Not quite a full heart

The Mumbai living- well, almost.

That is what you get...when you have 7 adults and two children live in 980 sft. For the second time in two years..we will live that life today.

We have pulled out extra pillows, extra mattresses have been dropped off by friends- by the friend who came to drop off the mattress and said" i'll come up for five mins" and stayed back to roll 25 roti's and clean my kitchen. Thank you for everything.

When i get home from work today, there will be stuff everywhere, bags all over thanks to multiple travel schedules...waiting for turns to wash hands and use the bathroom. And toys! the one's we have not seen in ages- will suddenly appear and be strewn all over the place. Chaos!

But who cares? We are all under the same roof after maybe a few years...there will be so much to talk, so much to catch up on..V can do what he pleases- as long as he does not disturb our sessions.

It is a full house today...but not quite a full heart. The one person who loves having family around, the one who loves chatting away and just being there is in Delhi. And he cannot be back for another two days. While i have fun, enjoy having them around and talk away to death, there is a small corner that stays empty , sharing his loneliness and a little sad- hoping he too was here.

Mom's travel checklist

This is what my mom bought along for a three week stay...

For us...
-Banana chips
-Panchamritam
-Mixture( several packets)
- Home processed tamarind
- Half a dozen mangoes
- Dry coconut chutney
- Vathal mulagu and Assorted Vathal
- A kilo of jangri
- Home grown lemons
- Biscuits for the boy
- a top for the boy to play
- whole arecanuts

For herself..
- toothbrush
- two sarees
- medicines
That's all...

She also WANTED to bring...
- one jackfruit
- several coconuts
- one ripe pumpkin/melon/ her garden vegetables.

Which were abandoned thanks to my father repeatedly pointing out that he was not travelling along to lug all this along.

Is this normal?Do all parents , like mine bring half the house along?

Gasp at the price of vegetables here and make mental note to bring that also along in the next visit?

Breaking news

I just want y'all to know that my "horlicks bottle full of pachamritam" arrives today. Am off to pick it up...and of course along with my mom too.

She's also getting with her my paternal aunt, who has even her nasal structure made out of "funny bones".

Will be back when i manage to scrape my guts off the floor.....

Of new years and new years

Considering today is "gudi padwa" or new year in maharashtra, i looked up the net to check on how many other states celebrate their own new year on this day..this is what turned up...

Punjab : New year starts on 13th April.
Assam : New year starts on 14th or 15th of April.
Bengal : New year starts on 14th or 15th April.
Gujarat : New Year starts on Karthik Shukla Pratipada.
Kerala : New year starts in the month of Medam (on the day when the Sun enters in the constellation Leo). Around April14/ 15th
Karnataka : New Year falls on Chaitra Shuddha Prathipade. Mid- end march
Sikkim : New Year starts on 18th day of the 10th month of the Tibetan Lunar Calendar.
Maharashtra : New Year starts in the month of Chaitra .Mid- end march
Tamil Nadu : New year starts on 13th or 14th of April.

So much for national integration....Lots of diversity for sure!

Mom Cleaning

I have been busy from last night...

picking up stuff from the crevices of sofa, re organizing my kitchen shelves, folding and putting away clothes that were washed and dried 3.5 days ago...piling V's toys into his bag and keeping them inside the cupboard, checking the fridge for all the sauces that expired eons ago, throwing off the mayo from last year( eeeeks!), scrubbing of water marks from the top tiles in bathroom..restocking my groceries and supplies.

No..it's not spring cleaning.
Mom is coming to stay for three weeks...

Maybe i should stop fretting so much. She will anyway do it all over again!

Weighty issues

V is proudly diplaying his stick thin arms and saying" see my muscles", and all i can see is bones and skin. His BMI index says he is at a healthy weight...but time every i look at him, theory flies out of the window.

Between me and TB, he looks underfed and over exercised- that which his parents should be subjected to. I subtly mention this to his pediatric- not the parent part, the not gaining weight part.
Doc wants to know if he eats at least two full meals in a day?- two?, yes.
Doc wants to know if he is tired all the time?- Never! his parents are , always.
He dismisses the question and points out that he is more agile and fit than the healthy looking nurse who sits outside. He is at best about 50 kg.

The more i think about it, i am convinced he has my fathers genes when it comes to weight. Dad i think gained maybe 2 kg in my entire lifetime!

My aunt had a theory about this....
-If you are from my fathers side of the family, you could eat three eggs and maybe lose 10 gms purely by the effort of eating.
- if you are from my mothers side, all you need is for a hen to cross the courtyard- there'll be extra three kilos magically added onto your weight!

He is going for his vacation to kerala..i am wondering how many" why is he so skinny?" i will have to evade, or pretend deaf to. I am very undecided between ...

-feeling apologetic about his appearance , and taking gazillions of advice from family on how to fatten him up- or-
-ignore such remarks and in choice situations respond with a trademark caustic comment.

Still undecided...and as confused.

Snippets

Conversations of 4 year old:

V: Mom, i'm going to shoot that guy, you say" you saved my life" and run to me, ok?
Mom: Huh!
V: And you kiss me and say " Thank you , James"
Mom:* makes mental note to watch less of Bond movies*!!!!!!!!!

V: Why is this juice like water?
Mom: This is coconut water, it does not have any colour. It looks like water.
V: Oook, so we pretend to drink it, and spit it out like alex and gloria in Madagascar? Lets do it..
Mom: * wondering why she always ends having no answer*

V: * Swats mosquito. Demands to know why it is not flying anymore*
Mom: It's dead, gone. Now no more flying.
Two days later...
V: * spots a dead bird on the roadside*" Amma what happened to the bird?"
Mom: " It's dead kanna"
V:" How? I didn't swat it."

V: Amma, when i become big and you become small, you'll give me car to drive?
Mom: Yes..when you become really big and old enough.
V: And when you are small enough i'll scold you and swat you if you bite your nails...

“Smell is a potent wizard ..

.....that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.”
Helen Keller(1880 - 1968).

There are lots of times when people, places , voices, music and events transport me back to some specific period in my life.

But smells! they take me back right to the moment that i last inhaled it...does that happen with all? I was always credited with a sharp sense of smell, but i think i greately undervalued it. As my life progresses and i mellow down i realize that is the one sense i remember and associate with more than anything else...

I had a smell associated with each one of my family.My sister used to smell of milk, even when she grew up..i think till about the time she discovered perfumes!I loved to sit next to her , just for that smell. Not the strong milk smell when you boil it, but the milder , grassy smell immediately after milking...

The only one whose smell i could never figure out was mine..i kept asking mom, and she used to find it quite funny i guess. TB was the first one to tell me what he felt i reminded him of...he thought i smelled like "water". Now if only i could check that myself!

I always pick up a book or a garment at a store and smell it before even i look at it..it just comes by habit..I smell the heads of all babies that are available in close quarters...i sidle upto my close one's so i could feel their smell....each one of them have an individual smell stamp...i go weak at my knees every time i smell TB's neck or V's head.

My earliest memories of seasons were the change in smells...freshly washed earth in rains, smell of grass in the windy season, the mango blossoms, the drying leaves...the scent of earth warming up in summer, the jasmine blooms, the smell of paddy --sap oozing, cut, dried, billowing in the wind, boiling in cauldron...the smell of ground cotton seeds and rice husk in the cowshed. Of kerosene and oil lamps...of gardenia's in a dark night.

I can still feel the way our very first house smelled..the perfume TB was using when i first met him.., the smell of bamboo on the southern corner of my house...the smell of drying mango stem sap at my father's ancestral house, after all of us had downed a few dozens with salt and chilli powder.

Oh! the smells. I could define my life with them.

This morning, i propped up V into the school cab, and rushed out of the building as usual..Stepped out and in a split second, i smelled summer- of earth warming up, of fallen mangoes and coral jasmine. I slowed down, stopped and savoured it all in.

In that moment, i was back at my house on a summer day, sitting on the mango tree with a book and listening to my philips radio hanging from the next branch.

Nothing is memorable than a smell to me. Once scent can bring back a lifetime..What brings you memories??

Bathroom reading

Till i married TB, i thought men wanting to read in the bathroom was a random occurence.

After i married him , i thought it is a trait that runs in families...

After V, i am convinced this is ingrained in the "Y" Chromosome.

Bhangra and some more..

Waited all week to watch V perform Bhangra for his school annual day.

I had an adrenaline rush watching my baby, look all grown up and dance perfectly to tune, do somersaults and use the lathi and sing along too.

I thought i would burst into tears when his turban came off and he stopped, a sob escaping his lips. He looked so lost....

My heart was bursting with love when he quietly walked to the side of the stage, handed over the turban to his teacher, and continued dancing from where he left off.

Silly me..i had tears in my eyes and could not get the video right!

***************************************************************************
V's best friend sitting right behind me kept reminding me that i am watching ' his best friend's dance", and kept clapping.

Yes Kiddo...that my " bestest friend " too, and thank god for friends like you.

***************************************************************************
Watching so many kids perform, on stage and off stage too...is such a balming effect.

The fact that 80% were too stunned to dance when put in front of the light is just ignorable statistics. Watching them up there, dressed and dolled up was reason enought to spend those few hours.

**************************************************************************
On a different note, i would have enjoyed swatting the following people....

- who walked in a full hour late, and walked in and out of the aisles, searching for non existent empty seats.
- who came dressed for a P3 party, and almost tripped on the dark aisle steps( i giggled, does that make me mean?)
- Who walked out of the auditorium to take calls, every five minutes, disturbing 300 others.
- THAT dad, who kept saying " Come on R", every five mins, before the kid on stage decided to call it a day and stop dancing altogether. Well done kiddo, is all i have to say!
- Parents who troop out as soon as their childs dance is over. Next year around, i am petitioning to put their kids dance the last item- about time they get a taste of their own medicine.

The third eye effect

For some strange reason , all my work life, i have been in roles where i am dealing with two different sets of people.

ALWAYS! It is not as much as actual work that goes on, but being able to keep both sides at bay and not get at each others throats! I think 'it is written'. The worst part of the jobs are when both parties think you belong on their side , where as i know precisely that i do not have the liberty to lean towards either....always the third person.

Across companies, across businesses, this basic fact seems to follow me around. For a good part of next week, i am going to be doing precisely that...be the third person, the observer, the one who influences the final word.

I have no complaints though...just an observation. For someone who is so involved in real life, it struck me as an odd profession..or maybe the best one?

To someone special....

To the one..

Who had the chubbiest cheeks ever as a kid...

Who refused to walk at age five, used to being carried around all the time...

Who cried buckets over not completing homework, while i barely glanced at it.

Who managed to ALWAYS tear pajama bottoms!!

Who ran out of the house when visitors came in...

Who has inherited the accountants genes..

Who i first confided my love to...

Who poked me to death till i told my parents about me and TB...

Who bullied and blackmailed TB , still does...

Who never gives up...

Who constantly fought with mom about our age gap...

Who thinks the world of V, and spoilt him rotten till age two.

Who i miss a lot when i really need to speak to someone , other than TB...

Who finally found her prince charming, and is living her dream.


Happy Birthday little sis, you are, and always be my first kid.

And i miss having you around!

What love does...

Last night....

TB was coming in late. So we killed time by reading Dr Seuss's Books, drew on dotted lines, coloured parrots , and sketched about a tonne fish.

With my calf muscles killing me, i told V i want to lie down, can we please go sleep? He agreed, so we read the bubbles book in bed and settled. The pain was not going away and it must have shown on my face.

V quite did not like the look of it. He said" smile amma", i managed a weak one. Ten minutes later, he said" amma, i am hungry".

I almost fell out of my bed! my son, the food hater, is hungry!!!???I told him to stop joking and go to sleep. He said " No, i want idli"
We had mini idlis and sambhar for dinner and i had kept some for TB. I checked again, he said yes. I threatened him with dire consequences if i wake up and give him some and he does not eat all.

He still wanted idly. I gave up, went to the kitchen and got him idly..he wanted six of them, with jam. And his glass of water.

He took his plate, went to the dining table, got his cushion and sat down. I was ready to faint..he.is.sitting. at. dining. table, without a fight.

I read my book on the next chair, glancing sideways to catch him unwillingly stuff his mouth with the food , wondering what on earth??Why was he eating without wanting it??He finished all six idlis, had the water and tapped on my hand. I looked up, and he said.....

"Amma, now smile. I sat on the dining table, ate all my food, did not play with my car in between. I am good boy. You always smile when i finish all my food"

I think i cried. What did i do to deserve him?

Of 'behaving nice'

What do you call parents who go around exhibiting their kids, at every given opportunity?
What gives people the right to quiz anyone else's kid, without being asked to?

I can't handle either....and 'queen of sarcasm' in me shows up most of the time. Like yesterday, at the pediatric clinic.

There was a couple who came in with a almost two year old, the dad insisting that the kid wish all the people in the room" bhaiya to hello bolo", " aunty ko namaste karo", " switched on some song on the mobile and said "singh is king karo"..etc; and the poor kid wondering what to do. From the looks of it, no one else in that room could figure out the drama too...

Then the dad proceeded to quiz V on his picture identification prowess and another 6 year olf boy of general knowledge"wheredo you stay?where do you study? what all do you study? and such insignificant crap

Mind you, all these to kids who were there because they were- Unwell- and wanted to just curl up to their moms.

I kept up my zen state for a while , counted till 10-25- 50 and turned to the dad and helpfully pointed out that

"maybe he should be more bothered about his offspring's fingers being squished between the doors while he was trying to benchmark other kids educational progress"
" that while his child maybe a born genius, we were not exactly in the mood for a recital"
" that this was a hospital and could he please leave the sick children alone?"

V butted in to make sure all was ok and asked"What happened amma?" I told him " nothing".

The 6 year old helpfully added " You mama is telling uncle how to behave nicely in public". I grinned....that said it all.