“Ah-ha,” you’ll say when you see this title. “There’s a toddler in her home!” All she has to say is, “Would you like a pancake?” or “Don’t climb on the chair,” and she will be asked in return, “Why?” and a complete day will pass as one “why” follows the other until there are no answers left or no energy left to answer.

Most of us have been through this with our children, nieces and nephews, grandchildren, grandnieces and grandnephews. It is pretty exhausting, but it is generally something we look back on with nostalgia — because in time those same children pass that curious “Why?” and “Why not?” stage and suddenly have all the answers and begin to question our intentions, our home, our bona fides, our ‘rules’, our lack of rules ... essentially everything.

But this is not about children and their many Why’s.

This is about the here and now, with a retired couple that lives in the same house, but somehow cannot manage to be on the same page during the rare moments we indulge in conversation — and don’t get me started on the many, many more times when there is NO conversation ...

It could begin with a question as innocuous as this: “Did you pump water today?” I ask when I get back from my morning walk.

Sometime during the last Ice Age, when we were in junior school, we learnt that all such a question requires is a simple “Yes” or “No” answer, or for the more loquacious: “Yes, I did. / No, I didn’t.”

I know it beggars belief that an immediate, to-the-point, bare-bones reply is not forthcoming to so direct a question, but amazingly, I don’t get a straightforward answer.

A spin-off

(Perhaps, having left all that simplicity and clarity of thought behind in junior/middle school, this time of our lives has been allotted to open-ended answers ... a spin-off from those open-ended questions we were encouraged to ask if we wanted to get more information from the person we were questioning).

So, the reply to “Did you pump water today?” goes like this: “I got up late.”

‘I know he got up late and didn’t come for a walk,’ I think. ‘But does that answer my question?’

Aloud, still fairly even-toned, I say: “I didn’t ask when you got up. I asked if you pumped water today.”

“I know what you asked,” he growls. “Fresh water was coming in the tap when I got up.”

Phew, I go in my mind. “Fresh water is still coming in the tap,” I say. “But did you pump water today?”

Considering that it is the third time I’m asking, you can guess that the volume has gone up a bit. Maybe even a lot.

“There’s no need to shout,” he grunts. “You’re always sniping at me first thing in the morning ...”

“All I’m asking is a simple question,” I say, full throttle now. “Did you or did you not pump water today?”

“You’re going to wake the neighbours up with your yelling,” he snaps. “And by the way, the neighbour’s water tank overflowed this morning.” I want to shout, ‘I don’t care about the neighbour’s water tank!’ but I know that will probably get us into an argument about who is more neighbourly, he or I, and then to a squabble over neighbourliness versus minding one’s own business and finally to an altercation about anything from conservation of water resources to global warming and the state of Planet Earth.

And I still won’t know if he pumped water.

So I give up, march off, and switch on the pump. In a short while, our tank overflows and he comes out looking innocently perplexed. “Why are you pumping water again? I’ve already pumped today. I told you that.”

Really?

Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.