#OhBaby
Time: 9:30 pm.
Scene: I am sitting on the bed bouncing my six month old baby on my lap. She is wide awake. My husband is busy typing on his laptop, frowning for effect as well, which means do not touch me and do no talk to me. A song is stuck on my lips since a few days back when randomly flicking channels I came across this deep (cough) number lip synced by Akshay Kumar and some pretty girl one third his age. ‘Oh mamma, cinema dekhen mamma, Nau se Baran mamma, lalalalala.’ The beat is stuck in my brain like a leech draining my otherwise healthy blood supply. I sing this song and my baby is giving me a curiously amused look like the one she would direct at some colourful mammal in a zoo in the near future and bobbing her head with the tune. After maintaining his calm for a good few minutes tolerating the verbal torture, hubby’s carefully maintained cool breaks and he gives me a long suffering side long glance.
‘Can’t you sing a respectable song like twinkle twinkle little star?’ he asks me exasperatedly.
‘I do! Twinkle twinkle, baby shark, wheels on the bus…I sing all of them. But see our baby is bored of those ones. She wants to hear some more tunes.’
‘You mean you are bored of those songs?’
He has hit the nail on the head and I reward him with a sheepish look and a grin.
‘Is this a nursery rhyme?’ he asks me curiously. He doesn’t understand Bollywood lyrics. When we used to go out to watch Bollywood movies with my side of the family and something ridiculous would happen on screen like a sad scene with dramatic dialogue which ended up being funny due to the sheer absurdity of overacting, he would turn around and look at me to assess my reaction, was he supposed to laugh or not, was it a funny scene or a sad scene? It was all up for a toss.
‘Huh? You mean the one I was singing?’
‘yes.’
I laugh. ‘Nooo, this is a Bollywood song. The guy is asking his girlfriend to go to cinema and watch a movie with him.’
‘Why is he calling her mamma then?’ he asks.
‘Thatis a good point. I have no idea.’ I reply.
He gives me a confused look and waits for me to say something else and I oblige him with a bright thought that appears in my head like a bulb lighting up.
‘You know, I think we should watch a movie in the cinema, it’s been ages!’ I say excitedly.
‘Like the one with this song?’ he asks with raised eyebrows.
‘No…I mean, probably like that one yes.’
‘You are asking me on a date?’
‘No…I mean, yes probably like a date.’
‘To a movie like that?’
‘Yes.’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes?’
‘What?’
‘aaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAA!!!!’ baby screams with anger at being left out of the conversation for so long and getting zero attention.
Both of us look at her. Baby looks at me and then him.
‘I think it’s her feed time.’ I tell him.
‘I’ll go make her feed.’ He jumps up and dashes out of the room.
‘Oh-kkkk.’ I look at my little pink ball of cuteness and talk in baby mode. ‘Did we scare papa? Did we scare him? I think we did!’
Salmah Ahmed 