Title: Who the bleep cares about baby spittle? By Selma Carvalho Source: Goan Voice Daily Newsletter 13 July 2009 at http://www.goanvoice.org.uk/
Full text: Goan women have a singular mission in life. That is to produce the next generation of babies and babas. Once this mission has been accomplished the middle-class Goan woman assumes the position of queen Sheba in the household and feels it her prime responsibility to regale everyone within a 60 mile radius with stories of her baby or baba. For those in the Goan Diaspora who might have forgotten who these two creatures actually are, a baby is a female child and a baba, a male child. Goan children are never referred to by their actual names until they turn 25 and manage to produce babies and babas of their own. If they don't produce little look-alike hobbits, they will continue to be called Shannu-boy, Johnny-boy or some other name which condemns them to perpetual pre-pubescences. The moment a women goes into her 18 hour labour and comes out at the other end of it with an ugly, crumpled ball of red skin, adorned with rat-like eyes and a drooling mouth, she suddenly morphs into a boarding school matron with hips to do justice to this role, and spends endless hours spinning not just yarns but veritable sweaters, of stories involving the fruit of her labour. For the life of me, I cannot imagine why these women who once might have been teachers or doctors, think any other normal, functioning human being would have the remotest interest in whether baba vomited that day or whether baby threw a ball at baba and made baba cry. But they do. Not only are these stories to be heard in their own homes, should you be insane enough to visit them, but they will actually import them into the sanctity of your own home, should you be completely insane to invite them over. A note of caution here, these aren't actually conversations where you are expected to participate. You are a helpless, captive audience, expected to nod your acknowledgement at convenient intervals when the mother comes up for air and demurely smile your adoration at the little munchkin who has evoked this babble of conversational incontinence. Of course, other women are co-conspirators in this horrendous act of death by baby stories. Grandmothers, ageing aunts and unemployed neighbours all collude to make the woman think that these stories are actually interesting. Grandmothers especially have a vested interest in perpetuating stories about their grandchildren. They like to build these stories into untenable myths which imbue their progeny with super-human strength and unmatched intelligence; baba can tell which airline is flying overhead just by the sound of the plane; baby can count to 1000 and she is only 9 months old. It is the sad outpouring of unfulfilled dreams and the spent force of their own children's wasted potential. A chance to live in the hope that the family will produce a doctor or engineer. Now when I gave birth, I mistakenly believed that it was over and done with. I had managed to spawn a small clone of my husband and me, and I could go back to talking about the macro economic challenges faced by an emerging India. I was wrong. Not so fast said the other mothers around me. We're not interested in your over-inflated sense of intellectual superiority. Conversations that began with what I thought about Darwinian evolution invariably ended with profound thoughts on breast-feeding, spittle, constipation, gas and potty-train. Well, there's an honest saying, if you can't beat them join them. Did I ever tell you about the time my baby was so constipated... Do leave your feedback at carvalho_...@yahoo.com
