It just takes a phone call to throw all my family building plans into garbage. It as it is took about few years to come to terms with the realisation that people from broken homes can too lead happier families of their own. This big realisation was the precursor of spending a long lived cheerful time of my life with the man of my life. His presence in my life made me feel that literally all men are not bastards, nor are they dogs either. In fact, now I can say most of them are indeed humans with anatomical differences when compared with the female bodies.
Anyways, I can confirm this about me that I am not yet ready to have my first child yet. I will be reaching my third decade in 2 years, and I am still still not comfortable with the idea of taking the plunge into a blissful conventional family life. People who know me wonder what makes me postpone this idea to an absolute eternity. As far as i know, it is me and him, who understand why this topic has never been a part of our dinner, bedroom or even casual discussions. The conversation just happens within ourselves; luckily the way both of our hearts are connected, we both understand that we know it all and had it all, so no point discussing between each other.
The moment my cell window flashes "family" I start getting those weird pangs in my stomach. Seldom I must have answered their call, and never ever in the first ring. Instantly my thoughts reach out to him, no wonder the mind knows very well whom to cling to at the darkest hour. It is wonderful how quickly the remnants of our last night’s bedroom fights and “....I will never talk to you” phrase wash over from my mind instantaneously almost.
This morning it was one such moment. I had fallen for one of my friends' one year old cute boy. I just loved holding the baby in my arm; the soft feel of his limbs made me want to have my own in a similar form, obviously since it cannot be the exactly same. All night I tried figuring out how to bring it up to my husband; and slept when I could not come up with a possible game plan. The day at work was as normal and boring as it can be. I was savoring my cup of coffee and satiating on my chocolate chip cookies, when my parents' called. I finished the cookie that was in my hand in one bite, and completely forgot about the coffee. I returned the call and reminded myself to remain cool, no matter what the task could be.
As far as my experience goes, I knew the task would have been financial in nature, but what exactly it would be I had no clue. I barely had said "hello", that my father ordered me to inquire to any windmill company to install one at his backyard. Due to the little exposure that I have, I knew it would cost a lot, so I hesitatingly asked him about the funding. To which he promptly replied "oh..ICICI will fund it". I mean how cool or rather how carefree, ignorant and out rightly confident one can be. I had no other option but to succumb to the situation and to agree to get back with the details. What else I could have done.
My mind was almost fresh with the last such distress call. It was about 2-3 days back. Though it started off with the usual pleasantry stuff like "oh it has been days speaking to you and all...” but heart and mind I knew it was some ways related to something tangible as well. As it had to be for withdrawal request from a mutual fund of theirs, since they needed quick cash for some infrastructural expenses that had incurred at the food joint that they run. I was supposed to send a request to withdraw some units from their fund to which I had no access to, except for the Folio no. and the name of the fund. HDFC Top 200. Yes, I also had some extra information to locate it; it was a growth one and not the dividend. I am here in Mumbai, they are in Bangalore, they themselves invested in the fund house and the fund that they liked, by an agent from the mutual fund house; and then why the hell I was required to withdraw it. I then tried searching for some proxy distributor sites that could let me sneak in to see how much wealth my parents had amassed in about less than a year. As the luck would have it, no email id was registered at the time of unit purchases, leading to non-disclosure of the data. My last resort was to just update them on the current net asset value of their fund. I picked up the phone to call them, but instead my phone informed me of their incoming call. I rejected it and called them back to update them on the information that I had just discovered. I had thought my job was done. But to no avail, they promptly update me on the tentative purchase date of that particular fund. Yes, it was the tentative one.
It then took me about 2 days to figure out how much the approximate wealth generation of my parents would have been. It turned out that they must have made 20% profits on the principal invested in a year's time. Since i had no idea of the amount invested, it can be assumed that a sum of INR 1,00,000 would have become INR 1,20,000 by now. I called them after few days to inform about the calculations i had devised, but rather it was my time to get updated on few stuff. I got to know that not only they had withdrawn the amount but also paid the suppliers to whom they owed the money. It was all done by a call to the nearest HDFC bank branch. I cannot explain how stupid and cheated and mocked felt at that moment. It was pouring heavily and I was standing under a road-side tea-stall waiting for an auto-rickshaw to stop by. I smiled at the tea-stall owner for his kindness to let me under his dingy kiosk shade; and also found it a convenient time to call them up as well.
After hanging up, i just managed to not cry, and allowed the rains to be me for the moment.
My mind was fresh with this, since then I have decided to not get into taxing myself into doing something for them in the initial phase. I am sure with the recurring frequency of such distressing calls; my body will also give up the desire to bring forth in the times to come, much like my mind, heart and better half.
