It was the best of times. My apologies, Mr. Dickens, for rampantly borrowing the famous opening line from your ever-popular novel. But rest assured, the borrowing stops there, because it was certainly NOT the worst of times. It is a tale of one city and two babies --Reevu and Gogol-- a tale that is an outcome of the collaborative enthusiasm of their equally ecstatic mommies.
My friend Angana and I, the mommies in this story, go back a long way. When we first met in 1991 in our undergraduate engineering class at Jadavpur University in Kolkata --two teenagers from suburbs-- none of us imagined that we would watch our babies having the greatest time on earth together in New York City during a late-bloomed spring weekend in 2007. It is amazing how a myriad little things converged over the years to spin out this perfect trip.
Angana and I share more than one layer of connections. Few years back, to our surprise, we discovered that Angana’s husband Rajib happens to be my husband Bikash’s cousin sister Susmita and brother-in-law Arindam’s classmate from high school. Eventually, Arindam became a filmmaker in Bollywood. His directorial debut “Shoonya” (The Zero Zone) was going to have its North American premiere at the Museum of Modern Art in New York city as part of an Indian film festival. Bikash and I decided to go to New York city to catch the premiere. New York city lures us often, being less than four hours of driving distance away from our place. Both Bikash and I knew that only one of us would be able to watch the movie, while the other would be babysitting our 20-month old son Gogol. But that was OK, because we had the added incentive of having the chance to chill out at the lovely Manhattan apartment of our good friends Piu and Arnab.
For Rajib and Angana, the trip was not trivial, because they live on the West Coast. It was a mere coincidence that Rajib was scheduled to come to New York on business trip on the same weekend that we were going. Angana quickly figured out that if she and their 18 month old son Reevu tag along with Rajib, then we would have a chance to see Gogol and Reevu together in their toddler year, which is priceless. Kudos to Angana for acting on her impulse. I firmly believe that, as life presents itself in an ‘always-running’ mode, trusting your impulsive instincts (and hoping that they are the right instincts!) often earns the most pleasant surprises for you.
I guess I don’t need to tell anyone who has traveled with a toddler that whether you are going to enjoy your trip or not depends entirely on your toddler’s cooperation. And the situation can get quite complicated when there are two toddlers and two sets of parents in the picture with lofty plans of their own. Just because the moms are good friends, and often exchange notes on the surprising developmental similarities between their sons, it was not necessarily a ‘slam-dunk’ (borrowing from ex-CIA chief George Tenet’s now-famous words about the Iraq War) that the toddlers would click too. After all, they have been growing up completely independently on opposite coasts, and have met only once before, that too almost a year back when they were both too young to remember anything. But to our utter delight, Gogol and Reevu took an instant liking to one another as soon as we met at the lobby of Angana and Rajib’s hotel at Times Square. They ran after each other in the lobby, fell down countless times, danced in their unique ways to entertain anybody and everybody who cared to look, and got equally fascinated by the escalators to the point where Angana and I had to accompany them on their trips up and down the escalators, repeated continuously for a good 15 minutes! I guess the proverbial ‘wavelength matching’ applies to infants and toddlers too!
The fun continued for the next two days. The weather was just perfect with balmy 75 degrees under a cloudless sky. Gogol and Reevu totally enjoyed their time at the playground at the Madison Square park, one of the coveted patches of green in Manhattan where parents bring their kids to play. Though it was not the easiest thing to successfully hail a cab with strollers, diaper bags, and mobile toddlers, we managed to accomplish quite a ‘park and café hopping’ expedition that afternoon, very ably guided by our Manhattan localite friends, Arnab and Piu. Both Gogol and Reevu took it in their strides without any tantrums. Seemed like both of them were used to surviving a good part of the day on repeated servings of snacks, and stealing short naps on-the-go, thanks to their parents’ choice of spending time outdoors on the weekends.
The movie premiere was on a Monday evening. We had the whole lazy morning to totally savor having taken Monday off from work. It felt like the city belonged to us, the outsiders, while the natives had to go to work! We went to the Bronx zoo in the afternoon, this time in our car instead of a cab, because it was a longish trip. Angana and I used to picture Reevu and Gogol sitting side by side on a road trip when we had our telephone chats earlier. The picture finally came alive! Special thanks go to our lovely husbands as well, because they were totally supportive of our grand plans for creating the longest possible 'together-time' for the kids.
One would think that after a very active outdoor day at the zoo, marveling at the majestic tigers, summoning the reluctant ducks and egrets, and spray-painting their trousers with muddy splashes by jumping on puddles, the tiny tots would be tired and cranky by the evening. But, didn’t I mention things were really going our way in this trip? Gogol and Reevu were back in business after catching some much-needed late afternoon recharging nap. According to unanimously agreed upon plans, our husbands went for the movie premiere while Angana and I stayed in the hotel with our kids. I know it sounds anti-feministic, but, you have to remember that after all the movie was made by Bikash’s cousin’s husband, and Rajib’s school friend, legitimately making them one less degree separated from the director than Angana and me. However, the real reason for us to stay back was not to show generosity, but to take the opportunity to chill out, taking a trip down memory lane back to our college days, while watching our kids entertain each other. And boy oh boy, are we glad we made that decision! I have never seen two kids happier together, jumping on the bed and diving on the pillows, blowing bubbles, sharing stale French fries, and shredding old newspapers! They were not jealous towards each other at all. And more surprisingly, it seemed that they understood that Gogol is a bit older (by all of one and a half month) than Reevu. Gogol tried to act mature, indulging Reevu’s little fancies --the typical big brother-little brother dynamics that we didn’t quite expect from toddlers of their age. By the time we parted that night, Gogol had slumped into a satisfied sleep, but Reevu was still awake. He had cried hard that night before finally going to bed, Angana told me later.
We sure hope there will be more get-togethers like this in the years to come. But the memories from this trip will continue to hold a special place in our hearts. As Angana so aptly described in a message that she wrote after going back home, “we kept looking at our sons with eyes full of astonishment, somewhere deep inside seeing hopes to see our friendship span generations.” If our hopes do come true, we would always look back to the magical spring weekend in New York city where it all started.
P.S. the last photo is borrowed from Angana's album. Thanks Angana.
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Hello Madhumita, What a lovely post to read first thing in the morning.....those pics really made my day.... Aditya
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