Life – Page 77 – Nourish-n-Cherish

The Solar System, Some Dinosaurs and a Birthday

Conversation was flourishing yet again at the breakfast table. The clock ticked on unmindful of the parodies and paradoxes being played out at the very moment. There was time – 6 minutes and 23 seconds before the big horn was blown and all children boarded the car and raced towards their scholarly duties. This time in the morning is the most fraught with tension, melodrama and hilarity. For instance, one time the daughter sighed an identifiably 10-year-old tenet that Monday mornings were tough with P.E, gym and all classes packed into the day. It must be particularly hard for her, for she knows how to take relaxing-over-the-weekend to ridiculous extremes.

“Don’t worry .. you can sleep soon in the afternoon.” said the wise toddler opening his mouth way bigger than it needs to be opened for 3 pieces of cereal to be spooned in. The cereal made it in, but the milk did not. The wisdom-dripping sister sighed and passed the milk dripper a napkin.

“I don’t have nap time in my school unlike yours. Amma – he thinks I have time to sleep in school!” said the affronted sister.

“Well..how is he to know that? His school has nap-time. You go to school, therefore it must have nap-time.” I said.

“Yeah – Pre-school. They don’t even agree to call it school yet. Pre-school! He has 3 breaks, 1 nap, 2 play sessions and 4 go-to-the-loo’s in his time-table.”

Say what you will about the toddler, he rallies. His brief confusion about how there can be schools and universities without nap-time occupied his mind for a few seconds and he said, “Oh! That’s okay – when you become small like me again, then you can sleep in school.”

3 minutes and 40 seconds.

Another howl from the older sister. “I don’t grow small again, I become bigger.”

“Yes, but I will also become 5 years old.” says the brother.

“That doesn’t even make any sense!” she says to me again. I nod.

Say what you will about ambition and planning, the toddler has it right. When asked what he would like to become when he grows up, he says, “I want to be 5.” At 10, his sister must seem like a wise-rishi to him. When she tells him about flip bars (https://nourishncherish.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/guess-what-flip/) and running 9 rounds during P.E, his mind boggles. The magic of her age, size and tenacity seem formidable. He cannot even aspire to such greatness, and he settles for being 5 and becoming a fire-fighter like his favorite cartoon character.

These age-related discussions always have her puzzled. She has tried explaining the concept of time, solar system, evolution of dinosaurs and mankind to him (subject to another blog, for it was fraught with theories bound to make philosophers and scientists squirm in their seats and graves).

One time he told her that when he was small, she was in my tummy. “How is that even possible? I am older than you, lil broke-head.” she says tussling his hair and he replies. “Yes I know. But when you were small and then smaller, you were in amma’s tummy.”

“Yes, but you weren’t even there.”

“Yes I was.”

“NO! You weren’t. “

“Yes I was. You was in Amma’s tummy rember?”

“I remember.” (Maybe she is a rishi after all, could Rishis remember the time in their mother’s womb? I must check)

“Yes…then I was a small boy.”

“You are a small boy now. You weren’t even there when I was in amma’s tummy.”

“Then where was I?” he asks in confusion. He looks at me for answers. I am flummoxed. I suppose I look like a dinosaur to him and have lived eons in comparison, but how was I to answer the #1 existential question that has wracked mankind for centuries?

Earth goes around the Sun Dinosaurs roam the Earth The Clock is Ticking — Earth goes around the Sun
Dinosaurs roam the Earth
The Clock is Ticking

Luckily, it is time to herd everybody into the car and I welcome the confusion.

To make matters worse, his birthday rolls around in May, while the rest of us have it in the fall. School (Fine – pre-school) starts in the Fall, and so he patiently waited while all his friends had birthdays. “When will my birthday come?” became a common question mixed with the notion that birthdays mean he will get older, his sister younger and my tummy flatter. (Well, alright alright.)

Unable to bear it any longer, I told him that it takes a full year for the Earth to go around the Sun, and when that happens, his birthday will come. Patiently, for months, he waited and spoke about his birthday every time he saw a picture of the Solar System.

Well, the Earth made it around the Sun and the son’s birthday is finally here. Happy Birthday little Tucky! (https://nourishncherish.wordpress.com/2011/06/07/welcoming-tucky/)

Divine Intervention of the Gardening Gods

If there is a Gardening God, I am curious to see where he would grade me on various aspects of his or her domain. I think he would view me like a benevolent, brilliant professor regards his loyal, funny but idiot pupil. ‘See thee down there’, he shall boom to his godlings, ‘there goeth the very example of exemplary gardening intent. If ever you want to know how to admire a fallen leaf, thou can gaze down at her. She and her progeny are always bending or squatting and looking at something marvelous. Sometimes, when I am bored, I send out the snails to see the enthusiasm thee here summoneth up. But send her lobelia, geraniums, petunia, primroses and violets together, and she will still, after all those years, not be able to tell you the difference.’

“If you pusheth me, I may give her a pass with the planning, but will send to Earthly Exile the next godling who suggests she gardens well. “ This is where he shakes his head and the clouds above spatter a few drops of rain on the Earth below, and the parched trees in my backyard gulp and send thanks to the Gods above, for I forgot to water them for a few days.

Why, you ask, do you assume that a Gardening God talks like someone escaped out of a badly written 17th century book? I don’t know – in my mind, this gardening god looks like a gnome with a long flowing beard, a brown hat that looks like an upturned nest, a booming voice and language like he was happy to not be written into one of Shakespeare’s books.

Anyway, back to the point of our garden. Very near our backyard is a marvelous tree. Home to thousands of leaves, hundreds of twigs and branches, and scores of birds and squirrels, this tree offers shade and respite to a person who wishes for a few quiet moments. But every time the tree so much as shivers or flutters in the breeze, it sends ten thousand leaves straight to the narrow strip of garden in my backyard.

This is where the ex. intent plays its trump card: I declare, rather grandly for one who has failed at this task for almost a decade, that I shall gather up the leaves and have a clean backyard. I say this vehemently for a week or so, as though the sheer force behind the voice will collect, bag and compost the leaves. When that plan fails, I wait to see if anyone in the house will be gallant enough to say, “No, no. You rest. I shall shovel and clean the backyard.” But of course, everybody in the house is too wise for that. This is when I start shamelessly sighing and dropping “hints”.

Ahh! I wish I can do those leaves, but these allergies of mine, they just don’t let up you know. AAAACCHOOO!

Nothing. A brief silence and then I hear the jarring song to which the husband and children are dancing rise in volume by a few decibels. This goes on for another few weeks, by which time the sycamore tree’s leaves have figured out that the best place to fall is our backyard because they don’t have to flutter on to hard earth anymore and can simply cushion their fall on their already fallen brethren.

Next up: I try the guilt-tripping with the make-it-a-jolly-family-activity technique.

Rake, rake rake your way merrily through the leaves. I sing as I rake. (The Lyrical God joins the Gardening one above and they observe the specimen below to see where they went wrong with this model)

I manage to pile up the leaves with my enthusiastic, but equally unskilled helpers, the children, when the sneezing starts. But of course, I don’t stop and soldier on. The husband is tactfully finding himself outside tasks to do – service the car, go to the bank, grocery shopping, clean the rooftop. Anything at all but gardening.

At the end of it all, the day is ripe and getting on. There is a huge pile of leaves, weeds tumbling over one another all over the backyard waiting to be removed, no lunch, three cups of tea and sneezing enough to rattle a herd of elephants. Meanwhile, the wind hears about the gardening action in our backyard and comes a-howling. The leaves spatter yet again and I curse using some very imaginative phrases, making the toddler look up in alarm and say, “Stupid is a bad word!”

By this time of course, everybody is fed up with me and will gladly let me dangle like a wind-chime on the apricot tree. Enough, I say to myself and make a call to the kind soul who helps out every once in a while. This narrow strip of garden is home to some trees, a jasmine creeper and some flower bushes. The gardener makes it generally known that he is doing it solely because he views it as acquiring some good karma: Help thy helpless, share thy green thumb or some such.

He comes with his pal in his pickup truck, and I kid you not: the pair of them clean up, de-weed, plant new flowers, prune the roses and hose down the garden leaving the patch looking beautiful and well-nourished in about an hour.

I think it is divine intervention: for how long can even the most tolerant Gardening God behold our garden’s plight?

Guess What? Flip!

So it was a normal, every day kind of day,when my daughter strutted proudly into the kitchen. She had a confident look. The look someone might have when they are bursting to say something. She exclaimed, “I want to go to my school today.” I choked on a biscuit and said,” Excuse me, if you haven’t noticed it’s a weekend and you said you would help me clean the garden!” The daughter whined in response,”Forget about that, I want to show you the flips I learned!” I tried not to appear as frightened as I was about seeing those flips. I was sure I would have to keep the hospital on speed dial, for me, not my daughter! But, the job description of a mom is to not to discourage the child. My son bounced up and down saying he wanted to do a “tummy flip” and “dead man “(these are names of some flips the daughter does). Finally, I tried to bring the son to reality, that he could not do a single flip. So, he started singing a song about flipping. At that point, the hospital was going to have two emergencies. We got down at the school. My daughter rushed to the 5th and 6th grade area. I had no idea where it was, but the son had run off with my daughter. I was lost for what seemed like an hour when a voice yelled, “Amma watch what I can do.”

I followed the voice to the playground and ran quickly when I saw my son trying to climb on the bar. My daughter yelled at me from the highest bar,” Amma, look at me!” I saw her just in time to see the “easiest” flip. One foot was in front of the other and she fell forward. I ran under her to catch her like a brave mom fighting off snakes. But, it turned out that she was back up on the bar. She topped this off with Back Cherries, Tummy Flips, Dead Mans, Front Cherries, Roly Polies , and more – all of which gave me heart attacks, but nothing compared to the scariest of all( or at least in my opinion), the Fall Back. The daughter took her hands of the bar put them high in the air and without warning fell back!

The Back Cherry or Cherry Flip or Roly Poly or Fall Back

I almost called the hospital when I found her hanging from the bar, her arms dangling near the floor!

Readers, for the final surprise, it was not the normal author of the blog, but me, the daughter, writing from the mothers point of view! I hope this was a surprising blog! Bye!

P.S: When the daughter said she will write a blog for me, I did not realize that she will write this in my voice. I can’t deny that I am proud I write like an elementary school kid.

Happy Mother’s Day

It has been ten beautiful years since my first Mother’s Day as a mother. I remember playing with my first born and finding newer and newer methods to get her to kiss me. My peek-a-boos were becoming more grandiose. Once I twisted myself into a knot trying to get my head in between the sofa and the chair for a new angle at the peek-a-boo. Maybe, the knot never straightened itself, but it got me a bigger kiss than before. Flush with the kiss from my baby, I resolved to do what I liked to do best. Jot down all the nice things as our lives progress. I used to write things to myself in a diary that is long eaten by moths. Then I resorted to sending emails to myself. You know? So, I would not forget when the time comes. But everybody knows how that goes. First of all, the emails became shorter and shorter, terse even. Second, they started resembling notes taken in short hand. I mean what does “Kunjulie smiled 2 door.” mean? If it had not been typed, I am not sure I would know what I had scribbled. No. Things needed to change. Most important of all, I knew heart of hearts that I was not going to sit and plod through thousands of emails to find the note I had raced through.

Like the time that she first looked like a mountaineer. I can still see it fresh in my mind. She saw the peak rising before her . She knew she needed more than grit and willpower. She surveyed the mountain from multiple angles, making mental notes as to the best path available. She looked not only at the peak, but the best path to get herself up there. She also needed ropes hanging from cliffs to pull herself up on when she encountered tough and steep slopes. It was easy to see her mind gears squeezing together as she saw the rope, now all that was left was to scramble up. The rope was a thin one, but it would have to do. When one scales mountains and overcomes obstacles, they don’t stop to see whether the ropes are replaceable. They should but they don’t.

Mountain Goat: Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_goat

In many ways, she had to function like a mountain goat, but with the advantage of opposable thumbs, and the disadvantage of no horns.

There probably is a photograph of her somewhere looking proud and happy with herself at the first summit. (I can’t find it. ) She had scaled the heights of her grandfather’s tummy to plant a wet kiss on his cheek. The rope did not bear the assault very well. That was also why we were seen scrambling to find the spare hearing-aid cords. Just before the hearing-aid cord gave way, she managed to hold on to his spectacle frame and hoisted herself atop the peak.

In the ten years since, I have to say, my family and friends have been remarkable subjects of my blogs. They have shared many moments of hilarity and borne the references to themselves on the blog with grace and charm. I have grown to love writing about varied topics though family and friends play a good part of my writing, and the daughter has not become a real mountaineer.

May 2015 marks ten years since I started writing the blog. I blogged at various different places:

http://tangential-thoughts.blogspot.com/

http://am-kicking.blogspot.com

Slowly, the blogs where I co-blogged at trickled out. So, I went on at about a blog post a week on this blog. I love how writing has shaped my thought processes. When I am stranded, when in difficult times, I cling onto the high and funny spots in the experience. I must say it makes the experience the better for it, and the blogs are funnier for the mindset.

Happy Mother’s Day to all you incredible Mothers out there!

The Mushrooming of Fashionistas

T’was the evening before our return to the connected world. We were to leave beautiful, bucolic, Bala with its bubbling brooks and baying buddies, to catch a ferry to Ireland the next morning and the brother’s family was to return to London. The refreshing walks and hikes had resulted in much sharing of life’s wisdom. As the niece said, the toddlers now know they must not stamp on the black balls on the trails for that is sheep poop.

There was great excitement in the house. We were getting ready to go to a fancy dinner. What I had seen of Bala was wonderful, but did not look like the whipping hot scene of the fashionista and the twitterati. The old farmer we passed on the road seemed nice enough and waved at us from his tractor, but I was having a hard time imagining him as the charging center of Bala’s social scene in his earthly tweeds and hat. Which suited us perfectly.

Allow me to digress here for a bit. The husband cannot for the life of him squash his neck into a tie. I would not put it past him to crinkle a freshly pressed shirt. He is the sort of fellow who feels compelled to fold up his full-hand shirts lest they look formal. (I have touched upon this aspect here: https://nourishncherish.wordpress.com/2011/09/29/what-ties-a-unicorn-a-book-together/) So you can imagine how sterling the sister-in-law is for convincing us all to dress up nicely for a dinner out.

I felt like we had gone back to Jane Austen times when they dressed for the ball and no other reason, but shook the feeling away firmly. The slightest doubt about dressing well would mean we all slip back to yoga pants or worse, pajamas for dinner. That does seem to be fashion trend these days: http://nextdraft.com/archives/n20150423/follow-the-yoga-pants/ )

“Are there any restaurants in Bala, or are we just going to eat out like what we did in the afternoon? We could do that, you know? Under the stars.” piped the girls. You can rely on them to surface any nagging doubts sniggling in your brain.

Though we were miles from any restaurant or super-market, I don’t want you to run away with the notion that we were hungry. The Balas and those who marry into the Bala family like their nourishment. Consequently, the brother and sister-in-law had a box of considerable size with ‘provisions for a few days’. What that meant is that if the sheep were not happy grazing, we could have fed them all Channa Masala, Dum Aloo, Creamy Pastas or Steaming Basmati rice any time of the day. This is what the girls were referring to: we had eaten food fit for feasts in the backyard in pajamas, why not have more of that after a shower?

Anyway, despite hemming and hawing about dressing well, we collectively put up a brave show of it. The toddlers looked like strapping fine gentlemen, and the strapping fine gentlemen looked like harassed toddlers forced into wearing pants; the girls looked like young ladies, the ladies wished they looked more like the younger ladies teetering next to them and all was well. The toys, boys, girls, men and women got into the cars. After brief stops to open the gates by the ponds, we sped off towards the adventures of the night.

I must say, for a small town, the eateries were very good. The Bala-name’s reputation with respect to food was intact in our minds. I was asking the brother about cuisines and pastimes when he said, the Welsh love their mutton chops and lamb stews.

There was an ominous silence from the back seat where the daughter was yapping seconds before. “Uh oh!”, was all the brother could say before a quivering voice asked him, “You mean people kill these lambs – even Patchy?”(Patchy was the sheep who she managed to get close to that morning, https://nourishncherish.wordpress.com/2015/04/22/patchys-lessons-in-patience-perseverance/). We assured her that we will not be killing Patchy and bleated out a white lie to set her animal activist’s heart at rest.

The brother heaved a sigh of relief and told her he was going to ask the waitress for a vegetarian menu. It is at times like this, that I wonder how lovely it must be to live in a small place. The service we got for this simple request was exceptional. The head chef left his busy haven. He probably switched off the oven, turned off the gas, untied his apron, removed his mittens and headed upstairs to ease our hearts and tell us all about his offerings.

“We have mushrooms and cheese that I can make into a lovely omelet. “ he boomed heartily. “And some of the best creamy mushroom soup. If you are looking for something a little more spicy, I could make you a Mushroom Stroganoff with some mushroom and tomatoes. Or you could have a vegetarian lasagna with mushroom.” Clearly, he couldn’t help noticing that he was going a bit strong on the mushroom motif, for he hastily added that “Carrot and coriander soup is also available.”

We ordered them all and the chef sang his way to the kitchen. The daughter was happy and Patchy would have been happy.

patchy-mushroom — Patchy happy with menu: Mushroom stragonoff, mushroom lasagna, mushroom omelet and carrot soup!

As we headed out, the brother pointed out a picture taken about a century ago on Bala High street. Even though the picture was a black and white one, you could discern the flushes on the cheeks of about 30 young ladies dressed for the Ball at Bala, and it looked marvelous. Suddenly, it seemed okay to dress up and come to dinner. Like the husband said, “Anyway, no one knows us here, so why not dress up?”

Patchy’s Lessons in Patience & Perseverance

Walking has always been a favorite with the Balas. From a mile away, one can identify the fathers or my walk. In moments of thought, we tie our hands behind our back, take long, energetic strides and march on. Walks are also the time when we come up with our epiphanies and learnings. Ripe with the lessons gleaned from a reading of Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, I took a walk near the cottage at Bala.

The mists were lifting and the sheep and their kids were starting to get on with their day. I looked at them and saw a number of tendencies that were downright endearing. The ewes and rams that were mothers and fathers cast a protective eye upon the surroundings and while they watched their kids frolic around, were quick to show they meant business if you approached too close to the kids.

After jumping over a gate and skipping over a gushing stream, I sat down to gaze at the surroundings.

The English Countryside – pic taken from wikicommons but where we stayed looked similar

As I sat there admiring the sheep near me, I mused on how wonderfully the whole society looked after one another. How they let the young ones thrive, while ensuring their safety. How they grazed, and what useful animals they were. Human beings have no means of knowing what animal thought processes are, but as I sat there gazing out at these gentle creatures, one of the kids came closer to me. I saw it approach, saw the mother cast a warning look and bleat at it to be careful (probably, for I don’t speak Sheep, but you can always get tone). I just continued to sit there and the kid approached me even closer and finally came really close to me, before bounding off to boast to its friends. There was much bay-ing among the kids when this one bounded back and I could not help thinking the kid had approached me on a dare. It brought a little smile to my face and I headed back.

But again, I maybe inserting anthropomorphic tendencies into that lamb’s demeanor.

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/can-fiction-show-us-how-animals-think?mbid=social_twitter

Over breakfast I told the daughter about the lamb and inserted a ‘lesson’ about the virtues of patience. A lesson I can learn myself as I know too well. “Sitting and patiently waiting for things beyond our control is a skill and one that can be developed, “ I said to the children like I was Buddha. To give the daughter her due, she did not call my bluff and she did not laugh, but absorbed the statement with as much mellow-ness as her character would allow. Which was to say that she continued attaching herself to the chocolate syrup and the pancakes and ignored the banana pieces.

In a place like Bala, it is phenomenally hard to do something filled with purpose. After a few hours, we decided to walk. After walking for a bit, the children wanted to touch the lambs, but they would not let them approach. They frisked and ran when we approached. After some time, the daughter decided to try what I told her and I was truly amazed.

She approached a lamb and sat at a respectable distance for a few minutes. Then she moved an inch or so and then waited again. Patiently. Quietly. Every time she moved, the ewes and rams gave her a warning look as if to say ‘Don’t mess with our kids!’. The minutes ticked on and though, at other times, she would have been anxious to move on to more gregarious activities, she sat and waited.

Apparently, she had taken my words to heart in the morning. It made me realize that though it looks like children are not sitting like disciples around the Buddha and listening, they are absorbing and it drove an even harder lesson to me.

It happened after what seemed like a long time. The kid approached her. He let her talk to him and look into his eyes. She named him ‘Patchy’. When she tore herself away after a few minutes, it followed her around like Mary-and-the-little-lamb. She was ecstatic in her joy as were the rest of us.

It was hard work winning the confidence of a lamb, but it was worth it.

To Look up or Not to Look up: That is the question

I was yawning the other day as I walked into the office. It is not like I had not slept well. I had, in fact, put logs to shame with the night’s repose. Optimism was brimming as I went to bed early after setting an alarm for the break of dawn the next day. The alarm, helpfully titled, ‘Fresh Air Beckons!’ , was to nudge me towards getting in a wisp of fresh air before the rigorous day got under-way. But I had snoozed the alarm and had slept on till my usual time. So far so good.

I opened my browser and I kid you not, the first article to attract my attention was this one:

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31928434 (The article told me, quite morbidly, that folks who sleep longer die sooner.) Well, it doesn’t quite say it like that, but you know – sleepy heads, still muddling about before coffee and all that. In my befuddled state, this was like an alarm. It certainly worked better than my ‘Fresh Air Beckons’ alarm and I bustled about after a cup of coffee, desperate to make amends.

I mean, with the internet, there are studies on studies and studies on no-studies, studies on sleep and studies on no-sleep, studies on exercise and studies on no-exercise. It can all be a bit much. As long as you feel energetic and feel like you are living a healthy lifestyle, equip yourself with knowledge but don’t dwell on them is my philosophy towards it all. I am not sure it is a great philosophy, but the fact of the matter is that what we know today ‘for sure’ can change tomorrow with another research article that argues the exact opposite with statistics. So, how am I to find out what is best?

Of course, there are advantages too, for you can backup anything with research. Shirking at home without exercising? Just find a study like this to assuage your guilt: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-31095384: Too much jogging the same as no jogging at all. Having done your part, you may now kick back and relax nibbling snacks of your choice. You just stamp pretty hard on that nagging squeak at the back of your brain telling you that you mis-interpreted the study.

You can do it with anything. Watch:

1) Prefer to turn your eye when cleaning beckons? Do you see socks lying everywhere, shoes waiting to be stacked, books waiting to be cleared away? No problem. Science shows people with messy desks are creative.

http://mic.com/articles/103954/the-science-of-why-the-most-creative-people-have-the-messiest-desks

2) Feel like sleeping in late, and battling against what people have been telling you for ages about the benefits of being a early-riser? Find another research article.

3) Got up early one day and feeling complacent and righteous? Casually toss out another study.

I wonder if there is a study on seeing why we need to feel validated by studies. Can somebody research the topic and let me know?

Smell the Phone!

Literature affects people in different ways. There is a reason I like light-hearted fare and uplifting works in general. Bear with me while I traipse down a familiar path.

I have noticed my literary fare of late has been morbid, laissez faire or tepid. After one book that made me want to cry while looking at tomato soup, I picked up some books with jolly titles : books with names such as ‘The Happiest People on Earth’, only to find that the happiest ones are probably the ones that did not pick up that book. Classics, good old classics should always set me back, I thought to myself as I picked up some classics to smooth things over – they turned out to be so depressing that I could not bear to even have sunny-side-up eggs for breakfast. It seemed like I was letting the author down by smiling or watching beautiful Spring unfold around me.

I usually spice things up a bit in my reading. One morbid, followed by two up-lifting. Then, one that hurts the brain followed by two that hurt the jaws while laughing. But really! Why is uplifting fare not given its due? This necessity to cry and make others cry is appalling. Schadenfreude is what it is. I have written about this with a certain whim before and shall do so again.

https://nourishncherish.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/the-indian-twist-to-the-schadenfreudian-principle/#comments

What then should I have done? Fallen back to my tried-and-tested pick-me-ups? But I did not want to do that just yet. There will always be misery, problems and what-not. Literature can and should teach us to take the rough with the smooth with grace. We need more authors who embrace the stout heart and the practical mind with a dose of humor. If any body has authors firmly placed in that league, please let me know.

With spring in the air, I thought I would be spending time sniffing the flowers and admiring the trees, but I got to tell you, this depressing reading has taken its toll. I haven’t exercised much, I have managed to fill my days up with a whole list of should-dos and have neglected my must-dos. (Incidentally, I read this piece about should-dos vs must-dos that I thought I must share with everybody)

https://medium.com/@elleluna/the-crossroads-of-should-and-must-90c75eb7c5b0

“This busy-ness is a malady.”, I cried as my husband and daughter rolled their eyes once more. I ignored it with a master stroke and continued, “What with the invasion of cell-phones and laptops into every aspect of our lives, our social lives blend with e-social, blend with the professional, where does one’s silly-side-up shine? Where does one get to be the person who stops to smell the flowers? “

My son took the iPhone, picked out a picture of the flowers and sniffed it. I started laughing. That’s it folks, take the phone, smell the flowers and galvanize yourself to go out and embrace Spring. The sidewalk is filled with flowers if we stop to look and sniff.

http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/17/sidewalk-flowers/

Happy Spring while I go and read a wonderfully uplifting piece of work.

A bad rinse is good?

It had been a rather long journey for us. We had already spent 13 hours on the bus. We had gone from (hot and sweaty) to (cold and hungry) overnight. The journey had been rocky and not, altogether pleasant. The bus had droned over endless hot, dry plains, before beginning its 3 hour ascent to the cool, refreshing hills in South India. It was 6 a.m. when the driver stopped for a break at a riverside village. “Vandi patthu nimisam nikkum” he shouted (The bus will stop for 10 minutes. )

Our knees looked like gnarled trees as we stepped out gingerly to stretch ourselves. I was happy to breathe in the fresh mountain air. We could hear a swift river flowing nearby and this small village was named after the river.

To add to the appeal, the fresh smells of Nilgiri tea wafted around us. The father and I made our way quickly toward it. The tea-shop was a shanty like any other on the route: A tin-roof, a couple of kerosene stoves and glass tumblers that were narrow at the bottom.

The point is, there we were, sleep-walking towards the spot where our noses were leading us and our bodies shivering with the early morning cold. The father ordered two teas in his booming voice. It was then that I stirred and noticed the men in the tea shop were clad in dhotis. The guy making tea was obviously a bossy sort, for he clicked his tongue at his helper. Distinctions were evident between employer and employee. The employee was a man, clad in a much-dirtier dhoti than his employer. I mean, if you are going to become this filthy, is there any point in wearing a white or cream colored dhoti? Why not just wear a brown towel or a tree bark and be done with it? Maybe it was their corporate dress policy, I thought to myself and settled into a sort of stupor again, my mind wandering. What if he wiped his hand on his dhoti and then put his fingers into our tea-cups? It happens all the time. Should I say something or risk it and down the life-saving and hope it would not become the life-taking in this case?

I peered into a vast vat with what seemed like steaming hot, very watery tea and said, ‘This isn’t the tea is it?” The father peered in looking worried. You don’t drink 100’s of cups of tea for nothing. When you peer into pots of murky liquid that you suspect is tea, it doesn’t make very good tea. I hesitated before asking the man – you see these chefs can be picky blighters. You look dubiously at their tea, and the next thing you know, they behave like recalcitrant mules on a mountain path and refuse to part with a biscuit packet, marketed by Parle-G.

I was trying to see how to put things tactfully (I can’t say I have progressed much over the years), when the bossy bloke bellowed to his helper, possibly the sous chef in the establishment. The disgruntled helper, or sous chef, wiped his hands on his dhoti and then plunged his hand into the vat I suspected to be tea and extracted a few glass cups. I mean! What? Had I not caught myself, I might have fallen over backwards in a neat scoop. The s. chef, however, noticed nothing and bustled about with his work. Having extracted the glasses from the muddy waters, he wiped it dry with a piece of cloth that would have given food inspectors in the western world a heart attack and deposited the cups on the counter for the tea.

The father and I exchanged deep looks packed with meaning and I saw the light of resolve and understanding dawn in the father’s eyes. His eyes had the it-is-a-simple-matter-of-education gleam in them. Once a teacher, always a teacher. He said to the pair of them, quite politely in my opinion, something to the effect of washing the cups in flowing water before offering us tea in it. Washing, he said, does not happen in stagnant water that looks like tea.

The disgruntled helper or sous c. growled. “Saar! It is washed!” he said

My father appealed to his inner teacher once again and explained that washing dirty cups in dirty water still leaves the cup dirty.

It did not go down well. The sous chef now looked like a sulky sous chef.

“Saar! All washed Saar. I wash again.” He smartly picked up the cups and dipped them into the same water again. I moaned. The father moaned and the chef groaned. Maybe the code of conduct with respect to washing cups had been gone over several times in his training, but had not registered much like the corporate dress policy.

“Flowing water pa! You must pour water over the cups and wash them. Otherwise, all the dirt will be in the cups too. What you want is to go for the clean effect of flowing water. Remember your town was named after flowing clean water from the river.“

What happened next could try the soul of the most optimistic teacher, for the man, simply plunged his hand into the water, took a cup and filled it with dirty water and poured it over another cup and washed it. He beamed freely at this bit of going-the-extra-mile-for-the-customer while we cried in our hearts.

“Clean water my good fellow. Clean water!” cried the father, while the helper stood there looking confused.

I noticed with a sort of sinking feeling that the father’s voice being a stentorian one, all tea-makers in the little river town on the mountainside heard this little altercation, thereby dishing our chances of picking up tea elsewhere. I tugged the father’s sleeve to let things be and asked to buy a bottled water. I then smartly poured a little bit of water on the cups and then asked for the tea in them.

I had, of course, affronted everybody by doing this. The father, for he felt that he now had to explain Economics to his daughter (Who spends Rs 20 on bottled water to wash teacups when the tea costs Rs 5 each?) The chef and sous chef cried too, for they never understood why folks bought water in a bottle in the first place, when it could be had for free in the river. To use good money to wash already washed cups was just excessive. They probably went home that night and lectured their children about not becoming obsessive and how a little bit of grime and dirt never hurt anybody.

As it turns out, they may have been right.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/02/23/387553285/kids-allergies-and-a-possible-downside-to-squeaky-clean-dishes

I quote from the article:

The findings are the latest to support the “hygiene hypothesis,” a still-evolving proposition that’s been gaining momentum in recent years. The hypothesis basically suggests that people in developed countries are growing up way too clean because of a variety of trends, including the use of hand sanitizers and detergents, and spending too little time around animals.

Squeaky clean dishes contribute to lower immune systems and therefore higher allergies.

P.S: The episode above happened about 20 years ago, but the mind has a way of resurfacing old snippets when it reads something new.

Who is a Super-Hero?

It was ‘Profession Week’ at the son’s pre-school. It is at times like this that you feel like a celebrity if you are a fire-fighter or a policeman. Imagine drawing up to the school-yard in your impressive red fire-truck and talking about your average day to a bunch of star-struck toddlers. I would have loved to do that. Only I am neither a fire-fighter nor a policeman. I work as a software engineer and as far as glamour appeal goes, computer engineer is as low as it can get on the toddler ladder of professions.

It did not help matters that another computer engineer had already been in to see them the previous day. The son told me that they ‘already knew all about laptops’. What, he wondered, could I have to say that they did not already know in the field of Computer Science? I felt my spirits sink a bit.

Let’s suppose you are practicing to perform at a concert. You spend a good amount of time getting your voice modulation and crescendos just right for that perfect rendition of ‘Let It Go!’. You then gingerly move on to the stage, hoping that your confidence will build up with the song’s tempo, and belt out your best attempt of the sensational ‘Let it go!’. You survey the audience (100-watt bulbs pale in comparison) as you beam around, only to find that the audience is slightly scornful and mutinous. You then learn that three performers before you had already rendered that very song. The first one got a thunderous applause, the second a warm hand because, well, who doesn’t like an encore? The third : a polite, but appreciative nod, and the fourth absolutely gets the bird. The fifth will probably get eggs and potatoes. The whole thing reminds me of an excellent short story penned by P.G.Wodehouse on these very lines: Sonny Boy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggs,_Beans_and_Crumpets)

Judging by the response I got, I was in the position of the lucky fourth performer and not the fifth. I beamed around the class and spoke to them about all the wonderful uses of computers and how even their toys and favorite movies are made using computers. I gasped to make them gasp. I spiced up my lines. I threw in guffaws. I went on about how computers are used to send rockets to outer space and some children were mildly impressed. I got to tell you, this was a hard group.

My brow was beginning to sweat a bit. I mean, every place in the talk where I thought I would get an impressive-something was a complete washout. I felt like a sad stand-up comedian getting no laughs out there. It was brutal.

“So, anyone wants to be a Computer Engineer when they grow up?” I asked, with that falsetto ring of cheeriness.

One boy put up his hand. I pounced on the gesture with enthusiasm. I said, “Oh wonderful! There he is. He wants to become an engineer. That is great!”

An older child might have humored me and let things be, but not this boy. He shrugged and said, “NO!” (I really don’t think that vehemence was necessary) “I want to be a super-hero!”

I gulped a bit looking quite the ass. I mean, my ecstatic smile was frozen on my face and I tried to salvage the situ. by laughing some more. But it came out sounding like a dog learning to laugh from a hyena.

One child, bless her, raised her hand. “Yes! She has something to say. Do you want to become a computer engineer dear?”

She turned away, with a bored expression on her face and said , “Policemen save lives.”

I mean if you are looking for nobility….

The teacher must’ve taken pity on me for she said that doctors, policemen and super-heroes use computers to help them . It was at this point I noticed the other teacher straightening some of the kids saying, “We want to sit on our bottoms and listen to her, not lie down on our tummies.”

I tottered out. Dreams of inspiring the younger generation forsooth! I mean to say, in a 10 minute talk, I was already getting otherwise active 3-year old children to lie down? How their teachers managed to keep them interested and learning for the whole day is beyond me. You want to know who the true super-heroes are? Those teachers. If I were in a profession that wore a hat, I would tip it to Teachers.

P.S: The irony is probably half that class will land up becoming Engineers of some sort.

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