Here's someone who dreams cars. And I thought loving and living cars was great.

11PM - Tue, 14/Apr/09 :
Have just returned from a busy day at work and had a quick dinner with my wife. My son
stayed up till 10PM waiting for me, but slept off after that. For a kid who hits the bed at 8PM
or so, 10PM is already too late. Had planned to be home atleast by 9PM so that I could spend some time with him, but as usual some last minute stuff needed to be attended to.

Anyway, since it is April and with Chennai in summer mode, it is sultry even at night. So I
decide to take a quick shower. Halfway through the shower, the power goes off & the whole neighborhood is plunged in darkness. Inspite of its faults, one good thing about Chennai was
the reliability as far as electric supply was concerned. In my 2 decades here, power failures
have been very rare and even in those rare instances, it is restored quickly.

This is so unlike Kerala, where apart from the announced load-shedding of 30 minutes daily, there are atleast 2-3 suprise power cuts, lasting for a few hours. Ofcourse in the last year or
so, even Tamilnadu has been facing power shortage and they have had to resort to planned
load-shedding in Chennai & other places.

My wife was reading the newspaper when the lights went off. I verbally guide her to where
my phone is so that it's display can be used as a light source for her to get candles & matches.
As I finish my shower and get to the bedroom, she already has a candle lighted. I know that
in a few minutes my son will get uncomfortable with the cool air of the airconditioner being absent and start crying. So, I fan him with a magazine.

I assure my wife that power will come back soon, but even after 10 minutes there is no sign
of it returning. Every few minutes I fan my son with the magazine so that his sleep is not interrupted, with my wife asking,"How long will you keep fanning him ? All night?"

When I almost gave up hope of a good sleep that night, the power comes on. As I tell my wife, "See, this is because of good-hearted people like me..", the power goes off again, as if proving
me wrong about me being good-hearted. My wife has the last laugh here.

Again, it is back to sultry weather and to add to the discomfort, some mosquitoes are buzzing around. WhileI cannot sleep with mosquitoes around (I need to kill them all before I hit the
bed), my wife has no such issues and she is soon asleep. I lay awake thinking of various things - my Uncle who passed away yesterday, the void his loss would leave for his family, some stuff
at work etc - and in between remember to fan my son.

My thoughts are broken by my son stirring in his sleep. He turns over in his sleep and talks in his sleep.I have heard him talking in his sleep earlier also, but could not make out the words. Now that his speech has improved a lot & become more legible, I can hear the 2 words clearly. He says "Baleno car".

In the evening, I had talked to him over the phone and told him that after I return from work, we will go out in the Baleno. I wonder if he was dreaming about this in his sleep and thus his uttering these 2 words. Now this truly is a car mad kid. I know that most boys are from a very young age crazy about cars & bikes, just like baby girls are crazy about dolls. But this guy is on
a different plane altogether. If I were to compile all the words he says in a day & rate them on which he says most, I think the list would look something like "Baleno car", "Tittu car", apart from the other most used ones like 'biju pappa' & 'neena mummi'. 'Tittu' is how he pronounces "Swift' and on the road, he can identify a Swift when he sees one. Ofcourse, when it comes to Baleno, any car with a boot is a Baleno as far as he is concerned.

At my auto-forum, we have a set of stickers available to be stuck on our cars and one of the stickers has the tagline "Love cars. Live cars". But here is someone who even dreams of cars.
I hope I am able to make it early home today evening, so that I can take him out for a drive
in his "Baleno car".