Virtual move

Over 400 days of no blogging.

Its a record. Everyone needs some records. It being Olympic season and all.

I really have no excuses. Except that with the new google layout, it was getting harder to find out the way to reach my own blog!.

So i have decided to move and open shop here--> http://straygreymatter.tumblr.com/

Maybe now i can stop shirking. Pray for willpower, will you?

A little down south and to the east

Thats where i have moved to...down south and a bit towards east from Mumbai. At Bangalore.

Mentally i have moved here many times, went over what all i wanted to do once here , a million times in my head. Reality,has been very similar for a change.

For now, i am enjoying the space that the house offers me...my sparse furniture from the Bombay flat is looking like individual islands in corners of the house.

That hacking cough that followed me like a shadow in Mumbai has disappeared for now. I actually go for a morning walk and stop by to observe the flowers in the neighboring compounds.

The kid has made friends, re started his music classes and speaks a new Kannada word everyday. Yesterday, he sang two lines of a Kannada song - this one-to a much surprised audience including me , mom and sister.

I am back at work- as part of a 3 member team. The 3rd member being myself. Still haven't figured out travel in the city, and is completely in awe of the Volvo buses.

I come home to family - a six year old and an almost six month old who make my day completely worth while. And the sister i adore, and parents and the brother in law who make it complete.

My house is complete.. the home, not yet. My heart is in Pune. Everything is started by the " i wish he was here" thought.

I am happy with my material life as it is... it's the heart that hurts. I wish he moves here soon.Then i can call it home.

Down and out

That's pretty much me, these days.


Being a single parent and managing a long commute in this city is taxing. It's almost despicable! And it is turning me into someone i don't like.
I don't like to speak to anyone outside my routine, and hardly have any friends over. The last time i went to a friends house? Don't even go there..


Technically, it was very easy to decide that the husband will be in another city for a while. I am the brave one- you see. I pretty much run the house on my own anyway. All he does is come home in the evening and spend that few hours on the couch. How much of a difference can it make if he does that once in two weeks. Managable, really. Reality ---- is nothing like that.


Everything in the house runs like clockwork. We leave on time, we reach late( blame the commute here), everything stays in it's place.The cushions on the sofa are intact, there are no shoes lying outside the shoe rack, and no wet towels on the bed. My ideal world!!


But i am hating it.


I miss looking forward to catch the tell tale sound of the car lock, time his way up the steps and waiting with an open door. I miss asking him to stop reading the paper in the loo and step outside so we could use it.
I hate not being able to spend that five minutes talking about our day. I miss the noise, the commotion the father and son create.


Above everything, i miss his presence. Sometimes all i want him is to be home. I can live with him contributing nothing to the goings- on  in this house. He could be glued to TV all day. But the fact that " he is home" makes up for all that.


Who knew this would turn out to be so difficult?. May be this is what love matures into.... a beautiful companionship where the mere absence / presence of a person makes it all worthwhile.

11.1.11- and on this day...

I became an aunt, yet again.
This time , to a baby girl who looks like strawberry pudding.

And she looks exactly like how her mother did 28 years ago. Then, the mother's elder sis caught sneaky glimpses of the baby being bathed inside the labour room, and announced to everyone that there was a very cute baby inside. She continued to wait for her little sibling, and the nurse bought the chubby cute baby outside and told me she was my sister.

I fell in love, for the first time....

In the many years that followed, her cheeks stayed chubby and rosy and i spent much time defending them from my friends, classmates and random people. The chubby cheeked girl followed me all around the place, pretty much adored everything i did in life( at least in the early years) and grew upto be my little best friend.

And yesterday, she gave me the most beautiful niece i could ever have. Chubby cheeks, snub nose and looking like a pudding. My little baby just had a baby of her own. I am still getting over the excitement!!!

Maybe i should teach V techniques on how to defend the baby's cheeks from random people now :-)

Do you judge a person?

Do you judge people during your first interaction? And categorize them in different brackets?
I do not. I am quite tolerable when it comes to people.
Frankly, i think it is more of that "i don't care as long as it does not affect me" attitude that i use when meeting people.

But once in a while, there comes along a person who forces you to judge. Sometimes with just a 10 min interaction. I did that yesterday. And it has been eating me since then.

I want to a birthday party with kid y'day. We were late- it was a work day and there was no way we could be there before that. But since i promised the kid, i took him to their house for a quick wish and dash. Apart from us, there was only another couple who were present.We walked in , wished, gave the gift , and of course were offered the cake . Those 10 minutes when the kid was wolfing down the cake, i made small talk with the mother- i apologized for the delay and blamed it on my commute from work. The father of the child   (who i have never met before), who was party to this conversation took over then.He asked about the kids school, how long we have been here etc.

Suddenly, out of the blue, he asks me " What does sir do?"

It took me a minute to understand that he was referring to the husband as "Sir". My first instinct was to tell him that the name was not "sir". So i kept quite and answered him. The b'day girls mom helpfully added that i work in the city and hence we were late. He acknowledged it with a nod, and continued asking me what the husbands job was all about. I was surprised that he did not ask me what i do. So clammed up after a while.

A little while later, another guest walked in, he introduced the couple who had come in before us to them. He mentioned where they stay, and what the husband did for a living and the lady as " his wife". There was no mention about her work. She was a working professional as well, and he felt no need to introduce her as a professional. I was aghast.

I my mind, i was thinking that he had judged me - because i was a woman, and maybe not capable of holding a job of any value.Same with the other lady guest.

In that moment, i judged him. As someone i probably will have no respect in life for. I wondered how he must be introducing his wife to people in his social circle. I am pretty sure he says "this is my wife", without taking her name.

And it kept eating me.That fact that i had formed an opinion of some one i had met barely 10 minutes before. I told myself that i was being silly, that i was maybe being harsh. maybe he wasn't like that. But when i woke up this morning, i felt better about judging him.

No, i am not married to "sir", and he does not introduce me as " my wife". If someone cannot identify me as a person with a distinct personality, it is his loss. And i still hold my judgement against him.

Of a missing child and his mother..

In the many years of my existence, i have made a mental list of things that can go wrong with my life and feared for it every other day. Classic symptoms of being a worry wart.

After i had V , my list of things that can go wrong increased exponentially. It varied from him falling off the bed and breaking his nose to elaborate hijacking of the vehicle we were travelling etc(yes,  i can be very creative at times). The biggest of them being losing him in a crowd, of him getting separated , and me not being able to find him.

I read about parents losing their children and shudder, wondering how they cope with it. I read of children going missing and wonder, how do the parents survive with the realization that their child "maybe somewhere"? I don't think i can. I met such a mom this weekend.

We( me and V) were on a train for a short trip and less than an hour into our travel, a lady, dressed like many people who we see living on the platforms of mumbai , was escorted into the AC compartment by one of the pantry car attendants, as all the TC's for that train were congregated in the seats next to us.

He explained that he had found the lady standing near the door of the train and howling looking outside, after the train had started. From their halting conversation in actions, he understood that her child was left behind in one of busiest platforms on mumbai city, along with her bags. He then helped her look for the kid in all the compartment, failing which he bought her to the TC.

I shuddered, thinking of what she must be going through. Turned out she could only speak her native tongue, which only i understood. So i ended up translating her story.

She was a street dweller, one among the many that come to mumbai in search of a better life, live that fickle of life with someone , get dumped with a kid, and run back home with all their belongings. She was at her station, running back with all her belongings in two bags, and a baby boy about 2.5 years old. She had a midnight train that came into the platform , and decided to spend the time waiting out there.
Our train came in , halted, and she in her ignorance thought that the train was going to be stopped for a while. She bought a packet of snacks, gave it to the baby boy and made him sit with the bags, and decided to use the bathroom in the train.

She came out of the bathroom to find the train moving out of the platform , with here baby and bags left behind.
She was what i could best describe as a shattered soul.I made her sit on the seat while the TC's got in touch with the station officials  with patchy network. Then coordinated for her to be dropped off at the next station and sent back . And called the station where she boarded and intimated them to start searching for the kid and bags. I kept assuring her all will be ok, that she will be back with the kid soon.

In my mind, i doubted my words. A vast station,crowds milling for an opportunity- a child and two bags are easy to disappear, and said a silent prayer. After she got down, i hoped she does find the child, safe and sound. Then i held V's hands, and held him close, and never let him out of my sight.

Perfect Life, and a single flaw

And they lived happily aver after... isn't that how all stories are expected to end. Everything falls in place, their lives become perfect.. and all is well.
Isn't that the life everyone wants.. perfect , in their own way??

Well, everyone except me, i assume.

I have a problem with perfect life. Actually i have a problem with everything that can be called perfect. And no i am not a pessimist. I am the other extreme.. An optimist who believes that everything must have a flaw, insignificant, but existing.

Call it strange, but i have always observed that whenever something is referred to as perfect, it does not stay that way for long. So i have this problem bordering obsession where i hope that something small, something minor will go wrong. Then, i tell myself that it will stay on ...

It would be my perfect life to live in my own house, with my loved one's and have a job that keeps me happy.  But that would have been perfect. And i would worry myself to death everything thinking something is about to go wrong and upset this balance- and they invariably, always happen.

So when it looked like my perfect life was about to come together,i fretted, i worried and basically thought of everything possible to figure out what to do. But then destiny decided to play its own cards. So now i have my perfect life coming together- hopefully soon, with a flaw that will no longer make it perfect.

But to me, that single flaw gives me strength to know everything else will go alright. The petition to the man above is till pending, but he might just consider accepting it this time around.

I'd take this flawed life any day above a perfect one. I can sleep well knowing i do not have a perfect life.