The good news is that I am fairly comfortable with babies. In fact, if you come to a Roy household – be it Kalyani, Kolkata or Atlanta – with a dog or a baby, you are fairly assured of being completely ignored given the attention the dog or the baby is going to get. In fact, in those rare occasions that I show up to a party, if I can spot a baby, I am fairly well occupied for the rest of the evening. For whatever reason, babies take to me reasonably well too (same IQ level, they reckon?).

The bad news is that, invariably, in about a few minutes, they go off to sleep in my lap. There is only so much of having to look at my face that they can take, I presume.

Which is exactly what happened when a couple of the helps at home brought their kids/grandkids around to our house during this trip.