Category: Life

The Eleventh Commandment

I don’t know about you, but when little babies are given formal sounding names, it seems outlandish. I mean who names a tiny bundle of joy Mrityunjay or Giridhar? A lot of people do, and I have nothing against Giridhars or Mrityunjays in general. I just think they should be called Gimpies or Meerkat when they are cute and cuddly.

When do they stop being cute and cuddly you ask. Well…that is an occupational hazard of being cute in the first place. I know some people who look like you could safely drive a bus across their chest – they could take down an army with an upper cut. When one sees them striding down regally upon the red carpet, the urge to salute is over-bearing and yet they answer to the name of ‘Kutti’ or ‘Bolu’ or ‘Chinku’.  That is life.

It well maybe that my little lump of sugar who came into the World on a very special date (11-11-11 in room number 11 incidentally) grows up to be a force to reckon with. I would wish nothing but joy and success for him. But I can’t call him with that terribly official sounding name just yet.

May I take the opportunity of welcoming Goofy alias Guppies Appy till then.

I take my aunt-ly duties seriously and am in the process of writing several songs for him.. you know welcoming him into the world and all that. The songs, however, are a work in progress and tend to evolve with his current activities.

Gup Gup Gup Apple
Guppies is my name
Appy Appy Guppy Tippy
Chikoo Gubban Dee

While grandparents, aunts and uncles await His Highness’s Commandments, he sleeps to the Gup Apple song like a wee bird.

PS: He is also the 11th young person in my parents’ life counting the daughters and sons (including the sons-in-law and daughter-in-law, grand sons and grand daughters)

Less work * Less stress = More Money

To prove: The product of less work and less stress equals more money later in life.

The month of the Nobel has passed. I don’t know about you, but for me the Nobel month seems to tick me off robustly in the ear when I am popping balloons and being frivolous and wasteful. All nobel laureates are apparently hard-working, have worked all their lives and shall work rather hard till the day they die. Losers!

I shall tell you why I classify them so harshly.

There is a news article that is getting so much attention, it makes us young folks quiver. Think of the facts: I thought I had a system going. Do an honest day’s worth of work everyday as long as your mental and physical faculties allow you to and life will go on. It will take care of you in its own way. When the head needs hair and/or dye and the skin needs ironing and the back needs straightening, we should still be able to eat, live and love. Work now and enjoy the fruits later – Karma Basics 1.

But that is not what the news article tells us. It tells us that older Americans are at least 47 times richer than younger Americans —-> Exhibit 1

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9QRMR800.htm

There are scores of articles claiming stress has increased and workload has increased dramatically in this generation as opposed to previous generations. —-> Exhibit 2

http://www.stress.org/job.htm

Putting two and two together, or rather 1 and 2 together; I place before you theorem number 1:
The product of less work and less stress equals more money later in life. [Q.E.D]i.e.Quod Erat Demonstrandum

I have a plan so brilliant in place that I might easily land the Nobel Prize – all I need is for someone from the committee to read this blog.

I just plan to grow old. To occupy the vast amounts of time that I will have at my disposal, I shall jog the odds of getting richer than previously imagined by taking up regular correspondence with those optimistic fellows who claim that I am in the unique position of inheriting what half the country of Lisuavia craves for. I have in my list around two score countries just waiting to tip their wealth into my bank account.

Then when I grow old, I can be 48 times richer than someone in the work force and laugh.

24 * 7 = 24 + 1

I confess to being a bit dim-witted especially when people add and subtract hours from my life at random. I have complained (often) that I don’t have enough time. I have wished for my day to magically incorporate 48 hours instead of 24, but I want that so that I would be able to do things that have to be done and get cracking on things I enjoy most like staring idly at the waters on the lake with a book in hand (you know…give myself the illusion of satiating my mind), or watching that bird befriend that cow. I don’t want an hour tagged on and then several hours worth of work tagged on because of that extra hour.

Somehow, it seems to me that the daylight savings phenomena can be explained away with these equations:
24 hrs = x work units
Adding 1 to both sides
=> 24 + 1 = x+1
But what really happens is this
24+1 = 24 * 7
I am no Mathematician, but that doesn’t sound right to me. And I’ll tell you why. Systems that run automatically at a given time are all suddenly confused. One spends the next few days soothing them and cajoling them while they whimper.

In the good old days of yore, one started work in the fields when the sun rose and stopped again when the sun set. In the current days, one starts work before the sun rises and stops again after the sun sets. The goal here is to see as little of the merry sunshine that encourages the flitting of monarch butterflies as possible. So, why bother with this daylight change? All systems run time-based. I know several people who only eat by looking at the clock – “Ah! 8 o’clock, time to breakfast”, they say and hunger or no hunger will sit again in front of a full-ish looking meal at half past noon. Why upset these systems?

As usual, I have no real say in the matter, which should technically stop me from saying anything. But you know how I am…

I have to be up all week-end trying to explain to large systems, small systems, weepy systems and whiny systems that this is how it is. One hour set back for all of you.

“Why?” they ask and I say “No Idea…”

The Witch and the Lady bug



When a witch comes at you with her face painted in that fiery manner one associates with potion preparation – what do you do? You quail and hide, or at the very least, beat the retreat. More so, if you are a beetle or a bug – they say these creatures are the sprig and parsley of potions. You fly away as fast as your little wings carry you, right? Wrong! 


You give a hearty cackle that you know will make the witch stop in her tracks and set aside that glowing wand of hers for a minute and crush you with a magical hug before heading out into the Halloween night, and you look after her forlorn that she gets to run out while you have to be carried into the evening for a spot of Halloween trick-or-treating.


The daughter was a witch and the infant brother a lady bug. Last year, I had managed to carve some pumpkins (amateur effort as it was, it was a pumpkin all the same) This year, we hastily managed this:




… and making dosas shaped like witches on broomsticks – sigh.


All in all, we sent October packing with a resounding Halloween success. Tucky was hailed as the youngest Halloweener in many circles and he seemed to like the attention. Next year pumpkins – next year. I shall come after you with a carving knife so sharp that you shall squeal.

	


	





	

		
		
What? 7?
	


	
	
	

		
Regular readers of my blog know I had a second baby this summer. They also know that it is the first summer I stayed home with the now-school-going-daughter. One afternoon as we sat on the bed reading while the baby slept nearby, I asked her how she felt about having a sibling. Her face lit up and she said in a rush “Finally I got a brother amma!” and proceeded to plant a rather wet kiss on his face, waking him up dutifully.


“Okay, so we just have to do this for another 7 years right? One baby every summer for the next seven years and we’ll be done.” I said putting my book down for the umpteenth time to soothe the baby. (I don’t know why I bother trying to read really.) She dropped her book and shrieked “WHAT?”


“What? My grandmother had nine children. So….”

“My god! NINE children? She had a baby, gave inga, had a baby, gave inga – that is all she did?” (“Inga” is her talk for breastfeeding and I think she said ‘had a baby, gave inga’ nine times for clarity)


I laughed at her extreme reaction and thought of my lovely grandmother again. Her dimple, the gray hair that she pulled into a tight knot and the nine yard saree. “One yard for each child” she said as she hopped, skipped and jumped while tying her nine-yard saree. My simple brain asked her why she didn’t just switch to a six yard saree then and she gave me a vibrant laugh as an answer.




I have been thinking of her almost everyday since I had my little Tucky. I love babies, but I will also sigh at the amount of work (This… when I am lucky enough to have diapers, washing machines and help from parents) The poor lady had nine children one after the other, and the rigour of it all may have ruined her intestines, but did nothing to diminish her love for children. She still loved talking to us.


The only thing she ever asked of us was to massage her legs and I feel so guilty that I did not indulge her enough.


A friend had posted this link on the effect having children has on us and I couldn’t agree more.

 http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/10/on-parenthood.html


As we celebrate the 7 billion mark on 31st Oct along with Halloween, let’s hope Mother Earth remains bountiful and as accommodating to her most demanding species.


PS: I really need to get my diagrams-act together. Any pointers appreciated.

	


	





	

		
		
The Garage Aspect
	


	
	
	

		
The world’s outpouring of grief for technocrat Steve Jobs has been unprecedented. Death seems to have magnified his personal appeal. Suddenly, the world not only talks about his family and his estranged father, but of his culinary skills, what a nice person he was and all things apple. Food blogs cry out about how they choked up while baking apple tarts and how he loved apple as a child with the same fervour as geeks crying out about iPads and iPhones. And to think it all started in a garage.


The garage has a mystic, romantic appeal in the makings of tycoons. Journalists writing his eulogy pumped up the garage appeal to the masses. In fact, I suggest those who don’t have garages yet get one pronto. Who knows? Our progeny may make it big and if they don’t, we will have ourselves and the lack of a garage to blame for it.


I wish to tell everybody that my parents’ home did not have a garage. Our scooter occupied either the front verandah or a part of our drawing room. That’s right! We didn’t need any toys to play on, we played on the real thing. Though I can’t say my mother was too pleased on rainy days when the scooter’s wheels would slide in alongside our muddy footprints onto the polished teakwood floors. But those are minor irritants in the life of mothers and children didn’t have to worry about them.


One never knows what life has in store for them. As the garage factor was missing from my life while growing up, I had to ensure that I gave myself a garage experience.


I lived in a garage when I first started work in Bangalore. I can’t say with entire honesty that it was beautiful, but it kept out the rain and taught us a lesson or two on bladder control on rainy nights. Obviously, the garage could not contain a bathroom and a kitchen – one corner already had the kitchen. The other corner the entrance. There really wasn’t place to add a bathroom. Garages are rectangular and that was the plan.




So, the bathroom was outside the premises and a heavy outpour meant getting soaked in the rain for a pee. One weighed the pros and cons (bladder and rain volume) and made the decision.


I digress, but the point is, I read so many things about Steve Jobs in the past week and almost all of them had the garage featured prominently. So much so that I threw my mind to my garage days and decided to share it. Now that the garage part of the story is intact, I can choose to meander about life in my usual manner, and lay that worry behind me. If ever anyone wants a garage story, I have one. Phew!

	


	





	

		
		
How do you know?
	


	
	
	

		
Please throw your mind back to the time you are holding the attention of all present. Your speech is flourishing, the mind drooling – powerfully cruising along with great confidence about a pet topic. A topic in which you are hitherto considered the expert, when somebody throws this at you. “How do you know?”


I don’t know about you, but there are only two ways to answer this question. One is uninteresting and long-winded wherein you whip out the facts from your bosom and lay them bare for the audience to consider, sift and form their opinion. If the audience is quieter than usual, then you go on whipping more and more facts till you fall into your own fact trap. The problem with this approach is that sometimes, I’ve seen the firm rudder flounder a bit in the wind and get into the “I agree with this, but on the other hand, I also agree with that.” boat.


The other can be interpreted in a wide variety of ways: rude, arrogant or funny depending on the tone and situation. Answers such as, “I know, therefore I know.” fall into this category.


Which is why when we saw the daughter’s to this question, we couldn’t help laughing and relishing the innocence of it all.



	


	





	

		
		
What ties a Unicorn & a Book together?
	


	
	
	

		
Qn: What ties a unicorn and a book together?

Ans: A tie


Ten years is a short time. Seems only yesterday that I met the man I love and gave him my first useless material gift. (The gift of my gab he still enjoys.) A decade later, we have managed to fill our lives up with our children, our friends and family, our own interests and hobbies and our careers. But it never does to forget the past, or look through them with rose-tainted glasses.


In 10 years some things have not become easier, in fact they have become harder – like finding a suitable gift for my husband. He is a minimalist. He doesn’t wear a watch, saying he prefers to see the time on the cell-phone given by his company. (The one he uses to cut me off mid-sentence because there is never enough charge left on it – that one) His clothes are bearable if I spend enough time to get him some new shirts and t-shirts and place the products so he gets them where his hands automatically reach out. Otherwise, he will willingly wear the maroon t-shirt (also given by the company) or the gray t-shirt everyday till I shriek in agony.


So, I lay in bed racking my brains on what to get him for his birthday when the brain-wave struck. Of all my gifts, the most useless has got to be the one I got him first. Allow me to ramble a bit.


My father was always dressed in a suit and tie as a school teacher in the Lawrence School, Nilgiris. Suits on school teachers make them look regal and I suppose is required to set the atmosphere among a bunch of kids trying to place wet soap on the hallways for fun. He looked majestic as he strode through the Assembly of students in his suits(even though the suits were often tailored to fit somebody else, but that is the subject of another blog). Every time I bought my father a tie, he beamed and sported it the very next day.


Now, the only images of America I’d had back then were from movies where I’d seen dashing handsome chaps sit around in suits and have lunch or walk very fast along shiny corridors. I observed. I deduced. And when the man from Sunny California was to come to Sunnier Chennai to see me after months of chatting and talking on the phone; I bought him a present that I hoped would be appropriate and useful. A tie.


I don’t know why I bothered gift wrapping it, since it was clear he didn’t want to discern the difference between the wrapping paper and the tie housed inside. I was guilty of choosing similar patterns for both, but still….


I thumbed through the albums of his school days hoping to see if they had a tie as a uniform. Many “English” schools in Chennai boasted of this monstrosity, and sold ties that could double up as leashes since they had a buckle on them. His school even had “English” in the name. No luck there either. He truly had passed life skirting ties entirely.


It was a perfect gift in many ways, since it set the expectations right. It set the trend for a lifetime of poor gifting from me.


Every now and then, we would laugh about the tie, and since I don’t ever want him to think that the woman he loved has changed, I renewed my vows of poor gifting and bought him a tie!


Then, I got to work on the easier gifts for the 7 & 70:

I got my daughter a magical pony i.e. a unicorn and wrote a book for my father.



	


	





	

		
		
7 & 70
	


	
	
	

		
The summer vacations ended on a reluctant note for both the daughter and I. This is the first time I was home for the summer (At my school, we had vacations when the weather was its most vindictive, namely monsoon and winter). Of course, we both had a blast. Which is why when I started work after my maternity leave and she started school in the same week, we both felt lost and moody (well, me more than her). She was quite happy to go pottering off with her new friends, some of whom apparently had some kind of viral fever. Have I told you she is hospitable to a fault? Yes she is….so, she gladly housed the virus and came home overflowing with love and kissed her infant brother. Sigh! Well, we all know the train of events to follow that particular show of affection.


To catch me at my cranky best, all you need to do is give me a cold, and throw in a couple of sick kids of my own making and a few sleepless nights as a bonus. The dumbest parts of me shine through and the crabbiest aspects surface. I spent a few hours at the Doctors listening to how this is a passing phase and needs no medicines and then more than a few hours listening to my mother rue the state of the American Healthcare System and why they don’t give any medicines. Rudimentary, it would seem to her. The lady who used to self prescribe antibiotics and dewormins with great confidence. (subject for another blog)


We all got better just in time to prepare for the adrenaline rush of meeting our dear friends and extended family on the occasion of the 7th and 70th birthday of my daughter and father. We kept the 70th part of it as a surprise for the septuagenarian and watched him smile his evening through. I know people have busy lives and yet they all set aside the time to come and give us the precious present of their presence. A special thanks to all of you for taking the time out to wish the 7 & 70 folks, you truly made them feel special.

Have a good day while I garner my thoughts for the next post!

	


	





	

		
		
Slay the Dragon (NOT the Parrot)
	


	
	
	

		
My dear father loves the stock market and anything to do with it almost as much as his children. I know we rank higher in the love chart, because he doesn’t forget facts about stocks, but he does forget facts about us. Lock him away without a physical copy of Economic Times therefore, and he gets forlorn. So, imagine his glee when the husband got an opp. to visit India on Business.


“Please get me a copy of Dalal Street and Economic times, pa. Not the Sunday ET mind you.” he told him as soon as he heard the news. The husband nodded glad to be able to buy something that would make the dear man happy.

A hectic packing schedule later (another blog waiting to happen), we went to drop him off at the airport.


The father gong sounded, “Remember to get the Economic Times pa. Remember not the Sunday ET. I will send you an email also to that effect. Not Sunday. Any other day is okay.”


He gave him a final wave before leaving the airport with the loving words, “Not Sunday!” (Once a teacher always a teacher – repeat after me, “Not Sunday”)




Now, my father knows that life can be intense and people tend to forget. So, he typed out an email mid-visit thus: (I shall, in another blog, touch up on the typing)

Dear XXX

We are all finehere.My new boss(the Baby ) and hisstser are doing well.Pl. buy Dalal Street and Economic Times.

Love

Appa

PS: I do NOT want Sunday Economic Times.


Now, the husband glanced at this email on Monday morning. He was supposed to leave India that night. So, his head swimming with ‘Sunday’, he tried his level best to procure a copy of the Sunday Economic Times. Failing to do so, he weaseled up to the peon in the office and asked him to see if they had a copy of the Sunday Economic Times anyway. He was in luck as the peon had stored away the Sunday copy. It isn’t everyday that working-in-America saabs thank the peon for old newspapers. The heart felt thanks made the man’s heart swell and he felt morally obliged to give him Monday’s copy as well.


One can imagine the triumphant scene whence the prince was told to slay the dragon (not the parrot) to obtain the approval of the king. Slay the dragon but not the parrot. Remember not the parrot. And the prince crosses 7 seas, dons bitter pills, fights gory creatures and slays the parrot.



The king and prince have since made up, since the dragon was also slain by mistake, but there it is – not the parrot!


It turns out that the Sunday Economic Times costs 3 times the amount and has 1/3rd the content of a week day ET, hence the “Not Sunday”