Tag: Life

The One-way Parrot-xysm

I still remember the time aunts shouted into telephones while talking to people far away, as if they needed to magnify their voices to be heard. It is often the other way around – you need raised voices while addressing someone right next to you because they are busy with their laptops, notebooks, phones, tablets or ipods. But for as long as I can remember, the telephone signalled two way communication. All that changed for me last week.

I could savagely bray the Kolaveri song without fear of retribution the same way that monstrosity was dumped on the unsuspecting public. The song has poets either turning in their graves or else yearning to rush into one as soon as possible. When one does something, it is only basic human courtesy to see the effect it would have on people, is it not? I digress, but really? Kolaveri?!

Anyway…I had been for a walk stopping to gaze at parrots and dogs when the phone rang. The tendency to talk has been a congenital disorder: I realised somewhere around the 22nd sentence of the phone call that I could not hear the other person. I hallo-hallo-hallo-ed for a bit and seeing a parrot look down with disdain at me shelved the attempt at parroting. I hung up and tried calling another friend. Same thing: I could talk, they could hear, but could not respond. Ha!

The husband suggested that maybe I was married to the phone. (“The wife could say what she wanted and assumed the husband listened, and not expect any nonsense by way of back-talk”) I gave him a frosty look that the comment was totally unappreciated, but it was wasted on the man who was thumping himself on the brilliance of his own joke (I know!)

But even I can’t deny the possibilities this opened up. I could call telemarketeers and give them a sample of their own medicine. I could call the husband and pile on chores that he wouldn’t touch with a barge-pole otherwise. Then I could accost him for not doing it, squashing the argument that he never agreed to do it, because guess who did not hear that he refused?

I did none of that. I am a loving wife and I also needed him to take my dear phone to the store near his office.

Anyway, the long and short of it was that I was able to go my way telling people what I thought, and my communication felt like living in the age of fancy telegrams. I was never much of an SMS person, but the phone had me spilling my guts on SMS. A number of intentions were miscommunicated with the helpful hand of auto-correct. (Auto-correct is begging a separate post from me – shall get to it one day)

I am sorry to say my phone no longer does that. It has been fixed. Two way communication has been established, but I can’t deny that I enjoyed the one-sided deal for a while.

Babyhood & Titanic Fusion

About once a year, when the holiday season rolls in, I get to see my Prince Charming as he looked on the night before his wedding. The way my father imagined a son-in-law to go to work everyday. He places a frantic call to me asking if I can dust up the old suit, since the holiday party dress code says it is formal. He swirls the word ‘formal’ around his tongue like it is something unpleasant. But I look forward with glee. I love to see people dressed in coats and suits – a lifetime of seeing all the authority figures in my life and school dressed that way no doubt, but I love the crispness of it. I love the way, it slaps your shoulders out of that slouching position and the shoulder pads make one looks like a gladiator in charge of his arena as you stride through.

So, once a year he gets out his suit, gets me to make the tie for him, and off we go – he resolving to lose weight as the pants remind him of a slightly expanding waistline, and me looking proud, happy and thankful that Women’s clothes are more forgiving when it comes to waists.

This year, the party was aboard a ship. I can’t tell you how romantic the notion was. Well…it was filled with folks from his office – that isn’t the romantic part, I mean…the notion of being aboard a ship finely dressed like the adventurers of yore. That is.

After a while of smiling my way through a banquet filled with things that moved till a few moments ago; we decided to take a walk to the hull. We stood there for a few minutes gulping in the skyline of the distant city, when I heard my man don a dreamy look.

How does one hear a dreamy look? Well…the husband likes to clarify these things with sound acoustics and switched on a look that in others would have had me asking if they needed a eye-check-up, but I refrained, because he had also started using his falsetto to hum a tune.

He had a Leonardo DiCaprio-ish air about him. I think he was thinking of spreading his arms, but was hesitating.

He was humming a  tune ‘Ta-na-nan-ta-na-nan-ta-na-na-na-do-da-ta-tan’. I scanned  the horizon for a running giraffe, and found nothing but a bay ahead of me. I looked at him quizzically to which the maestro said,

“Titanic…duh!” Confidence was clearly not one of his problems.
I looked at the poor fish with pitiful eyes and clarified
“No…that is the Baby Einstein tune for a giraffe running in the Savannah!”

Babyhood has finally got him. I told him it was futile to resist.

Gold @ End of the Rainbow

I love my cell-phone, but do not want to tell it that. You know…keep it in its place, before it gets ahead of itself and starts interfering with my life more than normal kind of thing. So, I bemoaned the constant need for the cellphone that fell on deaf ears because the husband was on the cell-phone and I went out for a walk with the infant. Just the stroller, baby and I.

The day was beautiful. The temperature was just right, the rain-bearing clouds had parted just enough for some sun rays to peep through, and put some rainbows our way. A few birds were tapped on their shoulders to cheep and the snails were up and about. All in all magical.

I passed a corn field and I stopped. The clouds were still gathered rather low over the fields and the farmer, being a hard-working sort of bloke, had started harvesting in a haphazard manner. He had just cut a path out in between some pretty tall corn plants. The rain had done its bit of good work and left a muddy, sloshy trail. Just looking at that made the heart come down a notch. The gloomy clouds, the muddy slippery path that one has to walk through…. But ….behind the fields, the hills provide a backdrop. The hills were flooded with sunshine – the golden beautiful kind of light that comes at dusk. I was admiring the whole ‘dark-difficult-path-leads-to-light-later’ thing and reached for my cell-phone. The picture was perfect. I didn’t have it on me. I tried cooing to my baby, but he had taken in the beauty of the thing and fallen asleep.

The need to expunge this profundity engulfed me and I found the first man walking – a wizened old Mexican man, who, I am pretty sure did not understand what I was saying. I got cracking.

“You see the symbolism of the whole thing?”
“Si…Si”
“A hard path, sometimes hard to navigate, but at the end of the road, beautiful sunshine just waiting to shed its light on you.”
“Si…Si.” Smile.
“Lovely huh?”
“Si…Si”. That is what I was telling him. “See..See” and he kept repeating it back to me. “No..no..you see…”

Seeing this was going nowhere, I smiled once more and passed from his life only to come back into it a mile later as I stood mesmerized by a beautiful rainbow. The whole arch – perfect colours and bent right over the neighboring houses. Picture perfect was putting it mildly and of course I did not have the cell phone on me. Damn!
“See the rainbow?”
“Si…Si…”
Now, I had to stop and see this Si-man and saw a tiny hint of gold glinting through his side teeth. In that evening light when everything looked magical, the golden tooth looked sinister. Was this what people meant when they said you would find gold at the end of a rainbow?

Raindrops came on without warning and the Si-man and I parted ways. Me ,running helter skelter with a baby sleeping peacefully in the stroller, and he, making a mental note to take another road next time. I passed the corn field and the whole outlook was gloomy – I saw that I had not the time to make it home without soaking the infant, and found refuge in a friend’s home nearby. Counting my blessings as I sipped gratefully at her tea.

I loved the spontaneity of the evening, but may just carry my cell-phone next time.

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.