Happy Birthday!

An honour it is to be a mother, to a daughter like no other.

You've been child, hero and charioteer; in total darkness you did steer.

Even over the din you could harmonize, I wouldn't be here otherwise.

Stay sweet, sure and strong, carefully choose the right from wrong.

Hope your life is what you want it to be; if you find happiness, so will we.

Always remember you are much loved, by us on earth and the Divine above.

Unsung Mosquito Warriors

When friends and family visit me in the hours before dusk sets it, they see me in the form of the mosquito warrior. The godhuli time does not just bring in the cows, it brings in mosquitoes as big as cows.  And I stand there armed to thwart the threat of the impending mosquito march - with anything and everything.  If I didn’t, then you would have been tattooed all over your forehead enough to qualify as an inmate aboard The Ibis and set sail on the Sea of Poppies.

So I smoke them out with traditional sambraani (tree bark resin to those of you who have galloped too far from home and lost touch with age-old ideas) or suck the lives out of them with modern mosquito repellents or both. In the evening our house is as hazy as an opium den where you will cough along with the mosquitoes or stand there in a smokey trance. My daughter prefers the smoke to me jumping around the house swatting them against the walls with a newspaper and a smug, “Got you!” It's also a great excuse to pass around a few slaps and say, "Oh, thought there was a mosquito on your cheek." After a project on Vector Borne Diseases, kid  informed me (probably thinking it would appeal to the feminist in me) that in the bloodsucking species of mosquitoes, only the females suck blood. Well obviously the male mosquitoes drove them to that but why take it out on us?

Pray tell me I ask, why I need to show mercy to these little vampires? Then I remember that in this day and age, there is such a sudden gush of love for vampires, that to look bloodless, white, and spooky (and have red eyes) is the “In” thing. To make matters worse, an inspired director in South India goes and makes a hero out of a fly. Now I have to let pests suck blood and fall in my soup?

I don’t think so – I am sticking to my exterminating role, and I know that somewhere out there, there are more unsung mosquito warriors. Besides, am probably setting them free from this blood sucking avatars of theirs and the only blood on my hands when I swat them is my own. 

And the Neem Tree said…

There I was, a young sapling growing free and wild

Looking into the balcony of a mother and child.

In a vacant lot, with other  trees older than I,

We grew in abandon trying to grow our branches high.

Once a brush fire set off a panic among us,

But the child’s worried tears stopped our fuss.

We were surprised and happy that she cared

And her prayers for our safety even her mother shared.

The fire dimmed and died out soon

Rains set in like a heaven sent boon.

Then one morning a year ago, on Raakhi day,

The tree-crusher machine inched up our way.

Crunch! As I heard the bushes and branches snap

I could feel the strength from me sap.

It was a school day and the child was away,

Who would send a prayer my way?

Then she appeared on the balcony and stared

It was the mother, towel-turbaned and teeth-bared.

I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry in fear

When she screamed out to the tree crushers, loud and clear

Her voice carried over the din of the mean machine

And her wild pleas, and folded hands were finally seen.

Leave the Neem tree alone and let it purify the air,

Please leave it and let it grow, we really do care!

As she told them I was home for the birds,

They actually paid heed to her words.

They left me alone, and noisily went away,

Leaving me to live and see another Raakhi day.

And the child said “Thanks Mimi, you’re a crazy mother

But you are now officially the Neem tree’s brother.

So I still stand, a young Neem tree growing free and wild

Looking into the balcony of the mother and child.

A Raksha Bandhan story of a different sort

Lost it have I?

Been wondering what it is that makes me lose stuff. Why is it that I am forever scrambling to find my car keys, house keys, cell phones, hairbrush, scissors etc. and why do I lose things on such a regular basis? What makes me Amnesia personified on two feet? Not only do I drive people around the bend having them search for my things but I also send the divine into a tizzy. This in the form of frenzied invocations in Sanskrit slokas for Amarnath’s Bhole to prayers in the Queen’s English for St Anthony asking him to please please come down because something is lost, and can't be found.

Sometimes it doesn’t work and what’s lost is never found like the cellphone (yes another ancient that was a prequel to the iSmash), house keys, a favorite writing implement, driving license etc.

And sometimes it works – like when the security guards at office found my wallet with its entire content that validate and confirm my existence on paper (this included the new driving license that my father effortlessly facilitated, saving me from the excessive trauma one undergoes when trying to procure a government issued document).

I did try and blame my losses on a colleague in office and the kid at home, claiming that they were last seen around the lost objects. While the former said she sold all the items in the black market, the latter threw off all allegations. The rest squarely blame me.

“You’re plain careless.”

“You’re not organized.”

“You’re hyper.”

“You think too much.”

“You try to do too much.”

 “You’re growing old – it’s a natural process of decay.”

“Alzheimer’s?”

All of the above?

Or it could be the car – it’s eating up things that I leave locked inside it. Scrunch, scrunch and it’s gone!

Then there’s the WWW consoling us that we are not the only ones with all the above or menacingly attributing the memory lapses to some incurable unique degeneration of the self. After being told (again) that I think too much and that possibly much more than the mandatory six impossible things were crowding my brains and cramping my memory, I wondered if I was possibly attention deficit ( the WWW informs me adult ADHD exists). Just for grins sake, I took an online test that proclaimed “Mild ADHD possible”. Drat! Just a ‘mild’ and ‘maybe’ and not even a worthy enough reason that could justify to all around that it is not my fault?

Meanwhile, I lost my Sodexho coupons...

The Curious Incident of the Keys in the Afternoon

Right, let’s have another laugh at my expense. T’was a very hot Hyderabad summer’s day. We were setting out to meet best friends from Mumbai and Hyderabad not met for many years, in an attempt to relive some fun moments of the past. Going out in the midday sun is what Englishmen and mad dogs do but we aren’t Englishmen, and we aren’t dogs, but mad is an adjective that can be applied to us. Err…especially me? I lock the door, start the car and halfway ask the daughter, “Where are the house keys?” She informs me that she doesn’t see the keys in my bag, or in the car.

Panic sets in as I have more than once left the keys dangling in the door and my friendly indispensable neighbour has made it her business to take care of this frailty of mine but the problem is that she’s out of town on vacation! So I make an about turn and rush back home and almost simultaneously the phone rings, and guess what? We can’t find the phone, but we can hear it.

Now for a bit of an aside: Since I traded in the beloved iSmash for a snazzier phone, I have not been able to recognize its ringtone, or find the contacts let alone check my Gmail from the phone. In fact, once a colleague was calling me several times over and I kept wondering why the person in the TV serial that I was watching was not picking up the phone – till the daughter pointed out that it was my new phone that was ringing. Sigh! How I miss my iSmash! Anyway, my child who feels that I share the memory of Jason Bourne which obviously is not saying much about my retention capabilities, decided to customize the theme of the Bourne Identity as my ring tone.

So imagine my surprise when I stop the car and have Moby’s Extreme Ways play out from underneath! Talk about music from the depths! That’s when I realized that I was somehow sitting on the phone and the keys!! Obviously, I have hit rock bottom in more ways than one. What was even weirder was the missed call on the phone showed as “Home”. Hello- if both of us were in the car, and I had the keys underneath me, then who was calling from home? So we continued back, and this time Ayesha decided to open the door, check the house, lock it and bring back the keys to the car. I also, by then managed to check on the phone that the missed call from “Home” was from some days ago ( err…most likely on an occasion when I could not find my cellphone and had to call from the landline to locate it. Once I even had a colleague call till I finally found it left as a bookmark in a book that had been returned to the shelf. That's yet another aside)

We decided to leave the keys in the car and proceed for tea with friends. And we locked the car. We are sure of that because we tried the doors before we went in. After an evening of tulsi chai, apple and walnut pies, mangoes and vadas, (and more vadas in my case) we set back home after dropping off Mumbai friends and when we reached, we could not find the keys. Kid insisted I had it, and I insisted that she had it. The car did not seem to have it. The bag did not have it. It wasn’t anywhere. And as I said the indispensable neighbour with the second key was on holiday. The kid’s extra key was in her school bag locked up inside.

The keys had just disappeared along with the keychain which was an ornate filigree ornament from my eastern hometown that zamindarnis of yore stuck in their hips or tied to the end of their saris. Together the key and the chain would be impossible not to spot, but we just could not spot it. In the course of the search we cleaned up the car, tore up the lining of my mirror work jhola, checked our pockets and retraced our steps again and again. The Hyderabad friend set out to search her home, and the car park. The Mumbai friend had to check her bags. The watchman searched the car. The builder of the apartment complex, who was out on his evening smoke, puffed his way through the car with a searchlight. The keys were gone, and we were locked out completely.

By that time, daughter’s midget cricket gang had gathered around as they found our adventure way more entertaining and each of them had a suggestion – none of which were practical, doable, or remotely connected with reality. Then Puff the Big Builder asked Ayesha if she had bolted the balcony doors? She sheepishly admitted that she might not have locked it properly i.e turned the bolts to the side. The midgets got the adventure they wanted when a heavy duty metal step stool was hauled under the balcony. The watchman then used it to jump up and rock-climb his way into the kitchen balcony, cheered on by the midgets. The door of the kitchen balcony would not budge – after all the domestic help (lets call her Balwant Kaur of the folk song fame) had latched it with incomparable finality. The watchman inched his way into the main balcony used usually by the homeless monkeys to enter and check our fruit bowl. After more than a few nudges, the door opened. I cannot tell you how thankful I was for the careless Sagittarian daughter that I have!! We got inside our home and nothing could be more of a relief.

Of course, we haven’t found the lost keys of our kingdom. Or the key-chain. And as this is not the first key that had been lost, we only had a singular original one left. The copies made of it confused the lock mechanism so much that we’ve had to replace the locks. So anyway, you who have the keys, you can’t get in. If you had, there would be nothing for you – except one fantail goldfish, the orphaned iSmash, books of various genres, and a pile of junk that my kid calls treasure. Nevertheless, I often mull about this very curious disappearance and while we've been attributing all our maladies, moods and madness on the heat, it could not have possibly melted the key and the key-chain away. 

Hyderabad friend you are the reason: Whenever I go to her house I lock myself out of the car. This time it was the house!

Mumbai friend you are the bigger reason: If it wasn’t for her, I would be the house hermit that I am and still be firmly in possession of my keys. 

China friend meanwhile says we make a serial on me. She also has a chat status that reads “If you are not living on the edge, you are taking up too much space.”

Trust me – am on the edge of the edge. Koi doubt maat rakhna.

Take a Call on it…

Three months into 2012 and it’s my first post of the year – terrible! If you want to know why I haven’t written in such a long while, it’s because I have been senselessly ragged and tortured and have had my creative juices staunched due to brutality over my phone and age. Obviously there is not much I can do about the latter but as to the former…what can I say? To near, far, dear and not-so-dear ones, I just seem to be archaic in all ways.

I live and work among family and friends who have a variety of cellphones: Apple iPhones and Android cellphones i.e. technologically advanced handsets that seem to run on bakery items like gingerbread, ice-cream sandwich etc. The fruit family has an additional representative in our very own Blackberry boy who is a girl, but seems to be on her way up (or is it down?) the android path.

As for me, I have the iSmash.

Once upon a time the iSmash was a brand new handset. All my colleagues had begged that I buy a decent brand - it reflected on them poorly whenever I whipped out a weather beaten Reliance LG CDMA handset, tottering on the brink, and hovering in the shadow of death. I was also duly informed that that I should not yield to a brand known for its washing machines and microwave ovens. Much good it did to me to follow the then Samsung brand ambassador Amir Khan's lead of "Next is What?" For me “Next” was woe.

The handset conked out in just five months ...took me to the dark ages for the want of a charging pin that could not be replaced. I was told rather insensitively, "There is water in the handset, madam." I had no idea a handset could be as thirsty as to get itself a drink. So equally insensitively, I accused my mother and daughter of sweating into my phone. They reacted by excluding me from family activities. Then I was told, "Madam, it is charging only, but it has to be plugged in at a certain angle." That was it. I am, as all my family and friends will tell you, not of the fainthearted variety (unless you send me to a beauty salon), so I upped the battle. While I began with acute-angled politeness, I drifted into much aggressive posturing, despairing, screaming, and shouting, till the Reliance people promised to deal with it and gave me a stop gap handset which had Playboy written on it. I think they really really wanted me out of the showroom as other customers seemed to be leaving just as I began Rajnikanth's dialogue of "Enna Rascalan...". The Playboy phone seemed to have none of the vitality you would associate with Hugh Hefner’s brand (may be it was from China – imagine an opium-tranced HH?). It just about had enough energy for the one last hurrah, the final phone a friend lifeline - just one call I had, like criminals arraigned for the first time in CSI.

I turned to the power of the pen and wrote an impassioned letter to a leading city newspaper accusing all and sundry of robbing me of my rights as a customer. While one colleague maintains that my letter published in English was Greek to him, it actually woke up Samsung regional heads who swung into action and actually fixed my phone. Good on them! It’s been a pretty faithful relationship since then.

However, it's totally another matter that I flung the cellphone down two sets of stairs in an extremely extenuating circumstance. I still remember it in the air very Matrix-Neo-like as I hurled it and watched it land on the floor, make a smooth suicidal slide towards the long flight of stairs...bump itself on many a step...till my daughter rescued it at the bottom of the stairs, and held up its smashed display with her usual incredulous look. Oh well may be the phone had enough of me too.

Amazingly, it not only worked better than before, but also gave me the unique tagline:
The iSmash – coz I smashed it!

So I have this just one of a kind cellphone, personalized to perfection. Even though I say so myself. Others usually greet it with:

Oh, do they still have phones like that? (STARE)

But aunty, you had this cracked phone at Ayesha’s birthday last year, too! (So, your point is...?)

Yours is the only phone that can take a photo and the output is a readymade collage! (STARE HARD)

You better change that cracked display before you have pieces of glass inside your ear. (FYI: My hearing power is better than yours)

It actually has a camera? (STARE HARDER)

You can’t find your phone? No worries, no one would want it – it must be where you left it (This at a crowded wedding – and yes, I found it, and yes it was where I had left it)

To add to my misery, my daughter has joined the Android Adda. She puts her phone next to mine and pointedly says, “The Samsung Y(Young) and the Samsung O(Old)”

Then the counter cry is raised, “O for Old? It should be P, for Prehistoric!”

I really like my phone. I’m really attached to it and it doesn’t bother me that its display is cracked and the buttons are worn down. Sure it might not be a very smart phone or much of a status symbol, but why would I need a phone to make a statement? I just need a phone to make calls.

Besides what’s with these touchy-feely smart phones anyway? Once when my daughter’s phone rang, all I wanted to do was receive that call, but this green arrow on it kept insisting ‘Move to the right’.

Choking on their laughter, the Android gang asked, “So you moved yourself to the right, did you?”

No I didn’t, thank you very much, but why should answering a call be like a dance number:
Move it to the right, and take a call like this
Take it to the left and end a call like that…
You can bump it like this
And tap it like that… and the dance continues…

And the other day, I was at a PTA meeting and somehow, something touched the phone to dial the family doctor who was about to walk into a surgery.

There’s an Apps for everything except one that can earn you money without working. There are a variety of keyboard that are unfathomable to me. They have voice assistants who get muddled up at the sound of my name and announce me as incorrect data.

To have the world at their fingertips is such a high; never mind that their fingerprints are eroding in the process, never mind the constant texting, and twittering, never mind the fact that one is more in touch with the phone than the spouse. Hail the whole new breed of Android Loyal Web-bers* out there with worn out fingerprints, and burgeoning collections of Apps trawling the internet till kingdom come, until what will exist one day is the myth of fingerprints.

All I need is a phone to call family, friends and Basha the vegetable vendor and hallelujah, at the moment, I can!

*The credit for this nomenclature being duly attributed to Ayesha;)

The Curse of the Wandering Spoon

There is something in a spoon that belies its actual potential. It is not as unpretentious as it seems. Be warned - it is a dangerous thing and often scoops up more than what is adequate for you. And then of course, there’s the spoon that wanders…

It makes audacious appearances in your child’s plate under the charitable social guise of not wasting food. It nonchalantly makes a business of popping into dishes to check if the salt is right. Inadvertently, it slips into your mouth when you are packing remnants of a meal into leftover boxes. It slips in surreptiously to avail extras for desserts. Sometimes, unabashedly, it plonks itself directly into the family pack ice cream carton all in the name of a bad day. It wanders into the different lunch boxes when you sit together to eat lunch at work. It makes a quick dash into your colleague’s lunch plate on the pretext of gauging the ingredients in the recipe. Then it meanders into the next plate, and then the next…

When you finally stand on the machine that is famed for ruthlessly reducing the self esteem of people ranging from the reigning celluloid diva to the humble homebody, you are catatonic once you shriek, “I could not possibly weigh that much!!”

Yes you do - it’s the curse of the wandering spoon under which you vehemently assert that you have but just eaten small spoonfuls of this and that. It must be the weighing scale that is wrong. So the wandering spoon moves on as mysteriously as god, adding increments to your already burgeoning vital statistics, regardless of whether or not you follow the metric system.

You can wage many battles with the wandering spoon, but if you make it shun carbs, it delves into the protein. If you deny it the sweets, it makes a dash for the snacks. And more than often, the wandering spoon so trains your fingers that they treat themselves as extensions of the spoon. A case in example is the matchless sister-in-law who comes back from office and finds herself in the snack pantry because her fingers willed her there. So immersed are her fingers rummaging through packages and boxes pretending to be spoons, that she wakes from her reverie only when her daughter discovers her there! Being felled by the spell of the wandering spoon myself, I have tried all possible tricks. Then, I found Rujuta. Most see her as Bebo’s size-zero diet guru. As a friend said, “No wonder people who consult with her turn size-zero, after paying her, they have nothing to eat!” I decided to buy her books as they are a cheaper option and recession is still on in my life. To me she is the antidote to the curse of the wandering spoon. Anyone who knows me, also knows that I can quote from both her books. Of course I quote her, she’s the one who reined in the wandering spoon and made it legal to begin the day with a mango!

In this world where being lean is in, where every woman wants to be the yummy mummy, where you blast the fat, with this and that – be it by nibbling on some sort of exotic berry or downing a soulless cabbage soup – Rujuta says EAT. Eat what makes you happy. Eat what you have grown up eating. Eat the moment you wake up or at least within 30 minutes of waking. Eat the samosa. Eat the chutney with the idli. Eat the puri with the chole. Eat the carb, the protein, the fat, the omega 3 fat, and the amino acids – just eat. Just make sure you train that wandering spoon to dig in more when you are active, and less when you are lolling around. Wake up early, ensure you get at least 30 minutes of exercise, have an early dinner and go to bed early. Eat every two hours from the time you wake till the time you sleep – begin with a fruit, have a generous breakfast, a sensible lunch, a light dinner and intersperse these meals with snacks like for example a block of cheese or a handful of peanuts.

It’s another story that friends and family do not want to hear what Rujuta says. “What’s the great discovery in this? That’s the way your grandparents and us have always been living our lives. It’s just that you chose not learn it and banished the breakfast”, says my mom. Daughter has drawn a picture of me with a bubble over my head that reads, “Rujuta says...”. Colleagues turn away the moment I begin to quote and cut me short with warnings and threats to rename me to match the nutrition guru. Out of a lot of love, I parted with my copy of the book “Don't Lose Your Mind, Lose Your Weight”, and left it with sister-in-law – I still do not know which page she is on, or for that matter, if she has at all turned a single page. Probably, she’s lost somewhere in the snack pantry, with all the weight and the mindless snacking. As for the snacking part, since Rujuta doesn’t strictly lay down what exactly is a handful, some interpret it to be an amount that would be a handful for the Incredible Hulk. Then there is the lovely lady who only read the “Eat every two hours” bit and ate a full meal every two hours with disastrous effects. Rujuta also does not mention when to fit in the 5Star, but since she hasn’t banned it, I give my 5Stars the respect they deserve.

The wandering spoon has been reined in. Since it has so much access to food every two hours, it’s tiring out a bit. However, my sincere efforts to enlighten the masses that the curse of the wandering spoon is no urban legend and needs to be tackled with what Rujuta says is met with reactions of the lines of “My spoon never wanders, it goes from the plate to my mouth, and never misses” or “Would it help to use a fork? Anyway it is leaky and can’t carry as much as a spoon?”

Look what I have to live with – around me the motto is lose the mind, not the weight…what a tamasha!

Expect the Unexpected

We’re already one month into the New Year (which did not feel very new what with routine work/school, and no vacations to herald it). Me thinks I should get in one post at least with the run down of what happened in just the very first month of this New Year:

The highlight of the last day of last year was a poster scrawled with wishes and autographs of daughter and daughter’s classmates – I believe their class managed to get an exam postponed citing the fact that it was their dear classmate’s mother’s birthday. Considering that it is a day I share with the Dark Lord (You-Know-Who), I am not sure how it could be made out as momentous enough for the teacher to cancel the exam, but cancel she did and even signed her wishes. Adopted family supplied the cake, the music, and the songs to drill in the message of the infallible frailty of youth and the unpredictability of life.

Then of course, life likes to reiterate the message once or twice with live examples. To what I would like to attribute to thinking a bit too actively about too many impossible things at breakfast, I locked myself out of my car on the third day of the New Year. This was for the fourth time. To make matters worse, the house keys were also in the car. To make matters even worse, the guardians of the extra house keys could not find it. So there were the duplicate car keys so safely locked in the house that even I, the rightful owner, could not get to them. After making frantic last minute arrangements to have child picked up at the bus-stop, a call to the emergency car services ushered a smug mechanic who unlocked the door (I tell you it was a lesson in car-jacking that I can now perform very easily if I had the tools), and sniggered that he would give me a discounted fee, as is due to a repeat offender.

While smirking kid informed me that I had broken the three-time jinx and got locked out for a fourth time so now that opens up the field for many more lockouts, colleagues lost no opportunity in proclaiming age-related memory decay. They sent me off to an in-house Ayurvedic health camp where the doctor in all solemnity declared that fire being the dominant element; a need for some calmness was in order. And for the record, nothing’s wrong with the memory or the head…just too many things in it

Too many things, like for example, how to occupy a teen during her 10-day Sankranti break when she is already miffed about a cancelled holiday to Tadoba Tiger Reserve? Work from home and call over kid’s friends – woe is me! Struggling with deadlines, cooking an Italian order, and startled by the sight of young girls in blue and purple wigs, numerous bangles, and painted faces and flowers on their fingernails. We hadn’t thought of pasta with basil and olives at 13 and our moms had stunted our nails with a simple stare!! Things have evolved so much that “Arre whaat re, arre?” is rolled out delicately as “Aw rei , wha’ re…aw rei?!”

I look at them and I shudder, thinking of the Facebook snippets my younger colleagues have exposed me to of the evolution of some 20 somethings. My jaw had dropped to see a pansy sitting there, posterior aimed directly at the world for a public viewing of another unimaginative tattoo in an unnervingly impossible place. My only thought at that time was that while she is at it, she could tattoo herself some underwear.

I prefer the blue and purple wigs for now and am prepared to expect the unexpected, like for example getting labeled as the Mad Hatter by the Alice and Cheshire in my family, especially since I thought I was oh so sane! Then there is the call late in the evening that frightens the daylights out of me till I realize it is a friend calling to inform me of a hermaphrodite designer in my hometown who shares my last name. And then in the night when something goes BUMP…yes I do still jump, but invariably it is daughter’s water bottle that has tumbled from its jauntily placed edge to flood the floor with water, and yes, I am the one mopping it up at 1am in the night.

So here's to expecting the unexpected – because things happen when you least expect it to and when you look at the bigger picture, the hidden pattern, the secret message, it’s all for the best. Or so I am told ;-)

For a G(J)em

He started off in my life as the elder brother who was too small for the role and who just could not understand why this thing that they insisted on calling his baby sister, had these bright beady eyes. “If I could only poke them a bit…” he thought, but was caught several times with a finger poised to stab at those optical illusions. Responsible adults, who reveled in the girl child, successfully thwarted each blinding attempt and I survived the need for glass eyes like the Nawab of Pataudi. Vision is still 20-20 (despite the age), even though I say so myself.

Not only was he the first born among all the grandchildren, he was born the commander in chief - where he led, we followed. Sometimes that meant scaling the rooftops of our granddad’s ancestral home. Sometimes it meant climbing the trees to rescue his priceless manja-coated kite string. It meant the breaking up of a Ludo game in case he was losing. It meant wielding the bat to face his fast bowling practice – and mind you, not with a tennis ball. It also meant being sidekicks in the shadow of the ideal eldest grandson. You could not resent him though, because he always had your back.

You needed that extra pen; he was there with it. You needed that math homework done he would do it. You wanted that extra chocolate flake on the ice-cream cone, even though you’ve eaten yours, he would give his to you. He would never hesitate to give away the matchbox cars he had collected to little cousins. He would save his pocket money and buy you that dancing doll you wanted from the toy store in the corner. So what if his idea of encouraging you to ride the bicycle was to take off the handbrakes - sending you skidding on the gravel, flying off the seat, and splashing into the garden pond? And to add insult to injury, he actually guffawed and called out for mom saying, “We got a spouting whale in the tub!” I was fished out by the gardener and got my own back by using the fighting techniques he taught me, on him with much satisfaction.

It was like growing up with Jem Finch – never a dull moment. There was always an adventure to tackle or a drama to stage, or a fight to win, or a loss to convert into a victory. In between, I learned from him about cricket, computers and carrying on all the values that everyone in our family stood for and still do. Diwali was always a blast thanks to his idea of collecting Granny taxes separately (for that matter uncle tax, aunt tax etc etc). Holi was a riot too and even now every family gathering he arranges for is a feast no one wants to miss. And I think of him always:

For toughening me up.
For getting me through math in school.
For teaching me to drive.
For the laughs.
For the sights of Washington DC.
For the microwaved ice-cream.
For the kick in the back.
For the endless support.
For so much more…

Jem grew up and destiny had him make his home in the Land of Liberty – but he’s never too far to be there when it matters the most. And he continues to touch our lives and make a difference in all the roles he lives out with aplomb, so here goes: Happy Birthday… to a father who will be unmatched always, to a husband who is a rock you can build your faith on, to an uncle who is always the best friend, to a brother like no other, and to a son who is a gem. Happy Birthday, Jem – we will send out the rockets in the Diwali night sky and have kababs on the table – from all of us who love you, and you know who we are.

Frenchly Nailed

Most of us have a “List Of Things to do Before I Die”: Scale the Everest (drat, it’s too high, will settle for base camp), own a Hummer ( hmm, at least the little hatchback fits into the smallest of parking spots), build a log cabin (wood still catches fire doesn’t it?) et cetera, et cetera…

Some LOT to do BID are fairly down to earth, and am glad to say can been ticked off the list:
· Trek in the Himalayan mountains: Check
· Act in a play: Check
· Visit niece in USA before she turns 10: Check
· Plan a euro-rail trip: Under active consideration
· French manicure: err…here’s the story:

My nails have a brain of their own. It is possible. My daughter has proved this at a very very young age in Class 1, when she told her teacher that she really really wanted to write and complete the rest of the work but her hand and fingers did not want to. “See, Mimi”, she said, “Do you think I don’t want to write? I do, but my hand doesn’t let me. My fingers say they are tired.” To explore the possibility that her fingers were tipped with gray matter were beyond us adults…but it is possible. Then I saw a colleague wave her hands nonchalantly, and stared in awe at the perfect white tips on her fingers. If not gray matter, then white!

“What is that?” I asked pointing at the white edges. “Duh, a French Manicure.” So ever since then, I have tried to grow my nails, but they seem to have had a mind of their own. Sometimes the nails actually made the effort and grew themselves out, only to be guillotined by the kitchen knife along with the bhindi. Once, they got grated along with the ginger. On yet other occasions, they were soaked to the point of withering away in my bout to clean and scrub everything from my kid to the walls of the house. Sometimes, I consoled myself that nails would interfere with the keyboard, so I stunted the effort and snipped them away. After all, one doesn’t need to be either a size zero, or have french-manicured hands to create usuable content for the software industry.

Besides, at least I knew what it was, and that gave me occasion to be gleefully one-up on my sister-in-law who said, “You, know, these days, girls dip the edges of their nails in white…” “Duh! That’s a French manicure!” Then I have people around me who are more than a consolation. They form a motley group who would, I imagine, have the following responses to the question “Ever had a French manicure?”:
· Nah, too plain – purple nails would be more like it!
· Didn’t you know, I bite off more than I can chew/grow.
· MIL due (and it’s a mildew of an in-law variety), so might be forced to use nails as weapons.
· God will love us with or without french-manicured nails – God will love us without fingers as well.
· I am forced to wonder about the hygiene factor- are such nails a healthy option?
· Kya Boli?

As time flew, and the nails were grown, chopped and grown again, only to be chopped again - the child who had brain matter in her fingertips, grew up into a teen interested in nail art, complete with a talented friend painting flowers on her nails. Needless to say she managed to convince me of the need of a manicure, right in the middle of a grocery trip. Buoyed by the fact that there was a salon right there, I allowed myself to be propelled in and hand over my nails. The girl in pink brought out her weapons of nail destruction and initiated the attack on my nails with a file. As she wielded it mercilessly, she took a look at my face, and said, “First time ever?” I nodded helplessly as my hands were soaked, scrubbed, kneaded, and then the dead skin on the cuticles were sawed away. I did not even flinch or make a fuss as a few drops of blood were shed – even though the thought of my little finger being amputated on the altar of the French, made me shudder from inside. I knew that if ever there was a moment to make a fuss and ask for an angry but perfectly justified refund it was then. However, there is something about the beauty industry that has me all timid and defeated (you should see me fighting for my rights in a police station – but that’s another story).

While my child was suitably impressed, and armed with information on the steps of a manicure to start her own nail spa for friends and family, I had no patience to sit and blow on the nails daintily. I left feeling the indignation right till the ends of my fingertips. From the French manicure to the Brazilian wax – I salute the fairer sex so ready to bear the brunt of these foreign beauty assaults. As for me, those white edges had me on the edge. From the moment we left the salon, the nails had way too many close brushes with the hauling of grocery, the making of tea, the washing and peeling of vegetables, (try making the Indian aloo paratha with the French manicure), and of course the old nemesis - the kitchen knife. When the poor fingers with their white French tips finally came to earn a living with their familiar tap dance on the keyboard, to complete some urgent document deliverables, they already looked frayed.

My only thought was much ado about nothing…and I actually had it on the list?

But as is often said, never underestimate a woman with a French manicure?!

French manicure: Check.

Photo Credits: Ayesha

Not Born to Bake

No, I am not blogging from inside of the Lobster. Obviously I survived the last post but it could be because the entire team got together to motivate my baking efforts and support me through the process. I might not be a sweet person but I am a sweet person (even though I say so myself) – cakes, cheesecakes, apple pies bring not a smile but a huge grin on my face. I have been known to demolish not just a quarter kg of the famed Bangalore Mysorepak but also half a German Chocolate cake. A jam doughnut in my stores makes me happy just thinking about it. I have been also known to buy myself an entire Decadence Cake from Cosentino's smothered with chocolate flakes just because I felt I deserved it. I beg for the icing on the birthday cakes and my heart breaks to see it scrapped off by others and left banished to the edge of the plates. I have had Tiramisu for breakfast and let me tell you what a perfect beginning it is to the day. Walking around a confectionery is one happy trip that involves physical exercise, a lot of salivating and a content soul.

But baking what I salivate over…that is another story. Soulful Slurper pings me links and more links of perfect pieces of cake served with perfect cups of tea in just about perfect houses. There are luscious fresh fruit with cream piled carelessly over moist mouthwatering slices of cake. There are layered wonders filed with chocolate and topped over with more chocolate. And then…here I am, can’t even bake a simple sponge cake, and some dame goes and uploads pictures of a chequered cake that has been color-coded into a delightfully looking eatable chessboard.

How hard can it be to bake? “It’s simple”, I am told by the company I keep. All you need is flour, butter, baking soda, eggs, vanilla essence, a baking mould, and of course an oven.

I have a very good oven…
“Ok, then, get yourself the rest of the ingredients.”

How much baking powder?
“A pinch and don’t add more thinking that it’s going to do the trick – you will end up with a funny taste in your mouth”.
“Remember exact measurements ARE important.”

“Don’t use butter straight from the fridge.”
“Try cooking butter.”
“I only use normal butter.”
“Cooking Butter is good”
“I only use normal butter.”

“Use fresh eggs.”
“Don’t tell her ‘fresh’ eggs! Before you know it she will be staring at the hen and waiting for it to lay a couple of eggs.”
“Mix the whites first, then the yellow.”
“I mix the eggs together – I throw it in the mixie along with the butter and sugar”
“I use a hand blender.”

“Make sure you fold in the flour gently”
“Make sure you blend it in one direction”
“Make sure you blend it so that it falls from the spoon in even undulating consistency.”
“Make sure it’s not too watery or that it lands in blobs.”

With all this information overload and a simple recipe for a simple sponge cake, I resolve to bake in the weekend. I am so nervous that I can cut the tension with a knife like you would a three-tiered wedding cake. I am so nervous while blending the ingredients, buttering the dish, preheating the oven, and so overwhelmed that the mixture fell from the spoon in even undulating waves of batter, that it is only after I put the mould inside the oven that my daughter hands me the butter that I had kept aside to thaw!

So went the first attempt-butterless…the cake looked good – I mean it was round and golden-brown and looked like a cake. Just that it tasted like sweetened bread and ahem…not as soft as bread.

“You forgot the BUTTER?”
“How can you forget the BUTTER?”

Never mind…lets try again. Once again the recipe was followed, this time with the BUTTER and all was perfect. Till I forgot the cake was in the oven and the oven got too hot. Well, CSI New York was on and Mac Taylor got car-napped. And before that was CSI-Miami and Horatio got shot. And before that was CSI and Laurence Fishbourne was making his first appearance…

After the many incredulous looks, and howls of laughter, and weeks of half-baked jokes at my expense, I bought a pressure cooker cake mix. It was perfect! Probably because the daughter mixed it with attentive patience and love.

All baking efforts have been relegated to the background and instead I have been re-instated as one of the recipe hunters for the one person in our team who has been born to bake – and so for hunting down links on baking a variety of goodies, I am given the first warm, wondrous pieces of croissants, breads, cakes etc. I am not complaining ;-)

Some people are born to be bakers,
Some are made to be paratha makers.
I can knead the dough, stuff it and roll it out,
But a simple cake mix throws me in doubt,
So I’ve simply given up baking doorstoppers.

An Ode to Office

Monday morning is usually something very few look forward to. You get to hear of Just Another Manic Monday, Blue Monday, I Don’t Like Mondays, Rainy Days and Mondays, Call it Stormy Monday…you get the picture. Fortunately, we have no such Monday afflictions in the workplace. Possibly it is the company we keep. An eccentrically eclectic elite, each one with a distinct quality branded in like the mark of Cain.

Trust me, I was very good in deed…but the constant quartet of the Saint, the Sinner, the Sleepy Slicker and the Soulful Slurper, has impacted me to no end. I have been urged to navigate life with prayers, long dangling earrings, deadly high heels, smart hairdos, food for the soul, laughter that makes the stomach hurt, and if none of these worked then sleep it out. Finally, when I out slept the woes, prayed feverishly, hung chandeliers on the ears, ensconced feet in stilts, styled the hair, obsessed about food, and laughed till my stomach hurt, I was told I was on the way to recovery. And you can’t but laugh because office is a riot where the Sinner urges the Saint to buy Devil’s food cake mix, and the Sleepy Slicker slips in a comment about age and girth as the Soulful Slurper waits in anticipation for a slice or two...maybe even more?

There are many others in between:
The Homework Helpline who is just a phone call away for the kid’s Hindi and French homework doling out explanations with the single-dimple smile thereby ensuring that she receives the first call as well as earns the chance to share the blame on report card day. We have however successfully thanks to her learnt to say, “Mon pied” to the world and stand our ground.
The Doomsday Devi who exhorts everyone to close corporate accounts to the safe shores of nationalized banks on basis of some floating rumors and with equal fervor requests the team members to shut up and bounce (the instance).
The Virtual Vaulter who has an ABs pro, Yoga mat and all the relevant exercise material like hand and legs etc, but she prefers to watch and experience pole vaulting and other asanas virtually. The rest of the time she does not correct perceptions of people who vacate their seat in trains, planes, and automobiles asking her politely when she is due –she’s been overdue for a while now but in virtual shape.
The Peaceful Piper, who has the deceivingly peaceful look till she pipes in a last word when you least expect her to everyone’s amazement and amusement but she’s our only link with respectability – the only sane shred this team can lay claim to.
The Taciturn Tapori whose outer reserve is a ruse for the inner fierceness that puts all and sundry in place dismissing dissent with the emphatic Hyderabadi, “Chhal” when you feign an excuse for whatever it is you are trying to escape from.

And escaping I was from a trip being planned to Goa with the whole jing bang club to slink into yet another quiet Sunday watching CSI NY. I was issued the threat that if I did not agree, I would be thumped into the sand, fed to the lobster, which then would be cooked and eaten. A concerned office pal who was headed to the wise hills of the Himalayas heard the threat and told me, “ You are better off coming with us to the Valley of Flowers- it’s in the opposite direction, away from this lot!” They looked at him glaringly and he slinked away saying he would bring me back pictures of the Brahma Kamal, if of course, I was not inside the Lobster. It’s a severe matter here when a face is spotted with the ‘look of a ditcher’…

Many painful deliverables have been successfully timed after rahu kalams or when Saturn moved out of Pluto. A simple conversation is unraveled to reveal double (often triple) entendres till you have to think and measure every single word you use because you never know what kind of hornet’s nest you are setting up. A trip to the hairdresser opens the floor up for discussion and debates – “Rats attacked your hair last night or what?” Should you wish a coconut to fall on some duffer’s head, they will assure you that it would be bunch of coconuts that would fall. On a day that you come in angry and cursing your luck that star-crossed you and Hugh Jackman, you get a patient hearing and the advice to cry out your agony into the hollow of a tree. We have not yet found that tree with a hollow where we can wallow.

Then there was a time when my brother’s visit, coincided with a company dinner being hosted at a fancy venue. Considering the ongoing recession the operating thought was grab the free dinner. Colleagues suggested I put the key outside the Tulsi plant so that brother could let himself in. Then I asked them what I should do with my child...the reply was "Is your Aloe plant big enough? Put her under there." My appalled sibling who was crossing seas to see us called me skinflint and wondered if I was exchanged at birth, till I had to demonstrate my inherent selfless nature and prove I am family indeed by forgoing that dinner. The next day, my colleagues did as was expected of them – cruelly detail out the menu and smack their lips about the desserts.

It is here that I learnt how the love for food is the sincerest form of love and that often you eat for your soul – especially cakes with the chocolate ganache to die for and the Mysore pak that melts in your mouth. Hot samosas, are swooned over. I have been witness to such passion for mushroom that I began questioning my own sanity for the company that I keep. The fish fry is received with much festoon as a newly crowned queen. The chicken in the curry is given adoring looks that it never got when it was alive. The communal love shared over chicken biryani made me feel that it could possibly be a useful aid during riots, till I got singled out as a vegetarian. For team lunches, a Kebab haven would be sought after and after a cursory glance at my fellow vegetarians, and me they would say, “We can throw them a barbecued paneer or grilled mustard cauliflower.” A suggestion of a vegetarian Italian restaurant invites comments on the lines of “Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum! What? No bones of chicken? Are you that dumb?” I did however get a lunch treat at a Chinese joint which made me feel real special, till I saw winks exchanged and the following said, “Anyway all we have to give her is veg rice and a couple of baby corns”.

As for exercise, one colleague simply sinks back in her chair whenever the issue of Yoga comes up and asks me to show her the Surya Namaskar – till I figured out that whenever she felt she needed exercise, she would ask me to proxy it for her! Not that exercising attempts haven’t been made. In a fit of an exceedingly ambitious moment, we all signed up for Yoga Classes, where those of us who could actually perform the asanas were discouraged by comments that our legs were short or arms were long. But then the same excuses were given if an asana could not be performed - one leg is shorter than the other. And then there were some us who would defiantly sit cross-legged looking at the others and pointing out at the fat peeking out of errant yoga clothes. Understandably, Yoga classes began with full attendance on the first day, only to peter out to a day when a colleague found she was the whole and sole participant. That day she got an intensive one-to-one session with the instructor who contorted her into seemingly unreasonable arches and twists, that had her hobbling in to work the next morning throwing us deadly looks…Our boss nearly laughed till she cried, expressing how she wished she was a fly on the wall and even considered making Advanced Yoga classes mandatory. Thankfully the classes are still optional with none of us opting for it. Needless to say nothing was lost…not even the weight.

This could have been an All Woman’s team, if it wasn’t for a few men here and there who any way do not want to be seated anywhere near us and keep a safe distance. Besides, they would not understand the need for detailed dissections of clothes, haircuts, movies, books, grocery items, education, children – and men. It’s been a pooled knowledge of shared experiences and much appropriate naming from the Saint who if she is not doing her stand-up comedian routine, dabbles in scientific studies to classify men as such:
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Family: Hominidae
Genus: Ogleterrific
Species: Sanitus empathos (common name: Nice Guy)
Rasculus rottenii (common name: Rascal)
Cynicus goldbrick (common name: Heartless Cynic)
Ogleterrific incineratus (So uncommon that there are no common names)
Some species are yet to be identified and are broadly classified as UNKNOWN. (Which basically also translates that some mysteries are best left unsolved and that we haven’t had the time or funds for additional research)

Forget about men, God has been analyzed, forcing the Saint to ceaselessly pray for the salvation of our souls and her’s – after all wasn’t it she who cooked and ate the pet duck(so what if it was bred for table purposes?) The rest of us feel a lot safer that she is praying because that means the rest of us can go about our evil ways – he he he!

Some voice bites:
You know whaaat?
No, I don’t know what.
I have Chicken Pox!
At this age? Please don’t come anywhere near us.
You know whaat else?
What?
My computer crashed.
What? You gave your computer the virus too!

I baked a cake over the weekend.
Where is it?
I ate it.
You Cheap Charlie!

Won’t you come and see me because I am sick.
No, and stay away from us for a month and give us notice when you are coming.
Why?
We will wave Neem leaves to get rid of viruses around you.

Pigeons are eating off all the potted Plants.
Can’t you get rid of them?
I feel like shooting them.
Hey, you can’t do that.
That’s why I ate off the eggs they laid in the pots.
How can you do that??
Simple – made an omlette…but it was very very small.

I feel so old today.
You are old.

My stomach is aching. (rubbing the (ahem!) seating arrangement!)

Kaun Columbus yeh application banaya…?
I just don’t understand this!
Don’t worry, you don’t need to.

Come you Little Thing, lets have some tea (person in high heels talking to vertically challenged other)

You are not taller than me.
Yes I am!
No you are not!
(Both parties solicit impartial opinion) Yes she is taller than you.
That's only because she has a big head.

You really are sooo nice…
OK OK…tell me what you really want?

Why are you wrapped up and sitting up hunched on your chair?
I am cold.
You look like a Toda woman.
What?
All you need is over-sized earrings and five husbands.
(Victim faints but rallies herself next day with huge earrings but no husbands - she also smses back, "Nice to be a short Toda, in flat sandals and loose pants and only Hugh Jackman to dream about")

I am going to be nice to you for two days (pulls victim’s chair away after two seconds)

Who has taken my chair?
Not me, but you can take mine.
No it will have Enterobius vermicularis.
What is that???
Pinworm.

That churidar looks like it was Mulla Nasruddin’s.
No no, it looks like that cloth hanging on the bottom of the big grinder we use in Chennai to make sure the chilli powder or the atta doesn’t spill over.

Arre, Chhal!!!

After all this over, there will be still the one who will suddenly peek over the cubicle wall to say “Kya Boli?”

In fact office is a place where one can’t even be depressed in peace. No one allows you to trip over a long face…they would rather stick out a leg, trip you literally, guffaw when you land on your bottom and pull your leg while you are still down. No ego massages available and be sure that there can be verbal guerilla warfare at any given time. Do not offer the rear end even if you have to pick a pencil up from the floor - it will be used as target practice by people who were kicking donkeys in their last birth. The bonhomie is hard to capture. The animated discussions, the absurd analogies and not a single chance is missed to point out how advanced you are in age, or how bad your hair looks. Amazingly, not a single deadline is missed. Not a single job left incomplete.

What a riot – what an incomparable tribe. Even though I say so myself. You know what I mean?

PS: Should you not see any post after this one, I might have been laid to rest.
PPS: RIP

There is Something about Mangoes

There is something about mangoes that makes the hottest Indian summers cool. There is that first eager anticipation of the mango blossoms, and the consequent prayers not to have the weather go all beserk at the wrong time so that the trees get a chance to blossom to fruition. Then the little green mangoes, making appearances like tiny tots on the first day of school, failing miserably to match up to the bully tree-bats who harrass them. Then there is their fight to thwart stone attacks launched in a bid to fell a few of the green ones to relish with salt. The privileged ones take cover behind the foliage till their greeness melts to match the golden of the sun. The journey is long and hard, but the hotter the summer, the sweeter seem to be the mangoes…and then the whole town is ablaze with golden yellow, and awaft with an aroma words will fail to describe. If there is to be royalty among fruits, the mango is undisputed as king, queen and annointed heir.

And so the Mangifera floods the nation with its majesty: Alphonso, Amrapali, Badami, Bangalora, Banganapalli, Bombay, Bombay Green, Cheruku Rasalu, Chinna Rasalu, Roomani, Dasheri, Fajri Kalan, Fazli, Fernandian, Gulabkhas, Himayath, Himsagar, Imam pasand, Jehangir, Kesar, Kishen Bhog, Komanga, Lalbaug, Langra, Maldah, Malgis, Mallika, Mankur, Mankurad, Moovandan, Mulgoa, Nattuma , Neelum, Pairi, Pedda Rasalu, Priyor, Rajapuri, Raspuri, Ratna, Safeda, Sammar Bahisht, Suvarnarekha, Totapuri, Vanraj, Zardalu…endless names, endless choices, endless flavor...

And so this season, each of my mornings began with a mango. Each scoop like a spoonful of sunshine. The sweetness unmatched. The texture smooth and delightful. The entire experience of relishing a mango is better than anything else.

Yes, better than anything else. Share a mango? Never! Bother about weight? Never! Control the indulgence? Never! Gorge on the slices, or eat them scoop by scoop or hedgehog style, a mango will always remain unparalleled.

There is the politics of mangoes, recall the attempts at sweetening Indo-Pak relations with the gift of mangoes? There is also the economics of mangoes. The mangoes you eat can help slot you in the appropriate economic bracket. Alphonso, means you have arrived, Baiganpalli for those who cannot afford the Alphonso…and all the other varieties in betwen...there is mango for each and everyone. Bottomline, if you’ve eaten mangoes this summer, you are above the poverty line.But seasons come and seasons go and there is always a last date to the Mangifera Magnificence. No more mangoes in the fruit bowl. Farewell then…to the last Mango of this summer, you made every bit of the hot summer worthwhile.

Face it...

“Everyone’s on Face Book!” Not me...and no, I am not going to wave placards to denounce it. Just that I’ve decided to bide my time and explore it along with my daughter... I have several invites and they are still pending patiently, while I debate if it is politically correct as a mother of a pre-teen to be part of a social forum where all and sundry can ‘poke’and even ‘super-poke’ each other to their hearts content. A forum where one's ego (fragile as it is in these days of recession) is given the boost by the number of friends we have added on in a desperate bid to show the world how much people like us and that we are not only connected but very well-connected indeed. Everybody is a somebody here and it feels good.

So, all and sundry seem to be on some online social forum or other—from the age range of 10 to 100. The peer pressure is overwhelming. The need to keep up, and have it all and let others in on the details of the ‘all’ is the order of the day. But aren't we couch potatoes enough that we need to add ourselves to another social forum in cyber space that requires us to glue our already exercised-starved gluteus maximus to the chair? Aren’t we leaving behind the simpler low-tech ways of having fun outside the door? I remember how I told my mother about how bored I was one summer vacation and how she challenged me with the retort: “Probably you aren’t being creative enough.” Aren’t we as busy parents using online socialising, PSPs, Nintendos to fill the gaps of boredom in children who have way too much in life to ever be bored? Do we need TVs and computers in our bedrooms however much they are needed for recreation and doing the homework?

Trust me, I value the power of technology—would not trade it for anything! I am amazed at the virtual dogs inside that Nintendogs that you can pet, walk, feed, and even clean. I am enthralled by the knowledge I can access at my fingertips. Without the Internet I would be lost—it is what links me and countless others to family and friends near and far. It keeps us connected and makes the world a much smaller place. I believe that the Internet should be added to the list of oceans right after the Pacific Ocean.

And that’s exactly what it is—an ocean with sightless shores. Kids are swimming in it already but for some reason I hesitate about them surfing the bigger waves. Are they aware of when the Internet become too much of a good thing and how it can bring in another set of issues and consequences? Cyber-space is a place of no boundaries. There also seem to be few limits on rules, loopholes, transgressions and eccentricities. Do they know when information becomes too much information? Click in a name and you can pull out photos, addresses, and other trivia and tidbits that leave a trail to trace someone’s life if they are not careful. Can they gauge what is real out there or unreal in Cyberspace? You can mask who you actually are. You can have aliases and morph yourself till you mutate into something unrecognisable. How soon can they have Face books and Orkut profiles? As parents we take the call on when they are ready for it but what do we expect them to be ready for?

Ready to know that it all depends on the choices they make? That what’s good is they can choose to take it slow, recognise the responsibility that goes with surfing the internet, prioritize their time, empower themselves with what advanced technology offers and evolve to the fullest potential. And hope that till then they don’t go chasing waterfalls…

“Don't go chasing waterfalls.
Please stick to the rivers
And the lakes that you're used to
I know that you're gonna have it your way
Or nothing at all
But I think you're moving too fast…”*

* Waterfalls, TLC

Monkey see and monkey do...

We’ve taken their jungles away, so what they want is restitution of what is rightfully theirs. So ‘twas on a bright morning, the house had just been cleaned of every single dust particle (well, almost). The glass top dining table was gleaming and what with the sun pouring through the French windows (why do the French call doors as windows?), the overall picture was one evoking images from an interior design magazine. Then I turned to walk into another room and I came back to see a Simian guest, making himself very much at home, sitting cross-legged on the dining table, hugging the crystal fruit bowl with one hand and helping himself to an orange with another…!

He/it looked at me quizzically and I just could not get myself to welcome it. So, I said “Hey, there!” Obviously, I didn’t get the tone menacing enough on the first go, because, he let go of the orange and picked up a pomegranate. Then it struck him, when he saw me rolling the newspaper into a baseball bat, that I did not want him around at all, and he made a dash for the exit, with cherries. Unfortunately, like many of us, he couldn’t distinguish between what is real and what is not. The cherries were fake and as I closed the doors, I could see him spit it out and give me a reproaching stare for endangering the environment with dreaded plastic.

From then on, we’ve been forced to keep the French windows closed. The monkey band was however, intent on getting back not just their rights but their pride too…fancy being caught stealing fake cherries! So they sent an emissary on a day when my visiting mother, ignoring our counsel, had the kitchen door wide open and aromas of her many dishes wafting out. The monkey walked in, mummy screamed. I cannot tell, who was more scared—Mummy or the monkey. My always unflappable and eternally dignified dad, recalled that the scream wasn’t nearly as loud as it had been the day she had spotted a full of beans jumpin' green frog of Orissa countryside in the bathroom, hence we had nothing to worry about. But for the monkey, it was was way too much—he bolted for his life and it must have taken a great deal of cajoling to get him back into the war against humans. But the rest of the band were spurred to plan another onslaught. They launched it the day my mother and I, were tending to the green gladiators, and your’s truly, left the doors of the balcony open. There we were digging and repotting my grateful plants, when I heard my kid say a very feebly questioning and trembling, “Mimi...?!” The proper noun hung there in unabashed trepidation, causing me to turn around and see a fairly large sized moneky (they finally sent the big guy) on the dining table holding on to the whole bunch of bananas, and proceeding to climb down the table. As he sauntered through the room to make a very unhurried getaway, he passed the piano, and looked at it. I almost thought he would put down the fruit of his labor on the floor and play a simian sonata for us! But I think he was smugly satisfied—he had squared for the fake cherries, the closed French doors, the scary scream…he had the whole loot, the real Mcoy.

It took me back to our ancestral home in our village and how we used to wage a battle against the monkeys when we visited during the summer. I remember there was one particular one, who had his hair arranged in a middle parting, and for some reason, he felt that our house was his. All my grandma’s efforts to keep him out, by keeping all the food and the kitchen locked up wouldn’t work. Then one day, perhaps to protest the lock out, he opened a bottle of her blood pressure medicine, swallowed all the pills, and moseyed off into oblivion, making us think that he had done a Marilyn Monroe on us. Ma was wailing that she was probably responsible for his ‘alleged’ suicide, and upped the prayers quotient for all her children, till some one spotted him waking from a deep dream of sleep like Abou Ben Adhem. Needless to say, he came back, unreformed and back into monkey business.

It’s hard to change, for monkey

…And for man?

Fourteenth on a Tenth

The irony of it is that it all happened in the Valentine month 14 years ago. The consequences of that is yours to bear because only you can bear it...What diference does it make? The sun came up this morning, you got to hug your child, layout breakfast on the table and do whatever it is you need to do.

And then there’s the dream of a time machine that could take you back to the point from where you would change things…

But, the bottomline: “No longer mad like a horse, I’m still wild but not lost, from the thing that I’ve chosen to be......Whatever it may bring I will live by my own policies. I will sleep with a clear conscience. I will sleep in peace”.*

So it’s a celebratory stride with a smile, through a day that would-have-been, could-have-been, but wasn’t an anniversary with:
Something old, something new,
Something black, something blue,
And…deadly, pointy, high-heeled boots.

*Sinead O Connor

A School Bag of Prayers

She hops off the school bus, slides into the car, giving her mother a perfunctory smile and wave but her eyes are fixed in a direction out of the car window. “See, look at them,” she says. “Those kids carry their books in plastic carry bags.” The mother looks out, and sees three children—two girls, aged around 10, 7 and a 5 year old boy, walking the dusty pavement with three plastic departmental bags stuffed with their school stuff. They are the children of a domestic help in their apartment and those plastic bags are probably from their house. The bags look worn out and the little one seemed to not be able to carry it so his older sister took it from him. As they walk on, the mother drives home, as her child keeps looking out the window.

The next day, same time, while she parks at the bus stop, the mother spots the three children again with their worn out plastic covers. Her child gets off the bus and once again looks out at the threesome walking down. “I have some old school bags but they are just too old…the fasteners are all worn out and besides who would like getting an old school backpack, anyway?”

That evening, as her child kneels down to pray, the mother hears her say, “Please Hanuman, or any god who has free time. It’s the New Year. Can you please get those kids new school bags?”

A few days later, she’s off from office early and has time till the school bus rolls in, and she passes by a shop selling school bags…

The next day, at the bus stop again, the child is all smiles as she sees the three kids proudly carrying brand new school backpacks. She knows now that she can believe in prayers.

Just that sometimes, you have to be the prayer.

Back to school…For Auld Lang Syne!

The lovely daughter has been coming back to me with all kinds of complaints since the day she took her first steps to letter herself.

In PrePrimary II, as a mature 4 year old she announced that she hated Rohit because he said he wanted to marry her. Her father said that he would first check his bank balance then follow him around with a gun before he would allow any such thing to happen. She found that reassuring. Then again in Class I, it was the older boys who were teasing her in the bus. She swept aside my lectures on how she should elegantly ignore it and deal with it on her own and once again called in the big guy who with all his fatherly tactlessness, stood his big frame firmly in front of them and warned the guys off his daughter. It worked. She also took to smugly walking into the bus with her elbows jutting out, so that she could knock all and sundry out of her way. This was on the advice of a particularly interesting colleague of mine with a soft corner for guerilla tactics.

In Class II, it was “Operation Remove Vamshi”. She simply did not want to sit next to a boy. But the teacher insisted on pairing the XXs and the XYs. But my kid gave me various excuses ranging from “he took all my erasers” to “he smells funny”, till she hit upon the one thing she knew would get my goat—she told me he had lice. I raced to school; to find that the target of her chagrin had very little hair…lice could not have possibly made a home in such sparse territory.

It’s been an amazing insight into the world of primary education from a parenting perspective—were my experiences the same? As I have followed my four-year old become a much wiser 11-year-old, I watched her drop the complaining and take on the world by herself. More responsible, more mature, she’s a natural counselor for other kids who call asking for her advice the moment we get home. The teachers congratulate me on my daughter and my parents’ gloat over her report card as they never got to gloat over mine.

Then as suddenly as it had gone, the complaining was back. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be Prefect”? Nope—was never the prefect material. “All the kids hate me!” Then why do they still call at 4pm asking for your advice? “I bet it never happened at your school…did they ever write your name on the wall along with all kind of other stuff?” Yes, they did. They even wrote on the back of contour maps and on the library books. They scratched our names on the doors with all kind of plus signs.

School isn’t all Ha Ha Hee Hee…but isn’t it? Was I complaining too when I was in Class VI. I really need to think back…to the last few days in Class 10.

When you’re in class 10, you never deign to think what you and your school mates would be doing 25 years later...You are so full of yourself and how things are affecting you, but time has a habit of flying and you fly with it. You had the thoughtless nicknames, the alleged link-ups, the chap in class who always came first and the bullies who wanted their way. You had groups based on height, sex, and class sections. You had writings on the walls, classroom politics, and the secret notes shoved into desks (along with the occasional frog) and they all seemed like insurmountable problems. You were misquoted, or ignored or put on a pedestal. You smirked over wisecracks, and imitated the teachers behind their backs. You were sent out of the class for talking too much, and ran the 100metres. You complained about and laughed cruelly at other kids. You also made the best friends. You learned the bad words and recognized the good deeds. You always liked what was in other people’s lunch box. You had bus stop friends, car-pool friends, best friends and second best friends. School and schoolmates were the microcosm of the big bad beautiful world out there.

Despite it all, you had to study when you didn’t want to and you would pray that the future would take you away into a rosier world, with just the right amount of rain to make rainbows, just the right amount of money to have the good things in life, just the right kind of love to make your life complete, just the right kind of success that would show them all….

Then you walk over the threshold and see what the world is actually like and you actually grow wiser. You finally know that the microcosm you left behind is the only bit of turf left that lets you be you.

Schoolmates are the ones you grow up with. They are the ones who gave you memories to laugh over. They are also the ones who with their torturous teasing tactics, toughen you up. They are the ones who have seen you at your ugliest, so whatever you look now is pretty. They won’t lie about frivolous stuff like age—because they can’t! They make you feel young. They also point out how old you are. They are thrilled to see your kids. They are the ones who really want to know about how you are and happiest to get back in touch.

So, one Christmas day, when you are talking in terms of 25 years ago…you know that things have changed, you have changed, but somewhere…time still stood still so that you could go back, sign into a online group and share a laugh or wipe a tear. And hopefully, if you keep your fingers crossed, they are the ones who will stand by you and understand.

"Rotate Your Shoulders"

For the past weeks, my arms have been aching. Literally. From the elbows to the wrists. From the neck to the elbows. It hurts even when I sleep. It is very distracting and am trying to get to the bottom of it with advice like “Check yourself for arthritis” (from the smugly youthful), “Lose some weight” (from the painfully thin), “Try alternative therapy, do Yoga” (from the chronologically similar) to Jayanthi's VERY very simplistic solution: “Rotate your shoulders” . Her daughter told me that she complained of a stomach ache and her mum replied, “Rotate your shoulders” . Tooth ache? “Rotate your shoulders”. Sad? “Rotate your Shoulders”. So despite my aching arms, I rotate my shoulders with all my might, I have cut down on the carbs and food items that are said to cause arthritis and I even throw in a dollop of Yoga every day. My arms still ache.

And that’s not the only problem. The car and I have been having our battles galore wherein I cleaned the battery myself and stretched the over 4 year-old battery’s life for 3 stuttering weeks more till today. Today I got fed up because there I was dressed to the hilt in trousers, shirt and boots, starting up the car to drop daughter at the bus stop and since the car refused to budge—in full-view of neighbors hanging lazily over balconies—I had to sprint down the road with high heels, hair flying in all directions (those shots of those heroines running in slow motion with their tresses gliding along with the breeze is all bunkum), with daughter's junk-fattened backpack till I reached and flagged down the bus and found the daughter very calmly lady-like, walking in leisure way behind me. "Ayesha??"!!! And with a smile to match, she has the gall to say "I knew you would catch the bus, Mimi". This is what happens, when you spend too much time with auntys Sangeeta and Preeti. As she elegantly climbs on to the bus with a very very Deepika Padukone Dreamy Girl wave, I rotate my shoulders, smooth down the hair and walk back as daintily as is possible for me and decide to work from home, call the Hyundai ERS and finally buy a new car battery. That is the story of my life: I get a bonus and God rotates those divine shoulders and thinks up dozen ways to spend it. Anyway—now at least my car will not stop on the road but my knowledge of what's under the bonnet of the car has impressed the Hyundai people enough to forget to charge me for the ERS help. Err… Hope they don’t read blogs…hope they don’t compound the interest.

It’s not just over yet—to compound my woes, my cell phone seems to have arthritis and it has no arms to rotate. There I am at home, after my humiliatingly lost battle with the car, trying to dial in for a meeting with the boss and like the armless Thakur in ‘Sholay’, the cell phone stubbornly refuses to acquiesce. “Your call cannot be completed-Please try again”. In fact, it doesn’t even let me try again, for heaven’s sake. Thank god for a boss sent from heaven (at least God rotated the shoulders right while allotting bosses)—she not only reschedules my meeting, she reschedules the team meeting. I meanwhile am pledged to get certain documentations finalized and guess what—the internet connection is gone! I breathe deep and rotate my shoulders. Then I call the Internet provider and begin very politely till the lady assures me again and again that someone will resolve my problem at 4pm—politeness rotates itself out of my shoulders and I cannot contain myself from giving that poor gal all I have in terms of verbal paranoia—I have deadlines I wail as she keeps telling me she understands. I then literally breathe deep again, rotate the shoulders again, invoke divine intervention and then as miraculously as it disappeared, the internet is back!

The cell phone is not. After furious online instant messaging with office colleagues, the advice to switch off the phone, replace battery and reboot again does work. But some calls which the armless Thakur does not like are truncated instantly. Buy another cell!!! The cell phone expert in office swings into action—what’s your price range, what kind do you want—I can sense the glee—as I am the only one in the team with a cell phone that NO one wants to steal. Forget about stealing, no one even wants to pick it up by mistake if I drop it somewhere. The same cell phone expert had walked in one day with the news that she had finally seen someone else carry the same phone as mine—the autowalla. Then my daughter does nudge, nudge, as we drive back in the cab from the airport, “Mimi, look even the cabbie has better phone than your’s, his is a Motorazor.” No please God, don’t rotate your shoulders—not just yet, leave me some moolah behind—I need that extra paneer after I lose the extra weight!

Moral of the story—even God rotates the celestial shoulders. Considering that we are from the land of the many splendoured gods and goddesses, we probably have the whole pantheon rotating their shoulders and may be not even in sync (which can probably account for all the dichotomies and dilemmas and the doldrums of our lives). May be they made a collective request to Jayanthi to spread their word? Whatever it is, my arms still ache. Then my mum calls and suggests the exact opposite: “Rest your arms”. Longing to do that but hello, Mummy! I am part of a documentation team, I have to write to make a living—I’d rather rotate my shoulders?

Family, Friends…and Other Fauna

I have been told that if there is one thing my family knows well it is to live with a dog. Hmm…the fact of the matter is that there have been more than just dogs in our lives. (One of the reasons perhaps that I never travel without George Durell's My Family and Other Animals.)

It probably begins with my father’s boyhood pet cat Rin Tin Tin. I loved the stories! She displayed a rare high on the loyalty quotient than the usual feline is capable of. Not only was she was fun to tease the younger sister with (who even in her adulthood resorted to looking under beds for cat people, just in case) but she was friend and playmate. Rin Tin Tin went everywhere Daddy went. Which meant that when Daddy got in a train, so did Rin Tin Tin…in a basket. She was told to keep as quiet as a mouse about which she must have been pretty affronted by, because she stayed mousy till the train rolled into the station, and then she let out a protesting “mia-aow”! I believe the entire family jumped out of the train and on to the platform, basket, cat and all, just as the ticket collector turned towards them.

Grandfather P(aternal) had a way with animals. Grandfather M(aternal) kept animals away. Between them both though, they had kids who loved either flora, or fauna, or both. The dog was the perennial favorite (from where it is gleaned that if there is one thing my family knows well it is to live with a dog). On the paternal side I have heard about Kukuli—a dog who often addressed as brother by an uncle who even offered to trim his whiskers. Then there was Toby who was a bumbling brown friendly fellow who was so friendly that Grandfather P replaced him with the ferocious Bhima—obviously named after the Mahabharata strong one. Bhima bared his teeth generously and had us kids toe the line out of pure fear. He showed respect to only my mother (which speaks volumes for her imposing personality), who till this day blames him for pulling too hard on the leash, necessitating my grandfather to tumble and endure a knee surgery. The whole neighborhood was mortified by Bhima’s presence. I am still unsure about how I felt about Bhima’s passing. My grandfather decided to stick to cats after that and Jhumri entered the household as this supercilious, self-centered feline who felt she had sole ownership of my grandfather. Everything that was his was hers and both of them forged an enviable friendship. Until she got lost. My father and friendly neighborhood people scoured the by-lanes, alleys, and even went up to the highway. I am sure my grandma was secretly rejoicing, till she opened a cupboard and Jhumri popped out—she had stayed there for three days!

My paternal grandma’s penchant was for the feathered flock. There were these pigeons who seemed to have a life-long lease of every ancient air-vent in every part of the ancestral house that we could not imagine life without them. It wasn’t uncommon that you would open the morning newspaper and find out in a most ‘dropping’ way that the pigeon is reading the paper along with you. My grandmother adored them—according to her, if they were happy and flourishing, her children too would be happy in each part of the world they were spread out in. Once in an attempt to tackle the dropping issue, the vents were blocked out and the pigeons were forced to leave. Ma cried inconsolably till all the air-vents were re-opened and the pigeons allowed to continue their life-long lease. Strange though, that after she left us, my grandma’s feathered flock left too. I miss them. I miss her.

Grandfather M, meanwhile condescended to allow pets in but treated them as pets—his kids however went gaga-goo to the extent that their she-Dachshund inappropriately named Louie, was hand fed, mouth wiped with a personal towel and patted to sleep in their laps. Grandfather M sarcastically suggested that they also add a leg massage for the brown sausage, while they were spoiling the dog out of her canine boundaries. He also had a way of mixing pets and politics, which my mom found out when she brought in a cute black spaniel and he named it Bhutto—I believe, the news that day was about the failure of the Simla Summit of 1972.

Apart from many other things, their love for their pets bonded my parents. They began their life with a parrot called Rupa who could speak. There was rabbit called Tungi who jumped too high for her own convenience and rather than have her dash her head on the ceiling, they gave her to the zoo and used to visit her. Then there were these very young orphaned fawns that my father found on one of his inspections as a young district collector. He brought them home to my mother and both tried to keep them alive by feeding them from milk soaked cotton-balls—sadly it didn’t work. They also had a dalmation called Dotty who walked with my father inviting the comments, “Look, the district collector with his white leopard”. Dotty, far from being a brave, honourable leopard, was a slightly delinquent sort who poached people’s straying chicken. He was however a good babysitter, I believe, and would catch us by the collar as crawling infants in our efforts to scale stairs etc and so saved us from many a fall.

Then we had Scamper—a pint sized white Tibetan Spaniel with honey-golden ears. He was the runt of the litter and as usual was given to my mother to nurture. But my grandmother warned that we would have to officially say that Scamp was my brother’s, because it was his horoscope that gave pets long life. Despite the ownership, he became the apple of my parents’ eyes to the extent that I had to compete with him for their affection. So grew our rivalry—if I got to my father first when he came back from office, Scamp would sulk away under the sofa, till Daddy tenderly coaxed him out. His favourite moments: whenever I got into trouble and got shouted at by my mom. He chewed up my brand new pencil box, he ran off with my hankies labeled with the days of the week, he sunk his teeth into a plastic roast chicken from my food play set as well as a cow from my farmyard set. When I complained, my father was on Scamp’s side explaining that the poor little thing just wanted to know what beef was like! But Scamp was also once of us—he tortured and ragged the cook by stealing vegetables and then have the cook run around in circles after him trying to recover the stolen loot. My brother, semi-ventriloquist that he was, threw out the Scampy voice and presto what a trio we were against the rest of the world. We couldn’t take exams without the “magic pencils” (read: warm licks) which Scamp was forced to dole out. We wouldn’t go out on any journey or any family function/wedding/reception/housewarming that he wasn’t invited to. In fact there was no one left among family and friends who would not invite him! 13 years with Scamper and then he passed away when we were living in New Delhi, his head in my parents lap, my brother away in the USA—and it was like an era over, the innocent era of our childhood. We couldn’t leave him in Delhi, so we flew him home to the garden he had loved so much…and he’s still there.

For a sizeable amount of years my parents promised they would not pledge their hearts to any furry or feathered thing again. But they did. When they visited me in New Delhi and got out of the taxi, out jumped Theodore SpitzWilliam aka Teddy. “Where did you get this Road-ation?”, was my first reaction. My parents were visibly hurt. They were positively put off and went on to tell me how he could walk on two legs, how affectionate he was, his fondness for mutton liver, and how content he was with a used up plastic coconut oil bottle and a rag. I looked at Teddy’s saliva-soaked worldly possessions, his huge love-loaded grin and sighed about what my parents have got into. My sister-in-law ( by this time marriage had happened to us all and though we were non-resident at our parents home, the ownership of pets still went to my brother in accordance with his life-giving horoscope) clarified that Teddy was in his growing stages and that I should give him some time. I did and within a few months, on his next visit, he had grown out of his mangy adolescence into a spectacular sight—I thought he was Aslan—complete with a mane of golden brown! As the official dog-in-law, he did invite envy as his meal consisted of dishes of specially prepared liver (which as a vegetarian, I still haven’t understood). He very proudly baby-sat my daughter and gave the 20-day old baby his tennis ball when she cried. So much so, that she would search for him and stop crying and smile when he barked. Teddy endeared himself to everyone and to my daughter he was Teddy Baba, who she could count on to bark back at her mother when she shouted, who would be her pillow while she read through a book, who would let her sit on him and share his ball. Then on Christmas of 2000, after being sick for some time, Teddy breathed his last, melting brown eyes fixed on my parents, his head in my dad’s lap—it was heartbreak all over again. Such a dear dear soul…gone too soon. I think of Teddy and Scamp and think—what’s wrong with being a dog or being called a dog?

This time my parents have kept their promise. But there have been the early morning crows who insisted on sharing Daddy’s tea biscuits which he stretched out to them. There were the numerous family of bulbuls who find the most inappropriate places to nest and hence have to be guarded. Apart from being standing sentinels to their feathered friends, there were many stray stories that entered their life. There was Panchali, who would dutifully wait for my father’s car to drive in at the end of the day and greet him with a happy wag. There was Toni who was quite beloved and came to us as a guest during my brother’s wedding, keeping a watchful eye over all the proceedings. She was sick and tired and she needed a place to rest and my parents gave it to her. There was Puppy, who was called puppy even after he was full-grown and his lady friend Camilla (perhaps because of the Rotweiller looks). Then there was Lily christened by my daughter, till she turned out to be a Lalu.

That’s the pet-roll of those who stood by us, watched us grow, shared their wisdom, made us laugh and broke our hearts too. In the end, everything is worthwhile.

Meanwhile, here are snatches of friends and family members’ “pet” conversation:

I had a pair of love birds.
How sweet!
Yes, but you can’t believe how they fought! They just would not stop pecking at each other. The non-stop khat-khat-khat drove us nuts—it was like some new kind of torture!
What happened to them?
Oh, the pecking went on and on till the birds pecked each other bald!

Then there was the fish. It used to swim round and round sitting in a bowl on the study desk. One day, I was trying very hard to teach my daughter a math sum and spoke really loudly and accompanied the decibel level with a thump on the desk. Suddenly the fish just flopped out, landed on its back and died. I can’t fathom what happened to it?

I had Fern the caterpillar…she fell off somewhere in the Himalayas.
Aww…(phew!)

Our dog Agassi was the cutest. Except that when we used to look for him in the yard calling out, “Hey Gas….Gassy where are you”—our neighbors would give us weird looks.
Duh…obviously!

We have a turtle…Noddy’s his name and he’s as big as a soda bottle cap and has such a penchant for food that he climbs up the aquarium wall and sticks painfully on one side and cranes himself sick to see the food we were eating. I was shocked when he even ended up needing an endoscopy. An endoscopy? For being on a See-Food diet?
An endoscopy on a soda-bottle-cap-sized turtle?

My mother had a pet Myna and her brother fed it to the cat!
Correction—my brother wanted to see the Myna stretch its wings and fly high into the bright blue sky. The reality was that when he opened the cage, it jumped out, flapped its wings and then before it took off, sadly a stray cat pounced on it—feathers and all.
So much for breaking free and soaring—baby, baby, it’s a wild world!