Mama O Mama!

The Raya/Eid Edition

. Yesterday Mama was upto her usual balcony shenanigans. She saw some Malay woman so she goes, 'Haslinda!' then 'Zulfekly'. Then she saw a Malay guy. She went 'Shahruuuuul!'

. For buka puasa (to open our fast) Papa brought home 'tez aloo' (spicy/ed potatoes) from a nearby Pakistani restuarant. It was heavily coloured, yknow that fake tandoori chicken colour? Yeah, much like that. So I was like 'Wow, whats this?' Mama goes, 'Tez aloo'. I say, 'O'. She goes, 'It should have been tez raang aloo' (heavily coloured potatoes).

. A few minutes ago Mama made tea after buka puasa for herself (and me). Papa had just returned from the Arab store with some 'halawa' of an unidentified sort. Little packages wrapped in plastic, bitesize. Mama goes, 'I wonder what this is and what it tastes like' so I'm like okay, then you eat it. She proceeds to unwrap it and just as she's about to bite in, I deliberately annoy her by asking her 'what flavour is it?' 'is it nice?' 'why arent you saying anything' in rapid succession. Then as she bites into the thing, she almost chews off the wrapper. And I go, 'Mama, you're not meant to eat the wrapper. Please dont eat that'. She responds, 'ab toh mein wrapper bhi khaongi. Akhir mein Abeer ki maa ho naa' (now that you mention it, I'll definitely eat the wrapper. After all, its characteristic of being Abeer's mother). Honestly my mum makes me sound like the kid who ate glue.

. So this little thing I bought today ended up breaking (its fixed now yay!) and I got all worked up about it and sad. So I go into the hall and cry out in exasperation, 'Its broken! Now what do I do?!' Papa replies, 'Where did you get it from?' and I dont respond to that and go, 'meine kitne armaan se le ke aayi thi yeh' (i bought this with so much hope!), to which Papa goes, 'Arman se kyun le ke aayi? Dukaan se le ke aana tha' (why did you buy it from Arman? you should have bought it from a shop). Arman, as you may/not know happens to be the word hope as well as a common Muslim name. Hence the joke.

. I recently remembered something that happened in about o7/o6. I remember this only because it happened in Bombay and it happened in a way that I cant forget the Bombay element. Mama has this habit of taking on dares if you were to give them to her, and I think this stemmed from her threatening that if I dont get up early in the mornings, she'd throw water on my face (which incidentally she has done previously). So I was like Yeah I dare you, and she goes, 'You dare me Abeer? You dare me?' and because I know she never acts on it (well not usually if it involves doing something highly embarrassing in public) I was like yeah I dare you. Okay fine whatever. Days go by and the entire thing (I assume) is forgotten. One fine day, I leave home to go out with my friends or whatever, go down the stairs- all good. I think I momentarily stopped for a minute to check something or do something, God knows what!, but within a second, there's a bucket of water that's been doused over my head. I look up in anger only to see my dear Razia of a mother poking her thumb out at me. Utterly clueless as to why there's all this water on me (thankfully she missed also a little), I am so flabbergasted I cant even come up with a response. On top of that, the neighbourhood's Uncle, Aunty and some random kids are also there, so I cant even swear. Being me, I just walked on out of the gate. I tried to take my revenge by getting a load of water ready when she went down alone next, but it didnt work. Cunning old lady knew how to duck and avoided getting wet entirely, going a fair distance and showing me that damned 'na na you didnt get me' thumb sign.

. Our help is honestly the bestest. I have mention of her before, and do so again, this time with regard to her children. She's awesome and always laughing and smiling and all of that. She's also from Indonesia. As she was going on leave today for Eid holidays, all the Yusufs said bye to her and wished her Happy Holidays. So Mama goes, 'Wish Eka, Raka and Linda for us!', which she was very happy to hear. Now those names- dont you think they belong in a song? I most certainly do, and I know which one too!