Booked !

I have been scrutinizing various city hospitals with a beady eye from a labour and delivery point of view. To state the obvious, South Delhi is dotted with various corporate hospitals of the shiny lights and polished floors variety. After careful consideration, I decided to give the stand alone birthing centres a miss. Call me paranoid but if I rupture a vessel and start haemmorhaging away, I’d rather have an intensivist in attendance than an aromatherapist.


So, I went and booked at one of the city's older multi speciality hospitals which is posh but not too pink. I have been a little worried about how much of a dent this whole exercise is going to make on my pocket, but I was pleasantly surprised. Even a labour suite where you can deliver in the comfort of your own private room costs about as much as a flat screen tv. And the difference in cost between a normal delivery and a caesarean section is that between a 42” and a 46” inch screen. While relieved that bringing my offspring into the world isn’t going to condemn me to the poorhouse, I still think that Indian medical professionals are among the worst paid in the world. Come on, how logical is it that the guy who routes your money to the Cayman Islands is paid in crores while the one who operates on your eye gets a few thousands ? Toss me a fat cheque when you next see me for the force of my arguments. Also, I could really do with the cash for the above mentioned reasons.

Of Flatulent dogs and omnipresent nannies

Bruno with macho collar - with effect ruined by tinkling pink bell


So, our labrador, Bruno, has been having an upset stomach for the last couple of days. He is lethargic, a little off colour and has been having episodes of diarrhoea. But the most interesting development is his loud, unselfconcious and incessant farting. Now, I’ve never put much thought into the topic of dog farts but it does lend a new aromatic dimension to watching reruns of ‘ How I met your mother’. I set out to investigate the cause of the above mentioned upset stomach and was informed by the cook that we’ve run out of his regular dog food and he’s been wolfing down human chow for the last couple of days. Now that order has been restored in the world and he is back on Pedigree( Vegetarian, of course) hopefully the mushroom clouds arising from his nether regions will be a thing of the past.


Which brings me to the second part of my post. How dependent are we on our domestic servants ? I am of course, an extreme example. As a child of that glorious institution, the Indian Railways , I find it perfectly normal to live in a house ( or envy inciting colonial Bunglow ) with more domestic staff than family members. Having shrewdly plotted to prolong above shiftless existence, I now live with my in-laws and assorted domestic staff responsible for everything from bringing me my morning Bournvita to giving Bruno his weekly bath. The thing to be noted here is of course that most of these people are paid to do the work which I should be doing in order to justify my existence in the world. One apparently indispensable member of the Delhi household seems to be a young girl of indeterminate age who is fashionably referred to as the Nanny or more realistically as the Ayah. She is pretty easily spotted in most public places but especially in malls, parks and restaurants. Select Citywalk especially seems to attract disproportionate numbers on weekends. Note that as the Delhi nannies are a far cry from the Degree in Child Psychology weilding Park Avenue nannies, they are rarely left alone with their charges. The entourage usually consists of mummy and daddy in front trailed by Nanny with Chikki/ Sweety / Pinki in tow. In cars, mummy and daddy enjoy uninterrupted conversation in front while Nanny wrestles with an unhappy Chikki/ Sweety / Pinki in the back.( Yes, I rudely peer into peoples cars ) In restaurants, mummy and daddy fork sushi while Nanny monitors Chikki/ Sweety / Pinki throwing a tantrum on the floor. Truly ubiquitous. I ,of course would have been oblivious to the existence of the Nanny species had not the question of my acquiring one of my own arisen. Being seven months pregnant and utterly incapable in most domestic duties, even I shudder at the fate of my offspring. For now, I am taking the moral high ground and have decided that I can dispense with the sevices of the omnipresent nanny. Under the implicit agreement that diaper duty will be shared by my husband and two sets of weirdly enthusiastic grandparents to be. Let us toast to the future and hope I am capable of tolerating my own flesh and blood through the course of a Happy Meal without the support of super nanny.