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 That explains the considerable number of unpublished posts in my blog, infact, the published ones also are sorts of soliloquy.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..

In Bangalore..

Two weeks from now, it will be 4 yrs since I came to Bangalore. It has been the most eventful period of my life, and probably the most important too.. I came to bangalore as a naive girl, just out of college, and for the first time, away from the family. From there, I have literally grown in stature and experience, and I don't mean it just professionally, though professionally too it has been quite an experience. I have already worked in 4 different companies!! On the personal front, I got committed, married and had a kid. All this happened during my stay in Bangalore. And yet, I am still not completely at home here... I guess it has been my fault all along. I am the one resisting change.
There are several things that make me feel like I don't belong to the place. The one that really alienates me is food. It is so different from what I eat, rather can eat.. as in spicy food never goes down well with me.. I sometimes wonder, when I can eat Chinese, Continental, Italian, Mexican, Thai, Afghani, Malaysian, even Korean food, why can't I eat rasam-rice. It should be easier.. probably coz' I never gave it a good enuf chance. The only other significant element is the language. I can pick up words, and bits n pieces, but when people talk fluently, I get completely lost. I have got plenty of friends who are Kannadiga's, and can help me overcome at least the language barrier. As for the food, lemme give bisibele baath and Mysore pak another decent chance..

For Him..

Why do we always end up hurting people we love the most? Those closest to us get the best and the worst of us. Probably the fact that they are so very close to us works against them. For one, if we are lucky enough to be geographically close, we spend most of our time together and that gives us ample opportunity to mess up stuff. Then our deep interest in each other's lives and wellbeing, often without an equally deep understanding leads to more issues. And then there are expectations... Expectations out of each other, expectation out of a relationship.. You can really expect them to ruin your relationships.

Yesterday, I had a bad fight with the person closest to me.. the fact that I am married makes it a giveaway. You can not actually call it a fight since I did all the talking and believe me, I am truly disappointed with myself. I still strongly believe in all that I said, and am willing to fight for it again... it was the manner in which things proceeded, that left me feeling so guilty. I practically waited for things to pile up and then tried clearing it off, all in one go. I had tried, but probably not hard enough to nip it in the bud. Some more sincere effort could have certainly helped. Also, we treat strangers and people who-do-not-matter with more respect and consideration than those who mean the world to us. Somewhere in our subconscious, we very well know that the person is so attached to us that come what may, he would never turn back on us, and we use it to our advantage. I did just that, blurting out just anything that I felt like saying, without giving any thought at all to his sensitivity. And in the end, after two and a half hours of playing the blame game, whose loss was it? Mine, and mine alone! That is the irony of the whole thing. When we hurt someone so dear to us, it is us who suffer the most. I was sad because he was sad, and sadder because it was me who was responsible for his sadness. Anyways, that is really no excuse.. And I wish to apologize, more for the sake of my own peace than to make up for his agony. I am sorry nonu, I really am!

Early morning blues..

It is 8.30 am, tuesday, friday still so far off morning and here am I, sitting in the office with a persistant headache and no inclination whatsoever to work. My headache can be attributed to acute shortage of proper sleep, not surprising considering that my daughter has just turned 8 months old, and still has trouble sleeping at a stretch. She wakes me up thrice every night and thrice I put her back to sleep when finally at around 5 in the morning she gets really worked up. She begins by purring softly in my ears followed by some rough kicking in my tummy accompanied by pulling at my hair. Now that she has grown 2 tiny teeth, she uses them to her advantage dexterously. Usually I am too drowsy to take notice, and if it actually starts bothering me, I tactfully turn her legs towards my husband. It used to work fine till last month, my husband would snore off peacefully oblivious of all the thrashing going on. However, now that her motoring skills have improved quite a bit, she re-orients herself to target me again. Also, if all that fails, she resorts to her good old screaming which is a proven success. Whatever it takes, I am not allowed to sleep past 6 am. It may not look so early to some disciplined people out there, but believe me, it is excruciating for me.. more so coz' I go to bed only after midnight. Babies have an amazing sense of time.. My daughter is a 'whenever to sleep, early to rise' person. I just hope she continues being this way when she starts school :) Anyways, 6 o'clock I get out of the bed and make a nice big bottle of formula for her only to realise that she is not all that hungry. She eagerly takes the bottle only to refuse it some two-and-a-half minutes and half-an-ounce later. All she probably wants is some quality time with me before I get ready for the office. For some reason, she is extremely playful and lively in the mornings, though she has the same amount of sleep and rest as me, and considerably less than that taken by the rest of the family. She is so bright, almost scintillating, smiling just too often, and giggling even more, delightfully throwing her little arms and legs just anywhere. Quite recently, she has learnt to wave her arms, both in sync when you say 'bye' and some other forms of greeting as well, so she gleefully begins the practice right away... all this until another hour passes by and it is time for me to leave for work.. The mood suddenly changes when I pick up my purse and put on my shoes. Her antics stop abruptly and she looks so lost and out of sync, probably trying hard to figure out what takes me away from her for so long every day. She does not wave her arms when I say bye.. rather she stretches them out, her tiny fingers trying to hold my sleeve and her naughty grin replaced by a look I lack the courage to pen down. But I move into the car swiftly ignoring my little daughter, fighting my own guilt laden conscience..