21st September 2022 

Dear Sam, 

I woke up at 10:30 this morning. I could feel a cold draft hit my head. Had I left the aircon on again, I wondered? Turned out that the chilly weather which had hit Mumbai recently had hung on. 

Last evening it was so unusually cold that I was about to take the thermometer out to check if I had fever, but then decided to tweet first. 

@finelychopped Is anyone else feeling cold in Vandre? 

Turned out that it was not just in Bandra. People tweeted back from Sewri, Goregaon, Andheri and Vashi saying it was indeed chilly... ‘Chalo, not COVID’, I concluded and had some mukhorochak ‘special papdi’ Bengali chanachur, my favourite savoury snack, from the jar kept in the kitchen to ‘celebrate’. As if I needed a reason to have some! I am addicted to it.  

The scales said 86.4 kg this morning. Four kilos up, from the nine I had lost after I went on a diet due to a post-COVID blood sugar hike. ‘What a shame Raja! (My daak naam as we say in Bangla, my nickname) What a shame!’ I told myself, though I knew that the Hershey’s creamy chocolate bar that I had the previous night had a role to play in this. As did the Whitakers almond chocolate bar that I had the night before. And the Fabelle hazelnut mousse bar the night before the night before. This is going to be your and my secret Sam. 

I did not mean to eat the whole bar but it is the same story every time I take out a bar of chocolate from the fridge and open the wrapper. I start off planning to have just a block. Then two or three block more to finish the row. Then the next row. Then I go to the bedroom. Do an about turn. Back to the kitchen for one more row. Then, ‘what the heck, there’s just a row left. Why hurt their feelings?’ Boom, boom, bye bye chocolate. 

Chocolate is my crack. Chanachoor my Ecstasy! 

I never finish them at one go. I am disciplined you see. I believe in portion control. Then the portion takes control of me. I return repeatedly to the kitchen. This goes into the deep hours of dawn. I know that I have to stop this post dinner binging. But the struggle is real! Tell me you have never done it. What? You have not. Of course, you have not. You are a diary. That’s an unfair advantage. Stop judging me Sam. 

The thing is that Baby Loaf and little Nimki are usually awake when this happens. They follow me when I go to the kitchen and settle down on the floor to watch me. As if it’s the next episode of Game of Thrones or Homeland. 

Wait, is that why they feel compelled to eat again and again at night? They usually wake up K. Correction, Baby Loaf wakes her. He gets up on her side of the bed and meows in front of her. When she does not wake after two or three loud meows, he taps her on the face. 

‘Hello, I am Baby Loaf. THE Baby Loaf. How can you ignore me mummyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?’ 

K groans and gets up. I am told the odd un-ladylike word is muttered before she accompanies Loaf to the hall where their cat bowls are kept. She fills them if empty. Sometimes there’s food in the bowl. Loaf just wants the company. That gets K’s goat. Little Nimki follows them and happily munches on the refills. 

I am smarter you see. If K is travelling and I am alone at home, I do what Teddy (my mom-in -law) does when she comes to look after the boys on our behalf. I keep a jar of kibble with me on the bed and cat bowls beside me on the floor. The moment I sense one of the boys coming up to me, I open the jar, pour some kibble into the bowls and shut the jar. All this without even opening my eyes. 

‘You should feed them only twice a day,’ said a vet to us. ‘A fistful of food in a day, that’s all. Do not overfeed.’ 

As if that has ever worked with Indian parents. I was so chubby as a kid that I won every ‘healthy baby’ competition I had entered. My mum would ascribe it to the rich quality of milk that I had in the UK as a baby. Baby Loaf has my genes. 

Interruption: 

#NoorBanuCooks (our cook): Saab bari billi ulti kiya hai. Woh do bar khana khaya abhi uske pehle. (The elder cat has thrown up) 

I got up from the chair and saw the puke. Cleaned it up. Earlier in the day, I tweeted about how I felt I should take up the moniker ‘Poop Daddy’ when I cleaned the litter in the morning. ‘Puke Daddy’ now?! 

I spotted Baby Loaf lying in a cat loaf position below the bed. Looking a bit sheepish and lost. ‘My little babyyyy. I love you.’ 

The bell rang. Of course, it does. I am writing now. How can it not ring? 

I shut the door and sat by Baby Loaf. He doesn’t run out of the door as often as he used to, but why take the risk of him running out?  

I brought my index finger close to him and he booped it. 

‘It’s ok sweetheart. It’s fine to throw up. Occasionally.” 

Little Nimki jumped out from below the bed beside my desk where he hides when the bell rings. It’s usually a bit of Laurel and Hardy tableaux when the doorbell rings at home. Baby Loaf runs to the door and tries to run out for some ‘masti’ as Erika (our neighbour and his godmother) says. Little Nimki darts inside and takes cover. 

He has perched himself now on the platform by the window in front of the desk. I feel that the boys feel assured when they see me write. It is as if they have taken it upon themselves to look after me with K out for a ten-day shoot. 

Or perhaps they are vetting the copy? I did tell them about the book last night. 

Baby Loaf followed Nimki. He sat facing me and looked meaningfully at me. He then sat down on my keypad. He has never done this before. I had to give him a few gentle pecks on his back before he got off. Maybe he is happy I am finally writing a book about him. Wonder what he will think when he finds out little Nimki is in it. As are the Kitty Blinders. My gangsta cat kids from the Almeida Park. 

Later someone told me that he must have felt cold and hence sat on the keyboard. I prefer my explanation. 

24th September 2022 

Dear Sam, 

When I woke up today, I saw Baby Loaf curled up and snoring on K’s pillow beside me. I have no idea when he came in. He was on the study bed when I kissed him goodnight last night. He prefers to be in his own room just like I did as a kid. 

Little Nimki was by my feet when I woke up. He is a bit like his uncle Shomu. My younger brother. Mamma’s boy. K says that his world starts and ends with us. He prefers to sleep on our bed most of the time. 

Nimki booped my toe when he saw my eyes open. He then walked across my right thigh, up my chest, as is his practise every morning, and walked by my right shoulder to go towards the window where he likes to say good morning, or ‘I’ll get you guys today,’ to the sparrows outside. I squished him mid-way through his walk and then let him go, as is my practise. 

He looked at me and plaintively said, ‘dao.’ Which incidentally is Bengali for ‘give.’  

In cat language it apparently means ‘get up and give me wet food.’ I gave the little one his breakfast and started my day. It was 10:30 am again. I have to start getting up a bit early. At least 9! 

Talking of Bengali, I later met Sashwati (Shas), my senior from Presidency and now our friend in Mumbai. She was coming to Bandra and suggested meeting up. She wanted to see her bhaipos (nephews). She is the pishi (paternal aunt) of Loaf and Nimki. I suggested going to Subko, the new coffee shop in our neighbourhood, instead. I love their iced cortado.  

I was introduced to the cortado by one of my readers in response to my post on finding cappuccinos to be too milky after I shifted to the espresso side. ‘Try the cortado. It’s less milky and still has the froth,’ he wrote. I did and loved it. It’s become my poison of choice. Then I discovered the iced cortado at Subko and have been hooked to it since. Many of my readers have told me about how they have switched to cortado after I posted about it. I call us the #CortadoCartel. K is an exception. She had a few sips of my iced cortado at Subko a week back and rushed to the counter to order a cappuccino. I got to have two cortados that day and no new members for the #cortadocartel!  

I went to Subko the day before when I took a large delegation (20 to be precise) of Israeli businessmen on a Bandra FinelyChopped Food Discovery Trail. They tried the iced cortado at my behest and loved it. I could not wait to go back and this was a good opportunity to do so. 

I woke up with a bad back today. The second time in 4 days! I had a very bad back pain when K went for her first work trip post the pandemic restrictions. It was the first time we were away from each other since the first lockdown was announced two years back. My back gave in the day after she left. Meds, physio, rest. Nothing helped.  

S, my therapist, said it could have been separation anxiety leading to the pain. I did not contest that. My ortho had told me in the past that stress can cause back pain. Namitaji in Sivananda Gurgaon online back pain course said the same too. S said that I was missing K and that the three of us boys were a bit ‘lost without mamma’ and feeding on each other’s despair. Thankfully these are online sessions. I wonder if I could be so candid with her face to face. I will know if we ever do one, but for now online works well for both of us. 

I suggested going to Subko instead of meeting at home to Shash, as going out is considered to be crucial for good mental health. Especially in our post lockdown life where we have all got so comfortable with being at home. With K travelling, my conversations at home are limited to talking to the boys, who do not talk back. Loaf does at times, but I am yet to learn his language. 

Our house-help and cook tell me about their aches and pains. I keep a stoic face while the ladies go into more detail than I can handle. Usually this is a lead up to why they bunked or why they will bunk. ‘Just do it ladies. I don’t need to know the backstory,’ goes the thought bubble in my head.  

Our Subko visit was all about cortados of course. I had an iced one. Shas had a regular (hot) one. When we were at Presidency together in the early 1990s, we had not even heard of a cappuccino, forget a cortado. And thought that espresso is pronounced ‘expresso’ which referred to the milky coffee poured out of those ancient coffee machines by wedding caterers. 

I told her about the book. 

“Oh, that’s great. What is it about?” said Shas. 

“It’s called The Diary of a Cat Dad.” 

She went silent for a few seconds and then said, “that’s ok.” 

That’s OK???!!!! I thought! Here’s the one who could not stop praising my first book, ‘The Travelling Belly,’ and yet here she was, barely half enthused! 

Then I told myself that this was the Bengali stiff upper lip in action. My mother would probably just sigh when I tell her about the book. 

My publisher was a bit surprised too when I suggested the topic. 

They, like everyone else, thought that my second book would be on food. A continuation of my first. I had thought so too. Till Baby Loaf came into my life and changed a cat dis-liker to one besotted by cats. Little Nimki was born a few months later. We fostered him for a while but truth be told, neither K nor I shared the adoption ad. He soon became our fur baby number two. And I became too much of a cat dad to think of anything else as the topic of my next book. 

Read The Diary of a Cat Dad to find out what happened next and who is Sam.