible and rush home. But the minute the survey is done and dusted, she turns all chatty. With a roll of eyes, I control all urge to remind her of impending doom – no dinner! Instead, I make a quick exit after firmly reminding her about the only serious affair in my life – cooking for my hungry babies. And leave.

It is such a relief to head home to my daily drudgery after growing a full ten dollars rich- payment for completing the survey! Back home, the kitchen is heating up with the gas flames while the cool evening breeze is acting all naughty, drifting the flames away from the food. It takes me a solid two minutes to shut all possible doors and windows in order to dish out the pasta in time. The minute I step out, sweat trickling down my forehead, my older one goes, “My God, I can now appreciate what it feels like to be you. It is a really hard job, Mom!”

And suddenly, this compliment makes me feel like a million bucks! A warm hug is long overdue. In the next fifteen minutes, the hungry little tyke has arrived, given us an insight of her day and vanished into the shower. My pasta is nearly done when I suddenly remember the slice of fruit gateau!

I order a masala chai and open the box that holds my prized possession – the sugar rush! And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, like bees buzzing around nectar, the two girls appear asking for a share in my wealth. Shocked, the younger one is even ready to try this fruit infested blob of cream and flour, baked to spongy perfection, I feed her a spoonful. This catches the eye of my partner in crime, the older one who purchased the cake with me. She demands a bite too. Doubly shocked, I wonder why she chose banana bread instead. I give her my world famous smirk used most thoughtfully on serious occasions like these.

To that, pat comes the response, “Cake ka ek bite manga hai, kidney nahi!”

And the whole house bursts out laughing. I cannot believe my ears. It takes me an entire five minutes to stop. It is a completely different point that half my cake has vanished while I was guffawing away.

I tell her how proud I am to have a daughter like her. So much for Hindi dialogues.

And pat comes another response, “I have learned from the best!”

P.S. It is a laugh riot once more. The day seems to have ended on a high. Cake and kidney – the oddest possible combination has made my day. There is a certain joy in observing how our desi genes have perfectly sent their roots deep into both our offspring. And the sense of humor I so enjoy has trickled to the next generation. Can’t wait for more lines in their mother tongue language!