When babies attack!

"Auyone, come see your baby sister!"

I froze. I had, with great skill, managed to stay clear of the coochie-cuddly group of aunties. It involved, amongst other things, taking the dog out for his daily walks and when he came close to his shitting spot, praying that he will have the decency to face his butt away from me, but always seeing (literally and ugh-ily)my prayers unanswered .
But now, six motherly pairs of eyes, full of motherly love, and absolutely
devoid of the knowledge of the panic attack which had seized me, gazed
upon me expectantly.

"Umm..hmm..ya I can see her from here. I am wearing my specs, Aunty.'

"Very funny. Come come. Look how she is laughing."

Now I had meant it in dead seriousness, nothing even remotely funny
was intended in my statement. I looked around desperately, hoping for
someone to ring the bell , my cellphone to come alive, or simply, someone to fart noisily so that I could hold my nose and rush out.

Nothing. There was no electricity, so no bell. The banks were closed, so no phone call. As for the fart, well, I could have pretended someone had farted, held my nose and ran out, but performance under pressure(pun unintended) had rarely been my forte. I was well and truly trapped.

I stared at the source of my fear – my cousin sister (okay, okay, all you linguistic purists, there is nothing like ‘cousin sister’ but it makes an awful lot of sense so I am going to stick with it). She was laughing while some aunt was tickling her and speaking to her in some language which she thought the child understood, but of course, the child knew she was talking crap and was laughing at her stupidity.

The fact that she was laughing was good news – I could just hold her,
give a big smile and then scram. Emboldened by this, I started walking
towards the group slowly. Just when I reached them, the laughing
stopped. I stopped. The aunt apparently wasn't a great extempore
speaker and had fallen short of things to say, and so the kid had also
stopped being amused.

"Why did you stop? See, Tultuli has stopped laughing. Come, make her laugh."

Gulp! It was as if indigestion had just turned into a fart-symphony.

I moved like a doomed man moves on the gangplank, the encouraging
looks of all the aunties aimed at me like the muskets of the pirates.

She was placed in my arms amidst "Support the head", "Be careful",
"She hasn't pee-ed in 3 hours, hee hee", "And she has diarrhoea, ha
ha".

I looked at her. She looked at me. I cleared my throat like I was
about to sing Bon Jovi's Always. Her eyes looked me over, settled on the conclusion – “His words might yet redeem him.”, and waited for my recital.
I began,

"Hellooooo, how are youuuuuuuuu (a broad nervous fake smile)??"

She kept staring at me. She was sharp, she knew these weren't the
starting lines. I could see it in her eyes. She seemed to say,

"You idiot, sing properly! I am tried of hearing this same crap over
and over again! Jeez! Can you guys get more boring?"

But I had no option – to break into an actual song would have
certified me as stupid. So I carried on,

"Coochie coochie (I began tickling the soles of her feet, desperate to
see her laugh)… coochie coo"

To utter these silly and foolish words in a matronly manner in front
of everyone made me feel extremely stupid - I was a fully grown,
strapping young man, mature and wise with my words, and yet, I was
reduced to acting like a complete imbecile in public. However, the
aunties seemed to love my performance. The cousin began to laugh. But
I could again see what she wanted to say,

“Of course I am laughing, you sicko! Try getting your feet tickled with your hands tied. Can’t you tell me a Little Johnny joke instead?”

I was aghast! Where on earth did she hear jokes of that kind? Come to think of it, what made me think that she was thinking all that?

Just like the Bon Jovi song, any plans which I might have harboured of narrating a non veg joke to my 2 month cousin were smothered by that assemblage of baby experts. Left without any other option, I began again,

“Coochie c..”

I saw the contempt in her eyes before I felt the warm liquid trickling down the front of my shirt.

“God! You are an absolute moron, you know that, bro?”

Her mom quickly took her away from me.

Bhurrrrrrrrr!

Someone farted.

Everyone looked at me and held their noses.

As Alanis Morissette sang – ‘Isn’t it ironic?’