Category: Life

The Wedding Aboard Emirates 636 at 3 a.m.

It all started the day we were leaving India. I had spent all day the previous day packing everything we owned into the large suitcases. There is something charming about weighing international baggage to see if a packet of sambar powder would fit in the first 13 times you do it.  After the 17th time this happened, I lost patience.

The previous day had morphed into the day we were leaving and I was still doing the pack-dance. I sighed a loud sigh. Loud enough for the considerate and well-intentioned husband to abandon all pretense at not-hearing. He was nominated to finish packing before he could flee the premises on a flimsy context. He did.

Our plans are always simple. For instance, if we have to go from home to the airport, our plan is:
1) Go to a temple that is an hour and a half away from the airport in a south easterly direction.
2) After the temple visit, go to a guesthouse that is an hour away in the eest westerly direction. Change.
3) Proceed to airport that is an hour away in a northern southerly direction.
See?

When plans are made, strategies are not far behind. Napolean could take a correspondence course from us. The able general may have moved his troops from France to Russia and back fighting some wars along the way, but I doubt he could have loaded the suitcases onto the top rack of a car, tied it with rope and loaded the troops into the car before transporting them to a temple enroute to an airport. It would have him stumped.

The large suitcases were all loaded and tied onto the car. The children were counted and loaded inside the car. I hollered to make sure the hand baggage was not tied on to the top and then the whole family piled in and we took off. I don’t know why this is, but the temple we were visiting insists on women wearing sarees and men wearing dhotis. The husband smartly tied his dhoti over his pants and deemed himself ready. The last time I’d tried to wear a saree on my salwar kameez, I was rapped on my knuckles and told that any pant-like garment was not allowed. So, I was relying on step 2 in our plan to change into something comfortable before the flight.

We stopped at the guest house to change. It was hot and the infant in my arms was having fun with my saree. He kept playing peek-a-boo in it. I was holding onto the garment quite gingerly. The husband thrust the hand carry suitcase in my infant-free arm and then bounded off indecently behind some banana chips that were being fried half a mile away.

I haven’t really talked to men of the desert, but I suppose they must feel a sense of relief when they see an oasis. My senses were similar. Silk sarees are extremely hot and uncomfortable. I clutched the suitcase and opened it with longing. At first sight, I could not find any clothes for me or the daughter or the son. So I looked again. Nothing. I gasped and tried everything. Closing and re-opening to see if I’d missed the goods in a poor angle of light or something. Still nothing.

The husband walked in with a smile on his face. My look must have unnerved him for he came and asked me to eat chips and “chill”. Hot though I was, I asked him icily where our clothes were.
“There!” he said.
“Where?” I said.
“Just there – under the bed sheet!” he says. Why a man should pack a bed sheet in our hand-carry suitcase I still don’t know.
I pulled out a nightie. “You mean this?” I ask. Sheep could have detected the sarcasm, but the husband ignored it.
“Yes!”

flight
He was serious. That was the garment he had for me. A nightie. One of those barrel-like pillowcase shaped garments that are so popular as night wear in India. I gasped. Even by my lax standards of dressing, I could hardly travel abroad in a nightie. I gulped and swallowed a hundred times and asked about the children’s clothes. There was nothing in that department either. He had 4 vests of his, 2 pairs of his jeans, some towels and bedsheets in there. Also the camera. I could hardly wrap the daughter in a towel!

For those of you who wondered why the daughter and I were dressed like the Emirates Flight leaving at 3 a.m in the morning was to host a dear one’s wedding: that’s why.

Sigh!

How do we …. ?

I read ‘The Life of Pi’ a few years ago and recommended the book to everyone I knew. So, one can imagine how I felt when I asked the husband to accompany me to watch the movie. Excited is the word. We drank tea, bought the nachos and the coke. All set for a good cry in other words. Before I proceed, I want to disclose that I am not the ideal audience for a tear-jerker rookie director. That is: if a director is testing to see whether he has appealed to the cry- factor enough, he would do really badly to use me as a test.I cried for Finding Nemo. That fish, Marlin, cried less at being reunited with his son Nemo, than I did.

So, when I say I was prepared for the movie, I mean the tea, nachos, coke and a small tissue packet with me for just this occasion. I was ready. What I did not know was that I am complete wuss! While I never imagined myself striding into a battlefield and bravely fighting the troops single-handedly, I did not think I would run from the theatre gasping for air in less than an hour. I lasted 45 minutes in the theatre.

Deep thinking afterward made me realise that it was the feeling of helplessness that crushed me. In the story, the protagonist is stuck on a boat with a vicious tiger for company. Not knowing when the tiger would pounce, not knowing whether sleep would overcome him, not being at peace for even a moment. The constant fear throbbing in the movie was too much for me. I had read the book, and yet the visual medium affected me very badly.

I thought of how people live in these circumstances. I thought of battered women whose life is about fear. Then, I read something that made my blood boil. That made me shout in outrage.
http://www.firstpost.com/politics/saffron-women-inside-the-rss-womens-wing-596730.html

How is one supposed to change the fabric of society if women who have the capacity to influence and empower other women advocate this? This is coming from RSS women’s wing and I quote (I am cringing even while pasting this):

The reporter quotes twenty-something Sharda from Jabalpur:

I turn to Sharda from Jabalpur. In her late twenties, Sharda has been a whole timer for five years. She tells me that apart from the shakhas, the Samiti also counsels women in their respective areas. There is a manual that is followed. When I ask her, “What advice would you give to a victim of wife beating?” she answers, “Don’t parents admonish their children for misbehaviour? Just as a child must adjust to his/her parents, so must a wife act keeping in mind her husband’s moods and must avoid irritating him. Only this can keep the family together.” Similarly, divorce is also a non option for women. She says, “Our task is to keep the family together, not break it. We tell the women to adjust. Sometimes, we try counsel the husband too.”

How does one stop this?

How do we empower girls to feel that this nonsense is unacceptable?
How do we educate the boys that equality leads to happiness?

How do we … ?

Talk into a skull?

I’d heard a few months ago that the nephew was going to take part in the "Young Entrepreneur’s Contest". Among other things, this meant his team of 4 could learn the basics of sourcing, inventory, estimation, accounting etc. As part of the contest, they were meant to set up a stall in Dubai and man the booth. I was agog with excitement and much to his embarrassment insisted on seeing photos of him dressed up in a suit and standing in his booth.

He refused point-blank and allowed a photograph of himself to be taken at home and sent to quieten his aunt. I goggled and sent him an SMS that he probably hid from his cool teenage friends about how grown-up he looks and all that. Another aunt of his tramped up to his booth to encourage the young entrepreneur. This aunt took ‘Aunt-pride’ to a new level. She lived locally and gathered all her friends and extended family and arrived early in order to make them buy stuff from her nephew’s stall. She kept pulling him out from the crowd and gushed about how proud she was of her little boy and how tall and dashing her young entrepeneur looked. He said the upshot of the whole thing was that, the busload of people who accompanied this aunt bought a lot of things they did not need and ‘helped business along’.

When asked about the whole experience, he looked visibly grateful that the young entrepreneur’s contest was over and behind them. I was excited to learn that they’d made decent profits, and learnt that it is ‘quite hard to bargain with Chinese traders’. He went on to say "We pretty much landed up buying more than we wanted from these people chitthi. They reverse bargained us!".

The conversation was going well till my sister came and shoved something hideous at my face. I recoiled in horror, yelped "GAAAA!"  and toppled out of my chair. Hardly the thing that folks fling in your face when one is admiring the young entrepreneur, what?

I told her so, and she said that the thing she had showed me was what she was forced to ‘buy’ from their son’s stall, since they wanted to reduce inventory and the Chinese trader who sold them that refused to take it back. I totally identified with the Chinese trader (although, why he procured it in the first place beats me)

This is what it is. Just in case the message is too subtle, it is a skull phone, and when the phone rings, the eye sockets glow red or blue or something.

skull1

Why on this earth, one would buy a phone that resembles a skull beats me. Oh! The horror of picking up the receiver when it rings.

skull2

I just let the nephew know what I thought of his skull phone when he told me that they had procured 4 pieces of it and 3 of them had been sold. I can’t imagine anybody willingly spending money on that kind of thing, but again, what do I know? I would have predicted 0 as the number for skull phones.

"Chitthi! Relax – we all have one in here you know?" he said sagely and pointed to his head.

Wise words from a profitable entrepreneur indeed, but I still made him put the phone away from sight.

Chitthi: Aunt

The Knee Scooter

I have always been a loving aunt and have prided myself in the fact that I love being around children. This time, the nephews and nieces seemed extra nice around me. At first, I deluded myself into believing that they were sympathetic towards me and my broken leg. But it turns out that while they love their aunt like an aunt, they loved my knee scooter better than any toy they’ve seen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knee_scooter

scootk

I often muse on our purpose on this Earth. I wonder how we will know whether what we make of our lives is meaningful or not. The knee scooter has provided me with deep philosophical answers.

You see? This simple aid has been a boon of sorts. I broke my foot a few months ago and am still hobbling around on a boot(cast). I was advised the use of crutches to not put any weight at all on the foot. My resolve to bear the injury stoically crumbled faster than some dried up cookies on my counter-top. Three days into using the crutches, I found myself weeping at the hopelessness of it all. My arms hurt from the crutches and I could not run behind my toddler baby to get simple things done. That is when one of the children in my neighborhood came and told me about this knee scooter. A contraption that can be used to move around without putting any weight on the foot. The husband got me access to one quickly enough and I must say, I whooped with joy!

The knee scooter was amazing and helped me perform most of my duties as normally as possible. In fact, I even undertook a trip to India and Dubai using it. Many people thought me nuts. In fact, my own family thought I’d become a salted walnut. I realized that it is not easy to travel halfway across the globe with a toddler in tow when one’s foot is broken. Most people would have cancelled without a second thought. Well…I am not most people, and went anyway (with some ‘subtle’ encouragement from the husband and daughter of course).

knee 1

I tried to find the inventor of the knee scooter, but it is not easy to find. Nevertheless, the person (or team) who invented it, or even helped conceptualize it in one way or the other, has led a purposeful life. The beauty of it is that they may not even know it. It is not a very popular contraption. The medical team at the hospital I got treated in did not tell me about it. They gave me crutches. If doctors tell their patients about knee scooters, patients could try to obtain one on their own even if insurance doesn’t cover the cost for it.

While I was scooting my way in Dubai one day, a Doctor came up to me and introduced himself as an Emergency Physician. He’d noticed my boot and asked me what I was using to move along. When I told him all about the knee scooter, I was surprised to hear that he had not seen one like it. He vowed to make enquiries to make knee scooters available for patients in the Middle East. To me, that one conversation was well worth the trip.

That and the large number of people who saw me forge ahead with a knee scooter. I hope they will remember seeing something that alleviated a person’s distress with a broken foot. If my trip abroad can help even a few people with foot injuries, I think the trip was a success. An unconventional one maybe, but a successful one.

Santa Followed Us!

Here is wishing all of you a wonderful new year! For those of you who noticed the quiet blog, I have been offline on a trip to India and the Middle East for the past few weeks. The daughter was sick with worry about whether Santa would know where to find her, since she was to be away during Christmas. She left letters and cookies under the tree in our home in the US (‘Just in case’ she says!) But she need not have worried. We knew a manager who worked at one of Santa’s factories and arranged for Santa to drop his presents off for the children halfway across the globe in our hallway in Chennai.

You know? If I were Santa, I’d be quite flustered with all the last minute changes that he had to deal with last year.

1) The lists changed in the last minute. For a whole month, there was something on there, and then the day we were leaving for India, a new list appeared with a bunch of cookies. I had to physically ban the milk, since we were scheduled to be away for over 3 weeks. ("Huh? I Changed my mind" – the daughter shrugs her shoulders when quizzed about the change in list contents!) IF I were Santa, I would have stuck around and shrugged my shoulder too, but he didn’t. He was very accommodative of requests procuring items from the local markets at short notice.

2) The location changed. There was a large Christmas tree with an updated list and a post script saying, "Santa: We will be in Chennai for Christmas for this year." I mean. What?

A number of questions arose in my mind. First of all India is ahead of us in timing. So, technically, by the time he read the note and zipped past time-zones, he would already have been late, but he wasn’t!

7849331-silhouette-of-santa-and-a-reindeers-flying-in-moon

The daughter and her cousins spent all afternoon on 24th cutting up pieces of paper and coloring them to be Christmas tree and decorating them with stickers and bindis. Santa behaved admirably and left the gifts for them under make-shift paper trees that made for endless days of fun.

Happy New Year!

 

(Image from Google Search)

The Ugly Sweater Party

In an effort to snap out of all the melancholy that set has set in, in the past week with brutal incidents and heavy reading, I looked for news other than the shooting and the gruesome and the inconsiderate. What drew my eyes was sadly this:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/13/doomsday-phobia-grows-china-december-21-2012-mayan-apocalypse_n_2292136.html?utm_hp_ref=weird-news

My nerves are weak I tell you. They can’t take the brunt anymore. 2012 was supposed to be the year. 12-12-12 was a huge anti-climax for those who fervently believed the Mayans and that Earth would vanish in a huge apocalypse. Now, these scary samaritans are going after 21st Dec as doomsday.

In the meanwhile, office parties and the holiday season is setting in like every other year. I love the holiday season in general. I usually get in the Yule-tide spirit and can be found ho-ho-ho-ing with my children in a fashion that has Santa drawing up his training programs on ‘Correct Laughing Techniques’. But does any of that make me cringe at laughing? Far from it. I draw inspiration from all the finger-pointing, keep a firm upper chin and continue smiling through the holidays.

I like themed parties in general, but this one went too far in my opinion. Everywhere I turned at work, there were these huge signs posted in purple.

JOIN US AT THE HOLIDAY PARTY

Event Dress Themes – Ugly Sweater!!!

Get in the holiday spirit by wearing an ugly sweater to work!

Bing something like this on me and my brain stores it somewhere for processing later on. I walked in to the office the other day, and there was a lady wearing a sweater I would positively recoil at if I saw it in a store. The sweater had large multi-coloured squares on it. Brown, yellow, mustard competed with pink, cream and red. Each box had a different pattern on it. You know the snowman and the mapel leaf and the snowflake and such.

ugly sweater

Naturally, the fertile mind that mine is put two and two together and I asked her, "Oh! Is today the Ugly Sweater Christmas party?"
"No! That is not for another 2 days." she said. Clearly, this was one of her better looking sweaters that I slandered.

She pouted a bit and then sat there not saying a thing. All this not talking was making me quite uncomfortable.

"Oh! You were wearing a very Christmas-y sweater, so, I thought today was the Wear-your-Christmas-sweater-to-work-party." I finished meekly. But there was no denying that she had read the same sign up and down the office too and my attempt to water down "Christmas sweater" for "Ugly sweater" was not much of a success.

I muttered "Nice bright sweater!" and beat the retreat before I had the acorns plucked from her sweater and thrown at me.

Sigh! Next time, please just say Christmas Party won’t you?!

I hope this pain will one day be useful

Ever since I heard of the mindless violence inflicted upon Elementary School children, I have been really angry and sad.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57559261/20-children-6-adults-killed-in-conn-elementary-school-massacre/

I was wondering how to address the topic with my Elementary School daughter and how to tell her that we will be there for her and that there are horrors in the world inflicted upon the innocent (without alarming her). This article tells us to use an age appropriate mechanism, but my husband and I were still not sure how to go about it.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012/12/14/connecticut-school-shooting-what-to-tell-your-kids/

Finally, when we picked her up from School, we asked her in as casual a tone as possible whether anyone told her anything at School. Her answer surprised me. She became defensive and blurted: "But it was not my fault Amma. Nylan was the one talking to me. I was only listening to him, but my teacher thought I was talking and she turned my card over as a warning. Did my teacher tell you she flipped my card over for talking?"

Inspite of the fact that I had cried in outrage while ranting about the whole shooting incident at CT just a few minutes before, I  couldn’t help smiling.
"So why did you not tell your teacher that you weren’t talking?" I asked her.

"AMMA! I can’t get him in trouble. I can’t tell-tale on him! So I just took the warning, but in the recess I told him not to talk to me when the teacher was talking." Apparently, the Code of the Elementary School Goers is quite rigid with respect to tell-tales.

As I thanked my stars for the ability to hear such a wonderful tidbit of her life in School, my heart went out to all those families and friends grieving for the loss of these children. The tale of the recess untold, the code of their friendships unraveled. May their souls rest in peace.

May their little souls also guide our misguided policy makers to make a decision that is not only right for the country, but for innocent lives everywhere. I hope this pain will one day be useful.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/12/newtown-and-the-madness-of-guns.html

perfer et obdura; dolor hic tibi proderit olim
(Be patient and tough; some day this pain will be useful to you.)

Walking on Water

You know how it is when you are growing up and folks (mostly parents, aunts and uncles) are always telling you about how life in their day was stern and earnest. The ‘You-youngsters-have-it-easy’ theme was an all-time favorite. They would gas on about how education was something they loved and why we should not be complaining about how easily education is served on a platter to us. How in their day, they had to walk across the town and then catch a bus that had no seats or fuel(sometimes): all to get to a school, that did not have teachers or roofs?

I always envied their stories. Because the most I could tell my children was that I had a wonderful childhood. It was true that it rained 10 months a year, but that was not nearly as bad as it sounds. When young, splashing in the rain and singing songs while walking up and down the hills was really not tragic. (I’ve tried the martyr theme with this and it fell flat, because I could not keep the glee of the good-old-days from my voice)

Which is why I am almost jealous of this class of students. Imagine this:

Septuagenarian Great Uncle: Youngsters these days! Pah! In our day ….
Kid: Huh? Telling me something grandpa? (unplugging music from ear)
Septua. Great Uncle: Grunt! Humph! You youngsters have no idea about the kind of lives we led. The perils we had to face in order to procure an education. There we would be waiting for the bus to come to the village. There would be a bus only once every 2 hours. So, if we missed it, we had to walk to school over 1.37 miles away. How long to stand for the bus?
A sound like a whistle of steam escaping a tea-pot draws the attention to the wistful sigh that the uncle just let go.
Kid: But you told us you whiled away time playing marbles at the bus-stop.
S.G.U.: Well…yes! But only while waiting for the bus. And when the bus did come, do you think we could waltz in and sit on the seats?
Kid: Why would anyone waltz into a bus, unless you are performing the bus-boarding-scene in a Broadway show?
S.G.U: *Completely ignoring the smart observation regarding buses and waltzes* Then…we had to study really hard. The homework we had was meant to make us think. Not like you – having free time to listen to music and not studying.
Kids: Really?! So you had to play with marbles while you waited and had a bit of homework, but did you have to walk on water for your homework?
That is our assignment you know?
S.G.U: What?
Kid: Our assignment: Walk on Water.

http://www.heraldextra.com/news/weird-news/weird-news-fla-students-walk-on-water-for-class-assignment/article_bc80890c-29ed-11e2-9c5d-001a4bcf887a.html

 

walking-on-water

Ha! I could pay to capture the expression .. Sigh!

The Story behind the Menu

 

I am going to go out on a limb and say that things could be better. On the other hand er.. leg, it could be a lot worse. So, on the whole, I have decided to not put my foot down and complain about the state of things.

I could not resist the above paragraph folks. So, thanks for letting me get away with that. The truth is that I have a hairline fracture on my ankle and am hoisted up on one foot for weeks. At first, the daughter remained in denial. She kept telling me that she can barely notice the limp in my stride, about how the foot would not pain if I don’t think about the pain etc. It was only later I found that her hidden agenda was making me believe I was perfectly fine. Fine enough to go to Disneyland for the Thanksgiving break. Well, we put a stopper to her Disneyland dreams when she saw me hobbling into the house on crutches. Even she knew that no amount of psychological counseling can get me to Disneyland at this point. So, she buckled down to a week-end at home and teamed up with the husband to "take care" of me.

The pair of them made a sufficient noise about getting me to rest over the week-end and said I was to remain upstairs while they cooked up a Thanksgiving lunch for me.
Very gallant of them of course, but I have to say, I have whipped up many a meal in my life, but rarely have I made such a noise about it. I mean neighbours heard pans clanging and music blaring. Not to mention questionable noises and smells. After about an hour of this cacophony, I asked them what the menu was, and I got the following:

Pan-seared vegetables:
What that means is that the duo had cut up vegetables in haphazard shapes and let them burn. My longish nose picked up a smell like burning rubber and I asked them in a slightly alarmed voice whether everything was under control.
"Oh no….!" moaned the chef
"APPA! You said not to cover it. If we had covered it, amma would not have smelled the vegetables burning!" the sous chef’s accusatory tone rang out. I must say I would have preferred it if she did not burn it at all in the first place.

Potatoes with a hint of Cumin:
I distinctly heard the husband say "OOOPS! The lid just fell inside and it plopped all over."
The daughter rang out, "What is that appa? You said chilli powder, but isn’t chilli powder red? This one is brown or is it green?" I decided I did not want to let my imagination explore what the powder might be, but a few seconds is all it took for me to realise that the "Oops" was the Cumin bottle.
I heard them splashing water on the pan. They must have washed the cumin off because by the time I ate it, they were boiled potatoes.

Lentils with the freshness of roma tomatoes:
The dal was fine – only in the last moment, the sous chef decided that she did not like tomatoes and the Roma t’s retained their freshness.

Thanksgiving

I groaned as I hopped into the kitchen. Every single spice bottle was on the counter and every inch of counter space was full. I must’ve looked a sight because the husband said he was going to clean up and that I had come too early. The daughter said that if they had aprons, things might have been better

And so it goes … never a dull moment in the nourishncherish world.

PS: My friends and neighbours have been wonderful they’ve sent food across, so the kitchen is holding up after the last bout of cleaning. Thanks all 🙂

Curious George Dances Gangnam Style with Tinker Bell

For those who haven’t read Curious George and his adventures, I suggest you do so. I love the little monkey and his wonderful adventures.

Man-in-the-Yellow-Hat

This time, Curious George was in an adventure of sorts with The Man with the Yellow Hat, Professor Wiseman and Tinker Bell the naughty fairy.

When Curious George the monkey heard that Tinker Bell, that amazing fairy, was going be at large, he was excited. He was a curious monkey and fairies, especially plucky ones like Tinker Bell, always interested him. He climbed on to the Man with the Yellow Hat and said, "Oooh oohh aaa aa! Awwww! ooh ooh aaa aaa!" The Man understood him as usual and arranged for little Curious George to go to the party where Tinker Bell was going to hang out with her friends.

It was a wonderful party and the Man-with-the-Yellow-Hat was a big hit. He could barely fit into the pictures with his tall hat. Even Captain Hook forgot about being evil and relaxed in the radiating yellow of the Man. Passing cars slowed down mistaking the Man-with-the-yellow-hat to be a yellow traffic light. But Tinker Bell the fairy swooped in with her sparkling green wings and set them going again. All in all, it was a wonderful party even though Professor Wiseman acted out of character on occasion. You see Professor Wiseman had come for the party and was talking to the Queen when a wonderful witch decided to kick the party up a notch by getting folks to dance to “Gangnam Style”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0

Curious George and the Man-with-the-Yellow-hat loved Gangnam style (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangnam_Style) and really wanted Professor Wiseman to dance. Professor Wiseman rose to the challenge and tried to dance. But she chose her steps poorly and landed up twisting her ankle. Tinker Bell tried to heal Professor Wiseman’s ankle, but she was tired and there wasn’t enough magic left for an ankle to heal.

Curious George is now Professor Wiseman’s helper and plays with her whenever he can to make sure he distracts her mind from the twisted ankle. Tinker Bell is spreading her magical love about the place and making Professor Wiseman feel comfortable.

DSC_0036

The End