Father of two daughters

A bat came to visit me last night. I was half asleep when I was awakened by the whirring sound of wings in a dimly lit room. The television was the only source of light. The comedy on the television had started to lull me into bored dizziness when my senses were suddenly heightened by this sound. I squinted to find something moving above in the space between the ceiling and the mosquito–net. The house I currently live in is an old bungalow dating to the British India which has been done up multiple times in the past to make it breath-taking to look at but barely liveable. It has high wooden ceiling which drip during monsoon, but certainly do not allow the entry of bats on a regular basis. I wondered how this creature of the night got inside. I did not get much time to worry about. The bat was flying in the room in an oval orbit, with the centre around two feet above my head. I was safe inside the mosquito net, but it was flying irritatingly close to my head. It was making f

“What is the name of the monkey that performs magic?” “Um. I don’t know. Wanded monkey?” “It is Hairy Potter,” replied the younger one mirthfully. The young girls were caught in the Corona pandemic at their grandparents’ house while I was stuck at my duty station. Long phone conversations with my wife and the children had become a routine affair. During one such conversation, the younger one started asking me a lot of riddles. Whenever I spoke with the girls, we talked about their daily routine which was completely different from what it would have been had they been attending school. I frequently made suggestions about how they could be nudged towards studies while not compromising with the fun that they were having. Invariably, I would end up irritating my wife who would say that she was doing the best that she could, and any alteration in their routine would only be possible if I were present.   And yet, she did take plenty of my suggestions. It is to her credit that

   “Corona is such a nice thing!” chirped the younger one.                 After the children’s final examinations, we had taken a very short break to go to Manali – a place where we enjoyed to the fullest. I came back to my workplace while the children accompanied their mother to their grandparents. Just before the school was to reopen, however, we got the news about extension of the opening date due to the Corona pandemic. The situation had elicited this strange and irregular response from the younger child.                 And they had good reason to rejoice. They had their cousin, grandparents, uncle, aunt and mother together with them in a large three storied house, complete with a rooftop garden, and their grandmother’s on demand delicacies.                 The house they were holed in was on a very busy street. On a normal day, it is very difficult to even talk with the doors or windows open. However, following lockdown, the streets wore a deserted look, except duri