Reporting Base: Home Time: 07.00 hrs Status Report: One soldier down! Off goes the alarm and I force myself out of bed with a sense of urgency and rush to the kitchen. Find the kettle, fill water in it and switch on the burner. As I move to draw all the curtains and open the windows of the house I notice a groggy Shweta making the bed. Hardly do I reach half way at the chore at hand and I hear the whistle of the kettle on the stove. I rush back to the kitchen and switch the burner off. As I pour the hot water into the cups and make coffee for the two of us, from the corner of my eye I see Mowgli (my pet) standing at the entrance looking as if trying to communicate something. Oh…yeah, I gather… I need to take him down for a walk. I hand Shweta her coffee, take mine and head for the lift with Mowgli for his morning walk. I suddenly realize I have not taken a paper for Mowgli’s poo, I rush back inside to get it. In the fraction of these five seconds, my pet is missing… damn… perhaps he decided to take the elevator by himself… I take the stairs to chase him and spill some coffee on my pajamas … ouch… it’s still hot!! And this chaos spills from the morning to the noon and way down into the night. That’s like a regular day in the month that Amma, our house help, takes an off as her annual vacation. She is gone for a month now and as anticipated, Shweta and I are struggling to keep the home and shoots, rehearsals, Mowgli and meals… all of that in order. It’s quite an ordeal. This one month I am 4804758 times more domesticated as compared to the rest of the 11 months. My close friends in the US would be very happy to see this as they always feel that we, in India, enjoy the luxuries of having drivers, house help and the other help we get here….Grrr. Ha… I feel lighten now that I have vented out. Actually it’s not that bad after all. It’s a trip, Shweta and I love to take together. It’s like taking full responsibility of your own home and it sure is fulfilling. We mostly divide our duties under such crisis and we do pretty well. What Shweta expects out of me on the domestic front is very little, so once in a while I love to surprise her by doing something she would absolutely not expect. At such times I am often reminded of my childhood when we were trained to be 'self sufficient'. Don't have the fondest memories of those days, but today, it sure is coming handy. Everyone can be self sufficient. It’s the way we pamper ourselves and spoil ourselves that makes life so incomplete without a lot of cushion around our backside. While growing up, even when it was 42 degrees I never felt the need of an air conditioner. It’s only now that my endurance and threshold have shrunken, making life more complicated. Today, I thank Amma profusely for keeping me in check. Reminding me that you could buy all the luxury, but being enslaved by it would be a folly. I feel immense appreciation for all the help I have around. I realize that all the articles of luxury I am surrounded with are only objects and not me, myself! Thanks Amma but that’s it...enough… now get back quickly… need my morning coffee by the bed ;) Yours Lazily :) Manav