Ammani's Challenge - 4 - COUGH SYRUP

They had been cranky since morning… While she was packing they kept taking things out driving her up the wall… While she prepared food for the trip - for her husband, parattas and dry aloo subji, for her in laws, Uppuma and Puliyogere, for them, all kind of boiled vegetables and raagi kanji and some curd rice, in case they insisted on ‘thayirmammu’… For her? She’d eat whatever was left over after serving them all… Anyway, she never felt hungry while on a train journey… May be due to the stress of bearing all tantrums of the young and the old… But they were making her go crazy… She had some more washing to do… some more ironing some more packing… some more arrangements with the doodhwallah, the paperwallah and the maid… CRASH! They had broken something…MADE OF GLASS! In a panic, she ran to the hall to see her kids looking guilty and surrounded by hundreds of pieces of her china vase… She hauled them to a safe part of the floor and whacked them both which set them off howling on top of their voices…She lifted the little one onto her waist and dragged the other by hand into her room. She switched on the TV and told them not stir from the bed. Then she opened the cupboard and took out a bottle of Phenargan. Two teaspoons each, she fed them… That’ll keep them quiet for the next two hours, till I finish my work, she thought wearily. With a guilty glance at her kids, she went back to her chores. I must remember to pack the bottle for the journey, she told herself resignedly.