Big Tears, Broken Jets, and Cooum-Scented Breath

Yesterday was both a mini and a gigantic bummer of a day for Riaan and me. His favourite Tamil and Hindi tuition teacher had to discontinue his classes, my fitness trainer is probably about to quit on me, and Riaan’s brand-new toy jet—which he only started flying a week ago—abruptly stopped working. All sorts of heartache set in by nightfall, accompanied by big, fat tears.

"Why is my life so broken, Mumma, just like my jet?" my seven-year-old asked, his cheeks stained with tears.

I sighed and replied, "Sometimes toys and people abruptly exit our lives when we least expect it. That’s life. We just have to accept it and move on."

He continued his tragic monologue anyway: "First my father died, then my jet died, and now my teacher is gone." If drama had a middle name, it would be Riaan Drama Bhattacharya. I just hugged him tightly and let him sob it out for about half an hour. Big, fat tears flooded my shoulder, accompanied by occasional wafts of smelly cheese breath directly in my face.

I patiently waited for twenty minutes before finally telling him, "I'm sorry to break it to you, and perhaps this is terrible timing, but your breath smells like the Cooum River. The stench is so bad that even a crocodile wouldn't enter your mouth if I stuffed a giant dead duck inside."

He cracked up in the middle of all that crying—hysterical laughter cutting through the tears. "But I don't want to brush my teeth tonight!" he protested.

I sighed again, enduring another five minutes of his "That jet meant something to me, Mumma!" wailing. My little boy and his life's big problems. Welcome to yet another day in our life.