imemyself

Healthy Birthday, Ma

2009-12-13T14:48:00.002+02:00

today she turned 70... and when i called early morning over a cup of steaming tea, her landline was busy. guess who called? my Dad's brother with whose family and another aunt (again my Dad's sister) she is going for her next holiday to the Andamans, end of the year.

she takes two holidays a year, mostly with a new-found group of friends... and this is what i have forced her to do. she had always been fond of travelling, but was married to someone who, leaving aside his Civil Service postings, did not derive any joy out of travel. so the latent desire to see places was always there inside. so this time, it is with her extended family, all from her late husband's family.

and this is what i find very intriguing. Ma was 21 when she got married in 1960. and i, the elder of her two children, came in seven years later. possibly because of that or possibly because of the fact that she always had one or the other of her brother(s)/sister(s) in law staying in with her, she has an indescribable closeness with them and this despite that Dad has passed away 11 years back. there is reciprocity, to begin with. all my uncles and aunts make the effort to keep connected with Ma, less now by dropping in, but regularly on phone. they do not miss her birthday, or to visit an ailing elder brother of their Boudi (Bengali for bhabi, or elder sister in law). they consult her on all their problems or make it point to share their joy with her, whether it is a child doing well or the arrival of a new grandchild.

on her part, Ma too calls them, is present on any occasions at their places and keeps up with their children's lives too. so when bro or i show unwillingness to participate with her in her "connection spree", she is visibly upset. and all this while she clearly knows that neither of us are really social in the way she is. we would rather be home, jabbering amongst ourselves along with our spouses. but she has her way in a uncanny way... since we still do not speak up to her, though we do show our reservations towards the gentle nudge that she keeps giving, suggesting a desired course of action.

and today when i said, "Healthy Birthday, Ma," she said, "Thank you and this is exactly what S (the uncle she was talking to) was saying just now... afterall, they are your folks, so you think alike." just her way of suggesting that it is about time i call them and talk...

this hint i will not take, Ma... i leave the connection bit to you...

Happy 14th Birthday

2009-11-25T11:35:00.004+02:00

Dear R,

Today is your 14th birthday. I have been reliving this entire week in my mind... what i did, when, how, with whom, who said what, why, what were my reactions and so on... it is a long long list... and you were still inside me and every minute I was saying to you, "Do you hear that, little girl?"(no we had not tested to know the sex of our child, but I was convinced that you would be you, a girl).

To cut it short, have a healthy, satisfying and happy life ahead. Try to make others happy... that is not the priority for many of us, but you should keep that in mind because when others are happy, so are you. This is something I see very strongly in your Dad. He tries his best to make others happy... and deep down somewhere, there is a slight pain, since your Dadubhai (my Dad) had the same streak. Possibly, unconsciously we girls look out for something of our Dads in our partners... hopefully you will do the same when your day and time comes.

We have tried to give you a very simple life, without much frills. It has been a life of constant movement, across cities, countries, jobs, and in the process we have tried to attend to you, to the best of our abilities. Yes, we have left you with the baby-sitter when you were barely 9 months old. And that did send guilt pangs deep down inside me, but you possibly understood that I needed the job at that point and you stood beside us very well. In fact, had you not, I would have had to quit my job and take care of you. That was Mumbai. Down to Kolkata too, you had an adjusting phase with successive nannies, despite the fact that for a period, we did stay with your grand-parents. And adjust you did. Come Delhi and the same story continued. It was only beginning our stay at Muscat that you started staying alone while I was at work and it is only now that I do not feel daunted by your vacations any more, knowing well that you and I will manage together and manage well.

I do not know how you will turn out as an adult. The only thing I will ask of you is responsibility. You need to be able to take responsibility for your actions, your words and stand by what you feel and do. Never be afraid of taking a stand, even if it means you are against the others. If deep within, you feel you are right, you are. Go by that.

We have tried to give you some basic values, since we have lived by them. You have seen our lives, rather openly and know what we have stood for. Nothing high falutin, but values that should help you lead your life on a straight path. Ideally, we would want you to live by the values we have given you, but beyond a point, rest assured, we will not pry to check what you are doing, though if ever I see that you cannot look eye to eye with your Mummy, I would deduce that you have goofed up somewhere. Never allow that to happen.

We value privacy very highly. But privacy should always come with a sense of responsibility. Keep that in mind.

You do not have to be the first student of your grade. You just have to do your best, in whatever you do. Thus, even for your dance rehersals, I was being very particular about the timings. You need to realise the value of time and commitments that you make.

Even if I sould like having given a lecture, bear with me. These are things which I have to tell you while you are growing. They may become redundant once you are fully grown.

Yes, I need to tell you this too... I LOVE YOU A LOT.

Mummy

she does not have to be a dancer

2009-11-22T07:48:00.007+02:00

is what i think, but not B of R and that was the provocation for the last fight that we had... nothing new, we keep having it every now and then, especially weekends.

of late, R has started taking interest in extra-curricular activites. when she was tiny, i did try to get her into music (which did not interest her) and later, into violin. she was not interested by this either... i quit thinking that she is another lazy lady like her mother, but when she actively took interest in public speaking, we enrolled her into Gavel's Club (the junior wing of Toastmasters)... i was not surpised by this. someone who reads and reads should be able to speak well as well.

what did surprise me was the latest interest -- dance. so in the latest Bengali Parishad function, she herself went and got her name in for the forthcoming dance recital, coming Friday. so for the past three weekends, life has revolved around dropping and picking her up from her dance rehersals. this week, it has and is going to be extra hectic because of in-between week practice sessions.

last weekend when we had dropped her and were leaving, the lady who is guiding the practice, came up to us and said, "your daughter is not able to pick up the steps well, despite my showing it to her. since this is an important function and will be telecast on Star Ananda, i will see how she does today and then decide whether she will participate or not," all this while i knew that the tailor had been called to take the costume measurements.

i told the lady, "she has never danced on stage. so if she is stiff, she has to put in more practice now... see how she is today..." while B maintained a stony silence and an equally stony face, with the jaws hardening. my heart broke and i kept remembering R's anxious face as she was dancing.

"Not enough said or protested, because she did not tell this to us earlier. on the penultimate day, how can she say this. i am going to pick her up right now and register my protest that this is an unprofessional way of doing things, that there should have been an audition and elimination," B stormed at me.

we left from there, went to pick up a gift for a birthday party that evening and were constantly arguing over why i did not tell the lady what B felt. in fact, B's colleague who saw us at the store said later, "K (his wife) and i did not call you because you were so engrossed in talking (read fighting)."

B kept calling R and she kept saying she is practising. then B mentioned, "the lady said you could be out if you do not do well, and you still want to do?" R replied, "yes, i will." we wre not sure whther she knew she could be dropped.

we went back to pick her up and on the way, i said, "dancing is no priority, if she is out, she is." "NO, there has to be a method and though we know R is not a trained dancer, it is her participation that counts. i will talk to the lady but you will not only be with me, you will say exactly what should be said," B was forceful and this was the parent in him talking, not my partner, i realised.

i followed him in (for a change) and saw the girls practising engrossed. B walked in straight and i told the lady, "in case you are dropping her, do that today, now. and imagine what will go on in the child's mind to know that she is being dropped now."

"she is doing much better than she was and with practice in front of the mirror, she will know exactly where to improve." she did not sound unprofessional in the least.

so little miss R is dancing all day in front of the mirror, but i keep having a nagging doubt in my mind: am i ok as a parent? or do i need to be more socially protective of her? with my poor social skills, possibly R misses out on these small things which will make her happier.... so here i am running around in the evenings, picking up and dropping children for unofficial practice sessions at my place and at others'... this has made me wonder how vulnerable are we as parents and how little things matter when it comes to the child.

Wish R luck for her performance...

why are so many marriages going wrong?

2009-11-08T15:02:00.004+02:00

this is something i wonder way too often... the number of dysfunctional families have just leap-frogged, marriages are going wrong left, right and centre.

over the years, in all of my working life, i have had friends who may have been colleagues to start with, but became really good friends, later on, either as we have moved out of the city, moved jobs or just moved on. and while B used to joke saying, "you have so many divorced friends", i never took it seriously, though i did have friends who were women and men, but a lot many were single, post marriage.

and let me tell you, almost none of my these single friends were very modern... the reason why i am saying this is: many a times, we tend to equate being forward in life comes with being modern. a couple of my friends, in fact, two to be precise, one man and the other a lady, came from very ordinary, middle-class homes. the lady went through a messy divorce in her 50s. was she dumb? no, she wasn't... she just thought things would get better, waited for the child to settle a little and moved out to eke out her own life at 45+. she now has a grandchild, ex-husband has re-married, but she is single, whether happily so, i do not know.
the other friend, the man, allowed his ex-wife to walk out on him, gave the divorce, was single for a time and has now settled into not-so-happy a marriage, but has become wiser as his words seem to suggest, "i have learnt to live with what i cannot change."

there have been others who have, i mean still have, not really great marriages, but have withstood the social pressures of making it work -- parents, children, this, that and the other -- and have just continued being as social entities, though hardly as partners. and i mean by partners, people who bond, who have opinions of their own, air those opinions but have learnt to respect each other (and the stands they take as individuals). that is the ideal situation which should prevail in this life-long relationship... in fact, we spend more time with our respective spouse than any other human being -- parents, siblings or children. each of these stay with us for a period and recedes to the background when another comes in...

what i have felt clearly over these years is: the crux to making a marriage tick is a fair dose of self respect and mutual respect. if these two are there, most partnerships last and happily so...

i feel sad for many people i know who are going through a messy life just because they have to... at the end of a harrowing experience, i have seen their faces change... they wear a weathered expression, with a smile that has lost the vibrancy. and it is then that i realise that many of us who have not the greatest marriage on Earth, but at least one which gives us enough air to breathe, have opinions, air them with little doubt and move on, without too much baggage, are indeed lucky.

letter from a daughter to her father...

2009-11-01T12:02:00.003+02:00

May 2008 is when i had written the letter below and today when i received a similar letter from a friend to her father, i thought, i could share this with you... in that other letter, it is a similar tale of growing up, of growing away from where she began, the path she has traversed and how insecure she is without her dad... and this post is dedicated to that friend of mine...

Dear Dad,
Ten years on, rather six months less than ten years, I am writing again. Looking through those earlier writings, I decided it is time I wrote again, just to tell you how far I have been able to follow what you had told me way back in 1980… “be guided by your head, not heart.” What you did not tell me -- possibly left it unsaid for me to learn myself, was the tool I had to apply, the method I had to adopt, to get on with this business of living and life – detachment.
Today, at 42, I would not say, I know how perfectly to negotiate life. It seems too tall a claim. But I certainly can tell you that I have become more seasoned, more mature, and more confident, more focused, less clumsy, less emotional. I am able to decide with firmness. I rarely break down if at all. I rarely feel that lump inside the throat, or those burning eyes, trying to fight back tears when things go wrong.
And things do go wrong even now – at home, at work, with my child, sometimes with friends and even my spouse. But I have learnt to deal, tackle, manage and move on, putting those instances aside, not letting them interfere with the process of everyday life. Yes, what I do very often, and here again, in my mind, it is one image of yours that keeps popping up… your pacing up and down at home, with a heavy look on your face. What I do is also similar… nope, I do not pace up and down, with a heavy face, you know I am lazy… but while I am alone (and very often I am, while I drive back and forth the whole city for work, for running domestic errands or for dropping the child to her classes), I am in constant dialogue with myself… the mind races with those things that went wrong, going over and over again at the particular instance that is troubling me, trying to assess what was my responsibility in the whole affair. And, when the heaviness in the heart ceases, I know I have addressed the issue, dealt with it. Not a soul comes to know how, but I know I have and it gives a great feeling within that I have succeeded once again. Should I call it independence? I do not know but one thing I certainly know, I will tell my daughter how to try living from the day go. In fact, this is one thing I told you then too… that I would rear her well. She is grown now, does most of her things by herself – but I still have to tell her about the art of detachment. I will not leave her to discover it herself – while that discovery might give her an edge, it certainly will corrode the freshness of her face, the lilt in her smile and the look of her eyes.
Yes, all of these are no longer there in me…while I am more at ease with life in general, there is no freshness in the face, no lilt in my smile and no innocence in the eyes. I have come of age. And that I hope to fight in my child.
I can almost see you smile…and I know the reason. You are trying to ask me: How will so attached a mother teach her daughter detachment? But as I said, I am more prepared now… ten years back, I would have been stumped with this question, leaving you to laugh condescendingly at my inexperience… but not any more… I am armed with a logic now: I will at least tell her, it is up to her to understand, learn and practise it in life.
Let’s agree to differ if the logic does not appeal to you. But at least I have told you what it is that you did not tell me, while holding my hand and teaching me how to walk, you left unsaid that the road of life is so difficult, and more so, without a loving hand.
And here, I better be honest -- I still remain that child of yours who is, by now, struggling to fight back tears since it is only a Dad who would listen to so much of complaints after so many years.
***

teaching 'life' in 5 minutes flat

2009-10-25T16:53:00.004+02:00

what a contradiction in terms... can anyone teach about life? or is it life that goes about, in its own inimitable way, teaching one and all?

both, i feel are true... yes, life is the best teacher, but i saw no harm in teaching a little wisdom to my little girl (actually not so little any more) when she came back from school in tears.

my first response was: are you ok?

she said, with a sulk, "yes i am ok and not ok."

me: why? what happened?

she: "the teachers have selected students for public speaking and as comperes fortheAnnual Day and they have selected all their pets."

Gosh, there are too many issues and i just have 5 flat minutes to address all of them, lest i be late for my post-lunch meeting.

almost thinking on my feet, i told her: "are you happy with what you have done, as in the speech that you had prepared for the audition?", half-knowing the answer that she would give me, since i had heard her rehearse and had suggested some changes in her delivery mode and expressions.

she said: "yes, Ma, i am happy with what i had prepared and had taken care to do all that you had told me. and i am sure that my speech was way better than the rest of the guys and gals. but they are the pets and i am not...", her throat wavered a little, in anger partly, in pain, partly at not being selected.

now the number of issues had not reduced though two minutes of my balance time had, but one thing i was sure of -- she was confident of herself.

i said: "if you are happy with what you have done, don't bother about the end result. that is not the result of your credit/discredit. there will be many such other instances in life when you will feel that you were better, but somebody else made it. the way out is to try to do even better, next time on. your feeling may be partly true; it could also be the result of a preconceived notion that you have about the selectors."

her face showed a couple of expressions, one after the other. first, she did not get my message about not bothering about the end result... and i do not blame her since she is not yet 14. but i purposely gave her this to mull over. second, that others may not be as good but will still make it... she partly got, must be through her tiny experience in life. she disagreed with the third, to do better next time on, saying, "there is no use in doing better next time... i would rather opt for dance where the selection is easier." this was a new issue hurled at me, that of changing track midway, giving up and not doing her best... but i decided to let go of it for the time being, though i will not let go of her in case she does not give me a convincing enough logic to opt for dance or mimicry (whatever it is), next time on. the fourth message, she partly got about preconceived notion, i could make out from her eyes...opinionated child, a genetic trait she has got...

my five minutes were up and i had to go, and when i left her, i heard sobs from her room... i dragged myself out, pretending not have heard the sobs, not because i was getting late, but because she has to learn to cope with life and such failures alone. time will come when we will not be around to hug and kiss her pain away...

let me be confident that she can, though i can hold her hand, if need be...

is there motivation tonic?

2009-10-20T12:27:00.003+02:00

if there is, i need a tub of it... right now, here.

of late, i have just been feeling tired, for no rhyme or reason. when the alarm rings in the morning, i feel like sleeping... and i cannot, because R has to be sent to school... it is not as if B will not send her to school but he will not do it my way... i like to be around when she leaves home and we steal a stare, me at the door, she inside the lift. if the going is really good, she even throws in a kiss as the lift door closes... i cannot miss all this and be in bed, trying to sleep.

i am a very morning person. i like the mornings quiet and alone sipping my hot cup of tea, watching over R's paltry breakfast of a bowl of cereal, with BBC World for background music.

i try to retire early at night so that i get adequate rest, even if sleep eludes me... and i have my books for company. none of this seems to be working and the mornings are bad...

and for me, if the start is not good, the whole day seems a bit of a slow-down... if i sleep till late, i have to skip a bath and a little session of meditation in the morning, which means i am not fresh and that drags on the whole day...

i just need to pull myself to be out of this... i hate this lazy feeling, i hate to be slow...

Dear Bablu Dadu*1,

2009-10-16T10:24:00.004+02:00

i write this letter as i sob, silently, alone, knowing fully well that this will not reach you. but i also know you will understand perfectly why i am still writing this to you when you are no more.

i got the news of your death two days back and since then i have been sad, really sad. now of course, i have learnt to deal with this strange phenomenon called death. i do no longer crumble on the outside, though there is a deep agony inside. but this will pass and i will get back to being my boisterous self, once again. i can see you giggle, with that characteristic twinkle in your eye and that naughty wave passing all over you.

you were not strictly even related to me or my family. you were Mashi's*2 father-in-law's cousin. it is strange that we got to know you... but had Mesho*3 not passed away, we would not have...

i can distinctly recall the first day i met you at the Kasba house where Mashi was staying with her daughters, sometime in 1983-84 and you had come to take us for a recital of Rabindrasangeet by Sumitra Sen. it was raining cats and dogs. the second meeting, same place, this time it was Jaws II.

thereafter you started coming home, often, but not regularly, mostly in the evenings, after work. you spoke little, sipped a cuppa, had a snack if offered and left silently. Dad liked you and often teased you to get married. and sure enough you did... around 1988-89. Ma and i had gone for your wedding reception. you looked happy, so did your bride.

years passed, i got married but you stayed in touch with my natal home... you kept visiting and each time, i visited, we would meet... you would make the effort to come and meet us, sometimes even late in the evenings. you had a son, he had an accident, at a marriage party, recovered... got into school, grew up, passed his 10th boards...

i kept up with your life as you did... you soothed my pain after Dad's demise, you constantly kept coming home, now my home. B liked you and understood the friendship we had. we shared a lot of time talking and in that, i was pained to learn that your wife and son did not really love you... i am busy with the lump in my throat now... and you are again smiling, i can see that...

you had retired from your job by now, but took up another... not so much for money but to get out of home every morning and as an excuse to return late at night, grab a bite and fall off to sleep. i recall your pain when i told you that i was deeply addicted to sleeping pills. you even threatened to blow the whistle and let B know if i did not stop...

i am out of my addiction. i am happy once again, having gone through a rough patch... and we met again this time when i went on vacation... you seemed ok, i could not prod you beyond the apparent, since everyone was around. you did promise to come back on the last day, but called to say you could not and said, "i am not feeling well."

how would i gauge that i had to blow the whistle to your wife? how would i know that your time was up?

on second thoughts, i have done some soul searching and come up with a logic for not calling in your wife... you had lost all will to live...

as a friend, i understood that, in my sub-conscious mind... and have accepted the fact that i did what i did, by design.

i again can see that grin of yours... a loving one this time, for your friend and sister, as you called me... and now the tears will not allow me to carry on.

S, the name you knew me in...

*1 Bablu -- a common name in our part of India; Dadu -- grandfather.
*2 Mashi -- Ma's sister
*3 Mesho -- Mashi's husband.

the place of the significant other...

2009-10-03T13:00:00.003+02:00

... in our lives, depends a lot on attitude, in fact whole of it.

have seen couples who portray a total lack of balance when it comes to their spouses, because the lady decides willingly to be a doormat. the man is clearly more equal than the woman and the woman either does not know what she has traded away (identity), or does not want to have one. that's one way.

then there are others where the lady wears the pants, because the man is docile and takes the passive role. here, the man has less of an identity. that's another option. the straight ones, both these, i call them.

the third way is made by couples who have, knowingly, shunned both the above and want a decent space for each of them(selves)... and that is the trick, since even if they are clear, on how much they will yield to each other and constantly think hard of how well to finetune it, people around who have seen an either/or scenario, do not know what is going on in these homes... i happen to fall in this third bracket.

B and i met 25 years back, as college students, in the same class. we have courted for 6+ years, and have been married for the past 18+ years. so the question of inequality really did not arise, to begin with.

so after marriage, while we both were clear in our minds, people around were not. my folks knew better... that to comment would be inviting problems and they steered clear. his folks stumbled a little in the beginning and have let it be.

running the home is my responsibility. he earns, i manage. i decide what is to be bought, what is to be cooked, what is to be washed and ironed, what is to be junked. and i love doing it. where i cannot, i seek paid help, in cooking for instance.

i manage R too... keeping my schedules as closely linked to hers, her studies, her classes, the works... where i cannot, B pitches in willingly.

we use each other as sounding boards for our doubts in life, in general.

we have kept one aspect separate -- money. i manage mine; he manages his, though we do know what the other is doing and not doing. we are more mature here and do not question. possibly, we have developed a certain respect in each other's judgement.

rather a plain arrangement, it struck me yesterday when, at a get-together of B's colleagues, one wife from Category 1, commented that she had the liberty of spending $4200 on a diamond bangle and mind you, she does not work for a living. this bangle was just to complete a set with a diamond necklace that her husband had got for her earlier in the year.

the mention has not saddened me or surprised me, it has just made me more conscious of one fact -- i come really cheap... only hope B realises it.

why can't i be a martyr

2009-10-01T14:32:00.004+02:00

this is clear why she does not like martyrs. i am with her on all she says -- that does not call for a post, though. what calls for a post is to state why i just cannot tolerate them and why i find it difficult to be one.

martyrs are irritating, period. enough said, no more emphasis needed.

they lack self-respect, thus they crib and only crib.

they bitch because they lack the courage to speak up in front of people, they have objections on.

and they whine, because that is the only thing they can do. they are sufficient for only that.

i have a Mt. Everest-ish ego. and i have tonnes of self-respect. i do not crib because it hurts my sense of privacy; i bitch, yes, but i also tell most people on their faces what i think on issues, i rarely comment on people and i hate to whine since i do not want sympathy or advice... my problem is mine and i can tackle it, if at all. i prefer not to have half-baked ideas as advice.

and most important, i can stand up for myself, which is one thing i keep drilling into R. let's see how she turns out to be, anything is fine, as long as she is not a martyr.

of kebabs and koftas

2009-09-21T20:57:00.004+02:00

i am no cook... yes, i do cook, but that is only now, in the past 9 months, the longest stint in my cooking calendar.
but when i made the lamb kebab today, after R's contant reminder that i had promised to make some for her, and served them hot-from-the-
oven to her, she smiled a smile that she has never...
and that is what pushes me to cook these days -- the look on her face which shines with an unexplained happiness tinged with a dash of pride.
and guess whom she befriended to share this little message with me... my Ma, who is (or is it was??) the best cook i have met and known...
R told her, on being served consecutive meals made by her grandmom this summer, that she wished her mom too would cook the same dishes -- malpoa, lau, shukto... peppered with her own kebab, kofta and pudding...
and honestly, i have made all the three on R's wishlist...
children have their own way of getting things done, and i do believe, R told Ma, not to get the things she wants, but trusts the impact of something that Ma will tell me to do...
some things go beyond explanation... and the bond that R shares with both her grandmoms is unique... with one, it is still like a child, with pranks, jokes and laughter; with the other, she acts like a full-blown adult, keeping her reserve and limit. and both these, she plays with equal ease, poise and a lot of confidence.
i relished watching both of these role-plays last vacation home... it was R's first visit as a teenager, and i was sceptical that she might show her ugly self there... the mother in me would be hurt then... but blood ties brought out the best in her and she behaved herself to the T, and needed no prompting whatsoever... it was as if, she never lived without our folks.

living with two MEs

2009-09-10T09:39:00.005+02:00

a strange feeling, sometimes a little weird, sometimes funny because of the complete opposites that get thrown up, at times outright boring because of the sheer repititiveness, other times a simply enjoyable pastime, and i am sure, this is no unique sitiuation, that i am not alone in this, that there are countless other loners who go through this and it is because they enjoy this dialogue, the two MEs grow, they are nourished, fed, bathed, clothed and let to live, only in the mind...

i call them my Big Me and my Small Me... the two guys who live inside me, relentlessly talking, talking in long soliloquies, or mono-sentences, as the mood is...

let's me recount one dialogue that has been happening for quite sometime now...

Big Me (BM): why blog?

Small Me (SM): why not? it feels good to let go of words and feelings that lie inside.

BM: words yes, feelings no. can i be open with feelings here?

SM: oh, you and open with feelings???? not possible, buddy... that is the because of your Spastic Colon, am i correct?

BM: behave yourself and i am not your buddy, understand... why talk irrelevant things? i was just raising a question and you have come out with an unrelated problem...

SM: i thought it was related... you are constipated in mind and body (the latter has resulted in the colon disorder)...ok, ok sorry, be less touchy...

BM: why blog?

SM: you are back to where you started... but as i said, i am all for telling what i feel, and care not for what others think about me...

BM: that is the reason why you and me are different, though we live in the same mind. that is the reason why your mental age does not increase and mine has never decreased, though we keep talking to each other.

SM: keep to the basics... mental age is a factor of the mind... i do not have one... but jokes aside, why aren't you writing? why are you not giving vent to what is inside you?

BM: call it a writer's block, a thinker's block, but there is some sort of a block and so many questions...

SM: like?

BM: i asked you one: why blog? rather how should one blog, since you have already answered my earlier question?

SM: what do you mean?

BM: how honest can one be? how honest should one be?

SM: for me, both are same... what i can do, i should do; what i can say, i should say...

BM: that is the reason why you are S and i am B... for me there is a yawning gap between should and can...i cannot do all that i should be doing; i should not do all that i can do...

SM: for once, keep your rhetorics aside and go write. just get off all the blocks and communicate with yourself loud. it's fine, it does not really matter that others might read your blog and read into your mind... all who come here to write, write with a view to getting a free mind... that is the idea.

BM: for starters, i will publish this dialogue... Yipee!!!

40 years back...

2009-06-21T07:52:00.001+03:00

when i was roughly 2...
Umm, this emotion is universal, i guess...
i don't know whether the man here held another child or not; i guess he had...
but the care is so palpable... something that will never ever happen, and something i will miss perpetually...

and now the real answers... and how i now reside in Pluto

2009-06-19T17:58:00.004+03:00

honestly, i was crest fallen with the earlier post... i hit a depression, cried and cried to friends (something that is really really difficult) and decided to speak to her... she said the earlier answers were JOKES and could i take them seriously??? i said, "Ok. then send me the correct, serious answers by mail. but no buttering." she instantly said, "i do not butter people, and in this i am like you and Pa."

and here are the real answers...

What is something I always say to you?
To be independent
** how well she has read me**

What makes me happy?
When im happy…so r u

What makes me sad?
When im sad…..so r u

** can i gloat a little over these two??**

How do I make you laugh?
Actually….im the funny one

Like?
Ummm….im not very funny….but I laugh at my own jokes…and some of yours too.

What do you think I was like as a child?
Honour student!!! Proud one at that

** Ma, r u hearing this??**

How old am I?
Ur a baby!!!!!! =)

How tall am I?
A bit shorter than me

**this is true**

What is my favourite thing to do?
Read….sleep….talk to me

What do I do when you’re not around?
Think of me??? Hahahahah….i don’t know….read?

If I become famous, what will it be for?
Writing a book…..you better get started

**i am hitting the rooftop, better tell the world that i do not fit here any more :))**

What am I really good at?
At giving pep talks

Really?
yes

What am I not really good at?
Your pretty much good at everything….mabye maths??

**my new address is Crater No. 10, Jupiter :)))))**

What is my job?
Journalist…mother…wife…daughter

** she is mistaken on the order... it is Journalist, Mother, Daughter, then Wife, but i will let that be, for her and her Pa's sake**

What is my favourite food?
Dal and rice

** she knows i am a proletariat with simple living, high thinking**

What makes you proud of me?
that you’re…..ummmm….independent

**folks, i am on Hillock No 581, Pluto**

What makes me proud of you?
Duh…that im ATRAYEE MUKHERJEE….that should make you proud enough!!

**it DOES, for sure**

What do you and I do together?
I explain to you about hannah montanna

How are we the same?
Looks wise

How are you and I different?
We have very different opinions…tastes

How do you know that I love you?
Because I just know

**Muaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah**

What is one thing you wish you could change about me?
Make you thinner

**we have the same wishlist :)) which will not materialise**

Now tell me what you feel about this... me and my fragile maternal ego will feel better...

read it, nonetheless

2009-06-18T09:17:00.005+03:00

one book, after a long time, that i had to make an effort to get going. but i did not give up and it took exactly six weeks to be done with it. since i made the effort, i thought, i will write about it too.
this 194-page book is one continuous read, no breaks, no chapters, no segregation... the biggest drawback for a reader like me who reads a couple of chapters of a book on a day... and without this break, it was a little drudgery to go on.

but first a little background. if you have seen the link, it's clear why, though, being considered a foremost writer of the 2oth century, Woolf is a difficult read. One, the time is quite far back -- 84 years to be precise, published as it was in 1925. that however is little reason for its being difficult since the thought process is very contemporary. it is the use of language itself which is most important reason behind it being quite a toll on the reader.

i will quote a sample:

"For the great revolution of Mr. Willet's summer time had taken Peter Walsh's last visit to England. the prolonged evening was new to him. It was inspiring, rather. For as the young people went by with their despatch-boxes, awfully glad to be free, proud too, dunbly, of stepping this famous pavement, joy of a kind, cheap, tinselly, if you like, but all the same rapture, flushed their faces. They dressed well too; pink stockings; pretty shoes. They would now have two hours at the pictures. It sharpened, it refined them, the yellow-blue evening light; and on the leaves in the square shone lurid, livid -- they looked as if dipped in sea water -- the foliage of a submered city. He was astonished by the beauty; it was encouraging too, for where the returned Anglo-Indian sat by rights (he knew crowds of them) in the Oriental Club biliously summing up the ruin of the world, here was he, as young as ever; envying young people their summer time and the rest of it, and more than suspecting from the words of a girl, from a housemaid's laughter -- intangible things you couldn't lay your hands on -- that shift in the whole pyramidal accumulation which in his youth had seemed immovable..."

all the above, within quotes, is one half of a para, spanning one and a half pages. that is on the negative since today, we are more comfortable with this, the 140-character magic.

on the positive, look at the myraid streams of thought that Woolf captures, all of it in one mind -- Peter Walsh, Mrs Dalloway's ex-boyfriend, who has come for the party that she throws at her London mansion. And the 194-page novella just talks about this one day, the day of the party, from morning till night, with about 2% printed space given to dialogues.

if you are patient, read it. if you want to unravel layers of thought in a mind at any point in time, read it. if London fascinates you, read it.

the difficult teen? or the overweening Mom?

2009-06-17T15:23:00.003+03:00

The tag is from here and only for her sake have i gone ahead and published this. BTW, i sent the questions by mail and she replied...

What is something I always say to you?
“if u get gud marks mi bank balance wont increase”

What makes me happy?
Ummmmm….gud marks??

What makes me sad?
Bad marks??

How do I make you laugh?
Ur not funny at all

Like?
Whts dat supposed to mean?

What do you think I was like as a child?
Bukworm??

How old am I?
43…in other words really old!!

How tall am I?
Shorter dan me

What is my favourite thing to do?
Sleep??

What do I do when you’re not around?
Sleep??

If I become famous, what will it be for?
Being hitler’s incarnation….

What am I really good at?
Bossing people

Really?
Yup!!

What am I not really good at?
Ummm….evrything xcept bossing people

What is my job?
Irritating people…nd bossing them

What is my favourite food?
Mango?

What makes you proud of me?
Nuthin!!

What makes me proud of you?
Gud marks?

What do you and I do together?
U irritate me…I shout at u!!

How are we the same?
Onli luks wise

How are you and I different?
Evry other way

How do you know that I love you?
I don read minds!!

What is one thing you wish you could change about me?
Ummm…nuthin!!!

... now you know why i was sure a e-mail would work and a face-to-face would not?

12 years back

2009-06-17T10:50:00.002+03:00

R at 1 yr 7 mths...
the father looks younger too!

i am looking forward to a long break...

2009-06-10T10:23:00.005+03:00

... and all i want is great food, home-cooked and planned by Ma, late mornings when i can not only wake up late, but also brush for 10 minutes, have a hot cuppa of nicely brewed Darjeeing tea, glaze over the headlines of The Statesman, The Telegraph and The Times of India, in exactly the same order, have breakfast at leisure with Ma and R, and listen to all that Ma has to say, tell her my points of view and slip into bed for a small rest...

... to be broken by umpteen reminders for a bath... followed by yum food, a short siesta, tea again, then the trio, spread across three generations goes socialising or have guests drop over, or bro, sis-in-law and nephew join in for a loud get-together where more time goes in giggling and trying to stop the children fight than reach any conclusion in what we are trying to discusss, followed by dinner and late night chit-chats, catching up of old gossip, and slipping off to slumber amidst all the side-pillows...

but such days, i know for sure, will be few and far between, they will be peppered with more work, mindless socialising and phone calls, though i have tried to tell Ma that this time on, i am not going to make any phone calls, not go visiting anyone...

she has mastered the art of diplomacy quite well, so says, "don't worry, I am not even going to suggest such things to you", but i know the ease with which she will mention people whom she wants me to call/visit and leave the decision to me... and i will do what she wants... when she sees, i am not yielding, she will drop a hint, "you will know how i am feeling when once R comes visiting and she does not call on anyone, like B (bro), for instance." and she will have the better of me... this has been the story for the past 18 years... and we seem to just carry on being the same...

Mom-to-Mom tag

2009-06-06T13:11:00.004+03:00

Umm tagged me and here's my take on mommy-ing and why it is sooooo difficult.

1. The challenges change every day. One day's peace does not guarantee the next day's; one day's challenge met, does not make the next day's easier.

2. There are no recipe's for easy success.

3. Forgiving is no effort, but it gets a little difficult when one has to continuously go on doing it.

4. When outsiders praise the child for her discipline, for her controlled reactions, for the way she carries herself, my constant reaction is, "If you can the same things about her 10 years on, I'll know that it is a job well done." But inside, deep inside the chest swells. Ms Pride at work! but is thumped instantly.

5. Parenting has a nice, little prefix: TACT, all caps, bold, in shining colour and the tact is seen through very easily by the child, so one goes on racking the brain constantly.

I could go on, but since 5 is the number, I stop.

BTW, just read this lady's blog in case you guys feel like...

my heart breaks to do this...

2009-06-04T10:46:00.004+03:00

... i have to.

i have to sell it, since there is going to be no future use of it... the flat that i pined for, the one that i eventually bought, after much searching, after much planning, after much of calculations, after checking out many others, after really scrounging for every penny that i had saved out of my own salary, my own labour, my own thinking, my own brains...

... and each article, from the curtains to the cushions, from the knick-knacks to the wall paint, from the furniture in each room to the mug in the washrooms, from the lights and the fans (no there is no AC in the flat), i had been involved in, i had decided, i had paid for... and we have lived there on and off, but i do not see myself going back there...

now 11 years after i had bought it, i am thinking of selling it off... for one, this is a fourth floor lift-less flat, so no way i see myself in old age, trudging all of 78 steps to reach my little nest... and B has bought another one for us, and constantly keeps referring to that flat as "your home"... that is the closest he can get to telling me, "my gift for you"... earlier, i used to rebuff him and say "that flat i am not paying for, so it is not mine." but since he hasn't heeded to my message, i decided to heed to his... and i now refer to his flat as mine and the bugger inside has already started planning the colour of the wall paints, the lights that could be used to increase the impact of space, the kitchen cabinets, the cupboards that will have to be made, the colour of the curtains... and sometimes, very very rarely, i try to take R into confidence when she comes up with her own vision of her room...

but let me tell you one sure fact, that though i have an unearned home, a home that my husband of 18+ years has "gifted" me, the decision to sell "my own, my very own flat", is a painful decision to have arrived at... and that is one reason that i have kept postponing the ensuing vacation, i have waited 19 months from the last time i have gone just to make sure that i will finally pass it off to some other dreamer...

what is this space for?

2009-06-01T16:31:00.006+03:00

big question mark...

but no one single answer since different individuals, different reasons for being here, different ways of looking at things, differing reactions to a similar thing, virtual dialogue... endless reasons, endless possibilities, and endless virtual kicks (positive and negative).

most people, including your truly, are here just to write their minds out... they are open with just about everything, from sex to love for their spouses/partners, their children, their hurt with someone/something, some experience that they have had, which could have instigated a thought process in their minds, and the readers giving their viewpoints in the comments which, many a times, could take on a tangent from where it all started.

here we can cry a little (without the inner me, Ms Ego telling booing us), laugh aloud, resort to virtual shoulders for a little support, get a little cushion, complain and yet not offend someone, complain and offend someone, and move on... this is just like the personal diary of yore, but one that is virtual and open to others, one in which we welcome opinions, give our own, whether asked or not, agree, agree to disagree since there is no such thing as the courtesy of consensus.
to me, this place is to just vent, though sometimes one does feel constrained since some of you even know me in person... :)))

till date, however, i really have not come across one topic -- openness about an extra-marital affair, though i myself and many others i read have written about a crush here, a nice feeling there, a harmless flirt somewhere else. even in the virtual world, this is something we do not want to risk talking about... some sanctity somewhere? or plain cowardice? not made my mind up.

what i miss most... and am making peace with...

2009-05-31T15:59:00.011+03:00

...the touch

...the feel

...the smell

...the baby-saliva laced kisses

...the tug at my nightdress

...the chained feeling while on bed when one can't move even if one has to

...the hugs

...the demands on my time

...the baby cries

...the sound of baby feet

...the rooms with toys strewn around

...the bed jostled

...the madness of wakeful nights

...the pining for my time

...the queer look in one pair of eyes if i decked up

...the smile when i came home, almost running, after work

...the tiny hands that could pull me out of every low feeling

...the silence of the house when she slept

...the joy in her small steps, first words, first call, first solid food...

...yet, i know this is what i wanted, FREEDOM... to be my own self, to be mistress of my time, to be able to read and read without interruption, to be able to sleep peacefully, and at one go, to be able to go shopping without having to stop since someone was hungry.

this is possibly what human nature is all about. it is all about missing what one no longer has but pine for something else when one has it, without realising that the empty feeling is more difficult to deal with than a 24-hour day when someone else calls the shots...

tragically, i feel my ribs crushing when she comes home and goes into her room without making eye contact... clearly an indication of telling me "leave me alone", of a silent way of asking for more space, of the silence she does not want to break, of the embargo on hugs, of, at times, angry moods, of limited periods of loud laughter, of slipping into a book which, i know, she is not concentrating on, of slouching in front of the tele without telling me how her day has been, of so many other small nuances, which only affects me since possibly i know her the best (or do i?)...

these are not really problems, these are not really issues, considering that many other kids give a tougher time to their parents, but these are things which, when one has to live through 24x7, 365 days, one gets sentimental about, and expecially a problem for someone like me, who tries to be reasonable and rational most of the times, cutting out emotions, trying to find reasons which explain a particular behaviour, alter the instigator (if i am the cause), make peace with what comes, if not the first time around, at least slowly... and it is this "slowly" that is causing so much of a problem since the phase of creating a distance is just not ending... what began as one-off has really become a pattern, with the one-off being the very occasional thawing of the ice that solidifies as soon as it has melted...

it is lovely to be able to spend a whole evening with books, but quite painful if one has to do it because there are just vacant spaces everywhere to deal with...

what the Grand Old Man had said...

2009-05-29T13:01:00.006+03:00

... i get to know after 18+ years...

The man in question is my paternal grandpa who was a doctor, had nine children through his two wives (my father being the eldest of his children and I am his first born)... this man was the only man whom i have seen my father love and love unconditionally. he was the man whom my father told everything; even things my Mom did not know, this man knew... so when my wedding with B was fixed, my Dad told B, "I have one request to make and that is, you will need to meet my parents."

i had never heard my Dad refer to his step-mother so. He always called her endearingly, "Ma-go" (which literally means nothing, but means 'My Mom', and meant a lot to LM, my step-grandmother).

now, i was not particularly fond of Dr M because he was extremely patriarchal, a quality i detest and detested from birth. another reason i did not quite like was the fact that despite having three sons (my father and his two younger brothers), he remarried when my grandmother, SM, died of child-birth of placenta previa, something i had after R was born and i had never seen two men, B and Dad, as worried...

al these are not the point of this post, but what the Grand Old Man told B when he went meeting them is. and how did i get to know this and when is what this post is about...

i was cooking a while back... and B comes to the kitchen and says, "Minus SM -- your grandmother's -- attitude, you are quite a good wife." This is not B, i thought... Has chicken pox infected his brain?

I turned back at him and asked, a little stunned, "Have you met SM?" He was in no mood to answer but i would not buy his silence. after much cajoling, he said, "your grandfather had told me when i met him before our wedding, 'You are marrying someone who is the apple of my eye. My eldest grandchild, she is a lady of strong likes and dislikes, very much like her Grandmother, my first wife, the lady who shared my life for six short years, sired three sons but who taught me what value honesty holds in life. She was a lady of attitude and this lady you are marrying, has inherited this trait in full measure. Take good care of her...'"

i was stunned since in 18+ years, B has never told me what went on behind the closed door meeting that he had with Dr M...

many thought have passed my mind since then...

1. have i correctly juged my own Grandfather? or was i harsh on him in my mind?

2. does B know SM better than i do? I had never heard anything about her from Dad who never mentioned her. whenever he talked, he talked about his Ma-go, never about his Ma... though the three brothers were wholly reared by my Dad's maternal grandparents, SM's parents. and the closest i got to seeing her was in the lone photo of hers in Dr M's bedroom, a photo which still hangs there in loneliness...

3. what more did Dr M tell B? I did not want to ask any more questions... my heart was already heavy with what i heard...

4. why did B keep this to himself? had he promised so?

one comment... but so very heavy...

wonder recipe

2009-05-26T23:49:00.002+03:00

honey-laced cornflakes dipped in condensed milk... super duper taste...

if i could...

2009-05-25T09:59:00.006+03:00

1. i would become a carefree girl again
2. i would get wet in the rain
3. i would eat roadside food and fall sick
4. i would think about the man i would love
5. i would not write any exams
6. i would visit each of the houses i have stayed in as a child and see if they are the same as i left them
7. i would sleep late every day
8. i would throw my mobile without a care in the world
8. i would own a library and just spend my days reading
9. i would stand on Mt Everest and look at the world
10. i would become a space tourist and not come back to Earth
11. i would reverse the clock exactly 11 years back and not let go of my Dad...
12. i would have a baby again and i would just go on cuddling her/him
13. i would be on perpetual leave, but go on getting the salary
14. i would stand in snow
15. i would get drunk and remain that way without drinking
16. i would think and it would get written
17. i would be on a perpetual holiday
18. i would swim the English Channel
19. i would live in Paris
20. i would have all the upmarket perfumes
21. i would wish a dress and it would be mine, with accessories
22. i would love without any expectations
23. i would have young parents
24. i would go home for lunch everyday to Mom's shukto, dhoka, chitol macher muitha, gokul pitha, pati sapta
25. i would watch all the soaps and not find them ridiculous
26. i would be less critical of people
27. i would weigh my ideal weight
28. i would run on Corniche every day, without fail, for half an hour
29. i would meet all my childhood friends and chat away
30. i would make international calls for free
...may be continued

trying to play the perfect woman

2009-05-23T13:01:00.006+03:00

... is not my cup of tea... i am more un-feminine than feminine... i speak my mind loud and clear, i do not really love cooking, i do not "show" care (if i do care for someone, s/he knows it), i am very independent, i am strong, i rarely break-down and even if i do, it is very very private... in a word, i do not seem to show emotions at all, except my anger...

but some situations in life are such when one has to switch shoes and become a lady... (i know i sound funny)... and here i am, cooking all meals, cleaning, washing, tending to the dreamer, keeping a bored R company, and all this, while i am working from home...

believe me, it is difficult to see the person whom one has known for the entire adult life (more than half of my life really!) suffer, suffer silently and not complain, trying to be as independent as possible, giving me as much cushion as he can...

it is difficult... not because i need to be doing all this alone, not because energy levels are low (i am a born fighter so when circumstances are difficult, i am perfect), but because i cannot concentrate on the three books that i am reading, i cannot do all that i love doing... foremost among them, think, look at the sky and get lost, drive around the city, sit at my work-station in office, sip wine, laze around... in a word, being MYSELF...

and guess what, my Mom made out that something was wrong with me when she called to check how we were, since i had missed calling her... and though i flatly denied that something was wrong, she hung up, saying, "my gut feel tells me that something is wrong, but if you do not want to say, i respect that as well."
didn't i say, Moms are Moms...

PS: one major source of support have been our colleagues... mine have sent across food, called umpteen times to check how we are faring... as they say, in an alein land, it is a new family that one gets...

fascinating tale, told well

2009-05-17T15:43:00.004+03:00

The Mahabharat is no mean tale... it captures every single emotion of life and what strikes is its applicability to this day and time... it also has the Bhagavat Gita within its womb...
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is a master story teller... she weaves her logic, her viewpoint and her world view into this novel... that, of course, is the storyteller's perspective, but what one loves about this tale is its interpretation...
this is the Mahabharat from Draupadi's perspective, in her first person... and what a tale she tells... nothing is new, we have heard about the story, the various phases of her life and death... but every page is gripping and one really lays down the book after one is through...
i am not a lover of mythical tales... i would rather stay away from these... but this one was an exception.
two things struck me the most: one, Draupadi's first and unfulfilled love, Karna (and the interpretation in my mind till i read this, thanks to Nathbati Anathbath so long was that Draupadi was in love with Arjun); two and more important, that Draupadi from birth was a lady in her own right (she did not believe that women deserved any less in life)... whether the latter is a matter of Divakaruni's view, I cannot say, but i loved the novel more for that... read it, sure!

unlike any other

2009-05-13T13:09:00.005+03:00

it takes deep deep maturity to churn out something like Mister Pip... the first confession i have to make is that, this novel is totally unlike any other i have read... it is a different writing genre altogether... it talks of a different geography, it talks of different types of people, it talks of a different lifestyle... but that is hardly what sets it apart...

Matilda, the narrator, could have been any girl, anywhere... her love for language, her love for Charles Dickens and her respect for her teacher, Mr Watts... all of this is global, perfectly identifiable... in fact, her whole relationship with her mentor could have reflections in our own lives... touching is what the description is, but nowhere mushy, nowhere gone overboard...

storytelling is an art and all do not have it... that Lloyd Jones has it in abundant measure is just the tip of the iceberg... in Matilda, he has captured a timeless individual who is not trapped by geography to appeal to anyone who loves the printed word...

my tribute to Mister Jones is that I am already on Chapter 3 of Great Expectations, the first time after I read it in school... and i can see Matilda all over... i am also retreiving so many fragments, so many bits of the story i read long back...

how i escaped a fight

2009-05-04T11:57:00.004+03:00

... with B, who else?

had been to the exchange to send some money, somewhat a fixed routine at the end of the month. and most of the times, B is there with me...

this time around, since he did not need to send, i went alone... and B was not aware. i walk in to the scheduled counter and it was empty... "I save 15 minutes from my set time," i thought to myself and as i was taking the last transaction paper, for the man at the counter, to get my account details, he said, "Yes, Mrs A...".

i was surprised, nay stunned. how the hell did the non-descript man, doing a boring job, remember my name, amongst the all such people who come here much more regularly?

he looks too routine to muster up the courage to flirt... and certainly not with me... i went on with the transaction, with a look of not having noticed that he mentioned my name, a matter-of-fact expression...

but for once I was happy that B had not accompanied me, though i sometimes do mention that there have been times when i have handled things alone and routinely do... for once, i thanked his almost-12-hour job, five days a week...

had he been there, i know his instant reaction would be a hardening of the jaws, followed by the cool jibes later...

can there be silent tears?

2009-05-03T11:54:00.007+03:00

yes, very much... and today, i experienced this...
and it is she who brought in the tears... of joy (at having met a rare human being), of connection (with a woman of substance) and of pride (that i had spotted her while having gone for an innocuous Press Conference, one more of them that i keep attending regularly), .

She is a Robotics Professor, at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg and was here on a special mission, though she does run a Lab here in the Doha campus... that is her profession, something she felt impelled to do right from childhood...

what touched me was two things: her pride (possibly because i have it in liberal doses myself) and she did say, "I do not like being told what I am not good at... so when men at the University told me women are no good at Science, I had to do it simply because I had to prove them wrong."
her love and passion for doing good to humanity at large (here, i have a firm belief, if one is not innately good oneself, the doing good feeling will never ever strike)... as a Robotics Prof, she could just have stuck herself at the Lab (s) and been a great professor, there are umpteen such profs... but the fact remains, she has moved beyond that and has been involved in helping blind students across less developed countries, to name one of her projects... and she is not ashamed to "beg" (her own words) for getting funds...

that she has done these is because her mission was in her marrows... her Mum told her six children, "I want you all to change the world"... so she is oath bound to her Mum...

I am happy to have spent 35 minutes with her and thank my job for giving me the chance to come in contact with great human beings and indulge in their company, journo that I am...

a new path

2009-04-30T07:57:00.003+03:00

of late, i have been going through a phase of soul searching...

soul searching on: do i have more things than i require? is it becasue of a lack of respect for what i have? do i buy stuff just because i fancy them at that point and then rethink the decision of buying and never use the stuff i have bought? have i become a hoarder?

while i could not agree with the idea that i do not have respect for what i buy, i agreed with the fact that i have done impulse buying... and also the fact that i have not used my stuff rationally... i have just stored things i know i will not use...

but i have stored them because i did not know what to do with them... clothes that i will not wear, or clothes that i have grown tired of wearing, utensils that are just lying around in dark corners of the kitchen cupboards, shoes that i do not like anymore or am uncomfortable wearing, clothes that R has grown out of, things she does not like wearing, or shoes she bought thinking that she liked them, but actually did not...

while i have told myself, "whet before you buy", i have told R, "we will buy you things only when you need them..."

because she is still young and has listened to what i told her, without questions about whether i am doing it myself, i know pretty well that i should practise what i teach her...

and i have found an answer of what to do with the stuff... GIVE THEM OUT, without remorse...

i have given out four boxes of clothes, one bag of toys and some of R's shoes... and let me tell you, I FEEL LIGHTER, I FEEL HAPPIER...

while that is true of my Doha home, in my next visit to India, i need to just give away stuff there... one cupboard of sarees, to top the list...

only then will i feel completely LIGHT. and this time, i mean business.

a little piece of history

2009-04-26T12:16:00.004+03:00

while fishing for my certificates yesterday evening I laid my hand on this letter...
it lay on my workstation when i resumed after my maternity leave in March 1996...
Great men come out in the style in which they appreciate... this was the best appreciation i ever got in my professional life and I hold it very dear.

bringing up Mommy

2009-04-26T06:49:00.003+03:00

in the midst of a meeting, i suddenly see my mobile ring and guess who was calling: Mom. she now has a roaming mobile and the call was to tell me that she had reached Nainital where she has gone with her friends for a vacation... she'll also be visiting Almora and Ranikheth...
i ran out of the meeting, took her call and spoke briefly...
as the call ended and i was headed back to the meeting room, my mind raced back to those days... those days of gloom... those days when suddenly i became responsible for Mom, without any warning, without any foretelling, without any sign of things to come...
and the "those" days were when Dad passed away... R was two year five months, i had a very demanding job with a 10-hour day, B was awaiting his transfer from Mumbai to Kolkata, while i had already taken the transfer...
to top it all, Mom was now alone in a two-storey house, not knowing how to fill her days and nights, not knowing where to sign on a cheque to withdraw cash, not knowing what and how much to cook for herself, not knowing why her husband had left her alone, with a busy daughter and a son who had to get back to his place of posting...

i literally stretched the days, day after day, to pack in more... my job had to be attended to with a lot of details since the financial institution i worked for was raising public money and i was looking after that in Kolkata, R needed me, Mom was helpless without me ( i called four times an hour to keep her occupied) and i was staying with B's family at that stage, which had its own set of demands, though not tall...

my day began early, at 5.30.
6-7 was driving class.
7-7.30 -- with Mom over morning tea
7.30-8 -- pack R to school
8-8.30 -- get ready for work
8.30-9.15 -- commute to work
9.15-6 -- work
6-7 -- commute back from work
7-7.30 -- with Mom over evening tea
7.30-9 -- R time
9-9.30 -- dinner with R
9.30-10 -- put R to bed and doze off

and in all the calls i kept making, i was trying to address the fact that she had to continue her life, she had to be able to manage herself, she had to make a new structure for her day, she had to stop depending on anyone (even me, though i did not have the heart to tell her that)...

it was almost like having two daughters all at once, one young in age and needing care and one older, needing compassion...

i started taking her to the banks to get her money in place, got her pension sorted and started, make an Excel sheet of her investments, got her started on a Library membership so that she could spend her time reading...

three years passed exactly in the routine above, only change, we had our first owned home and shifted in... B got an offer in Delhi and was not sure whether i could leave Mom alone and come with him. i assured him i would... i wanted Mom to grow up, be independent and live her life...

i left for Delhi, she saw me off with a blank look... but i knew in my heart of hearts that she would carry on...

and she has...

could have been better

2009-04-12T08:15:00.004+02:00

this is Hisham Matar's first novel... written well, but could have been better, considering the fact that it had been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
living in an Arab country and working with Arabs gives a distinct edge while reading Arab authors since it makes the task of understanding the way they use language and clears a lot of cloud on their thinking process... this thought stayed with me as i turned page after page of Matar's book...
the story is one of Suleiman, a nine-year-old boy who, as the protagonist is trying to make sense of the adult world around him... his parents' world, where the mother gives in to secret drinking binges, when the father is away 'on business'...
this is woven in and around with Slooma (Suleiman's nick name) friends, Kareem, the son of Ustath Rashid, who is publicly executed, for opposing the regime in power in Libya in 1979. the execution forces Slooma's mother to go and beg with a neighbour to help release her husband who is also part of the same political group...
till this story segment, the narration is detailed...
when Slooma is sent off to Cairo by his parents to help him carve out a life of better possibilities, it seemed that Matar is in a hurry to end the book... the detailed narration becomes sketchy... and somehow ends, with a touching reunion between mother and son in Cairo...
the imagery if powerful, the story is good, but narration falls short at the end...

a smooth glide

2009-04-11T09:12:00.003+02:00

one of the best contemporary Indian writers in English, Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth is very powerful in the images that she draws for her audience...
in this, she almost weilds a magic paintbrush and paints vividly, with a deft combination of thick and thin strokes, choosing appropriate colours as she goes on finetuning the imagery. Each of the characters, whether present in her stories or not -- Romi, for instance in the first story, from which the book derives its name, is not really present in the canvas, but is there in the readers' mind -- is most likey to remain with them for a long time.
there is a certain subtelty in Lahiri's prose, a certain hold that she establishes almost from the start over the reader which, while giving them the freedom to get inside the book and exploring the minds of each of the characters, does not let go of her/him until the book is over.
each story in this collection is on the lives of Bengali immigrants in the US. the rootlessness is stark in the second generation and is brought out by Lahiri so very clearly... here, possibly because she herself is a second generation immigrant, Lahiri can empathise so well with Kaushik and Hema (in Hema And Kaushik, a short novella, within the collection, written in a unique format) or Sudha and Rahul (the brother-sister duo in Only Goodness).
For me, the last mentioned was the best story in this collection... it brought back so many autobiographical similarities to the fore which i thought, i had simply forgotten...

Chaitra sale and a crucial decision i made early on

2009-04-09T08:49:00.005+02:00

this month in our calendar is called Chaitra... the last month before the New Year (Nababarsha), which falls either on 14th or 15th of April each year...
and every year at this time, there is a clearance sale of garments... from shops to footpath stalls (i would not know about malls that have sprung up now), every shop that sells clothes, offers a sale...
shops are choc-a-bloc with buyers since customers suddenly become more trusting when it comes to goods offered on sale, mostly women, who buy for an entire household... there is (was, to be more apt since i am talking about 18 years back, when i left Kolkata, interspersed with two brief stays in between) a custom of gifts to youngsters and people who come helping at home on Nababarsha...
whether goods really become cheaper on sale, i have no idea... what i am convinced about is that the quality of goods genuinely suffer...
if one can go on the first few days, one lands up buying quality stuff at bargain prices, made more attractive with saree clad Bong housewives who, gloat over their bargaining skills with the shopkeepers, in mid-day scorching sun...

as i write this, i re-experience the numerous occasions when i accompanied Mom in her exploits, shopping for Nababarsha... money was limited, she made a long list, edited it to delete items which she thought would not make it through Dad who would not look at the list, but would allocate the funds for them...
if the going was good, she would be allocated all that she asked for... if not, she would have to be happy with what Dad thought was appropriate...

i vividly remember the little victory she scored when the amount was okayed... or the little hurt on her face when it was not... and it is the latter that had convinced me the need to be independent financially so that i could go impulse shopping, if i needed to...

i saw the same victory on her face when she was here with us last year and i was out with her, she next to me on my modest car, bought with my own modest means... but there again, it was laced with a thin film of tears in her large eyes (my large eyes are from her) on two counts... of joy that her daughter has done what she could not; of sorrow that her husband did not live to see what she has...

i don't know which of the emotions was primary, though...

our parenting, their parenting 2

2009-04-05T19:13:00.004+02:00

the new academic year is about to start, so evenings are spent in covering exercise books... thankfully, books have been given with a lamination... so no sweat over them...
despite being shown how to do it, R has not yet mastered covering books... she will do a ramshackle job and stuff the books in, if pushed to do it...
while it is no rocket science and there is no genuine skill involved in covering books, we (bro and me) were thrown into doing things beyond a certain age... i cannot recollect when exactly i started doing these things on my own, but i remember vaguely that it must have been when i was in 4th/5th, not later... and R is in 8th now...
i cannot sulk at home... B does not like it...
so here i am, tapping out at the keyboard, but in my heart of hearts, i know the reason why R is not yet into things i used to... my over-protectiveness... i can see the smirk on many of your faces... and i know i need to work on this...
let's see how well i manage that...

our parenting, their parenting

2009-03-29T09:34:00.004+02:00

today was the end of one more year from R school... she's now in 8th... has done reasonably ok, can do better. but that is not what i want to talk about...

she was with me when i was applying for her TC and i could feel the quiver of her lips... the quiver became stronger as we moved towards the parking lot and she made a silent refusal to sit next to me, choosing to sit behind... i let her and as i started off, she looked behind at her school -- where she studied two plus years, years that have seen her grow from an unsure preteen to a surer teen, years that gave her new friends (not all of whom were correct, but some good ones too), years that have dotted our relationship with small and bigger disagreements... and i could see the tears rolling down her cheeks...

i had to concentrate on the car, but my eyes burned... i can't cry any more, and have severe dry eyes... but seeing her cry made me want to... i bought her Krispy Kreme donuts, hugged her and while leaving for work again, she broke down in my arms... i held her tight while she sobbed and unconsciously i said, "You are a big girl now, you need to be strong in the face of separations," and lo, my mind went back to 1974...

Mom had to leave me alone to attend to her ailing mother... the reason i could not be taken was: my final exams for 3rd. so i stayed on in a friend's home (very near ours), attended school, shed silent tears at night and kept waiting for Dad to come back after dropping Mom and bro. On a Friday, as i came back from school, our driver came and asked my friend's Mom to let me come with him, since Dad was back. she refused saying, "let her have a little food and then she'll come." i insisted that i wasn't hungry but she would have none of it... so i gobbled the food and ran downhill, home bound... while running, i could see Dad waiting for me, the sun setting behind him... and i straight landed between his legs... as he picked me up, i broke down, sobbing just like R did today. Dad held me tight in his chest which sucked all my pain out... and he told me, "You are a big girl now, you need to be strong in the face of separations."

certain things don't change... certain things we can't unlearn... certain things die only with us... but one thing remains constant: the love for one's child and the fear that the child will not be able to face the world alone.

when the husband has no time for the home...

2009-03-28T11:16:00.002+02:00

... is it a sign of a deeper malady?

Warning: this post may seem very one-sided...

wives are routine complainers (i do not know whether this term really exists)... but many husbands look at their wives as people who are never happy, as people who would want a mile if given an inch... and so on...

such wives (yes, they are a different club, altogether and i am not a part of this wives' club, so i am calling them "such wives"), would not mind monthly purchases of gold and diamonds, go shopping to the silk store on getting an SMS that new stocks have arrived, make hot food every meal, rear real nice kids who dote on the mother, who find no time to groom themselves, have tomes to talk about (and all negatives) about the husband's family (as if their own have descended straight from God's kitchen), prefer being called Mrs A-Z (depending on the husband's initials), who do not drive (because they want their husbands to chaffeur them to the cloak, if possible)... but also want their husbands back home pronto at 4 pm, not wondering where the money to buy gold, diamonds and silks will come from.

i met one such wife yesterday and in 15 minutes, she not only shopped around like crazy -- four similar looking tops and one pair of Jeans was all she could gorge on (time was limited, you see), she publicly showed that she had a raging fight with the husband since he does not have time for her and her son, though she did not mind asking her husband for his debit card when the payment was due.

she basks in the glory of two international holidays that the husband affords for the family every year, three annual visits to Doha (the family is in the process of migrating to the UK, so she and her son live in London), a sprawling home each in two cities, but the complain was -- "M does not have time for us... and back in London my friends feel, he does not give me priority over work."

i felt like screaming: how will he, if he has to afford all that he has to???

i struggled to swallowed one small suggestion i have: look at yourself inside and out and be honest when you answer the question: does my husband find me interesting enough? as someone who can engage in some sane issue-based discussion, apart from shopping?
afterall, the appeal of hot food and great sex gets levelled over time... what sticks on is the ability of striking up a conversation in the dead of night, within a tight hug...

what price success?

2009-03-25T10:06:00.002+02:00

i do not know why the hell i am so worked up... it is someone else's life, someone else's career, someone else's choice, someone else's exclusion... so why am i fretting and fuming?

a lady i know is the country manager of one global PR firm here...exquisite looking, driving a BMW, her life could have been the fancy of any female...
she was happily single when i first met her, two years back. she got engaged, married and is pregnant with her first kid...

soon after i congratulated her on her pregnancy, and asked where she planned to have the baby, she said, "i am going to my Mum and will come back in three months without the baby, leaving her with my Mum."

My face must have ashened... so she consoled me and said, "it is a short-term arrangement... will get her back here as soon as i am able to handle both work and her..."

my unasked question was: how the hell will you know that you can handle both, if she is not here?

do you have answers? i don't...

R's 7th school

2009-03-23T14:23:00.004+02:00

she started in 1998, with a play school called Stepping Stone, on February 2, 1998, in Kolkata.
Next was Pratt Memorial School, from April 2000 to September 2001, Kolkata.Next came Ramjas School, October 2001 to March 2003, New Delhi.
Auxilium Convent School, April 2003 to March 2005, Kolkata.
Indian School Muscat, April 2005 to October 2006.
Ideal Indian School, November 2006 to March 2009, Doha.
DPS, Doha, April 2009 onwards.
all other school changes were a result of our city/country movements... so she had no choice...
this is the only time she has chosen... and we did not feel like saying no... hope she has made the correct choice...

the time of the day i like most

2009-03-21T08:42:00.003+02:00

weekdays, between 6.55 am and 7.30 am, when i am alone in the office. it's an early start to the day, with the alarm going off at 5 am (and to be honest, i hate it). but that sets the tone of the day ahead. have a quick shower, a hasty breakfast and we (R and me) are off to school... it is not only negotiating traffic, but also having a peek at her, next to me, when only i get to see her and none else... and the thing i yearn most, is to be seated on my desk at work, set the routine of the day, start ticking off the tasks that have been completed and do a little planning ahead...

weekends, when there is a long weekend, which is two times a month... on a Saturday, morning, 8.45 am to 11 am... when i am home alone... R is off to her Maths classes and B to a weekly meeting with the corporate bosses. i generally check mails, reply to important ones, start cooking, have a long bath... and write on this space... generally contented and not asking for too much is the mood of this time...

both of the times, i am alone... and i really don't know, if this is normal or not, but i feel happiest when i am alone... and i never ever feel lonely.

i am sorry, R

2009-03-19T14:13:00.003+02:00

this is escapism, i know... but i have to get it out of myself... and once i am home, i will say sorry to you, my child...
i shouldn't have screamed at you when you wanted a Coke, after coming back from school today.
i was rushing for my next assignment and had to be there by 1 pm. it was past 12.30, when you suddenly realised that you wanted a Coke...
i was restrained initially, but when the nearby shop, even after a phone call, did not deliver the can, i burst out... then to make up for the lapse, ran and got the can myself... left for the assignment, had a very nice interview, came back to work...
and when i called you from work, your tone was normal... despite being screamed at, despite being told that you were harassing me, you kept your cool...
and that is when i started feeling more rotten...
i really am sorry... and will try not to repeat this ever... and i love you veeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy much, muaah...

dinner smelt of Raju tai

2009-03-18T10:37:00.005+02:00

as i cooked the green moong curry, i could sense a familiar aroma, but knew after a while that it was part of an embedded memory from long time back... with memory cells ageing, i could not place the smell...
i shoved the thought and carried on, kneading the flour for methi paratha...
i actually have started liking my cooking sojourns... i plan ahead, and quite like myself in the kitchen, like an adept cook... for one, over the more than two months, i have forced myself into this habit, but would not have dared to venture, if i was not sure with and of myself...
so when the moong was almost cooked, i asked R to taste... to see if the salt was ok, if it needed more water, etc. she tasted and instantly said, "salt needed... but where have i taken this before?"
my doubt was sealed... it was after R came along and before we left Mumbai...
and bang, the image of Raju tai flashed on the mind's eye, the extremely efficient lady who could have been a corporate boss had life willed it that way, with a big red bindi on her forehead, a warm smile, armed with an umbrella and strutting in her starched cottons from home to home, spreading comfort for 18 hours a day to run her own family...
she was one blessing that i had in my last leg of Mumbai stay, when we moved next door to R's creche so that she need not have been carted in an auto in the monsoon (those who are familiar with Mumbai will realise the ferocity of the city's monsoons)... Mrs Nadkarni, R's Mamma (that was what all the creche mates called her) was next door... she ran the creche and looked after at least 20 kids of various ages... from three months to 10 years...
she offered Raju tai when she saw me struggling with R's food...
and there was no looking back... Raju tai would come early in the morning to cook R and B's lunch (menu decided by her), take R's daily bag to the creche. she would come back again whenever she had the time and we had given her the keys to the flat...
so many evenings when i came home from work and got back R in my tired limbs, i found dinner cooked and left on the dining table, ready to be eaten...
Raju tai was also my interpreter for all the Marathi that R picked up at the creche... so she told me what R meant when she said, "mandi paar" (come to my lap) or "Mamma la sangu kai mi?" (should i tell Mamma what you have done?)...
and it is Raju tai who cooked green moong with methi paratha...
where are you Raju tai?

piners and whiners

2009-03-16T09:11:00.010+02:00

all of our lives are like this lady's... with multiple choices laid out in all segments... but many do not know which road to take and always pine "if only i had taken the other road..." -- these are one kind of people, the piners, i call them but what i like about them is the thought of exploring "the other road".
and there are many such piners since it takes all kinds to make this world, but that really is rationalising and i certainly am in no mood to rationalise the varied kinds of people...
i would love to only meet and interact with people who have made clear choices, personal or professional, but that seems a tall wish list, since i constantly keep meeting those who, having taken a call, are not able to handle it, and whine on the way, a sure sign of having taken a decision, not having mulled it in the mind and coming out confused during the journey and after it.

i have known women and men who are diehard professionals, who literally stayed in office (mark that I have not used the word "work") for 12-14 hours a day, travelled 15 days a month, politicked hard to battle all the possible contenders and sat plum on company boards, enjoyed fat salaries and strategised to make their benefits fatter around the coming appraisal. but they seemed happy with the choice they had made -- they had children and families, but they had clearly chosen between professional success and personal happiness and the logic was -- professional success is more important. so all they did was to attain that professional success, held onto it and bettered their control over their own lives and those around them and lo, they came out in flying colours. in a word, they knew what they were doing. so i like them.

what i have never liked and still don't are the confused in-betweens, the quarter-baked professionals... who want all the professional control that the likes i described above have, who also stay in office longer than most, but whine after that on the things they are not able to do otherwise... how do you rationalise these kinds? who will tell them that if you choose one, the other will have to be given up?
afterall success comes for a price and if one is willing to pay that price, success is theirs.

there is always the other road... a little bit of professional success and loads of perceived personal happiness, and the price is "Little Bit of Professional Success"...

do i need to tell you which one i have chosen?

stray scenes from the grocery

2009-03-14T00:13:00.004+02:00

Inro:
endless crowd, being Friday evening... entire Doha was at FFC (Family Food Centre), the weekly ritual that every family has in getting there with as long a list as possible, shop till one drops and get home.
parking is a nighmare, so are all the counters, of stacked foodstuff to the vegeatble and fish section and the bakery... all of this crowd negotiation, is neatly punctuated by some odd acquaintance, with some equally odd querry about exams, the next vacation, the currency rate, et al...

Scene 1:
husband-wife combo (presumably)... for a change the husband has the list and the wife is tagging along aimlessly... i started looking out for B who was singing to himself and lolling behind me, and i had the list in hand (a small one, since most of last week was food called from the next door restaurant).

Scene 2:
while shopping for fruits, i plunged myself into the orange section... it had 5-6 varieties and instantly moved away from the orange that came from Pakistan. ditto for basmati, with Indian basmati the staple at home.

Scene 3:
at the billing counter, while waiting for our turn to come, i started to observe people around... some has dressed for a party but had hit the grocery; some carried themselves really well, despite the bulges; some slouched and made themselves look most awkward; some couples were in love and showed it off; some had just grown used to their spouses and did not even talk to each other (quite like us both); some had to make the most urgent call at the top of their voices; children made the most of the wait and stuffed small goodies which the parents would not allow; some looked bored; others quite enjoyed this weekly do; the only expressionless faces were those manning the counters... i came away pitying their legs.

Jibanda* and Tapatidi**

2009-03-08T07:03:00.005+02:00

I usually use the first letter as an acronym for the people i write about. But today's post is an exception since i feel it would be demeaning these two guys... they are one of the first mentors both B and I had when we started our life in Mumbai.
A common acquaintance (who still is the Finance Minister of our home state) had given us a scribbled sheet on which Jibanda's telephone number was written. So on reaching Mumbai on January 14, 1991, we went visiting them on January 17, the first Sunday, in an alien city...
Both of them welcomed us as if they had known us for decades... the warmth was palpable, the affection grew later and still continues...
Jibanda was an Economist with the Tatas and Tapatidi was a Lecturer in Geography at Siddharth College...
their only son Sunny was in the fifth standard at that time...
Thus began our tryst with the Mukhopadhyays (incidentally, we also share a common surname)... every weekend was spent with them, over dinner... for me and us both, they became a source of great comfort...
Jibanda came with us when we went to visit a Professor of Political Science at Bombay University, in the hope that i would pursue a career in research... his logic was simple: an academic has intellectual freedom with more control over time (what he implied then, I did not understand... that was his way of telling us that it would be easier when we decided to go the family way, but that was far from our minds at that time)...
It was Tapatidi who spotted the vacancy for a Junior Research Officer at one Danida-funded project with the Indian Council of Medical Research and asked me if I was interested...
and when i did bag that assignment, she said, "You will be engaged in good work, but the pay is less at Rs 2300 a month"... not that I cared, it was my first job and though it was quite a travel from Borivli to Mahalakshmi, i did complete the project and moved on...
Both of them were shocked, when I changed gears and took on a journalistic assignmnet with Business India and then onto ICICI, but did not interfere since they knew the limits pretty well...
When R was on her way, Tapatidi would cook and bring it over home so that she could feed me with things i crazed for... in the menatime, they had befriended both of our families back at Kolkata and were requested by both our parents to look after me...
When R came home, both showered their affections...
We moved cities, our touch with them continued, but became less and less frequent...
but we knew the bare outlines of their lives and they knew what we were up to...
Sunny is doing very well as a Medical Researcher in the CMU, Jibanda is now an academic with a premier business school and Tapatidi has retired formally from her job, but continues post graduate teaching, in addition to her political activities (she was all through a Member of the CPIM and Jibanda was all through an avowed supporter of the Right)...

It might strike you, why am i writing all this? Just to tell you about two excellent people who have shown us, by the way they have lived life, that it is possible to have simple dreams and attain them, with a large dose of mutual difference, but larger dose of mutual respect...

They are alone now, that Sunny is in the US, and on the last call, last weekend we made, we both felt Jibanda, after having lived through 65 summers (in his own words) is still as inspiring as ever, even if he is (and always was) a little sarcastic...

*da means elder brother; di elder sister

synthetic patroitism?

2009-03-02T08:20:00.003+02:00

we meet him outside the Chettinad joint on a windy Thursday evening. he is a friend's friend. we get talking and all he can think of is the food waiting inside the restaurant. R and i were ready to jump into the car because of the wind... but could not...
loud mouth, tall talker and an utter bore are my opinions of the baldy...
suddenly he switches gear and pops the question at B, "how long have you been in the ME," and without waiting for an answer says of himself, "I am in the region for 32 years but have never thought about migration to the West, like many Indians do. I love my India," with a big boastful smile.
pat came the reply from B, "that is the reason why India lags behind, every patriot is outside the country." he managed that without a twitch... and i felt like running away from there...
our man suddenly felt the chill and went in with a faint grin...

where does one draw the line?

2009-02-26T10:30:00.004+02:00

an aunt is suddenly diagnosed with cancer, is operated and is recuperating... Mom is upset and sad... she calls me to inform...
one week after the call and the news, i am not sure how to feel... should i be sad? and unhappy?
yes, one part of my mind is certainly feeling a trifle sad...
trifle??? i can see the grimace on your faces... how can i be so heartless? you must be wondering... but fact is i can never gloss over the past... i can never see a person's present without taking account of the past, of what a person has done and not done (prefix deliberately)...
many tell me, these are not times to remember such things, that one should and must be more forgiving and gentle...
whether i agree or not with their views, it remains a reality that this aunt could never sympathise with others, she was always critical of most and never had time for anyone else but her own ilk...
what's so new in that? there are scores of such men and women, but what i just cannot get over is her heartlessness when some others were in trouble and all she could do was to gloat, have pleasantly unkind words (telling them smug things which a troubled mind does not want to hear in times of distress)...
and many have forgotten about this past...
yet, i am aware that there is one more way of looking at this... if i do not feel soft towards her now, how am i different from her?
my defence is: to a heartless character, be heartless...
rude? yes;
dishonest? NO. and that is me... i would rather be rude than be dishonest.

global meltdown's latest casualty!

2009-02-21T07:00:00.004+02:00

this is news, especially in a continent, which, in our view, epitomises desire, in every form.
"This economic tsunami is going to have a negative effect not only in the boardroom but the bedroom," says the article.
if interested, follow the link and feel the pulse...
news can be made with thin air, i thought since there are no comparative figures of pre-meltdown libido levels.

work-life balance and Jack Welch

2009-02-19T06:58:00.003+02:00

what kinda silly thing is that? what does a retired CEO of a large US major have to tell us about work-life balance?
NOTHING NEW, but that is exactly the point... Winning is a fabulously written book and let me tell you that i am not a great fan of management literature and do not, on purpose, read books that tend to give only their take on life, work, business and the rest, reason being that i have my own take which, i feel, is fairly rational and workable...
this is what differentiates Jack Welch. while he gives his opinion on things which make and remake global conglomerates and Fortune 500 companies, he does not forget that all of these are made possible by PEOPLE like you and me and led by people like him... he is humble enough to say that he had very ordinary beginnings, like people in middle class America in the 1960s have had, that it was only after having worked his arse off that he landed at the top job, but that did take a toll on his work-life balance... i am back to where i began from...
he says, "There are as many work-life balance equations as there are individuals. But no matter what balance you choose, you'll have to make trade-offs. After all... it is a rare and lucky person who can have it all in life, all at the same time. Usually, that's not the case. Working parents who want to be very involved in their kids' lives, for instance, often have to give up some of their ambition. People who put business success first most likely have to give up some level of intimacy with their kids.
"Work-life balance is a swap -- a deal you've made with yourself about what you keep and what you give up."
need i say more?
read the book... it is meant for anybody who is already somebody, or who dreams to be a somebody some day... it will throw up reality on your face, drawing up from facts of life that could well be yours... that's the beauty.

25 things that will add the peek you can have of me...

2009-02-15T09:06:00.003+02:00

this has been doing the rounds in Facebook and some friend had tagged me there, but this is what pushed me to do it... so here i go (this is in no order of importance, or logic, i have put it down as it came to my mind:

1. my passions change and change very fast. but when i am passionate about something, i really am passionate. right now, it is this blog.

2. i assess people from the word go... and reasses them. at no point is my assessment final. but in most cases, i tend to stick on with what i thought of them on day 1 and turns out to be right.

3. if a love a person, i can be forgiving.

4. i love to be alone... this is a passion that has caught on with time and does not seem to be changing. i love being alone at home, on a walk, on a drive... even on a holiday.

5. i rarely miss people. some think of me as cruel, but that is the way i am... in case i want to re-ignite a connection, i will do it.

6. i rarely take advice. when i have an issue, i usually mull it in my mind, be alone more, be more silent... rather than talk it out because i have very very few people i can open my mind to.

7. i love Doha, the city i stay currently... and this is the 5th city i am staying in.

8. i love anonymity. i hate being in a crowd. in the former, i can find my way. in the latter, i get claustrophobic.

9. i am very very opinionated. and rarely change my opinions.

10. i love doing nothing.

11. i love to read, read, read, read...

12. i love to sleep... 16 hours is also fine, followed by 4 hours... there is a quota for everything, you see.

13. i love to sip tea leisurely... good Darjeeling brew, roll it in and then gulp it down.

14. i always have and always will love my Dad the most... yes, i have reassessed him too, but that does not take away his place in my life.

15. i love to watch R sleeping.

16. i would love to s**t everyday, being a patient of spastic colon.

17. i love to write... both paid and here.

18. even if possible, i would not like to re-live my life.

19. if stranded on an island, i would just need a laptop, hopefully it would work.

20. i would like to go as soon as R is on her two feet.

21. i am always in a hurry.

22. i love to drive.

23. given an option, i would love to settle in an European village.

24. i snore.

25. i love to laugh loud... people who do not do that are mentally constipated.

every affection has a name

2009-02-10T10:14:00.002+02:00

this is a powerful story, well told, peppered with tender emotions, emotions that bring in a screen of tears to the eye...
it tells the story of three generations... the one past, the one that is today and the one that is tomorrow...
and each one of the readers can identify with the teller, Amir... some of us are the present, have seen our parents and are tending to our children...
it throws up the story of Afganistan, a historical fact of a nation destroyed and another intangible casualty, childhood...
Sohrab is not alone... he has millions to keep him company, but none of whom are any more fortunate for that...
particularly touching is the relationship between the half-uncle and his nephew...
for me Sohrab was a fitting reminder of my own nephew back home...10-year-old A... who only knows his Pishi comes once in more than a year, makes his Thamma happy in her presence and making her cry when she goes off...
and A is more fond of B than me...
he is simplicity personified, in many ways like his Dad... just like Sohrab is like Hassan and Amir recalls the Dad in the son...

selfish mom... contradiction in terms? search within

2009-02-10T08:07:00.002+02:00

this article sums up a new dimension in today's parenting...
it talks about HAPPY KIDS and the role of the parents, especially the mother... and one sentence literally spilled a bucket of cold water on my face: quoting a British survey, it says, "the main risk for British children... was that their selfish parents were too busy chasing their own success. The culture of individual fulfilment for adults was making the lot of children much less happy than a generation or two ago.... Odd though it might seem, it had never occured to me that working was selfish. If we work hard, we make money, and because work is stretching and stimulating, which can't be bad. Sneaking off to have a manicure instead of grilling fish fingers is selfish, but toiling over the computer is not."
and as the writer very clearly points out, it is one word that has caused a lot of trouble for a lot of mothers all over... that word is selfish.
we all are selfish as individuals and have rationalised it for ourselves, as partners, as professionals, as children, as friends, as acquaintances... we are selfish as all these... we know it, we have accepted it...
so no pains...
but as mothers, selfish???? not possible, we cry out... i do this for her, i do that for her, i do the other for her...
wrong, all wrong, all false, all lies...
two reasons why: first ask yourself whether all that you and i claim to do for them, is it actually for them?
my take is:we do all of what we do for them, actually for our own selves... all the running around for them is actually for US, not for them.
second, even if we accept that we do tonnes of things for them, how much of it is with them too?...
find that out...
so we are selfish as mothers... but the idea is not to accept that and wallow in self pity for the rest of our lives... the idea is to work around our unique situations... the idea is to strive to be better as mothers, better as friendly mothers...
and again, it will be not for the little ones we have brought in here, it will again be for ourselves...
the idea is to move towards as better as we can get, so that the child opens up to us, without fear, without doubt, without a cloud on her eyes...
and when the child seems like an open book (as the mother, we can see it reflected on the eyes), i guess we have done better than yesterday, but remember, tomorrow is yet another day, and the striving within has to continue...

WHY?

2009-02-09T10:23:00.002+02:00

this has kept me thinking and thinking really hard... should i or shouldn't i vent that huge mountain of emotion that i think i have NOW, finally put behind me and moved on, and it took me precisely a decade to do it? should i tell about that day, that one day which, in a swish, just changed my life and forced me to grow up? should i tell you all how hopeless i started feeling? how the smile and laughter just vanished from my life? how i became a new, hardened, realistic, me... the one you see today? ok, let me tell you...
a 31-year-old discovers, to her dismay, she is pregnant again... she is not happy. she has just taken a transfer back to her hometown, with a two+ year child, is staying with her marital family, but the husband is still awaiting a transfer... she is not happy that again she has to wake nights and do all that she has done for her daughter. will she be able to give the kind of attention that she gives the noor of her eyes again? nope...
her mother does not want to give her opinion... but her father is very happy... she will be grand-dad again... he will look after R, he assures his daughter who retorts, "will you wake nights instead of me?" he laughs his assuring laugh... and tries to convince his daughter... but she miscarries... he runs with her to the clinic, does all that have to be done, looks after R with his wife and nurse her back to work... the husband is still in Mumbai, still awaiting his transfer...
he falls sick... high fever, bad cold... "don't worry and don't come since it is contagious... little R will get it."
she who senses trouble visits her parents after work, fetches some milk from the nearby market... he is already feeling better, he says, no fever... that was Friday...
saturday is working... but she calls and checks... he is feeling weak, but ok. she does not go to meet her parents...
sunday morning call from her mother, "can you come right now... Baba is not feeling well... the doc has given new medicines but there is no one to get them."
she runs, leaving R with her MIL...
she goes in and sees that her ever-strong Dad is having breathing difficulty... but she becomes a moron, it does not strike her that he is on the threshold of an attack... or in the process of one...
she fetches the medicines, gives it to him... he sleeps for a while... has early lunch, and sleeps again, this time all three together, she in the middle of her parents, but she does not sleep...
evening, he climbs all the stairs, goes to the terrace and has his tea... the breathing is still heavy and he is sweating... still she does not think it to be an attack...
she fetches R since she will stay the night with Baba and Ma...
her mama, mom's elder brother, comes visiting after two years... they have a grand chat and he leaves around nine...
he is still uneasy, still breathing heavily and sweating...
she runs again and gets an inhaler, after checking with the doctor... who reassures that it is conjection... the heart is fine...
she is asthamtic so teaches her Dad how to inhale... he is hopeless at it... but inhales some of it... takes light dinner and sleeps...
next morning, the clinic guy comes for a blood test... he fasts till 8 and has tea...
he is smiling tired, she thinks...
he goes to the loo, "do not lock the door," she tells him, "i am just here."
he comes out, with a tired look, wears the watch his son gave him on his last birthday, lies down and closes his eyes...
she calls out, one last call, "BABA." he half opens the eyes, grabs her hand and his wife's...
R is behind... she has seen it all... her last memory of her Dadubhai...

how did you start a new life?

2009-02-04T11:56:00.003+02:00

read married life...
but the question is how did you start it? rather how luxuriously did you start it?must be wondering why suddenly this question?
because we were jabbering at work (what's new?) and guess what that was on?
it was on wedding customs and traditions... some of the young guys at office (they are from Egypt) who are just married or engaged to be married, said they have bought apartments in Cairo, are paying the loan but are staying here with their newly wed wife...
they mentioned that an apartment precedes marriage... i would have loved to be born in Egypt in my next life... how cool would that be!!
they asked us what the scenario was like in our native place.
we, in chorus, said, "we get married at our parents'and go to live with our marital family."
they dropped half dead... but rationalised soon after that since it was tradition for us, we did not really think it was something unusual...
i too got married, lived with my marital family for 10 days and moved to Mumbai where my husband was posted at the time...
he had rented a one-bedroom hall, kitchen, one loo flat and all the furniture that could have been bought was: one double bed, one gas stove, one folding table, two folding chairs and two garden chairs (to suffice in the hall)...
and i thought, he had given me the best HOME possible...
yes, we struggled hard to make that flat comfortable and now, after 18 years and 12 other homes that we have lived in, still pine for those days, when all we wanted was to be with each other...
an apartment came much later... now we have two, but that first home still has a special place in our lives.

dollops of destiny

2009-02-01T08:45:00.003+02:00

a master story-teller, a fascinating account of the lives of the people that are part of the canvas of Rohinton Mistry...
what makes this book partcularly unputdownable is the reality of the characters... Dina, Nusswan, Ruby, Maneck, Om, Ishvar, Rajaram, Beggarmaster, Ibrahim, Shankar, Aban, Farokh, Mrs Grewal... all are some or the other person whom we have encountered in our lives... they are all living somewhere in our minds and Mistry just tickles that imagination to make them come alive, go through what they do, shaping their attitudes every single day in neat strokes, almost like that of a painter...
while the 614 pages of the book flies past, what i could not, despite my best efforts, agree on was the climax... while taming of Dina from an independent self to accepting the inevitable dominance of Nusswan is acceptable, why did Ishvar and Om have to end up as beggars? and why did Maneck have to do what he did? was it an attempt on Mistry's part to tell us that idealistic souls just end as Maneck has? that all people just do not accept destiny... i am at a loss to understand whether he killed hope for his readers or made them more realistic...
but read the book you must... for its style, for the weave, for the language, for the intricacies and nuances of how people change and rationalise that change... that is, in essence, the fine balance... possibly it is because Maneck could not rationalise Om and Ishvar's beggarhood or the fatal finish of Avinash and his sisters that prompted him to do what he did... i am mulling this question in my mind as i go about my day, with a faint ache... and am loving it...
once you have read the book, tell me whether you agreed the way the characters matured and eventually ended.

when i finish reading a book

2009-01-29T15:07:00.002+02:00

my continuous date with some or the other author continues... i finish with one, i have another one waiting... it is a ceaseless process... so that is not new, what is, is my new fascination for Indian writers in English...
and Nagarkar is but one illustration... this one, a 600+ page book has a lot of weight, but when one starts reading, one can breeze through... and though the descriptions just won't leave you, you will not feel like putting the book down...
and one more thing i discovered with this book... who says history cannot be fodder for modern minds???
try this and tell me how you like it...

S, my driving instructor

2009-01-28T10:16:00.004+02:00

... the second one, to be precise for the left hand drive here...the first one being the inconsequential guy who taught me how to drive a manual car, in the last century, but who did not almost hit me as S... thus his inconsequentiality...
and believe me, i remember S every single day when i negotiate bad traffic with a cool head, when i switch lanes effortlessly, when i drive confidently on a Round About, when i can manage a sharp turn with the least amount of jerk, all i do is to thank him silently for those loud hours of teaching, for those merciless evenings when i used to almost cry before leaving for the driving class...
i now know the benefits of a tough driving instructor...
my unfazed driving is solely his credit, rather the credit of his vocal chords...
and once i had the Licence in hand but still had not bought the car, thankfully B took me around... oops i took around B in his car and he was S's replacement, shouting and whipping (only with words, mind you) me to enable me to get over my road fear, all this after having given S a fat reward, since in his own words, "S has done what i have not -- shouted at you, without you retorting."
i just pretended not to hear... at times, i too know to keep quiet...

Made in India

2009-01-26T08:57:00.003+02:00

this has nothing to do with Republic Day...
but recently while lolling around at an upmarket shopping mall here in Doha, R wanted to look for some nail enamel... little did i know that the colours she would want would be least what i would approve... she chose BLACK... and of a renowned and costly US brand...
following her to the same store, i started to shop for some lip pencils... the colours i liked were available from two brands, but i, unknowingly opted for an Indian brand...
the counter lady who had to prove her superior selling ability, was happy with what R had chosen, but as soon as she saw what i wanted, she blurted out, "Madam, this is made in India... so would you want it?"
i felt like k**king her... but with a straight face said, "I am also made in India and would want only what i chose."
she smiled with a hurt look... i had achieved a little bit of what i would have with the k**k...

12+ things that bowl me over

2009-01-25T07:46:00.025+02:00

there are many such, but will note down what i can tell you...
please note that the order does not indicate the degree of importance or the extent to which each can bowl me over... it is the order in which those came to my mind while i started this post... so here i go:

Public Library: where i could spend my lifetime... where i can go with B and get lost in-between stacks... where i have spent time romancing both with books and B...

Muscat: where i stayed less than two years, but a place which is BEAUTIFUL, to say the least... more importantly, this is where i started working for a publishing house and am still with them till date, Insha Allah

Barack Obama:... no need of restating...

Lipsticks and glosses: fascinates me, sends me into fits of feel good...

Diamonds: am i different in this, nope, but i still have felt the urge to splurge to you

Souq: to pick up material for my everyday office wear... and then one trip to my tailor and am done...

Yum food: need i say more? any country, any cuisine, any taste... i am up for it...

Sports cars: for a swing and a zing in life, what better than a low, two-seater sports car....

R...

writing, writing, writing, writing...

Home...

Walking alone

Sleeping, sleeping, sleeping, sleeping...

anyone who reads this is tagged...

i assume there is something called 'i-etiquette'...

2009-01-24T15:20:00.003+02:00

... but i think, as countless other times, i am wrong...
i have a strange habit of getting rid of things i do not need which i have, of late, finetuned to extremities... just as i write this, B calls to ask about a Gift Voucher that he had got and given me for 'safekeeping'... nowhere is that found and his doubt is that i MUST have junked it, in the belief that we wil not need it... that is not the point of this post though...
i erase people's numbers i no longer call, i erase people's ids (mail) from my IM, in the foolish belief that if i do not see them, they will also not see me... clear instance of a tunnel vision...
but just a while back, someone with whom i have not communicated for quite sometime, pops out of nowhere on my monitor and hugs me...
she was a baby when i first saw her, but that was 31 years back...
this lady, all of a sudden comes like a gust of wind, and after the cursory exchanges of how we are, how the weather is (typical example of more important things coming), she pops her real question... about character certificate in some other country...
i am quite irritated with her sudden appearance, since when she changes countries and cities, she gets so busy that she misses even telling me, over the same chat site...
and on top of that, she reveals her purpose in the third sentence...
i brush it aside like a speck of dust and tell her, "have no idea"...
the next sentence is, "ok, bye, take care, catch you soon" and runs off...
what does one do with such idiots? can you tell me?????

history in front of the eye

2009-01-19T20:02:00.004+02:00

tomorrow Barrack Obama will take oath as the 44th President of the US of A. every eight years, on this day, the 20th of January, a new President takes office... nothing new, so why am i writing about it?
a puny soul, with high human aspirations, i felt euphoric while watching him live on TV for his pre-innaugural speech... he has one thing for sure -- an electrifying capacity to inspire, with a capital I. in this day and time of anti-heros, Obama stands out and the colour of his skin becomes totally incidental... he clearly brings to mind the Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech that King gave on August 28, 1963
what King dreamt, Obama has realised.
at this point, i just want to cherish this feeling, the feeling born out of what King had described as "character"... and America has testified to that choice by voting for Obama...
why am i rejoicing? why am i sounding on top of the moon?
because of the victory of MAN, does not matter that it is not my country, not my continent...
it is still the human being above all else...
and what is the Obama couple doing today? Michelle Obama is spending the day packing bags for the troops in Iraq and her husband celebrated MLK day in various services...
so in spite of the slight pall of gloom of the recession, of the tough job at hand and that the world will scrutinise Obama for every moment, i want him to prove that as the President of USA, he is also a super duper human being...
all the best President Obama!

cheap thrills... why cheap?

2009-01-11T11:38:00.005+02:00

we do it on an ongoing basis. and why not? flirting is good for health and great for the mind, as long as it is restricted within sane limits, does not hamper work and adds a little zing to life, it's perferct.
it allows one to stay young and bouncy...
so we at office indulge in it very regularly...
our crush lists get updated, we weed out stale guys (after a point in time, we also get bored, so we move on), and are on top (i mean ONLY figuratively speaking) of the most happening guys in town...
and what a multi-cultural list have we... you name a country, you have some representation in our database.
and what is the husbands' reactions? others i do not know, but mine makes out who my current crush is, going by the hoo-haa that i make over a story i have just done and when i carry the published copy, he immediately latches on to the guy and gives a dirty look at innocent me while i try hard not to break out into a guilty giggle...
that is my way of keeping him on leash... afterall my beau of 23+ years is a man in his 40s... it helps to know that one has a partner who is noticed and this is true for both...
try it and see the difference...

this one's for you, Mom

2009-01-09T11:24:00.003+02:00

since we are born of our parents, it's natural that we are a combination of the genes of two people (the first step), our grandparents (the next step) and our fore-parents (not forefathers, please; the next step)... nothing new, you may say...
certainly not in what i have stated, but new is my latest avatar... that of a cook, who is cooking willingly, experimenting recipes and enjoying food after a long while and mind you, i have even cut down on my intake (in both the quantity as well as cutting out certain things totally, like sweets) since i am thoroughly enjoying what i am ruffling up.
what is the secret of this transformation? my erstwhile recruit, G, very very neatly put.
he had been cooking and cleaning since May 2008. initally a very pleasant chap, but suddenly got worldly wise... his speed of work increased, he started calling shots on what was to be cooked (no chana dal since it takes a long time to boil, only masur dal; no non-veg since he is a veg), no interest or time in learning to make any of my recipes since is "buzy".
i was seething inside but tried to make the best of what i had at hand since cooks are not easily available here... so in the meantime, i had started to make the odd dish that i wanted to have cooked. it was only making things more and more convenient for G who cared less and less.
his ways became more and more irritable and his timings more and more eratic; missed calls became common in an effort to intimate me that he would be late by a couple of hours since he was stuck with some odd job (read quick cash) at some odd place. SMSes also became cool with a cryptic note, "Please call me back."
finally it reached a boiling point when citing visa work he pleaded absence for 5 days, mind you through an SMS again...
if i can manage for 5 days, why not longer... so while i thought about it very hard, i replied to his message the next day, asking him to come on Feb 1 to collect his 3 day's salary...
since then (and it is more than a week now), i am the chef at home. it is grand freedom, to say the least. i decide what i want to have; i decide when i want to cook; and i decide at what pace i want things done, not in the pace set by my erstwhile bionic "buzy" cook...
and i have ruffled up kofta, bhape ilish and cholar daal
yesterday and both meals were silent, except for B's and R's clean plates and licking fingers.
while cooking, i was recalling the way Mom used to do when she used to... so all the credit goes to her...
muaaaaah, Ma, this is my way of saying, "I LOVE YOU."

how we create stereotypes...

2009-01-05T15:27:00.003+02:00

while driving R to her Maths classes, she was fiddling with the car lighter. it was irritating me, i know not why. so i asked her, "do you want a fag?" "what's that?" she asked. "Papa's after-dinner snack," i said.
she knew what i meant... and said, "good girls do not smoke."
i was thrown off guard... while i have to admit that i was happy with her confidence in her belief in two things (a)that she is a "good girl"; (b)that she thinks she will not smoke since she is (a), it has kept my mind occupied on a whole lot of other questions:
(a)does she know that good girl does not mean being a door mat?
(b)does she know that good girl may entail a lot of choices which do not necessarily mean being smart (unlike the non-smoking choice she seems to have made)?
(c)what are the other attributes of a good girl in her mind?
(d)has she latched on to the idea of good girl, not seeing through my trick of getting her to do things by calling her a good girl (lokkhi meye, in our lingo) many times?
(e)have we successfully increased the number of a non-challenging stereotype?
... many questions, many doubts, many unsure ideas in the mind...

for the sake of conscience

2009-01-01T19:21:00.003+02:00

does that sound passe? or prehistoric? or out of date?
yes, to many it does... but again, not to many, i am sure...
conscience is not a Moral Science concept or something we read about only in the books...
it is very much relevant today, as it was when the word was invented...
i am sure all of you must have felt an inner bliss when you have done something good, not necessarily for yourself but for someone else, not to your tangible benefit... that can be described as good karma, but the bliss was the feeling of joy your conscience gave you... the invisible reward.
or the reverse when you have felt an inner heaviness when you, consciously, have done soemthing that is not correct, lied, been harsh and rude?... bad karma and the heaviness is the chiding that the inner voice gives as punishment for being wrong...

my encounter with this inner master began quite early... while in a convent school, we necessarily had to study moral science, though i was not particularly inclined in any of what i learned (socialised at home as we were in a strongly anti-religious way), i understood the inner power when some little lies escaped me, in my effort to be smug... whether or not i was caught by others, this guy inside told me i was wrong... today i know, it was the result of the training that my parents gave me and the schooling i had...

in 1991, just before my wedding, my aunt (Mom's elder and only sis) came visiting... we (aunt and me) were great buddies... many a times, she has saved me from being thrashed by both my parents... so the soft corner i had (she is no more) for her.
in an after-dinner walk that we had gone for, she held my hand and said, "shortly you will be married and will go, leaving your parents, to another home. you will not like many things about the new place, the new people, even the guy you have chosen to be your life partner and you will not be able to discuss them with all, maybe none at times. but always take care to build the relationship with B and his family, guided by your conscience." this was no tall order i thought then, the immature 24-year-old as i was... i know better now, though i have tried to abide by her advice...

some instances stay on with you... this is one such. aunt was no career lady, no working woman, but what she told me for the sake of building a satisfied married life, has stood me in good stead in LIFE, in general...

when the soul is touched... i thank LIFE

2009-01-01T12:09:00.006+02:00

the first day of the year... my birthday too...
am fortunate enough to be part of a small, well-knit group of colleagues who make life better, more worthy of living and cherishing...
that is the BIG picture, as one cliche would put it.
but i am grateful for that... but that is not the point of the post...
we had a small, simple New Year celebration in office, which was also a birthday celebration for me and my colleague N and today's post is wholly dedicated to her...
i have mentioned her in one of my earlier posts, but just in passing...
she is our office Mom, who takes care of us, literally... she carts food from home regularly so that we are not hungry. she takes care of all the parties we keep having, from planning to executing it, with the same degree of warmth and personal touch as she runs her own home. she cannot say NO, even when it deserves a loud, clear one. she is unspoilt in this day and age when people think only about their own benefit. and she does all of this with a broad smile that is not put on... it comes genuinely from within. this is again the BIG picture about N which everyone who knows her in the office, knows...
what i discovered today, is something beyond words...
N and A (her hubby) have gifted me on my birthday a framed family pic which we took at Paris... A took time and effort to edit it and gave it the background of Invalides garden, though it was shot at the entrance to Napoleon's tomb...
and when i called A to thank him, he merely stated, "N wanted to surprise you..."
some people are just made differently...
thank you LIFE for giving me these moments which bring a lump inside my throat...

another new year... will it be new for all?

2008-12-31T15:39:00.005+02:00

Midnight today will usher a new year... new hopes... new goals (i know it is cliched, but many still make goals in the wake of a new year)...
midnight today, will not make a big, huge difference in the lives of many others who are living every minute in fear in Gaza where for the past five days there has been relentless rocket fires...
this post is not to discuss the right/wrong of what is happening and address why is it happening...
i am too puny a person to do that...
for the moment, let's think about the countless injured, in ramshackle hospitals, which are running short on every blood group... the countless homeless, trying to track their children, who may or may not be alive, mass funerals which are not attended by the kith and kin since many are nameless faces... but very much people of this planet, with the same emotions, same pains, same joys, same aspirations as you and me... but so much less fortunate than us... have you wondered at this small truth?
i have... and felt grateful for this small life of mine, which despite many issues, which i, at times, consider enormous, has given me the joy of a child who misses my absence, a husband who still wants a lot of attention and care, a Mother who still pines for my company and demands periodically that i tell her today when i am going home next, a job which is satisfying (if not hugely lucrative), colleagues who are good human beings...
in 2009, that is my only goal... to remain a satisfied individual, crib less, carry on with a smile and make some few people around me happy... AND (this is most important) shrug all bias, since that is the root of all unhappiness...

the real ME

2008-12-27T13:01:00.003+02:00

where is she???? the real me... i am delving deep and i know not where she is...
to Mom, i am the daughter who is needed for everything that one can imagine, her details of money spent, where should she go for her next holiday, her complaints against the world, her agonies of loneliness...
to R, i am her Mom, whom she needs, to tell her her stupid stories, her quarrels in school or her performance at the Toastmasters classes that she is going for in her winter vacation, show her anger, negotiate a deal (most of such deals are wholly unfair and totally in R's favour) but one she cannot afford to ignore since as she herself says, "you are my fat, sweet Mummy"...
to B, i am the wife, who does not cook (but arranges for food for all meals), who keeps a neat home, who is still more a friend rather than a wife, so can share a good bit of his secrets (odd ones, like the new sexy secy in office, without insecurity) but who knows him bone to bone and whose opinions he relies on...
to natal family, the eldest of my generation, even now cherished by aunts and uncles (on both sides) who make an effort to keep themselves informed about this idiot who is too busy with her life that she does not keep a tab on them...
to marital family, the elder daughter-in-law, somewhat distant, somewhat tough, somewhat decent, but can be relied on in times of crisis...
to friends,(very few and far between) who can talk about any and everything that bothers them since the sounding board is not judgemental...
to colleagues, who miss the banter and the loud voice when i am on vacation but who can be entrusted with work safely...

in all these myraid me-s, where am i? it is all of these put together, added one layer with the other to make a fat, strong, pig-headed whole, very opinionated, and not very scared about her opinions...

the flop baker

2008-12-23T19:38:00.003+02:00

it's winter vacation in schools... trying time for all those who have to leave their children and go to work.
and more trying if the child is home alone...
so Mummy turned a baker in the evening today...
one who hardly cooks (and does not feel sorry for the fact) steps into the kitchen since R wants the cake batter (not the cake, mind you)... she wants to lick the batter from the bowl in which Mummy has made the batter and emptied it in another for it to bake...
there was a time, when in a phase of transition between countries, i was at home (read, not employed) for six whole months... the MOST diificult time of my life... i had sort of decided to find a job where i could dictate timings (fancy me, as usual) so that R could be looked after as well... that story i will tell later...
it is in that fateful six months that i got hooked on to tele, a vice and an opium at one shot... so in addition to all the soaps, i watched the cookery shows too...
so when today's batter turned into a hard lump after mixing four, sugar, essence, baking powder, i ran to the bedroom to locate my yellowish notes... those that i had taken down with my bionic speed while the host almost wound up the show... and found that i had not added butter...
quickly i added that, but some evil eye had cast its spell... so bake i did, but the cake (R and i call it so) turned out totally flat...
but R licked the batter and kissed me with the batter all over her face...
B, am sure, will not even notice the yellowish thing lying on the table...
and for consolation, R wants a bit of that lump for tomorrow's breakfast.
she understands that Mummy is no cook or baker... and has internalised it well. she instead reads the magazines i write for (including the fashion title which she reads cover to cover and is on top of things in that domain)and tells her friends about the issues we try to talk about...
at least, her mind seems to be occupied.
for all my inefficiency with cooking, i try to make it up by the books that i get for R from the library or Virgin Megastore...

On the lap of history...

2008-12-16T12:17:00.005+02:00

this is my reaction to our latest vacation. we literally were in the lap of history, with each building, nay each brick in the city of Paris, having some history attached to it.
it is difficult to have savoured the city in just five days... one really needs to be there for five years... only if one can retain her status as a tourist and does not have to get into the fray of earning a living, can one do real justice to the awesome place.
a bird's eye view of the city one gets on top of both the Eiffel Tower (do not bother to go to the topmost level, since with fog, visibility is limited; the second level is good enough) and the Arc de Triomphe. it is from this latter landmark that the fashion capital of the world pans out in 12 different directions, with La Defence and the Louvre equidistant on either side.
for one, the country has and knows how to preserve history. they have kept the memories of its stalwarts (that we laymen from other countries know only as characters popping out of history pages) alive... so Napoleon and his family, De Gaulle and his exploits have been preserved in museums dedicated to them...
when monarchy died out in this advanced nation, palaces fell vacant, but not the memories associated with them... and what better use can a nation do of its old palaces than to convert them into museaums?
so one has the Louvre, a museaum that has the largest art largesse in the world, including the Mona Lisa, the Invalides that has Napolean's tomb on the one hand and his daily budget on the other... such is the detailing that has gone into the thought behind the collection...
why leave out the Siene? a cruise on it takes one from the Sorborne University to the Notre Dam, the Versailles Palace and the French Assembly...
and if history does not interest you and fashion does, go for Paris. the average man and woman in the city looks and carries as much fashion and style that sets the tone and direction of the whole world. so stroll on Champs Elysees and you'll see budding models who may make it to the cover of Vogue some day on the open ramps in the many shops that line this avenue. and believe me, all the images of Hollywood from the late 1960s till this day fall in perspective on the Champs Elysees... each lady/man that you see on the roads remind you of some Western movie or the other... they carry colours, bright and muted; new patterns, loud and understated; new cuts, bold and traditional, with equal elan.
and what about the open romancing? o la la... each couple had their lips locked, be it on the Metro, or the Champs Elysees or lift taking us to the top of Eiffel Tower... inspired by all these lip-locking romantics, B and i, managed to hug a couple of times and requested R to click us... that was very romantic for us and the photographer merely managed the shots, with a lot of unasked questions...
it is all a question of perspective... where the West believes in showing off their love, we feel it is something to be felt...
all in all, nice trip, great weather, good food, smooth wine and memories of a lifetime... while i have put this down here, R is busy her Paris collage and B is humming Champs Elysees... that's his way of compensating himself for not having seen the Lido show...

glycerine soap for winter; normal hard soap for summer

2008-12-09T15:53:00.002+02:00

there used to be a clear segregation of the type of soap to be used in winter and summer... look at the hoardings all over, the radio or occasional (then) TV advertisements and all one could fathom was: glycerine soaps are meant for winter and there were a plethora of local names (they were too puny to be called brands) to choose from...
with glycerine soaps piggy backed the skin care lotions: names like Tuhina, Basanta Malati that appealed to the earlier generations and Nivea, Dove to the later ones...

this was the scenario when we were growing up... soaps and skin care products were touted only on the anvil of winter... rest of the year, one could live without any regimen of skin care...
and believe me, we lived this... we became conscious of skin care only when the weather became drier, each year, year after year...
the rest of the sultry, sweaty summer passed without much ado about skin care...

today, when R spends aeons in front of the mirror, applying lotion, all year round, i find it perfectly normal...
but when i look deeper into this, i feel, she is growing in different times, away from family elders... many of my growing up experiences were different from R because we always had invisible power centres outside of the immediate family, constantly interferening in the way we were growing up, giving 'new' (since they did not strike Mom alone) ideas on how growing children need to be controlled. we, as parents, do not give such liberty to anyone to comment on our child's limits and on our parenting lacunae...

this has its merits and shortcomings... she is growing free from interference, but equally she has very few people who know her as a person, even within the wider family... in my natal set up, she is my daughter; in B's family, she is his...

random moments

2008-12-09T11:53:00.004+02:00

Eid holidays are on. before every long break, i set out some tasks for myself, not in writing but in the mind. creates less pressure than a written list, possibly.
this time, it was clearing the closets and the enormous book case R has, part of which she has managed to fill with all the rubbish she gets from anywhere and everywhere.

yesterday was closets clearing day... time to chuck out old clothes, none of which are torn or even faded, but those that we have got tired of wearing. time to sort those clothes out in neat packets and old suitcases. while most of these were R's since she has outgrown quite a lot of her clothes which were just dumped into this unused corner, while sorting these out, my mind seemed to get into those moments that went into carefully selecting those frocks, those dungarees, those tights, those Ts... and picturing R in them... when she ran with those, when she smiled in them and when she fell with them on... part of it were also gifts from Mom or B's parents... remembered some of those old moments when the gifts were given to R, nothing rich or ornate, but filled with love for their only grand daughter... incidentally, R does not any girl cousins... on both sides, she just has younger brothers, three naughty ones...
now the challenge is to find out what one can do with these clothes. coming from a country where a many have insufficient clothes, we feel guilty if we have to just junk them out. i would like to give it away to some organisation which looks after kids so that these could be put to good use. does anyone know of any such local organisation?

today was the book cleaning day. first of all, must say R tries to obey me. when i keep telling her that last year's exercise books which have pages left must not be thrown, but used this year for rough work, she has followed the first bit of advice... not thrown them. but has she used them? i don't think.
so what is the use of keeping them? "Will use them some day," was her response... when? when? when?

possessiveness? or mean-ness?

2008-12-07T16:10:00.005+02:00

recently, i came across a lady who seemed most graceful in everything she does -- working tirelessly, managing a home with three generations, having a very well-defined identity, great marriage and above all seems happy with herself...
actually, the last is what should have been first since that is, to me, the root of all else she does...
this lady, i shortly discovered is also very generous (i do not have any better word to use here) with her husband...
odd, but true...
she knows of her husband's ex-crush since they were friends before they became serious about each other... what's more, she does not shy away from the fact that the crush caused quite a bit of pain to her now-husband...
honestly, i have not been able to categorise her... is she very smart? realistic? not possessive?
or many others are dumbos? impractical? mean?
many other marriages i know of would have collapsed had the wife/husband known of the husban/wife's ex-crush... here, it is as smooth as butter...
after a lot of analysis, i finally concluded: it takes all kinds to make this world and she is one of the rare kinds. two, it is just a question of attitude and she has loads of it...
keep it up, wifey, though she would, as far as i have known her, would loathe this descriptor...

how do the mornings look?

2008-12-05T09:05:00.004+02:00

how does the morning look at your home? how does the morning look at X's home or Y's home?
today, on a lazy winter weekend, while having my date with a steaming cuppa, i was reminded of this eternal query on my mind, aeons back...
i would love the way the morning looked at home with the sun kissing the bed, bathing the balcony with its warmth and creating a feeling of hope and renewal in my mind.
similarly when visiting my Mom's natal home or my paternal grandparents or any aunt, i first thing i would do when i woke up, was to run out and see what the morning was like... how did the trees look? how did the flowers bloom? how long was the shadow of the house? how did the people walking in the sun look? how much sunlight did the rooms have? and all these at later hours too... for the road in the morning looked different from the road at 10 am or 12 noon...
thus, i hated the monsoons, many days of which began with an overcast sky.
but for all my rendevous with the morning, which i never realised then, i understand now that it was possible only because of the habit of early rising that was forced down our gullet. so i had decided that once on my own, i would never wake up early when i am on my own.
but as luck would have it, i entered my professional life in a city that never sleeps... so my morning sojourns continued, but in a different way... i was in a train coming towards VT or Churchgate in Mumbai...
and now it is more of habit... i cannot sleep beyond a particular hour and can neither lie down when awake...
i have come to enjoy the mornings alone, i do not want to talk, i do not want to be distracted from my gaze outside the window where i stare out at the shadows that the buildings opposite my home create, the slow pace of the day (today), given the less number of cars on the road, some curious by-standers...
and let me tell you, i go back home each morning when i am looking out here at the speeding cars in the road outside my window... and one question in my mind is... morning are you the same there as you were 17+ years back?

have you done this?

2008-12-04T08:13:00.003+02:00

i have not. but given a chance to re-do what i have done, this i surely would...
well let's have a better bargain... i will do it for our Silver Wedding Anniversary, some 8 years from now and will invite you too...
on a different note, B's colleague and his wifey are all excited about their 25th Wedding Anniversary, they will wed again in the Church where they got married, they will have all nth cousins attend it, and the two MCs will be their son and daughter. while they are full-time planning, Mr A (B's colleague) sends out the e-Card to all in the office.
an hour later, N, a young lady who works in Mr A's team, comes in hurriedly and says, "Happy Birthday, A... and many happy returns."
crest fallen and in no mood to clarify, he sobs his heart out to B, who could not help laughing out loud.
when i heard it at dinner, i almost choked and R, in the midst of a glass of water, spewed it out on the wall.
who said insensitivity is not fun?

our people assessments

2008-12-02T10:05:00.003+02:00

we do it all the time, whether we are conscious of it or not... we study people, we look at them intently, we re-look at the interaction we have had, we keep on revisiting the experience and on the basis of all these, we draw an image of the person in question; we also tailor our expectations of people -- how they will behave with us, how they will react in a particular situation, how they will deal with life in general... based on the assessment that we have made...
and many a times, we are correct in the way we have formed our opinion of the world around us. so we feel, life really rocks.
but what we forget to factor in all of these is: the person(s) we have assessed is not a static entity, s/he has a mind that is also working over-time, moulded by all the experiences that s/he is having on a continuous basis. so what we assessed on day x, may not hold true on day y
so some other time, we feel that we have goofed up on our assessments and are shocked by the way people (whom we have formed opinions about) act, react or behave.
the shock, however, comes only in the first instance of the new behaviour pattern... and as we lick the wounds of the shock, mind you, the bugger inside, already starts work in re-sketching the opinion and re-setting the parameters so that we have an easier time dealing with the person in question, the next time on.in the midst of all this, we also need to factor in another variable: while we assess, we are also being continually opined on... and the person's reaction to us, whether pleasing or shocking to us, has also been coloured by the way s/he has assessed us...
so next time you face a jab (silent or vocal), remember to count in all these in your mind...
well, have i told myself all this????????????

Happy Birthday R

2008-12-01T18:45:00.004+02:00

it is 13 years for R who was born this day in 1995.
13 years for B and me as parents.
13 years for two families with their first grandchild.
lots of memories, lots of looking back.
but one wish...
May you grow fine, R,
May you hold your head high
May you love others
And allow others to love you.
Mummy

at last

2008-11-30T13:07:00.002+02:00

the Government of India has not only paid lip service of taking responsibility for the horrors that Mumbai went through, but is also re-manning its key posts.
the Home Minister has gone, at last, replaced by the erstwhile Finance Minister, someone known for his 'will do' attitude.
the National Security Advisor has also put in his papers...
at the State level, why should the entire Government be not given marching orders? R R Patil's comments on the tragedy is now history... only if he lost one hair, i am sure, his tone would have been different... and with what authority is he talking about not putting in resignations? we need to invent some adjectives to describe his ilk...
hopefully, we will see a more responsible, tough guys in charge...

and the media too, after being reminded by an eminent film-maker, have now started talking about the people who were affected at VT Station... better late than never...

we just are a patient race, and believe in giving endless chances... is that to cover for our own inaction?

Mumbai, we are with you

2008-11-28T12:44:00.002+02:00

the purpose of writing is is not to add anything to what has been going on now for the past 40 hours, the longest duration terror which has struck India and Indian sovereignity.
as usual, the victims are people who did not choose what has happened to them. first time of course, terror has struck the wealthy, though that is by no means any justification of what the terrorists have done.
one common logic that the media (the audio-visual) has been giving is: Mumbai with its resilience will bounce back to normalcy, as it had done post 1993 when the Stock Exchange, the Air India building, and countless other locations were blasted. then happened the 2006 July blast.
and for once, i could not agree more with Shobha De, who left-right-centre blacklisted all the politicians... true, the security expenses of the State exchequer that goes to keep these politicians safe is totally mis-spent. instead more money should be spent in the security of common people.
the role of the media in this entire coverage is not beyond question. while it is for them that the world gets to know what is happening moment to moment, questions remain on the way the coverage is being done. first and foremost, why show these things live? are we not giving banal criminals a place they do not deserve? second, why should top ranking (hierarchically) reporters fly from Delhi to cover in Mumbai, when there are local staff, well trained ones who are there? yes, i am referring to Barkha Dutt.
next is the issue of intelligence. when these terrorists came by boats, what were the Indian Coast Guards doing? and mind you, the Coast Guards are right across the Taj. If one sees a global pattern in what is happening, security in hotels need to be tightened.
what is confusing is: should the cops been more rash and stormed in? obviously, they feared for civilian lives. but what price are we paying for being patient, now that there is news of fresh encounters?
how long more will this whole fiasco last?

is expression the whole of love?

2008-11-28T11:32:00.003+02:00

nope... or so i thought.
love is something which is to be understood, felt and cherished, silently, in privacy... this is what my socialisation was all about... my natal family never believed in love which was shown... so bro and i had one of the most down-to-earth upbringings... public hugs and kisses were taboo, nay i do not think, it ever crossed our parents' minds.
privately also, when just with their children, the only expression of affection i recall from Dad was in a coy, but broad smile and softening of his small eyes, behind his glasses. Mom also, now i feel, was too serious in her responsibilites as a homemaker and a mother, so much so that she did not remember to show either of us any affection, except on our birthdays, when she hugged us tight and blessed us.
with this notion of love, i stepped out into a world of my own, with B, 17+ years back.
my marital family belongs to two schools of thought on love. my DIL is a strict Dad, no-love-to-be-shown school. MIL, on the contary, is very expressive with hers for her children and grandchildren, and since her elder son possibly expected a replication of some, if not all traits, of hers in his bi(e)tter half, he got a rude shock, initially.
i was never (and still am not) a hugging, kissing kind, something which if you know me well, you would have known. i hate showing emotions publicly. in that, i strictly carry the torch of my parents.
my love is in the deeds i do... if i feel warmly for a person, it will be evident in my dealings with that person; contrarily, if i feel cold towards someone, i will show it, though, i feel, over time, the latter has mellowed.
today, i tried to rewrite the love-not-to-shown rule about myself... being B's birthday, i decided i will show off my **** for him... so i did cook some things he likes... and who noticed the difference first? not B, who went about the morning like any other Friday, but R, whose big eyes turned bigger... she ran to her Dad and both came together to the kitchen...
B just gave a stingy half-inch smile... i think i have infected him with my love-not-to-be shown bug, but R gave me a hug and tonnes of kisses.
i will try to do this more often, let's see if i can...

flexi hours and we

2008-11-26T07:22:00.006+02:00

i have to write this, since i practise it and have all along advocated it... switched jobs in a jiffy, just so that i could work on my terms, not in anything else, but time. i have always felt that i need to decide my work timings, i need to be in command, though i would leave the targets to my employers... so i have always given the logic: you give me the target and the timeframe; let me decide how i want to work around it. and i am, if necessary, available online 24x7 (sounds marketing cliche, i know, though i am not an expert marketeer in any case)
what she says is true and i agree wholeheartedly.
yes, it is a fact that at the end of a tiring day, we feel a little conned... but what else is the go between fixed hours (which may or may not suit us, mothers and homemakers, who take those roles equally seriously), stiff targets and managing our times (which in essence is linked to the timimgs of our children, our spouses, our cooks, et al)?
i have experimented a lot in this domain. i have held jobs, cushy ones, but which required my presence at office for 12 hours. while it suited me fine when we were DINKS (double income no kids) and we were that for a good five years after marriage, once R came along, i was no longer ready to do it... started my working from home, started my poring over proofs at midninght in between feeds and comforting a cranky child...
the result -- i quit with a golden handshake.

get into another job, specifying clearly that i would be available only between 10 am and 6 pm... the result, i was unable to attend most meetings which were deliberately fixed after 5 pm, to suit the decision-making men in the company (i happened to be the only lady supposed to be attending those meetings)...
the result -- i quit again, moving cities, with B's new job...

the next stint, very rewarding in terms of the things i learnt on the job, but killing since most work started flowing late in the evening, after a full day at work, since i left on time and the refrain was, "you will do it, we know.".
the result -- quit yet again, this time with B's transfer to a new city.

yet another stint starts... again i specify that i am available only on fixed hours of the day, while delivering all the work on time... but the men i work with refuse to understand that while working in a team, there have to be some priorities fixed according to the lady member as well.
the result -- quit to leave the country, with B again.

sit at home for a six months, determined never to look around for a job, but is that possible with me? nope...
find writing work, strictly specifying that i am available only in the mornings...
this arrangement continues, but R has grown up, she can manage herself to an extent, though bouts of being ignored, periods of attention deficit happens. and her quote of the week is, "you love the comp more than you love me."... so to deal with that, i am hugging her tight, but a part of my mind is on the Cover Story i am supposed to put in today...

to be honest, however, i am largely satisfied with flexi hours. yes, there are taxing times. yes, we do tend to work more. yes, i too feel over-worked and over-taxed (i am working all weekends, in the evenings, sometimes in the nights), but i call the shots when it comes to my time, my home, despite minor adjustments, carried on fine. that, however, is possible because of the fantastic team i am a part of. most of us are women who have children, some are expecting... but we are pulling it off... with perfect understanding, perfect poise and balance, much to the chagrin of many.

my time obsession

2008-11-21T09:50:00.004+02:00

this is one strong obsession i have and try as i have might, i have not been able to change it... it is in my upbringing. Mom and Dad always insisted for both of us that if we had to be in a place at a particular time, we had to be before time.
now in our respective professional lives, bro and I are misfits in some cases, correct in some others.
in 99 out of 100 cases (why not 100, i will explain down), we are correct... so in many conferences, i show up just a while after the organisers, while the other journos are either caught in traffic or in some other assignment.
today, when i called up Georgetown University at the nick of 1 pm, the time they are supposed to open and could renew my books, i was thrilled...someone is really following the clock, i mused.
and i insist the same with cab drivers, with R, B of course... and when a colleague who came home one evening and narrated the harangues i had with cabbies, B was cool and replied, "if city cabbies have such a tough time, you can imagine my plight."
but when i was five minutes delayed in a meeting this week, because of traffic (and the fact that in flat 40 minutes, i had to run to the pharmacy for R who came home with fever and B was in a meeting, not to be disturbed) and received a little less than double-didgit calls in exactly 30 minutes, my heart broke on two counts: one, i had done what i hate others do, make people wait; two, i had missed the record of being the super hyper human on the planet.
while i will take care about the first and will try harder to be before time in any meeting, be it an oil & gas conference that i am covering or a luxury house which is opening a new outlet, i am not sure what i can do for the latter. may be, in my next life, i will write for my own magazine, till then will have to grin and bear.

wilful exclusion???

2008-11-20T17:45:00.003+02:00

yes, certainly. if after being in the region for four years, one just does not know the language, s/he deserves to be excluded.
after many conferences, meetings that address only the Arab media, leaving the English out just as one would treat furniture or flower pots, i have vowed to learn the language... but have not moved my little finger... so i deserve to be left out.
yesterday, one more conference at the soon-to-be-opened Museaum of Islamic Art, one more instance of reminding the likes of me that we were just present, but did not count...
it started right at the entry, where the security took away my ID card (for many of us, that card represents us, a number with a photograph), handed a Visitor Pass... i hung on to that piece of paper and after getting stuck in at least four different points of security check, landed at the venue, which had been shifted from where i knew it was being held...
for once, in a long long while, i felt i was on foreign soil... there were none who spoke English... every soul was Arabic speaking, so all my desperate efforts at communicating were falling on deaf ears, with a small, staccato phrase, "mafi english."
to top it all, the security who was escorting me from one wing of the huge building to the other, thought i looked like some Chinese or Japanese...
ok, i thought... may be...
but while at the Conference, it was painful to be excluded... messages were only being translated on request... but the speakers could not only speak English, they were good at it... and that was evident when a prominent TV journo insisted to speak in English since her channel is telecast in many English speaking countries.
so where do we, who represent just the local circulating press, stand? any idea???

do i have quirks?

2008-11-14T15:39:00.002+02:00

yes, it is an endless list... and as this colleague says, there cannot be universal quirks... what is quirky for one, could seem perfectly normal in the other...
here are mine:

1. my addiction for music... some tunes, some songs give me a high, so much so that i go on tuning them on, to the point that i loathe them after a point of time. while writing this too, i am on an old ABBA number.
2. my love for wine... the idea of being high on wine excites me more than the actual wine since i tend to fall asleep after a while.
3. i still smell R though she is almost a teen. i still ask her who she loves the most, in the fond hope that she takes my name, though she studiously avoids giving an answer.
4. i cannot sleep without a book beside my pillow. it could be just be a para that i read while in bed, but the book has to sleep with me.
5. i enjoy one person's company the most, apart from B: myself and can spend hours with just her.
6. remember the birthdays, anniversaries, the kids' birthdays of all in the wider family, including first cousins and silently expect that they reciprocate mine, knowing fully well that they will not.
7. expect that B will wake up early and make me cup of steaming tea in bed.
8. i love to sleep and sleep and sleep.

life, why art thou so difficult?

2008-11-13T11:37:00.002+02:00

i hate to whine. i hate whiners.
i love life. i love to live. and i love to live mostly on my terms.
therein lies the reason why i have difficulty in gulping a lot of things, swallowing terms set by others, though most of the time i work out a middle ground between what i want and what someone else says... but there are instances when i even wholly accept what the other person wants, if reason is better there.
but this one is different... this challenge is unique and to that extent more difficult. it is the first time in life that this is happening... naturally, with every first time, you dither, you are unsure, you are groping, you are looking for a way out, you are thinking how to react, you are weighing your reactions, you are responding, you are negotiating (covertly and overtly, with words, with gestures, with the way you look or stare), you are conscious of every word you say (aware that you are judged every single time)... and there are many more subconscious processes that your mind is engaged in.
it is in view of this, that i have not been here... i have come and gone... not stayed on, not elaborated, not felt like talking. my silence means my mind has been preoccupied...
today, a while back when i opened the edit post menu, i saw seven drafts that i have saved over the past one week... and believe me, i did not feel like continuing on even a single one of those...
i am dealing with questions, some of which are below, and i know that this test is mine alone, that i will have to figure out all the answers myself, that there are no second chances, that it is only the future that will let me know the correctness/incorrectness of the choices i make now, that i need to be patient and pleasantly so, that i cannot show that i am worried, that i need to behave normally...
1. what do you do when your child starts contradicting you on every single thing -- from food to dress to friends to how she is/should be occupied?
2. what do you do when she questions you relentlessly?
3. what do you do when she, though not very openly, shows that your opinion does not count, that it is useless?
4. what do you do when you know that though she does not say it, she is not taking you seriously?
5. what is the magic wand that will lead us out of this state? more love/less love; more time/less time; more space/less space; more freedom/less freedom; more concern/less concern... most important, how much is more? and how much is less?
till date, i have dealt with life more rationally than emotionally. i have tried to keep a balance between the head and the heart. i have found my own way out, my own answers to most questions in life.
hope this will be no exception.

PS: if someone reads this post with just the previous one, they could have doubts on my sanity... but such i guess is life.

R's Mummy and R

2008-11-06T07:51:00.004+02:00

below is what i feel about the most important role in my life...
i still have doubts on my mothering skills though it is 26 days short of 13 full years... and let me tell you also that R was neither an accident, nor an after thought... she was planned and timed, when my parents and B's had almost given up all hopes of their first grandchild...
my first reaction to this bundle of joy was insecurity... how could i understand when she is hungry? when sleepy? when in colic? how do i know how much to feed her? what do i do in case of a high fever? or when she does not pass stool? or vomits? or goes into a dehydration?... all related to creature comforts, all when she was hours, days, weeks, months and till two years old...
this stage passed... passed with days and nights of back-breaking effort, more so because we were alone without any family help, first-time parents, had to commute one-and-a-half hours each way to work and back, kept busy schedules at work, all this while the lady entrusted with her care at home while we were away at work, decided to leave, so enter the day care, and the big G rearing its head every day when we dropped her off, and she said, "bye" for 10 hours with a tear drop in each eye and a pout on her lips... my heart broke every day... but i could not bring myself to resign from a cushy job at Mumbai and later at Kolkata...
gradually, when we shifted to Kolkata and R began her play school, the challenge for me was to keep her mind occupied, teach her the difference between a y and a w, teach her social skills, read to her at night (i did that from the time she was barely a year old) so that she slept with dreams straight out of books...
then started formal school... change of routine from her play school, and the associated newness... by then, she had her friends and their moms became my friends (this process still continues)...
then came Delhi, change again... R struggled with Hindi with me... had new friends in her new school and all along when her friends said, "you look like your Mom," she relayed that to me with a twinkle in the eye... and one day told her friend, "obviously, because i was in her tummy for 248 days" (the mother of this friend recounted the count later over coffee!!)...
at this stage, she once told B, "i look like her, but my skin is like you, see the dots,"... an effort to humour B, lest her father feels left out...
Kolkata again... change again, new school again, this time a new board too... R looked tired at times with these frequent changes... but i learnt adjustment from her... that she is a silent kind with the habit of keeping things to herself i knew now...
enter Muscat... struggle less, because i was with her at home for six months at a stretch... new friends, new board, new country, new language, Arabic... but remarkable versatility
to Doha... she is 11... getting mature in logic, but knows how to negotiate and when not to, reads like us, incessantly, shows a mind of her own, with strong arguments at times... still dependent on me, i love that though B feels i am putting her in a handicap...
in fact, R renewed my faith in life when Dad left and left suddenly... she is the one who comforted me with her tiny hands whenever i became wistful... she pulled me back from a huge bout of depression, her kisses and hugs tell me that i am important, her eyes can spot a slight change of look or expression on my face, she is the one who cries when i am travelling on work, and it is she who takes me back home every single day... the entire structure of my day and night is wound according to her day.
never have i identified more with anyone else and she has shown me what my parents have done for me... so that i love them ever more.

words and words

2008-11-06T07:05:00.002+02:00

some instances of what i do not understand and most of these are very frequently used, cliche as they say:

1. the big picture: of what? and why big? why not small?
2. think tank: outside the tank does not think?
3. middle of nowhere: if it is nowhere, how can there be a middle?
4. shape of things to come: how is that possible?
5. dust settles: does it?
6. read between the lines: is there anything?
7. think outside the box: which one?
8. go nowhere: same as 3
9. heart of gold: possible?
10.hand over fist: can't be visualised
11. as luck would have it: why not plain luckily?

... more later, perhaps.

the last day, perhaps...

2008-11-04T10:55:00.005+02:00

of a world with a White US President... and that's really really rewriting history for a number of reasons, about which a little later.
right now, my mind goes back to my student days in college, when as part of our major curriculum, we had to study the US constitution and one of the most difficult to engage topics at that stage was the Presidential elections... how the popular votes and the electoral college votes work to get someone elected or knocked out... remember the controversy over George Bush's second term in 2004?
anyhow, today the whole world is gazing at the US... it will be good to have a refreshing change... Obama, for one, has brought about a major change in the way the whole campaign has been conducted. many watchers have compared him to John Kennedy and the whiff of fresh air that the latter had brought about, in his brief term before his assassination.
Obama, unlike Kennedy, has fought it every inch, first against a formidable rival within his own party and now more against Bush rather than McCain since the Americans see a Republican re-election as nothing but continuation of the many international (Iraq, the foremost) and national (economy in shambles, which stole the show in the last few weeks) blunders that Bush has done on over the past eight years...
while he has these blunders on his favour, he has his colour against him... and that is not an easy thing to overcome, going by the fact that there are no past preceedents... the only reference that colour has had in the American context is negative, though with the coverage of the campaign, the Presidential debates and the polls which consistently has suggested Obama leading by no matter how slim a margin, it is by now clear that he has relaid the length that colour can set for him, transgressed the erstwhile boundary and the marginalisation on the basis of colour... this itself is a big big leap... and if American media reports are to be taken word for word, it has clearly branded Obama as someone who has given the nation a new way of looking at life... not only has he based his campaign on the theme of change, he also has a definite agenda when he talks about the US economy, though it will mean less outsourcing to cheaper labour hubs like India or protectionist trade policies...
we just need to see whether Americans are sane enough to buy that worldview...

how much do children share with parents?

2008-11-01T11:03:00.005+02:00

depends on how much they are allowed to share, period. the child, when born, is a tabula rasa... it is us, the parents, who give them a shape, a state of mind, set largely by the contours of allowable behaviour that we set for them. in setting this parameter, we are driven by our own experiences... and there are two ways of reacting to our own framework... the more common reaction is to redo what we faced, trangress the limits we faced and set more space for the child to operate in. this is the outcome of our own unmet wishes, our way of rebelling against the cramped space we may have got as children; the other is to ditto what we have gone through as children and is an ideal case scenario since most of us tend to have assessments on what we faced as children and what could have been better had our parents been a little different...
whichever route we take, there is bound to be rethinking, at least periodically and many a times, we set the rope tighter for our child(ren) or give them more space.
the child(ren), like sponges, take in and absorb from every single experience, every single encounter... and each moment a small line is created on her/his/their minds...
so every censure they face, every condemnation of their action that we do, leaves an impression on their minds and will affect their next line of action...

two years in Doha

2008-10-30T07:54:00.002+02:00

today we complete two years here... quite an accomplishment, going by B's track record of finding jobs in a jiffy and no I haven't reminded him yet of two years gone by, lest he starts updating his CV and looking out...
somehow, i have sort of fallen in love with this place... possibly it is familiarity, but love there is between me and Doha... and this is now...today, when i was passing by Airport, trying to recollect how Doha looked like when we first landed and came out searching for the hotel coach that was supposed to be waiting for us... the first reaction was a little jerk... having come in from as beautiful a city as Muscat, we were struck by the work going on, on the roads, the city was busy preparing for the Asian Games that were to begin on December 1, 2006...
now of course, we have understood and accepted that ongoing work is what this city is all about... in fact, even the hotel where we checked in is no longer there...
and some entire roads have been redone, some flyovers broken down, some roundabouts made signal driven...
but now that i love this place (despite the hours that we spent initially commuting between Luqta and Office, the two shift of homes that we have done, the pain i underwent after having enrolled in the driving class here), i want it to continue... let R pass out from here, let her not be new girl again, let me hold on to this job (i love that too), let B's mind be settled in his present job, so that when we move, we move finally...
is that a tall order? hope not, dear B.

the non-existent house

2008-10-29T18:41:00.002+02:00

it does not exist any more...
yes, there is a multi-storey building in its place, which made more economic sense to the five sons and two daughters of one Mr Ganguly who built this house after marrying off one of his daughters in 1956, keeping away money for the wedding of his younger daughter who was still studying...
a good part of my childhood was spent in this house... i am a grand child of Mr Ganguly... no i haven't seen him, since he passed away five years before i was born... but i have seen the huge oil paintings of him, his wife (whom i have seen and am told resemble a lot, my grandmom, my Mom's mom), his ancestors and his wife's ancestors in the high-ceilinged house that he built...
part of our (my bro's and mine) summer vacations and winter vacations were spent in this house... it had two huge balconies, one on each floor... the floor was of red cement, shining red, with black borders... there was a well-kept lawn in front of the house and a well at one corner, where we, the grandchildren, took bath, on days we wanted to be different from the other days...
mornings at this house were different than those at our home... it began early with tea, crisp toast and butter, with All India Radio to match the grandfather clock that was in the hall, with merun sofa...
the sun came in all brilliance from the large open windows, with dark curtains which were tied neatly by Mr Ganguly's third daughter in law... it is her husband, my third maternal uncle, their son (who still stays with his family now in one of the flats in the apartment) and daughter who stayed in that house from the day it was made till the day it was broken down for some money that the siblings, My Ganguly's children, had agreed on with a builder...
after a hurried round with the newspaper, my two uncles went for bath, had breakfast, carried lunch and were off to work, leaving the house to their families and us, the occasional pampered visitors...
my Mom was happiest when here... she became carefree and went out leaving us with cousins, aunts and foremost, our grandmom, whose smell i can still get if i think hard... Dad would come to drop us off and pick us up after a scheduled number of days...
i still dream of this house... how we fought on the balconies, how we played hide and seek, how we watched the sun set and planned the next day...
and as the dream wares out and i wake, i feel a pang in my heart...
Mr Ganguly, Mrs Ganguly... i too feel the pain that your children could not keep your dream house intact...

PS: i am the child of the daughter who was not yet married when Mr Ganguly built this house in 1956.

forgive i will, forget i won't

2008-10-27T14:43:00.009+02:00

i am really really angry and why shouldn't i be? i am asking myself...
we had a small Diwali party in office... organised by some of us, we sent out a mail to all in the office: let's assemble at the pantry at 12 noon and have a small get-together...
we got the food, were all ready, waiting for our colleagues to join in... some who were out on assignments rushed back as soon as they were done...
some other people, however, were conspicious by their absence... they did not take calls when contacted and did not excuse their absence...
and they were home for lunch!!!... this while we went all the way to join in their Iftaars...
since some of us work on two shifts, our friends came back and headed for the pantry saying, "is there food for us?"
some of my colleagues do not know what to read into this initial absence followed by taking food when the party is over...
i am confident that they have deliberately not come: if the meet is at a particular time, they should have been there, or else have had the courtesy to inform us...
should we make an issue of this? or should we carry on, move away from this? the latter seems more of an educated choice... this is how we have been bred, nurtured, indoctrinated...
the seething anger will settle, we will have to carry on working... and though i will possibly forgive them when a new sun rises, i may not be able to forget this...

marriage and/or success?

2008-10-27T10:34:00.004+02:00

this is a crucial paradox but true nonetheless... women have to choose between a stable, successful marriage and sky rocketing professional career...
and i have stopped asking why... i did ask these whys when i was younger, when i was relatively inexperienced, but now i keep silent (in fact, while i was in the process of being hired by a financial institution way back in 1993, i was asked at the second interview, "what are your family plans?" when i did not understand and my face said it, the Executive Director of the company asked me, "we mean when do you plan to have children?" pat i replied, "pardon me, but had there been a guy in my place, would this question have arisen? and equally pat came the reply from the ED, "no certainly not, since he would not take maternity leave and be away from work like a lady would need to." so though i did not answer that question and was still hired, the question still lingers in my mind)... but have still not accepted it... and often question the choices i myself make from time to time...
how many women have you come across personally, who are very very successful and have a rocking family and family life? whose success on the job has not eaten away balanced children, a happy spouse? who sits on the Board of her company, travels 20 days a month on work, have brilliant children and an equally successful spouse?
honestly, i have seen very successful women from very close quarters... but the choices they have been able to make, can by no means be universal... one lady i knew, was the Joint MD of the same company i referred to above... she was certainly very successful, having been shortlisted by Forbes... her children were quite balanced, but her spouse was remarkable... he was an armyman, took early retirement to be with the kids to enable his wife to fly professionally and introduced himself as "Mr LDG"... very few, i repeat, very few men would do this...
another lady, equally successful, has two growing children, but her spouse has chosen to work from home on his own business... this has worked two ways... a) the women have taken the lead in career, b) aided by men who have made a different kind of choice... but they possibly could do it as a family since there was no confusion on who wears the pants and even if the lady was more successful, that did not hurt the usually fragile male ego.
now not all women can hope for such robust support structures... again, am i opining that because of the men in their lives, these women could be successful to the extent they have been? possible... and why not? if so many score women all over the world are taking easy careers (your truly included, to be blank honest) just to enable the husband ride exciting career and career booms, what is wrong with some men doing it...
just the other day, B received a mail from an ex student of his... she works for Infosys, is on different continents on different days of the week, and is still single at 29. her parents have told her to find a guy, but she has not been able... she says that most men she knows want home-makers as partners... and she does not want to turn a home maker...
are we heading towards a situation where we either have successful women or successful marriages?

first time this happened

2008-10-26T15:54:00.003+02:00

there is a first time for everything... so this too had to happen... highly highly unlikely... but it has... an assignment was marked to me by way of a mail, usual way of going about work... what i do is to make a mental note and carry on.
this too, i clearly remember seeing... but do not recollect having made the mental not...
so what should not have happened has... i am busy chasing proofs since one magazine needs to be finalised... and i hear my superior on a line, "yes, someone is coming for Rolls Royce," as soon as i hear this, i know it is me... and i am still in the office, fifteen minutes behind the schedule time of presence and this is the same me who am on time for every single meeting, every single conference...

i have completely forgotten about it... so in flat 20 minutes, i land up after the event is over... tender my apologies and come away with the information pack...

as i walk out, i am not only surprised, but worried... in fact, even my superior is surprised that i have missed a meeting... this is not normal...
and let me tell you, these days, i am having a problem with some names, some words, though my date memory is still intact (in fact, it would be better if i could forget some birthdays, some anniversaries, some engagements)...

so is this a warning telling me to cast off my confidence and start making physical notes? i do not have an answer...

should we soul search?

2008-10-25T19:17:00.005+02:00

this says it all... if an award winning writer can comment that life would not change and that life in Mumbai"...has a way of reminding you that writers are not particularly important", it becomes telling.
really, for how many people is a book that important? how many people really follow what is going on the world of the printed word?... so even in the backdrop of a Booker, if Adiga commented as he did, it is time for some soul searching. Mumbai is just a micrcosm of the world where we are busy running our own routines... start early morning, run the whole day in chasing small goals, come home tired, wind up the day and start yet another unmeaningful, uneventful one...
while Adiga, since he lives in Mumbai, concludes so about his adopted home, most cities and its residents are more or less the same...
and believe me, writers are one of the most marginalised, in terms of the attention he or she gets... many consider the writer to be residing in a different domain (while s/he is constantly deriving her/his source of writing from what s/he observes around her/him)...
as Adiga says, "It won't mean anything to my neighbours, they won't know about this. Life will continue."... is this frustrating? or is this one stage ahead -- cynicism? i think it is the latter and that is because the writer in Adiga had to find publishers to talk to the world, while the next door remains closed...
yes many of the so called next door persons would say, "would Adiga talk to us if we did?"... is true also. Looking at the whole thing from the next door neighbour's perspective, i feel, there needs to be two way traffic... and that writers also have a role in their own alienation... but who takes the first step? there are expectations from both sides... the writer thinks the neighbour should come ahead, while the neighbour thinks the onus lies with the writer...
it is a broken communication... and this is as true of Mumbai, as London or New York... a larger human issue, i feel.

i live for some-time else

2008-10-23T23:03:00.003+02:00

it's really a problem... i either live for tomorrow (i always set the alarms for all the tasks that need a reminder tomorrow, today; i try to save money for tomorrow; i save the pleasures of today to be able to enjoy tomorrow... but till date that tomorrow in my mind hasn't come) or i live in yesterday (this latter i put on a facade and deny vehemently... but yes, a large part of me, which i try to hide from everyone, lives in ruminating, in nurturing the pleasant memories, analysing unpleasant ones)...
so this wooden box, a perfect cuboid, which contains first flush Darjeeling tea, that sits prim on the top of my refrigerator in the kitchen is taking my attention away as i write this... it is past midnight, R is in dreamworld, B is snoring... but i am caught with the wooden box... it was a gift from Fortnum & Mason when i was on work at London this summer... wrapped nicely, i did not have the time to open it and see then, though some Chinese journalists did comment on it, saying what a useless box to carry all the way to Shanghai... can't blame them though... they are used to herbal or green tea... that Darjeeling tea is a delicacy that few relish, as the lady from Australia commented, "in case you do not want your box, do pass it on to us." to our Chinese friend...
first flush... a term i heard when i was still single-digit old... and one reason why i hated Mumbai was because the entire city drank Assam tea from Lipton or Brooke Bond... so until i discovered Girnar Tea on Dadar West, just outside the station, i did not drink tea...
tomorrow i will empty the contents in a container and throw that wooden box... it reminds me too much of the time when tea was bought in wooden boxes from some tea garden in the Dooars, in the foothills of the Himalayas, in North Bengal...
i will have to live for today, starting now... to hell with my ruminating self.

are all success stories inspirational?

2008-10-23T14:28:00.003+02:00

there are various reasons behind success... for some it is sheer hard work, for others it is sheer luck, for a third bunch it is drive and energy, for the rest an admixture of all of of these...
but one trait that is common for most successful beings is perseverence... and none else but Bill Gates one else could prove this right... after announcing retirement from Microsoft , he is now yet again in a creation mood... and now the venture relates to a think tank that will oversee Gates’ personal pursuit of breakthrough ideas in science and technology...
while some draw lessons about success from his life, to me what stands out is his philanthrophy... succssful he certainly is and there is no denying that he has changed all our lives by his software genius...
the more important fact, to my mind, is the way he touches lives of so many unfortunate ones by his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
this indeed is a case of extraordinary success matched with extraordinary human qualities... the total package is rare, but inspirational certainly...

every nest has an aroma

2008-10-22T18:06:00.005+02:00

i was busy keying in a message, while turning the key of the home absent-mindedly... as i pushed the door open, my nostrils which cleared after a bad cold, were greeted by a strong smell... the smell of my home... of late there has been a new tinge to it, of a strong cleanser, the effect of a pest (only roach) control that we did some months back... minus this tinge, it has been the same smell across all my homes... all my 12 homes that i have set up, some earlier ones painstakingly, the latter ones, by way of habit...
the smell of a home has a personality, the same as that of the inhabitants... so there is a nicotine smell in the air at home, thanks to B's lean fags from Turkey; it has R's deo smell, which has replaced the tinge of the baby smell that abounded when she was a baby... but that baby smell i can still get when i recall her growing years; and the incense that we burn some days...
in the mornings, there is the perfume smell that i use before i go for work, B's after shave smell...
in the evenings, there is the smell of the cooking rice or the seasoning G, my cook (in fact, my life line, thank God, he does not read my blog... he could even ask for a hike) uses for the vegetable he cooks or the fish he fries...
all in all, it is our smell... and on days that i come to an empty home, with B at work and R, either visiting friends or in her classes, it is this smell that hugs me in... i feel reassured that i have come to a corner which is mine...
yet, it took a long while to get this identification... just after marriage, when in Mumbai, i could only identify with home back at Kolkata... so every long break we got, we ran there... so, not surprisingly, when Dad had come on work and i asked him how he liked my home, he answered, "nice. new concept. two bachelors staying together."
in fact, it was only after R came along and no matter how long a break we got at work, we could not run back, that my mind started taking root, longing to go back, but not with the same intensity... and the smell of my home started taking shape...