Wired different

During my college days whenever somebody described their journey with a " there was a baby ", I would immediately revert with a sympathetic "Oh no".  Fast forward a few years and I am on the other side of the table. To the people who haven't travelled with a baby, believe me when I say that the only person deserving that sympathy is the one holding that baby. To those whose children have grown up, I am certain you would agree with me. If not, our mechanism of self-preservation often makes us forget things that have caused us significant distress. Maybe this is just one of those things! 

My boy is almost a year and a half old and is turning out to be quite an interesting person. He and I flew from New Delhi to Nagpur last Sunday. The last time we had travelled together in August 2021, by the end of our trip, we were both in tears. I distinctly remember standing at the baggage claim taking deep breaths, trying with all my might not to openly weep. I wonder if time healed those wounds or my mind simply chose to wipe off the emotional trauma that trip bore into my soul. Fairly confident that this time would be different, I took another chance. After all, he is older and I am wiser. But neither his age, nor my wisdom held me in good stead. 

As we waited to board, he smashed my muffin and tried to throw it everywhere. At a store close to where we waited, he tried to take away all the packets hanging at his eye level. I thought taking him to a kid's store might help until he started pulling out the soft toys from their shelves and sleeping on them until the lady at Hamley's told us off.  He wanted to drag the suitcase onto the escalator and slapped my hand off when I offered to help. On the shuttle to the flight, he insisted we got off the moving bus. 

When we entered the flight, I was already half-drained. I switched my window seat for an aisle, something I never would have dreamt of doing before. As we flew, he dipped my sandwich and his hand into my coke, threw prunes into the aisle and kicked the gentleman sitting next to me. 

As I left my seat, my shirt was half tucked-out with food and spit on the shoulder. My pants had stains from whatever he wiped on them. My right shoe felt wet from the spilled coke. Let us not even go to my hair. Walking ahead I crossed a lady sitting a few seats in front of us. She held a baby wrapped in a pretty pink blanket, sleeping away to glory with a cute little bow on her head. The baby and the mother looked like they were both straight out of a movie. Calm, breezy and poised. I gaped at them with ill-disguised disgust. 

The gentleman right behind me must have caught the look of disbelief on my disgruntled face. “Boys are just wired different” he suddenly said with an air of non-chalance. I smiled. As I pulled back to take a look at Krit’s face, I could see his eyes darting from one thing to the next at rocket speed. I was pretty sure he was plotting his next attack. This time, thanks to the nice gentleman's remark, it bothered me less.