Birthday gifts

A year ago tomorrow Appa's birthday according to the Tamil calendar. Let's pretend this is 28 June 2008, evening.

I'm not sure how they have allowed my son - because children below 12 are not allowed in the hospital - but security is notoriously lax; on doctor's orders, I have smuggled in parathas and paneer and all kinds of home-made food for Appa for the last three days and no one has objected - but they have let him in during visiting hours, and when we leave, Nani, my son and I decide to stop over at Abids to buy Appa a walking stick for his birthday tomorrow.

Three days in hospital and I feel lightheaded. My days have been spent on the overstuffed sofa reading sci-fi/fantasy I would not otherwise have touched. Appa sleeps all the time. The room is always semi-dark but I cannot leave to read outside because he now needs help to walk to the bathroom. The tree outside the window makes me queasy because it feels like the building is swaying. Outside it must be nearly-monsoon.

I park in an inside lane because as usual there is no parking anywhere on the main road; though rumour has it that Abids is not as crowded as it used to be I see no evidence of a migration to malls in other places.

Appa needs a walking stick. Rationally, I know this. Buying him a walking stick is my son's idea but the thought makes me bitter. A practical, useful gift at this point sucks what little joy a celebration might have held. As well buy him a pillbox or a bed-tray (I have considered buying him these things).

Birthday gifts should be frivolous. They should demonstrate how little we care for the time we have because we have so much of it.

The walking sticks are upstairs. Lepakshi must think that only those who don't need them will buy them; why else would they make them so hard to get to? They are stuck in a bin at the end of an obstacle course. We pick each one out. They are all hideous but we detect even amidst this poor selection, ones that are worse than others: some are chipped, others are painted an ugly shit-brown. Finally we select one with a twirling body and a sturdy handle. As I pay for it (on behlaf of my son) I wonder how an already shaky man will be supported by this thin, crooked piece of wood.

Later we stop to buy him some track pants. These are another one of those things he needs urgently.

At night, Nani, with her failing eyes, gets things together for the akkaravadusal she will make for Appa tomorrow, that I will smuggle into the room and which he will at first refuse but when the doctors come to wish him, cheery and loud, asking him how he plans to celebrate and urging him to eat whatever he likes that day, he will manage one spoon of before he sets down the half-katori to go to the bathroom.

I lie in bed telling myself that if he makes it past his real birthday, I will think of a good gift for him. Until then, in whoseever's dispensation such things are, his life is a sufficient gift for me.

But it's not my birthday we're talking about here, is it?