The Dance of Destruction

The Vs have thankfully gone out to play and am sitting on the sofa, exhausted, savouring a few moments of peace and quiet before the storm begins again. As I turn my eyes around the drawing room, I see around me the ruins of what was once a beautiful, immaculately kept home.

Once upon a time, this is what our home looked like.....

Today, there are cars & footballs lying carelessly on the drawing room floor, my silk cushions have drool stains on them, the gorgeous centre table lies bare, with all its knick knacks now ensconced safely on top of the crockery cupboard. There are no fresh flowers on the dining table. Before the Vs, never was my home bereft of fresh flowers. There may not have been vegetables in my fridge, but there was always a vase of fresh flowers on the table. Even the vase containing the bamboo stalks lies bare after they wilted thanks to the orange juice fed to them by the Vs. 

Holy s$%t!! What on earth are those squiggles that I hadn't seen before?? No, no, they can't be!! But they are!! Those are unmistakably crayon marks on the walls! My walls, MY walls!!! Yes, the very same Me.... who once told a friend if she cannot stop her little brat from drawing on my walls, then she shouldn't be bringing him to my place! Needless to say, the friend didn't remain friendly for very long.

So where was I? Yes, musing about the destruction that is all around me. The gorgeous terracotta soldier from Xi'an has been beheaded and now resembles a Chinese version of the resident ghost of Gryffindor House - Nearly Headless Nick. The 2 aborigine warriors statues will never again stand ramrod straight but carry a limp for life! The Indonesian bride and groom are every day without fail offered a bite of everything the Vs eat! The wooden swans are prodded and poked to see how come they have eyes and mouths like us humans! The money plant is now missing half its leaves and the beautiful pussy-willow I got for Chinese New year has none left, after the Vs took a fancy to it! 

My bookshelf is watered regularly to make my books grow. V1 has gotten into the habit of rubbing my Body Shop body butter and Clinique moisturisers on his stomach and worse, dropping my creams into the pot to see how they get impacted by their latest obsession - the "plaas" (flush).

Every man needs a facial on a Saturday morning!
V1 and V2 with my moisturiser

The iPad's touchscreen has been touched, tapped, slapped, kissed, licked, kicked and stamped on! And I don't even want to get into the destruction that is unleashed on the remotes, the cell phones and my laptop; the calamity that has hit my poor, half dead cell phone can fill one entire post!

The other day I found V2 near my prized and extremely expensive Buddha statue. I asked him what he was up to, especially as he knows there is a standing restraining order against him, forbidding him from coming within 3 feet of my prized possessions. So as I reminded him he, of all people, had no business being near the Buddha, he very calmly told me, he was looking for Buddha's 'bumbum' (butt) and he was perplexed as the Lord didn't seem to have one! Now this one, left me speechless!

My precious Buddha statue.
The Vs have been told "Badha" is perpetually sleeping & gets really mad when woken up and thus they should never ever  go near him! (Oh Lord Buddha forgive me for lying in your name but what sins I commit in your name, I commit to prevent another Bamiyan from happening). 

When the Vs started crawling, all I heard was that I need to now clear the house of all my precious artefacts before they get destroyed. But I refused. How will they learn to be appreciate beauty if they don't see it around them, I said? And more importantly, how will they learn to be careful in other people's homes if they don't learn to respect their own??

But that was all before I had to eat my own words. And before I had to hold my heart in my mouth, each time either V stood near a statue I had painstaking collected and tried to make conversation about it. Today, my most precious things are safely tucked away. More will go into storage, once we move to London and I do up the new house. 

And I am learning to make peace with the destruction around me. When my soldier from Xi'an was beheaded by V2 in front of my eyes, my heart seemed to contract and for a second, I felt like I couldn't breathe. But just as I about to scream at V2, he came running to me and hugged me tight. And in that moment, somehow the pain and trouble I had undertaken to get the heavy terracotta statue across 3 countries didn't seem so great any more. Nor did it matter that it would probably take me years to find a similar one and replace it. All that seemed to fade at the sight and feel of a little creature holding me tight and burrowing his head in my lap. And then, I did what in a million years I wouldn't imagine myself doing. I said, "Its okay baby, forget it". People who know me would know that there was a greater chance of Apocalypse happening than me saying "forget it" to someone who breaks one of my precious artefacts. But at that moment, like any average mother on this planet, I had my first brush with martyrdom!

Keeping my thoughts aside for another day, I sigh and get up and pick a can of paint that I had kept aside, expecting eventualities like these. As I remove the crayon squiggles, I notice some more splotches on the walls of the play room, this time caused by my introducing the Vs to watercolours. For once, the splotches bring a smile and not a frown. It reminds me I need to go and check our very first masterpieces we created yesterday. They have dried. And in their splotchy glory, they are no less beautiful than the paintings I have seen in the best of museums.

Our first watercolors!