Along slept the driver...

What was left of Tulip Festival 2006 was the remains of the tulips. I was so disappointed to see them that way, drooping in the rain like somebody had mowed over the petals with a big fat lawn mower. My husband said I had that same look on my face in all the photographs that we took that day. We were one week too late in coming there and they would not wait for me. And the rains that day added insult to injury. Obviously, I had expected too much.

This was our second trip to Ottawa. The first one had been about one month before, made almost in the same manner - leave home on a Friday night, drive all night and all morning, roam around and leave after lunch to reach home for a peaceful night's sleep after a tiring journey. What about in between? Umpteen halts at Tim Horton's - not so much for the coffee or titbits but for answering Nature's calls.

Well, I for one, would recommend LOTS of coffee for the driver and the navigator. And for the back seat passengers as well if you have to travel all night. That first time our car almost crashed and we were saved from falling into a river by a hair's breath. My husband had driven the whole night. So his friend took over from him in the morning around 6 o'clock. (Please consider the two wives dozing off in the back non-existent for a while). Seeing the guy too sleepy,the driver told the navigator to sleep for sometime and that everything will be fine. Then in five minutes, Mr. Driver slept off with the rest of us!!!

And the rest is not history. We are still alive to tell the crappy story. Fortunately, the tires skidded over the highway ( whose sides had been made bumpy by some visionary of an engineer) and made such a loud noise that the four of us were jolted out of our respective beauty sleep.

What's the Game of the Names?

It all started on our return trip from Niagara Falls that the Guy sitting next to me asked something from Uncle. So I said, "Uncle? You call him uncle?" Further inquiry proved that he was using the right term to address one of my husband's good friend. Guy also calls my husband Uncle. But the two uncles in the front told Guy, maybe he should not call me Aunty. Why, look at me, just been married for five months and if he addresses me by that particular term of endearment I would feel so old. That's what I blurted out at that moment.

But upon further reflection, I guess it is OK if he calls me Aunty. What's wrong with that. I asked Guy whether he calls our good friend, at whose house I and my husband are presently staying, Aunty also. He said no; in fact he has never addressed her with anything, not even on the phone, it seems. That's strange, I thought.

Our conversation, or rather my own reflections went to the place from where we moved recently. My husband used to stay with some acquaintance, Bhabhi (Sister-in-law), from his home-town before we got married. And she has two sons. The younger one is fifteen years old, about four inches taller and weighing as much as twice my husband's weight. And his name is Chhotu ( Small one)!!!

Chhotu calls my husband Bheiya (Big Brother) and he addresses me as Didi (Sister). Bhabhi's elder sister is the wife of a high flying government official and we all call her Maasi (Aunty). And the best part of it all, my husband calls Maasi's husband Mousaji (Uncle) while I call him Jijaji (Brother-in-law). I have been trying hard to call him Mousaji just the way my husband does .But in random conversations, the name that pops up in my head is just Jijaji. Because he doesnt like being refered to as Jijaji. Says Saalis (Sister-in-laws) are the root cause of too much tension.