Kit Kats in the Sun

I think I was six or seven when a doctor that resembled Santa Claus told my mother that my father had heart disease. If she had her way, I wouldn't have found out. But her plan of keeping me pre-occupied with Snake on her old Nokia failed.  She got a call right at that moment. As I handed her the phone, I overheard the most important bits of the doctor's report. I really didn't know what any of that entailed but that revelation seemed to come as a jolt to our till then picturesque life. 

The mixed reactions I got from my parents made it confusing. My mother kept telling me that heart disease wasn't anything that different from, say, a common cold [but one shouldn't discuss it in school, nonetheless]. My father didn't say much if anything about it. He kept picking me up from school as usual but this time around he started buying me two Kit Kats instead of the one I was used to. This was strange since I was used to being told off whenever I had asked for an extra one before. 

I had always had inquisitive eyes. I wouldn't ask questions directly, I would probe people with my eyes. When I looked at him after finishing my second Kit Kat, trying to found out just why my fortunes had seemingly opened up, he would just pat me on the head and tell me to keep working hard in school. I wondered if that common cold had anything to do with it but I was getting more Kit Kats. I couldn't complain. 

I had gone against my mother's warning and discussed my father's situation at school. I had to. Shadman had agreed to tell me one of his secrets in return for one of my own. And when he told me about the Nutella he had stolen from his cousin's house, I knew I had to give him something juicy in return. I was sort of relieved to find that he was as confused about the situation as I had been. He scratched his head for a while and offered his opinion on the whole thing. In his well-thought analysis of the situation, he believed that my family was acting like 'a little girl'. "Only girls go to hospital for a cold. It's not even a toothache," he said while struggling through his multiplication tables. That crossed a line in my mind. You could call me names but call my family that, of all things? 

I got three Kit Kats as my dad picked me up from school after detention that day. It was the first time I had punched someone. But Shadman had literally asked for it. 

My father insisted I patch things up with Shadman. I couldn't explain to him why this wasn't a good idea. I wasn't someone for grudges but my former best-friend-forever had gone too far. As I positioned myself for our afternoon game of cricket, I told my dad that he was too soft and that he would get hurt if he didn't toughen up. Dad would bowl and I would bat or just swing my plastic cricket bat in different directions, missing the ball. Dad admitted it was because he threw the ball the wrong way. It was one of the nicer qualities my dad had. He always admitted his mistakes. I liked that thing about him. I liked most things about him. Especially the Kit Kats.

I was still sort of relieved that mom wasn't watching. She used to watch us every day but she stopped ever since we got back from the hospital. Maybe dad should have bought her Kit Kats too. Dad could always save the day. He was sort of like Superman.