I am impressed

Surprise! Surprise!! i am impressed by the efficiency of a govt organization...., for a refreshing change.

I filed my income tax returns today( always the last day- and this time aided by the fact that my ex employer decided to send me the required documents five days ago!). There were no office boys around, so i decided to to this great task by myself. I dreaded the thought! going into any govt office makes me depressed.Things just do not move...

So i leave office after lunch, land outside the building and see a SEA of people waiting..i almost died. Then i realized that the sea was actually a multitude of queues..so i ask the seemingly ignorant gentleman at the entrace. He looks at my form and tell me exactly which queue to stand in...and in ten minutes, my returns were verified, and the acknowledgement stamped.
That was it..i was done. I stood there for a minute wondering if this was true...too good to be true. I have never seem such well coordinated crowd handling..everywhere you turned, there was someone to direct you to the right place.

Hats off to the IT department. I am truly impressed!

Balance...

What is your idea of a perfect weekend?? I am a little confused! This keeps changing, and not always for good.

There are weekends where i manage to finish most of my tasks on fridge list successfully by sunday evening. Weekend of accomplishment ---i should be happy. Problem is, most of those weekends just whizz by. On sunday night, i will be sitting on the bed, feeling happy about all the tasks accomplished, and wondering what happened to the weekend???It was just another day at work!

And then there are these weekends where you accomplish nothing. Like the last weekend. My fridge list is intact! I took V to stand in knee deep water outside our building , thanks to the heavy rains , and took him to KFC in the evening. On Sunday, we had brunch with friends,a couple we have known for half our lives and are V's godparents. Brunch- from 11.00 AM till 4.30 PM. ( Pls note- woke up at 10.00 AM), caught up on sleep after that(!!!!) and went for a late show. It felt like a weekend, truly. But then, i felt guilty- for not having done any of those stuff on my fridge list. Wasn't the weekend to finish off those pending stuff?

I am a little confused....so what is a ideal weekend? Well, simply put - it is one where you accomplish most of the tasks , and enjoy the weekend too. I never seem to be able to get the balance right..How many people actually do??

Who says familiarity breeds contempt?I disagree! At least not in all cases..definitely not in 3 1/2 year olds.

V came back last thursday with a CD that has most of the rhymes they learn at school....must admit i was equally curious to hear and see some of the unintelligable rhymes he keeps singing. Very cute, 40 min CD with his school logo prominently displayed. Everytime the logo was on display, V went into raptures. I should have known then....He ended up watching the CD thrice that day.

Well, today it is 5 days since the CD made its appearance at home, and i am ready to jump out of the window if i hear it anymore!.On the contrary , V and valiamma can sit through it, twice in a sitting, everyday( beats me!..maybe this is some indication of why they get along so well)...

Sooofaaaa

We have a sofa in our 'living' cum 'dining' cum 'everything' else room- considering we spend about 85% of the time at home in that room. Now this sofa is today's topic.
Nope----- it's not handed down the generations, it is not gifted, it is not the most expensive piece of furniture we own,but it hold a very distinguished place in our house. It was bought of a very small corner furniture shop in bangalore and is with us because - (1) TB got a bonus that month (2) We did not have anything to plonk ourselves in front of TV---in that order.

It is one of those foam filled, upholstered sofa's that every struggling couple invest in their early years of marriage and promply give up as years progress, a 5 seater( 3+1+1). The decision to buy this one was instant- it was cheap, it was brown- means no dusting required everyday ( i love browns, this one is a very mild brown, kind of like chocolate milkshake), and they were ready to transport it home at no additional cost..PERFECT.

So we have had this sofa for the last six years now? maybe more..it is the coziest sofa u could find...very warm in winter and early mornings, with a roomy armrest where you could balance glasses/ bowls of chips/ TV remotes and everything that you put there. TB used to spend his entire off days on this sofa - with a bag of chips and a bottle of soft drink close by, and the DVD player filled with at least three movies. This was before we had V...

Now, V practically lives off this sofa...he plays on it, reads on it, writes on it- literally, and watches cartoons on it. He even insists on having his food there. On Sundays, there is usually a first right of refusal fight..TB gets his pillow to settle down and V promptly plonks himself down. It is quite a sight to see father and son squeezing and making space to lie down in a sofa that is maybe 6X3 ft.

The old faithful sofa was entering its fouth year of existence in our house when we felt the need to upgrade ourselves, and get better seating arrangements. For some vague reason i cannot recollect now( it must be divine intervention) the thought got shelved and the sofa stayed on....I can't be thankful enough for that.

In the last three years, that sofa has been subjected to torture of the third degree in several forms...here are some of the stuff that the sofa was subjected to ......
Cereal/ Tea/ Coffee/ Juice/ Vegetables that V does not like to eat/ hot water/ ink/ jelly and various forms of food that V munches on...and ahem!..lots of PEE( i know its gross, but this is the truth) . Of course all the times when he is sick, he promply throws up on the sofa..

And here are some stuff that have gone into the various crevices and have not been extricated till date----Remnants of chips / plastic spoons/ bits of crayons/ Toffee wrappers/SHEAFFERS PEN- brand new!!/ buttons/ hooks/ bottle caps/ tissue paper/ small handkercheifs/ broken pencils...and thousand other things that i have no clue about.
V has also managed to break open a refill last week and promptly wiped off all the permanent ink on the sofa. So now we have this huge blue amoeba shaped ink stain on one of the single seaters that i have manged to move to a not so noticable part of the room.

Maybe we should move on in life, dispose off the sofa. It is not is any condition to be displayed when we have guests over( nor is our walls , for that matter- they are an extension of V's creative energy. I tried telling him that it is his house and he should not be drawing on the walls. Pat came the reply- " this is not my house, my house is in bangalore"- i gave up).

We now live with a stained sofa that has more stuff hidden inside than a treasure chest, in a house where there are abstract drawings on the wall, that can be any animal as V wishes, and zillions of broken toys, at least half of which are strewn around the house at any point in time. Would i like to have it any other way...NEVER!That sofa is staying...till it gives up.

PS: For all those of you who know us and plan to visit us anytime , do not let the above description discourage u, we clean the sofa. No fear!

Worrying

I am a semi intense worry wart...while i have tried my level best in the last 3 decades to act otherwise and put up a brave face,it is not so.
I worry about a lot of things, about everything.......when i think back on the events in my life, i can't recollect one thing that i have gone through without worrying. I guess worrying is very normal...that's what everyone tells me. But, let me point out the difference, i do not just worry about today, i worry in anticipation tooo!!!!!! Now that must be new.

I can get worked up for things that affect me directly( read-V not eating breakfast when we have exactly 10 mins for school bus/ TB promising to call back in two mins and forgetting to do so for 10 hours etc), things that do not affect me directly( like deficit rains this monsoon/ why does cousin x want to quit her job etc)..and very generalistic things, that have nothing to do with my life(the sea link yet to finish/ a once met acquaintance who has just quit her job )......and anything that deserves a thought.

I have to mention here the heartache associated with my worries stay put inside my mind...would not be a wise idea to share all these. Not very sure what anyone would make out of these thoughts! So really, the downside of worrying is that i am left debating and holding back a lot conflicting emotions within, most of the time.
The upside of this worrying, though is the fact that i am usually prepared for most adversities by the time they arrive. In the face of adversity, only action is pending..it has been worried over already. And it works well for me, at least it has till now.
I once read an article that i am quoting here

"NOT ALL worrying is bad.
It can alert us to danger, help us rehearse what to do if something does happen, and prompt us to take constructive action. Take advantage of that kind of worry.
It's the negative, obsessive worry that's bad. It drains and paralyses us from doing something useful. It causes insomnia and leads to headaches, hypertension and raised blood pressure.
It lowers our self-confidence and makes us feel anxious, depressed and discouraged. Here's how to banish it:
Stop the `What if ... ' thoughts. If you can't do anything to prevent what might happen (and probably won't), let go of it. Stop worrying about things that are happening now.
Take some constructive action if you can. Then relax. If you can't do anything, chill out and roll with it.
Stop worrying about things that have happened. We can't change the past but we can learn from it. See where you went wrong and put the lesson to good use. Then let it go.
The bottom line is that worrying about things you can't change, control or influence is like riding a rocking horse - it won't get you anywhere- KRIS COLE "

I am learning..to differentiate between the good worry and the negative worry.

Whats in a name??

Whats in a name?...maybe everything, or nothing at all.
I read a post which commented about the names of Brad pitt and Angeline Jolie's latest twins, it said" while the son has a name that is as weird as that of a lot of celebrity kids , the daughter for a change , has a normal name"...hmmmm.... this topic intrigued me.

Lets start from the beginning. I was told that my name came out of a disagreement between my father and my grandmom, who could not agree on each other's choice, so they just combined both and named me. I should thank my stars that the word means something and does not sound as disjoint at a lot of names of my generation. It is traditional as it can get, and quite modern too.
For many years when i was a kid, i never liked my name( the fact that a very popular C grade actress had the same name caused much heartburn and ridicule). It took a very old Bishop lots of patience to talk me out of it. Maybe it has something to do with his talk, but names intrigue me. Sometimes, when i only have the name of a person, i try and put a personality to it. Why was he/ she named that ? what did the parents think? Sometimes it tells you a lot about what to expect..and something it turns out to be a complete blooper.

I think my generation suffers from having some of the worst possible names i have come across...the one's before that was very traditional, so they has names with meanings, and the current gereration seems to have returned to sanity after the brief experiment with our generation. I has classmates with the following names " Rasna"/ " Lorry"/ " Dreamsweetie"/ etc..and countless others with names that combined the elements of both parents names( this was the fad/ the IN thing), and sounded weird!The trauma of living with those names must be awful!
One of my little cousins almost became a victim of this...her parents realized before the naming ceremony that when they combined their names, the word that was formed exactly translated into....errrrrr" moustache"!!!!!!!!!!!and quickly found an alternative.

How do you classify a name as good and another as bad?At the end of the day, a name is very personal,as i have my own likes a dislikes when it comes to it. One of the reason's i said "yes" to TB , may also be because he has a very traditional sounding name..i just liked the ring of it. I love names that have a meaning, that are musical,and signify something. It just helps me associate that person with something tangible, maybe.

When we were expecting V, we dicussed names , as any parents to be would, ....i was quite sure it had to be a single word . We had a penchant for traditional Indian names, so V was called " Vishnu". I could not think of a more " all encompassing name",and thank fully, the family loved it.Between three cousins, we have four boys, and all their names mean the same. Says something about the family!

I wonder at times if having another name would have affected the course of events in my life? Probably not......Would it have affected the kind of person i am? Maybe yes...and i like mine exactly as it is today- name and life. I'll have to ask TB if he would have proposed , had i been known with a different name.... And then i will know if a name has any effect on course of life too....

Purpose of life...

What is the purpose of our lives??The theosophical question..and i do not expect an answer to that.
I have been reading this book last week" Palace of Illusions"- Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni / Doubleday books. The book left several impressions and emotions. Reading the much read epic from a very unlikely protagonist was the first. While Paanchali/ Draupadi is the axis around which the entire Kurukshetra war evolved, i am not sure how much of her story came into writing.
The book felt like i was listening to a friend, a woman of my age, with all the regular trappings of a normal human, and confused with her priorities and purposes in life, and with all the flaws that can be.
She wishes, loves, hates, falters and in all that she does, the destiny of the people around her is shaped. So is with the other characters in the story. While the story is not new, the emotions of the characters are, and i empathized with each one of them.
She knows the purpose of her life, and is unable to control the flow of events..and moves onto afterlife knowing that she had fulfilled what she had been destined to. That what came out of her actions was not in her hands,she was merely a catalyst.

Left me with one thought. The purpose of our lives these days seem to be no bigger than that of a firefly. Am i making a difference to the world i am in? I do not know, but i'd like to strive for and believe so....

Off non-veg

I turn vegetarian tomorrow....no, not forever. For 30 days, till the month of "karkkidakam" gets over. While there are traditional and religious reasons for this, and most of Kerala follows suit, i did not follow this till about a few years ago.

The tradition must have started for varied reasons, i'd like to believe that one of them is health as monsoon is not really the best time to indulge in non vegetarian food. Also, this is considered a time when food was scarce( this is the age before preserved foods came into picture) , and hence the order of month was eating frugally, resting your body and rejuvenating for the harvest months ahead and spending the remaining of the day in prayers.

My best memories of Karkkidakam are the day before the month, which is today...The house used to get scrubbed, dusted and polished. And in the evening, the dust collected , along with cobwebs, a broken earthern vessel, an old broom on a tattered woven basket was taken out of the house by our servant, who used to go far away from the house and throw away all the dirt for the year..and we used to chant for the " Goddess of dirt to go far away, and the Gooddess of cleanliness and goodness to come home". And for the next 30 days we worshipped the goddess of goodness inside the house.

Karkkidakam is also " Ramayana Masam" , where the epic is read at every house throughout the month. For us, that mean two readings,my ammamma used to read ramayana everyday, all through the year. Her reading ramayan was our signal for the end of the day; lights used to be switched off immediately after she finished. So in karkkidakam, there was one reading in the morning and one at night.

I wish i could read the ramayana - to myself and V. Considering the firefighting that we go through every day, that seems a remote possibility. I will still try..though i need a refersher from mom on where all i can start from and where i can stop during reading( those who do not know- you can't just open a page and read..there are rules to reading ramayan).

And go off non veg, for that is the closest i can get to eating frugally. So i am going to do exactly that. Last year TB volunteered to stay off non veg and managed that for exactly 72 hours...This year, he has volunteered again, and i am counting in hours.

Valiamma...

Today's post is dedicated to the person who makes it possible for me to sit here and earn my bread, write this and moreover, ensures that i do not have to worry about V while we are away.
All credit to my mom ( i think she should be a consultant) for zeroing in on her when i was expecting V. All i had to tell her was i need someone who lives with me to take care of V and be with him.

I have met her several times over i my life ,every year she worked around the house during harvest season, later with her daughter in law in tow. When i met her as V's caretaker, i wasn't too sure whether she fit my idea of a "nanny". But she was there and i needed someone.
She met V for the first time when he was 70 days old...and moved in with us when he was about 100 days old....and been with us since then. She is 65( maybe more..but even she has no idea...so we will stick to that number), a very small kid at heart, and V thinks the world of her. She has gone from being V's nanny to practically running our house.
She had never stepped beyond the confines of the tiny hamlet where i( she) come from, never travelled in a long distance train , never heard another language, and never left her family before...

Today, she has done more flights than my immediate family, lived in two metros in India, has made friends ( and continues to do so) who speak langauges varying from Hindi to telegu to Marathi to english. Please note here that the only language she has even known in her life is none of the above. Her english is restricted to "please" and " thank you" which V has been teaching her. Add to that the fact that coming in from a family that did not have an electricity connection till a year ago, she runs all the appliances at my home..

Over the last three years she has become V's friend and not just his nanny. They fight, make up, laugh, cry and have these very inane conversations which are so funny to listen to. V knows he can get away with murder with her...so he gets double the ration of jellies, extra spoons of honey, secret licks at the chocolate and a place to hide whenever i lose my temper...
She cries when V is not well...goes without food when he does not eat and puts him before her, in everything. She even cried when i fell ill!!!

I may not tell her everyday, but i am just grateful to have her around, and can't thank her enough. She may not be with us for ever( how i wish she did), she will never read this post, but i guess i just had to write her a Thank you. For being there, for being the person she is , for taking on TB , me and V as her family , and for living through my many moods. Thank you!


PS: She is my news source for all the gossip in our building..how does she figure all that news out when she does not understand one word of the language? Beats me!

Since the going has not been to great for the past few days, i decided to cheer myself up by putting down some of the stuff that i love doing as a family.

1. Long drives- TB drives, i navigate to try and get us to our destination, quite successfullymost of the time!


2. Singing aloud with the car stereo/ radio- We used to drive down to kerala from wherever we were and this was our entertainment. We decided to act grown up and decent after V entered the scene( parents, right)-V turned out to be a revelation- he sings louder, better and knows most of the lyrics..so now its a trio inside our small car. So if you ever pass by a car with three people singing on top of their voice, u know who it is:-)


3. Rolling around the bed once TB is back from work- We turn punching bags to V at this point of time..he jumps/ walks, rolls over us, sits on our head, shoulder, wherever, and basically makes a pulp out of any body part he can spot.

4. Watch Tom & Jerry cartoons. They are just amazing.....

5. Eating out: This one's a little messy...while V likes to go outside, he does not like eating- anything. So there is bit of a fight here , but its still fun.

6.Just being together and doing nothing, absolutely. V even makes sure we hold hands and sit when he is in one of his very Aquarian moods....

And to bring back reality...V went to playschool today after a weeks gap. And we are back to our morning screaming, crying and making up before leaving for school/ office.

Not quite the weekend....

It's not a nice feeling t0 end the weekend at the the casualty with a howling child at 2AM . Which is precisely what happened. After a decent saturday and better sunday where we thought V was getting better, we were back to square one last night. The virus just refuses to go away!

At 3 AM , TB and me are driving back from the hospital and wondering to ourselves the drastic change that one 1.2 metre person is making to our life. TB would have otherwise killed anyone who woke him up during his sleep.....all it took yesterday was one feeble" mummee" to get us jump out of bed, ready for any adversity.

V is bored with himself, with TV , with having to lie down and generally with everything around. All he wants is to is go out and play, and eat jelly and mixture. Can't let him do any of those, at least for now.
And i hate to see him look so low, hate to see him lose that 1 kg accumulated over last six months, and can't live through his tears.

Mixed bag of life...

Its been a seriously crazy week...some heartbreak, some exhilaration and absolutely sleepless nights.
We are proud owners of a "house" now. The entire clan is thrilled( me and TB are just a little wary of how this affects our finances- bottom line in corporate parlance). For sure, it is the best thing we have done in some time. I have suddenly developed this fancy for all those home magazines, the interiors in them loook fantastic! and completely unaffordable:-)

V caught hold of some stray virus and came down with the worst fever and loosies i have even seen on him. And right before the day we had to go to for the registration. At 2 AM was still making up my mind whether to take the 6 AM flight or call it off. But we had to..and we did go.
I always find that when i tell "V" the truth, he understands and accomodates..he's a gem of a kid. Has more sense than me most of the times.
So i told him we had to go and why we had to..and all he said was" You go, and come back fast". I cringed- which mother leaves her kid when he is sick and goes off? and on top of that i am trying to reason it out with him? I had the most guilt ridden day of my life!
I gave him the keys to the house in the morning and told him it was his house keys. He refused to let go of them and said he wanted to come to buy the house. So did i ....I am definitely taking him to show him his house very soon..for now, he keeps flipping through the pictures of the house and is thrilled to see the room that will be his.

Hopefully my weekend should be better..looking forward to some sleep, some self pampering( read- time at the parlour), time with V and TB and of course, the British GP.