Finally.. a note on Mumbai.

I have not been writing for the last few days.. nothing new in that except that this one time it wasn't inertia. I did not write because I did not want to write about Mumbai. There was nothing to share.. nothing that I knew and the rest of the country did not know already. I followed the news on the television and in the newspapers, discussed it with family and friends, called up relatives in Mumbai, expressed my shock and grief at the loss of innocent lives, and felt as bad as everybody else. Having spent some of the most memorable times of my life in the city, I have always liked it so much.. and one of the fondest memories is standing at the Gateway of India and admiring the Taj Mahal Palace in the night lights. It saddened me to see this magnificent piece of history go up in flames. As for the precious lives lost, this one picture here explains it. This little girl, the same age as my own daughter, has blood all over her tiny body. Somehow I feel it cannot be her's, how can somebody have the heart to hurt a baby.. What touched me even more was the compassion in the cop's face. Aren't policmen supposed to be tough, and if this was how the toughest people reacted, how could we be any better. Sorry for the digression, I chose not to write about it. Firstly, everybody and anybody who ever blogged wrote on the subject. They did add different dimensions, perspectives and helped the 'government' with ideas on ways to tackle terrorism, but there is a limit to novelty. After which, it was repetition and only that. But I seriously do not think that blogging can help a cause that 200 agonizing, untimely deaths failed to. It might help the writer to ease his pain, but it revives it for the readers who go through it all over again. Off course it is not forced on them, you can always skip the post that you don't wish to read, just like you switch the channel if you don't want to watch that telecast. Secondly, I don't think that not writing on the subject doesn't prove that one is indifferent to it, just like writing doesn't necessarily mean that you are very sensitive. I was surprised to see readers condemning bloggers who did not write on it. This post for one. It really did not make sense to me.. But I certainly appreciate the approach taken by a Mumbai resident. He made the headlines today by carrying a loaded pistol at CST to expose the security loopholes. It is just so in-your-face! The pen is mightier than the sword, no.. not when it comes to tackling terrorism.

We often meet our destiny...

on the road we take to avoid it. As mentioned in the previous post, it is plagiarized. But true all the same.. I am writing this post to explain why I haven't written any for such a long time, and people have already started popping up the famous question. No, not that one, sigh! Actually it is just one person, but I am flattered beyond limits with that comment. So much that I could barely stop myself from posting here the document that I created for the office intranet wiki last week. There were 2 things that held me back - 1. The document is confidential and at this time, it will be Godsend to my manager, who I suspect is already eyeing me 'pink' and 2. It is total crap, a figment of my imagination and written intentionally in a manner which makes it impossible to comprehend, completely unworthy of my mostly sensible blog. Btw did you notice, how I love ambiguity! I say 'people' and any lazy butt who visits my blog and doesn't bother to check the comments section would start imagining that I have a fat readership, and end up going through the previous posts to find out why on earth:D Come on, it is 4am in the morning, do you really expect me to make sense???? And why am I awake at this unheavenly hour? Is it my avid passion, an overwhelming sense of duty, single-minded devotion and total dedication towards my blog and its niche audience? Actually, it is all that coupled with 'a little too much' chicken the whole damn weekend, specially in dinner last night.. I am not sure how to frame that, it is still night by my standards. Off course I had fish too, but I think it will be a shame to blame those quiet, innocent creatures for the current uproar in my tummy, unless I ate a shark or worse still, a piranha.. Whatever it was, I feel really uneasy and pukish and at such times, all my husband can manage is a very sympathetic 'Its ok, go to sleep', grrr.. Off course it is ok for him, it is me who can't sleep cause that damn chicken is wreaking havoc in my digestive tract. Can't believe, he is the same man who complains that he never gets any sleep on the office trips, 'coz I am not there.. you should hear him snore now! Anyways, I will help him make up for this sin by letting him dropping me to office tomorrow, that is, if I go at all. Pray for me, all ya sleepy souls..

p.s. I missed the explanation. There is none actually. I have been bursting with stuff that I want to write about, it is just laziness that held me back. Also, with the yearly appraisal just round the corner, the last thing I want to get caught with is reading/updating blogs!

Can't sleep..

I am an early bird. Getting up a little late in the morning, which loosely translates into noon and post lunch afternoon siesta do nothing to spoil my routine. The fact remains that I grow very drowsy around 10 pm and come-what-may doze off by 10.30 pm. There are a few exceptions, my wedding for instance. I took the wedding vows at 4 in the morning, and you don't expect anybody to be attentive at that unheavenly hour. No wonder, I forgot most of them the next morning :P But tonight, it is different. I cannot sleep. I have witnessed what looks like the onset of grey hair, on my own head. And I am unable to get it off my head, quite literally :( The hair hanging off the edge of my forehead, scraping the arc of my left eyebrow look such light brown in colour. I actually have quite dark hair, bit too dark for my complexion. Now is it possible to have few hair in lighter shades of brown betraying your all black head? Or do hair start fading, losing color gradually as you age till some of them turn completely white to give you a grey head? Am I on my way to wisdom?? I really don't know.. and this confusion is enough to keep me awake through the night. But then, we often meet our destiny on the road we take to avoid it.. (it is plagiarized just in case you were beginning to appreciate my ability to coin adages), even if I do not have any grey hair already, I might get some by morning if I keep worrying about them all night. Good God nooo.........am off to sleep!

Back in action!

In my last post, I cribbed mentioned something about how some men prefer to be babied comforted by their spouse when they fall sick. I may have sounded otherwise but I strongly believe there isn't anything wrong with this. It is completely justified and even if your mate ends up catching the infection, big deal.. We are married to be together in rain and in sun, and to share each other's sorrow, and well, at times.. illness. But I guess the Lord did not take my innocent banter in good humour, no no.. I mean I failed to convey it properly and got punished royally for that slight of mine. Hours after I posted that one, I caught viral infection and was in the same bed, under the same quilt and on the same medication as my dear husband, albeit with a much higher temperature. All this just a day before Diwali!

Now that Diwali holidays are over and a couple of working days have been missed as well, I am back at work after a cool fortnight(remember wfh etc..) and no doubt, it feels so good. At least till 4 pm after which I grow drowsy and bored and hungry, sigh! The day has been good so far, I have read blogs, chatted with friends, exchanged emails, played pool, took a stroll on the office terrace, relaxed in the cafetaria, caught up with colleagues and worked whenever I had the time and inclination. This is in stark contrast with, and so much more exciting than my life at home on weekdays, especially when the husband is at work.. it is dull, uneventful and my little daughter ensures that I do not get too much of either rest or peace.. She is a lot of fun but I still enjoy her father's company more :)

As parents..

My husband is down with viral fever, and I am working from home the whole week to double up as a nurse. There is not much actually that I am required to do, to nurse him I mean. We have a full time maid, who looks after the baby, and can take care of him as well, but these men I tell you.. they simply refuse to grow up. All he wants right now from me is to sit next to him all day, stroke his hair every 10 minutes, enquire after his well-being every half an hour, offer him some eatable as frequently and argue and insist every few hours that he takes all his medication in time which he would have done as punctually, minus the fuss, had I gone to work. So while I put my precious life, and career to some extent at stake, the baby is deemed to be more vulnerable to the infection and put out with the maid. She is presently talking to her Auntie, as she is taught to address the lady. Let me clarify, she is blabbering away merrily, making little or no sense to us. There are few words that we understand, and she uses them continually to make the conversation interesting if not very intelligent. I hear her through the door left intentionally ajar, and all I get is umpteen repetitions of 'Papa' & 'Mumma' laced with gibberish. I point this out to my husband and we eagerly watch out for a third word, which never comes up. And suddenly, a realisation dawns on us, rather reinforced since we ought to know it already, as to how important we are to her. Her life completely revolves around us, it fills up with great pride, and a greater sense of accountability to know we mean the world to this charming little person who mentions us no less than a hundred times in a 10 minute long conversation. It is an absolute bliss to have somebody all for yourself! But, as my husband remarked with a perceptible quiver in this voice, or was it the fever, it is for a really short period. In less than 6 months, she will start with a play school and then she will have lots of things and more importantly, many more people to talk about..

Switching places..

It is a Saturday evening and we are back after an early dinner. The day was lazy, an uneventful one and we are not the least inclined to sleep. Somehow that always happens to me, I am never drowsy when I have nothing to do. Not surprisingly, the converse is equally true. So me and husband decide to play cards. Daughter dearest has had her meals and is playing contently with her set of blocks. But as soon as we get the cards, even before we can shuffle them, she loses all interest in her blocks and takes away the pack from us. Now, anybody with a 20 month or older kid would agree there is not much that can be done in this state. We simply leave her with the playing cards and start thinking of alternatives. Not a big issue, really.. we settle for monopoly. I acknowledge it is not much fun with just 2 players, but then compromise is the way to peaceful co-existence, ain't? We start dividing the paper money between us, and before either of us reach $20, baby Ninja strikes again! Our little lady mixes business with pleasure, quite literally. She takes the paper money, and title cards and shuffles them both with the playing cards. We exchange furtive glances, the big question looms large before us. What next?? Surely, as parents we cannot accept defeat, at least not this early in life. Husband suggests that we play carrom, but even before he finishes the sentence, we both giggle in a knowing way and drop the idea. We know that will not work. My daughter has a slightly different way of playing carrom. She simply climbs on the board and sits in the middle, with the carrom men all around her. Then she showers individual attention on each man and knocks them all out very conveniently, without as much as touching the striker. The battle is getting serious. And exciting. Rockband is actually a nice option but for the fact that it is almost 10 pm, and the neighbours are not that understanding. Not that we care for such uncooperative neighbours, but the closest one happens to be our landlord as well.. and so you can imagine.. sigh! Both of us sit grimly, on the verge of an imminent defeat when my husband comes up with an idea. The best he has had in a long time.. or so I think :P We decide to beat the little kiddo in her own game. Yes, literally again. So while our daughter plays with our pack of cards and monopoly set, we settle down with her set of blocks. We bet on designing the weirder stuff with those blocks. Since it requires little creativity, no brains and a lot of oddity, my husband invariably wins :) The picture attached is that of the 'Train Tower', I am not sure what that means, that he made. A closer look, and you can see our little imp too, submerged in a sea of cards..

A Golden Moment..

It is a moment which has the billion strong nation basking in a golden glory. India has won its first ever Olympic gold medal in an individual event, and the first since 1980. Abhinav Bindra has made us all so proud! It was just yesterday that I was thinking of writing a post on sports, and how both my father and husband were going gaga over the Olympics when there is hardly any hope for us, especially after the dismal performance of our shooters on the opening day itself. Procrastination is really not the big evil it is made out to be :)

I am sure each of us is feeling like a winner at this hour. India couldn't have asked for a better Independence Day gift!

Paltu..

Paltu is my daughter's dog. No, its not a real one but a stuffed toy. And they share a Calvin n Hobbes relationship. For all the eight and a half months that I carried her, I strictly refrained from reading anything remotely related to Calvin. Not because I have already read it all, Calvin fans would agree you can never have enough of the little imp and his stuffed tiger. He enthralls, amuses, surprises, delights, at times even disgusts you, but you just can't help loving him. I avoided Calvin because I did not want my unborn baby to be influenced by him. Everybody enjoys little naughty kids but the parents, and I shiver at the thought of having an over-the-board kid like him. My efforts, however have not paid off. Already, my little one has started doing things that smell perilously of Calvin, the most prominent being her love and excessive attachment to this stuffed dog, Paltu. Now, I am not saying it is weird or anything other than normal. We all have imaginary friends as kids and often discover them in our toys. She carries Paltu everywhere and even sleeps with it. Fine. She talks to it, or shall I say 'him' in long sentences, scolds him by pulling his ears and pampers him by hugging him close or at times by giving little pecks on his nose. Fine again. Now listen to this. She demands that her nanny put baby cream all over Paltu's cloth-n-fur body, and then dress him up just like Her Highness after every bath that 'she' takes. Also, Paltu has to be seated on a high chair and fed as much as she is. Poor thing, he now has turmeric stains all over his mouth and nose. And then, if being smothered with baby cream and eating rice-dal was not enough, Paltu now sports my contact lenses too. The moment my little lady got hold of the discarded lenses, she immediately went and put them in his eyes. Hmmm.. looks like I am not the only one myopic in this household...

Will you step into my 'parlour'..

I hate going to the parlour. Any girl will get it in the first go, but for the benefit of the male readers who by now, must be already wondering why I hate icecreams or video games, I am talking about 'beauty parlours'. The term itself sounds kinda weird to me, as some of the other classic terms associated with the business and hence, acknowledged and accepted by ladies nationwide. What sense does 'eyebrow' make to you? Or better still, 'underarms'? They strike terror in my heart... Nazi's treated Jews better than these parlour ladies treat their clientele.
I enter the parlour with a heart beating really hard, and they greet me with the kindest smile. But these angels turn into draculas the moment they get down to business, eager to sink their greedy teeth in my 'uncared for' skin. The best part is that they always succeed in persuading me into getting done more than what I would have planned and been prepared for. I would just go to get my eyebrows tidied, and return with the whole body waxed. Or if I go for a cleanup, I would get coerced into a 7 course, one-and-a-half hour long elaborate facial. I am not sure about the glow that they promise would come in a couple of days, but it surely leaves me bored to death. Still, I must admit I do feel lighter, with all the excess hair, dead skin, dirt and grime with black/white/grey-heads gone, along with some real hard cash. The irony of the whole thing is that all of these will come back real quick but the money won't, sigh! The trick is simple yet highly effective. While I get my eyebrows done, one of the girls there would comment on how dull my skin looks, and suggest me some facial. And during the facial, somebody would ask me if I would want to get my body hair removed, since it is so overgrown. I would reluctantly agree, just to cover up for my embarassment. Besides, it is not just wasting time or parting with money that hurts me so much, there is some solid physical torture involved. Plucking one hair at a time from the eyebrow is the most gruesome form of torture. Pouring hot wax all over you, and then plucking bunches of hair in multiple jerky efforts stands next. Infact I have heard of similar technique used with prisoners of war where their hair and nails are plucked ruthlessly to force military secrets out of them. At times like this, I try to recall all the not-so-good things that I have ever done, and suffer in silence hoping God would count it against my sins. Anyways, even as I write this, I am sure I need to visit the parlour soon. And it might be as early as tomorrow itself. So long..

Engineering begins early..

I have been awfully busy and slightly lazy the whole of last and current month. Not writing any new posts, I couldn't even publish an already completed one. No, posting doesn't take much time but I want to put a picture with that post like this one, and that has to be trasferred from my camera to the computer, and subsequently to the blog. Quite some work, isn't it? But I would really like to share this little incident that left me thoroughly amused. My daughter has this little, rather noisy toy, with a bear pedalling down having a drum in the front, which has several tiny aircrafts that revolve around an axis, simultaneously dipping and rising too. What I could make out of this is that the bear is vending airplanes on an icecream trolley kinda thing, and singing a little too loudly to attract customers. Sounds terribly weird, ain't? But my little lady loves it. And though the bear is quite capable of travelling on a pair of duracells, she likes to carry it around in her arms, dropping it often in the process. One such fall broke one of its legs, and the drum in the front couldn't rotate anymore, creating an irritating mechanical noise in the effort. This quickly got on my nerves, and I pestered my husband out of his couch to fix it. Since it had to do with daughter dearest, he promptly swung into action armed with his tool box. Now, my husband has this truly remarkable quality of treating the smallest of mechanical chores with utmost importance and he took to fixing this toy with lot of seriousness and zest. An engineer working on NASA's to-be-launched-asap-spacecraft cannot work with more precision and concentration. He carefully removed the intact leg, studied the mechanism there and then started on the broken one. After what seemed like an eternity, he finally got up putting everything together, and declared positively--'This cannot be done!'
Me: Why?
Husband: Mechanical + technical + laws of physics == gibberish.
Me: There should be some way to do it.
Husband: More gibberish.
Me: Why don't you try putting some glue, or probably tape?
Husband: Won't help. (Supplementary bullshit.)
Me: What if I skim the trash and get you the broken leg back?
Husband: Grrrrrrrrrrrr.......#$^%&*@#$... Do it yourself!
Me: !!! (rush back to the kitchen)

By this time, the baby had lost all patience, and she walked off with her toy to another room. And seeing the way she was forcefully twisting the drum trying to make it rotate, I thought the bear is on its way to eternity..



I didn't see the toy again till the following evening when my husband suddenly remarked with a twinkle in his eye and perceptible distrust in his voice, 'She has fixed it!'. The drum was rotating perfectly. We continued to stare at the toy, the bear was pedalling down merrily, singing loudly and following suit with a huge grin was our budding engineer.

Till technology do us apart...

It is almost 10.30, Wednesday night. I am at my laptop checking mails, catching up with some blogs, and intermittently chatting to 2 friends one of which, incidently happens to be my husband as well... No, he is not away to the US on one of those 'short' month-long official trips. He is in the same house, the next room to be precise. Given the dimensions of my modest abode, it is not possible for him to be more than 25 feet away. Infact, but for the incessant blaring of the tv, I dont even need to shout to be heard. And yet, we chat.. Needless to say, none of us are working or doing anything even close to serious. I know for myself, and he cannot work even if he wants too, reason being straight, he has had no work for the last 4 weeks. He is most likely reading soccer news or some sports article on the web with ESPN running on the tv. Can't be playing one of those computer games else he would have been too busy to even chat. He sends me funny emoticons, and suggestive audibles, and I reply back with spunk. Nothing amiss there, normal playful bantering which makes this evening slighly more interesting. My little one comes to me, and tries to play piano notes on the delicate keypad. I send her to her father. She readily agrees since she knows he has a better laptop and departs. And now I see her going to her nanny with a grim ready-to-scream face.. looks like daddy also refused the budding musician much opportunity and access to his system. Poor kids, nobody really cares for their sentiments and never buys them anything that they really want.. It must be really tough being a kid. By Jove! My husband just got offline.. now, he shall be here any moment. I'll better sign off.. Good Night.

p.s. It really surprises me how technology successfully brings people from all walks of the world so close, and yet creates virtual distances between those closest!

It doesn't get any better..

I have been pretty irregular at updating this blog. Not that anybody expected it otherwise. My friends consider me the epitome of laziness, and I expect my tombstone to read something like 'May her soul rest in as much peace as her body did even before it got shifted here', all courtesy these same prejudiced 'friends', sigh! However I have different thoughts. I personally believe that I am not lazy, just kinda.. uhhh... inactive, the sort of people who remain overly busy even while doing nothing. The blogging gets missed because I always have so much to do, especially on weekdays. Lets ignore the fact that I invariably end up not doing most of it, that is always due to some unavoidable circumstances and hardly affects the truth of the previous statement. I regularly read a number of blogs and irregularly post a few. The credit goes to the slow processes which comprise a huge chunk of my daily work in the office. By the time a process completes I am generally manage to finish reading a full length post or write about half a post. And there begins the misfortune of my blog. Had the processes been a little more slow, my blog would have been flooded with posts. The large number of incomplete posts in my blog are because when I start the second process, somebody usually calls me for coffee. And then I come back, start the third process, and get invited for a game of pool. By the time the 4th process starts, it is already time for lunch.. then foosball, snacks, and finally its time for the cab back home. Now surely, I cannot miss the office cab, not at least on the way back and so the poor post keeps dangling somewhere in mid air. This company is killing my blog, and I am seriously looking for a change. There are other trivial reasons also for my low productivity like the complete lack of ideas and interest in writing, not to mention the absolute scarcity of audience. Despite my best efforts, only few (read 2) people on planet earth could be persuaded to read my blog. Actually there are 3 if you include my poor husband, but I'll be honest and not count him in since he reads it for completely different albeit much more powerful reasons than interest in my blog. Coming back to the two readers, though they are kind enough to read it regularly, they invariably drop some not-so-kind comments and that is hardly an encouragement. Still, in the true spirit of a blogger, I continue to shoulder my responsibility towards my dear faithful readers and here is my effort towards providing them with better means to kill time. I just happened to find truly outstanding blog, and it is something that I can vouch for. Humour just cannot get better than this.. Hats off to Rahul!

Ninindale...

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I just happened to listen to this truly amazing song in the office cab sometime back, and am yet to get over it.. It is sheer magic. Mano Murthy's music has left me spellbound, and the fact that I can't understand a word, it is in Kannada, makes it all the more special. The poetry simply doesn't bother me unlike Hindi songs where I start pondering over the words and lose out on the ecstasy that music alone offers. There is just nothing that would interfere with the music, it flows like a river down a mountain. I enjoyed it exactly how my little girl enjoys music, pure and unadulterated. And given the current trend, I guess it will not be long before some bollywood music director draws 'inspiration' from this song, and gives us a Hindi version. Then probably, I can sing along too. If you happen to try it, do not get deterred by the 'hey hey' a-la-Kumar Sanu beginning, it ends just too soon. And if the lead voice sounds unusually familiar, you are more than right. It is our very own Sonu Nigam!

My Little Sister..

Today, she will be appearing for her 1st board exam.. All of 15 years, she is 6 inches taller to me, and quite naturally few pounds heavier too.. But I seldom see this gauche lanky teenager when I think of my sister. Probably because its been almost 5 years since I left home when she was a too much of a kid, partly 'coz I don't get to see her often now, and mostly coz' I don't make an effort to. I relate better to that tiny imp I used to tease to tears than this rather grown up girl. This post is meant to be a quick trip down the memory lane..

I saw her the day after she got born, and wasn't actually impressed. I was in the 6th standard and some of my classmates had little sisters who were in the kindergarten of our school. They were all pretty dainty things in pink and blue pinafores. My sister was too tiny for me to even hold properly, let alone having fun with her. I had not seen any newborns till then and was hugely disappointed with her.
But she did grow up fast, and in around 6 months she had us all wrapped around her little finger. I had little to do apart from attending school which would get over around 2 pm. Post school all my time, attention and energies were devoted to dear sis. Now, when I look at my daughter, I fervently wish I could spend even half of that time with her.

Vatu, as we call her was an extremely active baby, and me and my brother share the credit jointly for it. We always kept her overly busy with our pranks. One particularly favourite one was that which we played when she had just learnt walking, less than an yr old... we would lie on the bed, and dangle some part of the body in the air, and then call out for her.. 'My arm has fallen off, can you please pick it up'.. she would come running to our aid and by the time she would put the arm back on the bed, we would dangle a leg and repeat the trick. This might not make much sense now, but we enjoyed it immensely as kids. And our pranks did graduate to a higher level. Sample this one, we opened a bank called 'Didi-Bhaiya bank' and led Vatu into depositing whatever money she had got in our bank. We maintained an account book and also provided her with a check book for withdrawal! Offcourse, we never returned any of her money. And then, we made her work for us as was her duty towards revered older siblings. If we dropped a pencil under our desk, we would not get up to retrieve it. Rather, we would summon Vatu who would be in the other room or the next floor, we couldn't care less, to pick the pencil for us. Or we would lie on the bed, and call Vatu to put off the lights and the television. Sounds kinda outrageous now, but believe me, it was so much fun!

There is so much more that I can put down, like the time when she wore a brown silk frock with a creamish underskirt on her birthday and we told her that she looked like a 'gulabjamun' or preparing her for her first day of school by teaching her how to become a 'murga' and to do sit-ups holding her ears.. the list is just endless.. Lemme sign off for now, may be some later day I shall share more about my adventures with my little sis..

Jodhaa Akbar..

A disclaimer before I begin- This is not a movie review.

Frankly, I don't think highly enough of myself to play a critic to somebody's creativity, more so when the person in question is a master of his craft. I loved 'Swades' and was simply bowled over by 'Lagaan'. But for some reason, I couldn't quite connect with A.Gowarikar's latest offering, 'Jodhaa Akbar'. It can be hugely attributed to my attachment to Mughal-e-Azam, having already watched it for God-knows-how-many times, I can watch it twice daily for the rest of my life without having enough of it..(I intend to keep the 3rd show slot for Sholay, and given the length of both the films, there is no chance for a 4th show :D). Even my POTC loving husband has been made to watch it so many times.. it is one of the important things he does to express solidarity with me.

I can talk endlessly about Mughal-e-Azam but it shall be wrong to do so in a post titled Jodhaa Akbar. Returning to the movie, it would have been easier to relate to it had it been named ambigously or probably after some lesser known blue-bloodeds. Even Roopmati-Baaj Bahadur would have done the trick. Akbar is too prominent a figure to be wrapped in total fiction, and all of us have preconceived notions about his larger than life persona. In an effort to keep with times, the plot gets too contemporary to be relevant.. Before long, the movie loses credibility and the viewers lose interest. Also, the lead actors being the best looking people we have ever had, look truly amazing but sadly, they do not look their part.
Still, I must admit that I had a nice time watching the movie. Firstly, it was after a long time that I sat 'just-like-that' with my otherwise busy-as-hell husband for so long at a stretch, full three-and-a-half hours, and the movie not being so interesting, we got to spend some quality time together. Also, I must thank fellow bloggers for putting some salient points in the movie in an altogether different light, making it enjoyable. There was no trace of humor in the film but we still got to laugh heartily whenever some of it came up. Thanks GB for that gem of a review..

Just Another Wedding? Nah!!!

I am just back from 'the wedding'.. and in soaring spirits despite dropping energy levels, a constantly hurting overworked body and an inflamed larynx. It was a wedding we had been looking forward to even before the match was made. And I have seen this one from the inception.. my shy, hesitant, not-sure-if-I-should-marry brother-in-law meeting the girl in question for the first time.. and consenting to the alliance half an hour later! Gosh! Wasn't that quick? A hurriedly arranged ceremony the same evening, most appropriately called 'roka', sealed their fates. The wedding got planned in Feb, less than 6 months from the Roka, but it looked like a rather long wait! As I finally discovered last week, the wait was truly worth it..
We enjoyed every moment of the weeklong celebration.. Also, it all reminded me so much of my own wedding which took place exactly 2 years ago, in the same venue. We had nearly the same set of people as in my wedding, the only significant addition was my little daughter who had everybody wrapped around her little finger. She enjoyed the event immensely and was a source of joy to all of us. The plummeting mercury failed to bring down our enthusiasm and we are back with memories to last a lifetime..

Loneliness..

Loneliness is a depressing feeling, but I find the concept rather interesting.. Something which is with you when there is nobody.. so you are never actually alone.. 'main aur meri tanhai..' I have actually experienced this phenomenon, talking to my loneliness or rather myself. And now I see my daughter do it so often. I guess most of us do it as kids, few continue it after growing up, and fewer after they are married and have kids. I still do it at times.. and when I do it now, I sometimes write it down. That explains the considerable number of unpublished posts in my blog, infact, the published ones also are sorts of soliloquy. It is not that I am lacking for company.. mostly I feel pressed for time, have always so much to do and so many to attend to. But at times, I like to be with me, just myself.. and enjoy my own company. Another thing that I really like and have been doing since I forget when, is stepping beside my ego, and observing myself as a third person would do.. It provides me with such surprising insights. Writing down my thoughts and reading them at a later point of time, in a different mood is an exercise with similar results. All help me in getting closer to myself, knowing myself better. And vain as I may sound, it is actually important. At times, it really surprises me to see how little people know about themselves, things that are so obvious to everybody around but to the person himself! And then, I think they are so much like my daughter, who knows her parents, her nanny and the dogs in the neighbourhood, but wonders who the baby in the mirror is..

Another of my trademark, uninteresting to all but me posts...

It is midnight, a lovely Saturday just over, making way for a not-so-promising Sunday.. and I am at my laptop desperately trying to catch up some of the work which I have been deftly procrastinating all through the last week. Flexibility at work is a double-edged sword. It works wonders for sincere people and plunders the less fortunate, the kind I belong to, folks who would give their right hand to avoid work. My employer allows me to push off early and pick up work from home. I do follow the first half of the term stated religiously, but mostly miss out on the remaining half. And there begins my misery.. 2 weeks into the job, and I am already overloaded, work piling up on my not so capable shoulders, and an ever aching back. And here comes the cause of all my tribulations, my little bundle of joy, and my big bunch of trouble. Active and alert as she always is at all such unheavenly hours, she approaches me a wide grin, flashing all of her 4+4 teeth, crawling at an impressive pace. She has successfully put her nanny to sleep, and is probably paying me a courtesy visit.. 'just came to check on you mom, still working, eh?' And following suit is my husband, tired and drowsy, asking me to take charge of the baby. He has been taking care of the baby all evening, he gently reminds me. I am mincing words, but you get the idea, right? I refrain from refresing in his memory the fact that I have been doing the same for the last 5 evenings leading to accumulation of my work, while he sits late in the office, finishing off his. It wouldn't help either of us.. Rather I timidly request him to kindly bear with me for another half an hr or so, after which I shall resume my nightly motherly duties. These involve pacifying the baby at all the odd times she decides to scream her lungs out for reasons completely unknown to me, preparing formula for her whenever she looks and sounds hungry coupled with other trivial tasks like pulling her back everytime she threatens to jump off the bed, putting her under the quilt the umpteen times she kicks it off and protecting my rather delicate frame from plausible damage whenever she gets down to practising some kicking and punching.. I am so glad I get to escape all these 'pleasures of motherhood' during the time of the day I spend in the calm interiors of my air conditioned office. But then, this five-day-a-week liberation comes at a price. That which I am paying right now, burning the midnight oil, rather electricity in my case. Gotta run now.. lest my husband blows off his fuse.. Mom reporting for duty, Madame..

Its my first birthday!!!

Yeah.. you read it right.. today is my first birthday, as a Mom. Last year, this very day I made a fresh beginning as my daughter entered this world. It was as new and unpredictable to me as to her.. Though she got born at half past ten in the morning, I gained consciousness only in the evening, and thats when I saw her first.. she was all wrapped up in sheets, only her tiny face was visible. And I could recognize her immediately, thanks to the numerous 2D and 3D scans that i had been through. She was actually the baby I had carried around for so long but it was altogether a different feeling as I held her in my arms. I would be lying if I say there was a sudden surge of motherly love when i first saw her. What I actually felt was more of confusion coupled with some disappointment. New-borns are seldom pretty and mine wasn't even round n cuddly.. And then, all that I had undergone to have her, right from the quesiness that I felt the first day of my pregnancy and which persisted till the last, to the fluid injected throughout the last month, and the planned ceaserean, all made me wonder if she was really worth all the effort. I certainly wasn't a very proud mother.

We both have come a long way from there. My daughter, we call her Pari, has grown up from a tiny newborn to a bright and completely amiable toddler. And I am now an exceptionally proud and indulgent mom. What an eventful year it has been! I lack the words to put down my thoughts, so I would rather put it in pictures. But hold on.. there is something we are missing..

'Happy Birthday' Pari, you are really my little fairy..