whynotblogitout

CATCH A FISH; CATCH UP WITH THE PAST

2011-12-19T16:32:00.000+05:30

If it's a joint serving fish dishes at middle-class-pocket-friendly rates, what are the chances that there will be a lot of Bengalis in the clientele?

Yesterday, we went to Pratap Lunch Home for, not lunch, but Sunday evening dinner. Now, Pratap, near the Fountain, is an old favourite of the spouse and his press-wallah friends, as they serve really delicious seafood and booze. Also, unlike the more-famous Mahesh Lunch Home, the crab claws and lobster claws not really pinch the pocket. Even I have come here, travelling by train all the way from the suburbs lured by their Crab Mongolian and Seafood Fried Rice and Squid Butter Garlic. The only grouse was that they made you sweat for your food, as they eschewed air-conditioning even as you chewed on the tasty secrets of the sea and kitchen.
Now, in the new AC-avataar, that grouse is gone. So we went en family, kids and maid included. And we were surrounded by AC-chill, the wafting-inviting aromas from the kitchen, and by Bengali noises and Bengali voices!

Our waiter was a Bengali. The table behind us had a few Bengalis in their cosmopolitan mix. And the table next to us had three young Bongs chatting away in Bengali, on whom we shamelessly and smilingly eavesdropped. Till the Lil Kitten gave the game away by stridently demanding for something in loud, unmistakable BENGALI!

In the ensuing inter-table conversation, we found out that two of the Bright Young Bongs at the next table were Presidency College Physics Department alumni currently working at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, and the other young man was also certifiably brilliant, having passed out of the incredibly tough-to-get-in Indian Statistical Institute. And we bonded a bit over fried Machh-Bhaja (Fish Fry) and frightful Mumbai and, of course, "Do you know X/Y/Z who passed out in so-and-so-year?", although we were separated by more than a decade.

The spouse loves his alma mater, and, by extension, is willing and ready to love all the alumni of this hoary and honourable instutution.And so we went home, replete with good food, and the good news that Presidency is still churning out bright brains that can make a mark (and eat a fish) anywhere in the world.

CALORIES AND MEMORIES

2011-11-24T17:26:00.003+05:30

Back in Mumbai...the annual Kolkata visit on Diwali holidays was the usual blur of eat, meet, laze, daze, ....you know the drill.

If last year's indulgence was Sarbhajas (a sweet where the 'sar' or cream atop the milk is deep-fried and soaked in sugar syrup...gruesome gluttony, eh?), this year it was the humbler, but no less horrific, Gujiya (the Bengali version is a ring-shaped sweet made of dried milk and sugar) and Danadar (which is unredeemingly made of only and only sugar drenched in even more sugar syrup).

Now I am back after eating enough of the above to last me till next year. In fact, am back in stride as well, with school and work and home and all such other busy-making stuff that life is made up of.

But time-outs are there, and they pull at the heart-strings, and also pull the facial muscles into a smile...sometimes.

There was this bottle of Dalimer Hajmi ( anardana churan...a sweet-sour digestive) that I had bought and ate in Kolkata, and had then stuffed a lot of other things in as well, from cookies to jeera golis to Narkel Naaru (coconut and jaggery laddus) made by my Mom (who was coincidentally in Kolkata during this time as well). I had taken out this bottle after unpacking to wash and reuse it as a spice jar. Before washing it, I was putting my finger inside and licking the remnants.

And my taste-buds got a surprise when after a lot of hajmi/churan/salty-sourness I suddenly bit into a small chunk of sweet jaggery-infused-coconut. A tiny bit of Ma-made naaru, travelling all the way from Kolkata. To make me all teary-eyed and wry-smiling in Mumbai.

Calories and memories...funny how closely they weave together.

HOME ALONE

2011-10-20T16:45:00.003+05:30

This past week, I have been home alone.

The spouse and the kittens have all gone to Kolkata, and I'll be joining them in a few days, when my College will deign to give us our Diwali Holidays.

The first few days were miserable.

I was buried under an avalanche of semester-end exam papers to be corrected. Correcting bad exam papers, paper-after-paper, for nearly 500 papers always give me a feeling similar to a bad bout of influenza. I feel feverish, my neck and back ache, my eyes feel dry and blinky, and in my sleep I toss and turn in nightmares.

Then I really had a flu onset and a stomach upset.

Then I had a cleaning frenzy, fighting against every particle of dust that dared to enter the flat.

Gradually, I settled down. Watched back-to-back-back movies all evening-night, slept way past afternoon, curled up on the sofa eating lemon tarts and drinking jaljira-spiked (Diet) Cokes, dipped my feet in warm water-with-lavender-bath-salts.

And, of course, I went out.

To work, boringly.

To other places, excitingly.

Shopped at my favourite stores like Fabindia and Crossword.

Strolled at Carter Road and window-shopped at Linking Road.

Discovered a tiny shop called Shimmer at Atria Mall that sells tops and tunics in the most lovely understated shades.

Picked up vintage maps and posters from Philips Images in SoBo.

Grabbed, at Satguru's, a vintage Sholay poster and a tiny brass table fan that actually works.

Chatted with an old, smiley-bearded painter outside Jehangir Art Gallery and bought some tiny sea-scape watercolours.

Browsed through the Museum and Museum Shop and marvelled at our handicrafts.

Just as I was warming up to the experience, it is nearing its end. And really, I am so looking forward to being with them all again. And being back in Kolkata for my annual nostalgia pilgrimage.

Ah well, time flies...

STORIES AROUND US

2011-09-30T15:22:00.003+05:30

When I'm out of my home, I'm usually very un-observant. Too engrossed in my mental cobwebs.

Sometimes, though, I look around with eyes open. And see some person at some particular moment which gives me a glimpse of a back-story. A history. A lifestory.

Let me explain.

The other day I was at the neighbouring Sahakari Bhandar, a local departmental store where you can get groceries and other stuff at reasonable rates. I always go with a list (rice, wheat, oil, sugar...) but I always overshoot the list (adding 'Buy 1 Get 1 Free' and '30% Off' and 'Offer of the Day' stuff to my cart).

As I was standing in the queue at the cash counter an elderly gentleman, rather doddery and dressed in a manner that novelists usually describe as 'shabby gentility', came up to stand behind me. He had a shopping basket, not a trolley, to hold his meagre purchases - a bunch of 'palak', some brinjals, a broom and a (very economical) tooth-paste.

I saw him looking wistfully at the nearby rack stacked with chocolates. Hesitating, as the queue inched forward, looking away, and then yearningly looking again. Finally, he made up his mind. And reached out with a slightly shaking hand to put TWO SMALL DAIRY MILK WOWIE BARS in his basket. With a happy smile that made my day.

Immediately, sentimentally, I imagined his story. He was a loving grandfather buying treats for his grandchildren on their weekly/monthly visit to his home.

Or maybe it was a treat to be shared at with his fluffy white-haired plump-cheeked wife.

Or maybe he was a diabetic...and this was a pure self-loving indulgence in a forbidden pleasure.

Or maybe... HOW WOULD YOU END THIS STORY?

Image Courtesy: thehindubusinessline.in (Google Images)

THE UNBEARABLE WETNESS OF BEING

2011-08-29T16:31:00.002+05:30

It's been raining pretty much continuously over the week end. Overcast skies have been shedding their watery burdens on us.

Trains are either running late or not at all.

Auto-rickshaws are either refusing to ply or over-charging diabolically.

Buses are either stuck full of people or stuck in potholes-disguised-as-puddles.

Clothes are not drying.

Courier services are not delivering on time. When I had a spat with Pafex couriers (a branch of the famed Fedex) about a parcel that was supposed to reach me a week back, the rain was blamed. But when I saw the poor drenched delivery person, clutching my bubble-wrapped parcel in his wet, wet hands, I hadn't the heart to rant at him.

If this was Kolkata drowning under non-stop rains, people would have woken up on Monday, peeped through the window pane, yawned, dived under the bedsheet, and curled up for another snooze till mid-morning and a cup of tea beckoned.

But this is Mumbai.

So we wake up.

See the rain (in fact, can't see too far out of the window because of the rain).

Heat water in the geyser, take a warm/hot/boiling bath (WHY? WHY? WHY TAKE A WARM BATH 365 DAYS A YEAR, IRRESPECTIVE OF HEAT AND SUMMER AND SEASONS????AND WHY TAKE A HOT BATH WHEN YOU ARE GOING TO STAY WET AND MISERABLE FOR THE REST OF THE DAY ANYWAY?)

Gobble down breakfast, wrap up in raincoats, unfurl our umbrellas (all the better to poke other people in crowded buses and trains).

And step out into the friendly neighbourhood ankle/knee/waist-deep puddle.

That's Mumbai for you!!! The city that never sleeps. Also, the city that never stays dry.

BEWITCHING BANDRA

2011-08-18T17:58:00.002+05:30

Blame it on the Bandstand.

Blame it on the breezy sea.

Blame it on the bylanes.

Blame it on the bazaars.

Blame it on Bandra.

I am so bewitched by Bandra that I have neglected a lot of things. Blog-writing. Weight-watching. Researching...

The intricate, intersecting lanes that get clogged up with traffic at rush-hours.

The intriguing mix of fashion-savvy folks, laid-back lads, and crotchety crones.

The melting pot of religions and cultures that serve up a great variety of food fit for all pockets and palates.

The streets wide enough for REAL FOOTPATHS WIDE ENOUGH AND CLEAN ENOUGH AND FLAT ENOUGH TO WALK ON (which deserves a Hallelujah in suburban Mumbai), and which also houses stalls eager to sell everything from clothes, bags and shoes to trinkets, kitchenware and books.

Ah Bandra of the old-world charm and the nouveau riche fashion and the ...

...sea.

I'm bewitched. I've succumbed to its charms.

It's hard not to.

I KNOW WHAT I DID THIS SUMMER

2011-06-23T17:51:00.004+05:30

I know that I have been off blogging for nearly two months this summer.

And I know the reason for it.

Shifting from one rented flat in Mumbai to another.

First, it was the decision to shift.

Then, it was a round of seeking admission to new schools in the chosen area. As a school Principal said, "If you had one child, it wouldn't have been a problem. But...". Since no one had informed us of such future problems when pushing the 'two-children-happy-family-theory', we had to make double the effort now. Finally, though, we got both daughters enrolled in Arya Vidya Mandir, which, from all accounts, is a good school to grow up in.

Then, it was a search for the right flat. Oh, there are flats and flats, but a suitable match between a likeable residence and an affordable budget is really tough to find. You see, you shortlist, you negotiate, you wait...the negotiations fail...and then you go through this over and over again.

Then, it was a matter of waiting for the right approvals from the right authorities, for legalities, and contracts and verifications. I AM NOT TALKING OF BUYING, BUT SIMPLY OF RENTING PROPERTY ON A COMPANY LEASE.

Then, it was getting in touch with Movers and Packers, and watching all your beloved stuff being ruthlessly stuffed into bubble-wraps, cartons and cardboards, dragged into wet trucks (it was raining heavily that day), and dumped carelessly in new, strange rooms.

Tiring.

Traumatic.

And also rather exciting, actually ;)

Suffice to say, we have shifted to a new flat with kids, clothes, books and utensils in tow. This flat is still being done up by the owner, so we will be living a very public life amidst carpenters, masons, plumbers and electricians for a few more weeks. The house in a mess, there is a huge amount of unpacking still to be done, the kitchen is a work-in-progress, one bathroom looks as if it has been bombed...

Still, we can see the sea in the distance from some of the windows, and there are a lot of quaint churches and little lanes with sloping-roof houses to be explored. When the sundry people banging away around the flat finally leave...

Thank God for Maa, but that's another post!

All in all, a summer spent in fretting and fuming and sweating and waiting, and a monsoon beginning in a shifting.

What a waste of a lovely summer vacation!

THE BAG THAT CAME BACK

2011-04-14T16:18:00.003+05:30

It is an unassuming black net bag, the kind we call 'tholee' in Bengali. That's the bag you carry to the local vegetable (and/or fish) market.

It's weightless, although it can carry enormous amounts of weight. Kilos of apples, bhindis, cauliflower, beets, gourds, pumpkins, cabbages, dozens of bananas, bunches of palak, methi and kothmir, quantities of fish and fowl, have all nestled in happy weekly harmony in the confines of the bag, with a not-so-happy effect on my shoulder and wrist.

It's rather tatty and holey - precisely because of the above-mentioned weekly habit for working with heavy-weights.

It's got a heavy drinking habit, too - my husband often uses it for bringing home dozens of cans of Budweiser or bottles of Tuborg or...you get the drift?

It's recycled - in fact, it has been recycled ad infinitum, in all kinds of environments. It is as comfortable in grubby street-side markets as it is in air-conditioned restaurants where you have to pay through your nose. Because we always take it out of my much-more-expensive shoulder-bag if we have take any leftovers home.

It owes it's arrival in our household to an environmental crisis - after the humongous and horrendous rains of July, 2005, when drains blocked with plastic bags contributed greatly to the tragedy that ensued and prompted the Government to declare a ban on use of paper-thin plastic bags (isn't that contradictory?). I went to Big Bazaar and bought this net bag for Rs. 65/-

The ban was soon flouted, but the bag has stayed with us, loyal for nearly six years.

Until two weeks back. It had been carelessly pushed into my shoulder-bag (which is its usual resting place until it is called out for action). And it fell out while the spouse and I were on the way to, where else, the vegetable market. Its disappearance caused us a lot of grief and regret.

And then, like a miracle, it came back. My maid called me at work to say that another maid had found it hanging on a hook above the security-guard's desk in another wing of the building. It had apparently been lying there, unclaimed and unloved for a fortnight. I returned home with a happy spring in my step, the cheerfulness bubbling over in my voice when I called up the spuse with the good news.

And the very next day, my faithful bag-that-came-back was back in action.

For some reason, a tatty old 65-rupee bag has taught me a lesson in values beyond money.

WOMEN'S DAY: A PRIZED POSSESSION

2011-03-08T10:43:00.004+05:30

Here's the essay I wrote that won the First Prize at the Essay Competition for Lecturers by Hinduja College. It's rather long (they had a word limit of 1500) and rather dry and pontificating at places (academics are notorious for their incomprehensibility and verbosity), so feel free to skip as much or all of it if you want.

WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT: MYTH OR REALITY?

Miles to Go

“The race must be saved, and it can only be saved through the emancipation of women.”

(Emmeline Pankhurst, British suffragette, in her Freedom or Death speech at Connecticut, USA, 1913. Source: Wikipedia)

‘Empowerment’ means ‘to vest with authority, to authorize’. As men have been the ‘authors’ of most texts since time immemorial, it’s not surprising that women have always got a bad deal in the division of power.

Look at The Holy Bible. Naomi Wolf explains in The Beauty Myth (1991, Vintage, London, pp.93), “Though God made Adam from clay, in his own image, Eve is an expendable rib.”

Look at the etymology of the word ‘woman’. This Old English word is a compound of wif + man. A part of man, and not much apart from man – that was the woman’s lot. Till the first glimmers of change in the 18^th century, notwithstanding a few Cleopatras and Catherine the Greats and Joans of Arc dotting the intervening centuries.

And then there came the three waves of the Women’s Liberation Movement, from the 18^th century to the present day. The movement varied in its aims and achievements in different nations and distinct cultures, from opposing female genital mutilation in Sudan to breaking the glass-ceiling in Western countries to abolishing the practice of Satidaha (burning of widows) in pre-Independence India.

And, no, female empowerment is not a mythical struggle like the symbolically-laden fight between Judith and Holofernes (where Judith cut off her assailant’s head). The achievements are very much real and hard-won – one of the most noteworthy being women’s suffrage. From New Zealand in 1893, Great Britain in 1918, the USA in 1920, and India since its tryst with destiny in 1947, women today have the right to vote. Such a long journey from the ideal state of Aristotle’s Politics, where women, infants and lunatics were denied citizenship rights.

Beyond politics, other struggles have been played out across the globe, on issues such as reproductive rights, domestic violence, equal pay, sexual violence and gendered language. The manifestations of male power are so insidious and entrenched, that we have a long way to go before women’s empowerment becomes as much of a ‘given’ as men’s empowerment has always been.

Protest through Silence

“Silence can be a plan

rigorously executed

the blueprint to a life

It is a presence

it has a history a form

do not confuse it

with any kind of absence”

(from Adrienne Rich, Cartographies of Silence, 1975)

To know the real status of women’s empowerment in India, we can do a number of things.

We can look at the figures. India has always performed poorly in gender-related indices. www.nasscomm.in informs us that The Human development report of the UNDP ranks India 98 in its Gender related Development Index. While 85% of the total girl children attend primary school, less than 12% still carry on to the tertiary level. These women who drop out, as well as those who go on to have a job, do not sit idle at home. Indian women typically spend 35 hours per week on household tasks and caring for family-members, as against 4 hours per week for men.

We can look at the faces. Women in India have had their poster-girls and role models. From Indira Gandhi (“the only man in her Cabinet”) to today’s Mayawati-Mamata-Jayalalitha in politics, from Indra Nooyi abroad to Naina Lal Kidwai and Chandra Kochhar here in the corporate jungle, from Arundhati Roy and Medha Patkar in the jungles of injustice, from Sonia Gandhi, the de facto leader of the nation, to Pratibha Patil, the de jure head of the state, famous Indian women achievers make a long list.

Or we can look at the total picture. In a country of 496.4 million women (2001 census figures, source: www.merinews.com), pulling out a few hundred names from the conjuror’s hat is mere tokenism. Remember, India is also the land of Roop Kanwar, the 18-year old who committed sati on 4 September 1987 at Deorala in Rajasthan. We shall never know her real story, forever silenced on her husband’s pyre.

We can listen to the many silences around us – the silences of the women away from the limelight, away from our own educated, privileged world. Let me share with you my maid’s ‘herstory’. She is seventh-standard pass, abandoned by her husband even though she has two children, and she works from dawn to dusk washing-cleaning-sweeping-mopping to bring up her two children and to look after her mother and sister, who share her destiny of abandonment and subsequent self-sustenance through hard labour. She does not know about any charter of women’s rights, but her gut-instinct makes her refuse to take back her husband when he comes inebriated and wheedling to her door.

This is the power of silence, the real story of those who cannot voice their protest.

Power and Violence

“Girls never mean it when they say stop…

Was it rape, then?”

(from Rape, Joan Larkin, 1986)

Many a times, though, silence is at a disadvantage. Especially since violence is an inescapable ingredient in any struggle for power.

One of the most disturbing obstacles to women’s empowerment is the growing trend of violence against women. This violence takes many forms – dowry harassment, bride-burning, eve-teasing, sexual harassment at the workplace, honour-killing, marital violence and rape.

The Times of India, 27 November, 2010, reports that “statistics on rapes in the country shows how more than two women are raped every hour….The number of rapes across the country has increased manifold from only 2,487 in 1971 to 21,176 in 2008.” To each of these victims, women’s empowerment may just be an empty, broken promise.

Violence can take other forms, too. It can be self-inflicted, brought upon oneself by peer pressure and social expectations. The notion of ‘beauty’ can be fiercely competitive and mercilessly cruel. Isabelle Caro, the French actress and model who died on 1^st January, 2011, aged 28 and weighing under 30 kilograms, exemplifies the violence of beauty.

Naomi Wolf in The Beauty Myth (1990) analyses the ‘Walking Wounded’ – women who undergo cosmetic surgery, who become victims of anorexia and bulimia, to attain or maintain the ideal of ‘beauty’- beauty which always lies in the eyes of the observer, usually male.

The Bondage to Stereotypes

“The real trouble about women is that they must always go on trying to adapt themselves to men’s theories of women.”

(D H Lawrence, quoted in Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, 1973)

Down centuries and across cultures, one of the most debilitating bondage that women have had to face is the bondage to stereotypes.

As Eve the eternal temptress, or as Mary, the selfless nurturer, as Durga, the ten-armed super-force, or as Savitri, the unquestioningly devoted wife, men have created the image of their perfect woman. In religion and literature, from the epics to the romantics, women have always been the ‘object’ – of possession (Draupadi and the game of dice in The Mahabharata), of adoration (read any romantic poem by Shelley), of suspicion (Sita in The Ramayana). Women have always been expected to conform to this straitjacketed stereotype constructed by men.

And they still do. Look at the popular television serials, with their docile/domineering saas-bahu (daughters and mothers in law) in aspirational finery and patriarchal set-ups. Most advertisements sell cars and deodorants through Eve-like femme fatales, or peddle noodles and spice powders with the help of supermoms and yummy mummies. Feminine cosmetic products glorify the most fantastic stereotype of them all – the ‘fair and lovely’ lady, impossibly beautiful, unattainably fair-skinned, dangerously slender centre of male attention.

As long as popular culture continues to endorse these stereotypes, women will continue to be enslaved by them. And women will liberate themselves financially and politically, only to be disempowered by subtler socio-psychological forces.

Break Free, Fly, Choose

“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all.”

(from Hope, Emily Dickinson, 1861)However, there are encouraging signs. According to the Registrar General of India, the proportion of women in the workforce rose from 19.7% in 1981 to 25.7 % in 2001. Currently, in the Indian IT industry, women form 45% of the toal workforce. (source: www.nasscomm.in). More women are stepping out and speaking up, demanding and getting education and employment and some semblance of equality. Women earn outside and also slog inside their homes. But it is a choice many of us willingly make.

So, women’s empowerment is neither a myth, nor a fully-achieved reality, but a work in progress. A process that started long ago and far away, but carried forward each time any woman asserts her rights. My mother had to quit her job to bring up her children. I am managing to balance work and home. Maybe my daughters will have an easier choice, a smoother flight, a safer freedom, and a more equal empowerment. For the betterment of the entire human race – man, woman, transgender – we can all hope.

EARLY MORNING PATRIOTISM PILL

2011-02-24T14:37:00.003+05:30

I take it every morning, six days a week. Dropping whatever I was doing at the moment. Standing to attention. No talking or fidgeting allowed.

I may fudge my taxable income figures, or curse the government, buy goods from sellers avoiding customs duty, or apply for a Green Card at the first opportunity. But I must never fail to stand up whenever the national anthem plays. Because in our topsy-turvy, show-and-yell society, I must always flaunt my patriotism.

In our college, "Jana Gana Mana" plays every morning, Mon-Sat, before lectures start. We stop in our tracks and stand immobile, while the Nightingale of India melodiously - and rather lengthily - sings the well-known words.

Words written by a favourite poet sitting down at his favourite desk in his long gown, a faraway look in his eyes, white hair and long beard and serene smile creating an almost-divine image of creation. Words springing from a creative mind, overflowing in doodles and squiggles on the pages where he scribbled. The creative mind that penned, not one but two national anthems for two bordering nations - India and Bangladesh.

You see, posture has got nothing to do with patriotism at all.

It is the thrill you feel in your veins when the tempo in the song increases at "Jana gana MANGALADAYAK jai he" and the trumpets and drums unite in harmony to accelerate the blood in your veins. It is the little goosbumps on your skin and the prickle of sudden tears in your eyes at a nameless pride that swells up during the song.

Patriotism can be felt sitting down also.

If we can pray sitting down, why cannot we love our country sitting down?

NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS - OLD HAT, ANYWAY!

2011-01-13T14:23:00.003+05:30

Now that the euphoria has died down (and well-buried under the debris of deadlines and approaching exams, inspections), let me make a few resolutions that I make every year anyway:

SLIMMER WAISTLINE

FATTER WALLET

(how? how? is a hope and a prayer enough?)

LESS SHOPPING

MORE READING

(Not just Sale notices in the papers that make me rush out frenetically to the shops)

(Not just detective fiction and chick lit. Get down to the classics!)

FREQUENTER POSTS

INFREQUENTER VISITS TO FASHION BLOGS

(Not even HighHeelConfidential and GoFugYourself?)

SAY NO TO SNICKERS BARS!

SAY YES TO LOW-CAL, FIBRE RICH NUTRI BARS!

(Do I have to eat them, too? Can't I just stash them in my bag, feel virtuous and then throw them after the expiry date passes?)

DO THE RESEARCH PROJECT ON BLOGGERS IN INDIA THAT HAS BEEN PENDING SINCE LAST YEAR!

For this last one, I need your help.

Do send me your e-mail IDs and I will forward you a questionnaire about your blog that I desperately need for data collection.

My e-mail ID is sarkarsucharita@gmail.com

NIP AND TUCK

2010-12-14T15:40:00.003+05:30

Yesss! There is very definitely a NIP in the air.

Mumbai - sultry, humid, sweltering-round-the-year Mumbai - is actually having the onset of what-appears-to-be a Winter.

That's the only thing that Delhi had (apart from better roads and worse manners) that Mumbai didn't.

So The Times of India puns "KYA KOOL HAI MUM!".

So my friend writes on FaceBook, "I told you, Mumbai has always been a cool place!"

So the fans are having a rest, while the geysers work overtime.

So the kids have dug out all their woollens and are insisting on going down to play dressed for a Himalayan trek.

And me? I just want to TUCK my feet inside a warm duvet and sleep all morning.

KOLKATA LINGERS...

2010-11-25T16:22:00.002+05:30

The annual visit to Kolkata ended a week back.

Work/school has begun and we are back in the swing of things.

The lazy mornings watching the world go by from our balcony, and the hectic evenings of catching up with friends and family have already retreated to the silent shots in the camera.

But Kolkata lingers...

In the 'panchphoron' and 'radhuni' - spices peculiar to the Bengali cuisine - that my in-laws have packed for me.

In the Cookme 'mustard paste' that is adding tartness and the sharp tang of memory to fish curries cooked in Borivili.

In the Bori (dried balls of ground lentils) that is adding crunch and the bite of nostalgia to Maharashtra-bred vegetables.

In the Jaljeera (a sweet-salty-tangy powder) from Tasty, which is being dissolved in water (and a bit of tears) to make glass after glass of cooling drink in manic Mumbai.

In the sarees from Dakshinapan and the books from College Street. When we open and use, we breathe in deeply and remember.

DURGA'S JOURNEY

2010-10-15T15:26:00.003+05:30

Today is Ashtami, and I assume that Maa Durga has already started to feel a little sad hollow in the pit of her stomach, because the end - of her longed-for visit to her baaper bari (maiden home) - is slowly drawing to a close.

I always feel a similar hollow in my (somewhat more rotund) tummy when I am in the midst of a holiday, because THE MIDDLE IS THE BEGINNING OF THE END, if you know what I mean.

And the really fun part of any holiday is the first part, just as the most maddening part is the packing before the journey.

Because our annual Diwali sojourn to Kolkata is drawing near, it was really quite easy to visualize this.

PLACE: Shiva's mountain-top villa/palace/cave in Kailash.

CAST OF CHARACTERS:

A flurried ten-handed goddess-wife-mother
A spaced-out, always-high husband
Four squabbling children
Sundry hapless assistants

Durga is packing suitcases. Ten hands help, but then, she has top carry a lot of weapons and other paraphernalia that'll be hanging on these arms for the stage-show. Plus, there is a hell of lot of pet-food to carry.

Durga: "Laxmi, you don't need so many gold biscuits and silver coins, just take the credit card. Saraswati, can't you swap those heavy tomes for an e-book reader? Ganesh, go on a diet, at least for the sake of your mouse! And Kartik, it is all right to be vain and metrosexual, but do you have to take so many boxes of pancake? Or your nasal hair trimmer? It is only five days, you know! Can we get things moving here? Nandi (Shiva's assistant, who is known to puff on his boss's chillum on the sly) have you booked our boat/elephant/horse/Meru Cab yet? Why does nothing here happen on time?

Shiva: "That's because we live out of time...in eternity... (seeing Durga's frown)...At least look at me, I am such a light packer, taking only my tiger-skin toga."

The be-spectacled Saraswati (she wears contact lenses during the five days) looks up from her copy of Lonely Planet:

"Yeah, and PETA is after you for that. Can't you wear something more eco-friendly?"

Shiva: "What, like those Naga sanyasis. You'd prefer me to be a nude-dude, then?"

Laxmi: "Baba!! Don't shock Ma's suburban sensibilities."

Durga, distracted from her packing:

"Hah! I was always a metro miss till your father married me and dragged me to the jungles and hills. What a place! No network signal on my mobile, and no work from any of you!! Just look at me, I've been packing since days, and there's still so much left."

Ganesh, chewing the edge of his trunk (which means he's hungry):

"Don't forget to pack enough food for me. You never bother to cook food during holidays, and I get jolly tired to pecking on fruits and sweets given to us. These humans are too clever by half, they polish off the really tasty bhog pretty darn fast!"

Laxmi: "You've taken my jewelry box, haven't you? And don't try to filch my bangles. Please wear your own...having ten arms is no excuse for taking my bangles and bracelets."

Saraswati: "Have you taken my I-pod? That loud dhaaker music makes my head ache!"

Kartik: "Can we stay near a salon this year? Five days of smoke and fumes from the dhunuchi and my skin cries out for a facial. And I think I'd like to have my navel pierced, it'd look cool with my dhoti and angvastram."

Shiva: "Yeah, let's swap our mandap for a mall this year. Some of them have really good booze shops..."

Durga (frustrated, exhausted, exasperated) challenges:

"Fine. Just take care of the reservations. It's so not fair having to take you along every single time. What about some ME-TIME for poor old me? Any more back chat from you and I'm flying solo. It's MY HOLIDAY and I'm going to chill."

WATCHING SERIALS, SERIOUSLY

2010-09-09T16:01:00.002+05:30

Serial watching is serious business.

Just ask my Ma.

It needs

multi-tasking (switching between channels and also doing other work at the same time),

time-management (between the same),

dexterity (with the remote),

hand-eye co-ordination (knitting and watching TV simultaneously),

an understanding of melodrama and human psychology (rightly guessing who will do what next, and also guessing what had happened in case she misses one/more episodes),

and, of course, an elephantine memory.

My Ma manages efficiently to keep abreast of all the prime-time serials in all the channels. And her 'Prime-time' extends from 7 p.m to midnight. And she manages to simultaneously cook uo delicious fish-curries for us.

When I asked her what was the secret behind her being such a SUPER SUCCESSFUL SERIAL-WATCHER, she placidly said:

"Ad breaks help a lot. When ads come on Star Plus, just switch to Zee. Then to Imagine. Then to Colors...

And, if you miss out for some reason, watch the rerun very late at night or next afternoon."

WOW!!! At least, serial-watching has a well-planned technique. Unfortunately, the never-ending serials themselves do not seem to have any such science or strategy.

CAN YOU FLIRT?

2010-08-20T14:42:00.003+05:30

There I go, that's absolutely the wrong question to ask.

Flirting is a delicate art. Like the art of making the fluffiest and lightest pastry or cupcake or gelatto, flirting requires a light hand. Make that a light heart. And a glad eye. And a lightly raised eyebrow. And the lightest, most coquettish fluttering of eyelashes. Accomplished flirts can flit - like butterflies - from here to there, bestowing a smile, a wink, a flattering comparison, a risque compliment, even a suggestive proposition. All this without getting enmeshed or entangled in anything heavy or sordid like a relationship. Flirting is like those 100% fat-free gelattos, they are frothy, dainty, gossamer, and 100% commitment-free.

Flirting is the art of the indirect.

Unfortunately, I am a rather direct sort of person. A bumblebee who blunders straight into trees, rather than a butterfly.

If somebody pays me a compliment, I always wonder, "Really?" and often say aloud, "Why?". I raise my eyebrows rather than flutter my eyelashes.

Maybe because of my contact lenses, it is easier to raise eyebrows than it is to flutter eyelashes. Whatever, I am really really heavy-handed and get all hot and bothered by any kind of flirtatious contact.

Which is a pity, because flirting can make your life really easy. You can jump queues, get small favours done, get the best products on offer, get extra discounts, get better service, get away with late-coming/bunking/shirking-work/not-meeting-deadlines/making-1001-mistakes/murder. Anything, actually.

Flirts can pirouette and escape the consequences of their inaction. Whereas blunderbusses like me have to prove myself with every action.

So, let me be direct, and ask you, "Can you flirt?"

Because, to my ever-lasting regret, I CAN NOT.

TUNNEL VISION

2010-07-27T14:24:00.002+05:30

I hate tunnels.

Especially the under-passes built near railway stations or under flyovers, for teeming millions to cross over from one side to another. There is one near Sealdah station in Kolkata, and one under the Western Express Highway in Malad, Mumbai, which I had/have to familiar on a daily basis. And, in this case at least, familiarity breeds contempt. Ugh!

They are dank, dirty, musty and crowded. There's water dripping down walls and from cracks in the ceiling, and I shudder each time a cold drop falls on me. There are rodents and cockroaches scurrying along the drains at the side. There are pushing, groping crowds hurrying past in the permanent semi-darkness.

And what amazes me most are the tenacity of the vendors who have made these tunnels their workplace, staying in these claustrophobic surroundings for hours on end, like denizens of a nightmarish nocturnal hell.

And they sell spinach and bananas, garlic (to ward off vampires?) and knick-knacks. I always feel too suffocated to buy. The walls seem to close in, the ceiling seems to press down upon me. I rush as fast as I can, tripping on the uneven tunnel floor, ducking the leaking water, holding my breath to avoid inhaling the stale air.

The sunlight at the end of the tunnel always seems a bit too far away for my liking.

OF GRAND SLAMS AND SOUR GRAPES

2010-07-01T17:32:00.003+05:30

Grand Slams look unfamiliar these days.

Because Federer is exiting so early. No, not the first-round, but even the quarter-final is such an unexpected result from my favourite player. In fact, I usually do not watch the early rounds in Grand Slams at all, catching up with Roger when he strode into the quarters and beyond, mostly winning, sometimes losing, but always, always immensely, delightfully watchable.

Now, without Federer, the courts seems emptied of artistry, bereft of magic. The red clay of Roland Garros is harsher, bloodier with the grunting, lunging, gutsy, athletic Nadal and his power-tennis. Wimbledon's grass is no longer that shade of brilliant green it was for the past so many years.

Now, watching the finals of a Grand Slam is no longer a matter of biting fingernails, knotting-up stomach and clenching fingers together in prayer. Where I would jump from point to point, game to game, set to set, swinging between hope and despair. Where I could cry unabashedly when Federer's subtle charms would self-destruct or be mauled by the hard-hitting determination of his opponent, usually Nadal. Where I could watch, enraptured by the mastery of a man who could transform a movement into a masterpiece with his timing, touch, grace and fluidity. Where I would rejoice at witnessing magic and history weaving together a unique spectacle.

Now, I can relax during a Grand Slam final. It's just two men slugging it out - with the stronger one, in mind and body, the one who seizes the moment, winning. Tennis has become a battle of power once again. A game for gritty warriors, not the magic of the artist.

RAIN DICTIONARY

2010-06-24T17:48:00.004+05:30

DEPRESSION
Not just the low-pressure zones in the sky that invite the heavy rain-clouds and the monsoon, but the hollow feeling in my stomach when I look at the still-wet washing hanging on sagging lnes inside rooms where they have no business to be. Wet clothes should dry fast and smell fresh and sunny, not go on hanging for ever.

DEBRIS
Is the muck that rises up to greet your feet (or ankles, or knees, or waist - depending on the water level) when you wade from job to home, or anywhere to anywhere.

DECISION
To take the raincoat or the umbrella? The foldable brolly or the huge one with the hook-like handle that always gets stuck in other people's bags? Whatever I decide is ineffectual anyway, because the monsoon has a mind of its own. And a heavy downpour can throw cold water on all my decisions.

DEVILRY
The sheer cussedness of auto-richshaw drivers who are always zipping up and down, but never where you want to go. In monsoon, along with dengue and malaria, auto-rickshaw refusals reach epidemic proportions. Even if you have tons of grocery bags on your arms, or wet-and-wailing children in your arms. They'll never go where you ask them to, but always stop and pick up the next person.

DESPERATION
Personified by me when I am standing in the pouring rain, trying to flag down an auto, with an ineffectual umbrella in one hand and the aforesaid tons of grocery bags on the other hand, getting horribly late for home.

DELINQUENCY
Personified by monsoon-mad Mumbaikars who seem to be in love with this misery-pouring season. As Obelix would say, "These Mumbaikars are crazy!"

DEFIANCE
Me arguing with the above-mentioned mad phalanx and saying, "Monsoon, huh? The sooner it is over, the better. And anyway, why doesn't it just go and rain on the lakes, instead of messing up my life?"

DELIGHT
Is a fast-forward to a future when the lakes are full and the sun is shining.

Care to add some more words to the list?

FLIPPING OVER

2010-06-03T17:06:00.002+05:30

Probably I'm late, as usual. Probably everyone of you have already been there and done that.

But I'm just so, so excited about about this on-line bookshop I've just found out about - FLIPKART.COM.

They have the most amazing collection of books that most other bookshops (even my favourite haunts like Landmark and Crossword everywhere) do not have in stock. And they offer you pretty decent discounts! And they'll deliver it home, if home is in India, without any shipping charges!

I managed to track down a whole lot of completely delicious and completely unavailable-elsewhere women detective fiction authors from the 1940s-1960s. Everybody's heard/read/seen/bought/trashed/loved Agatha Christie. Her contemporary, Dorothy Sayers, - more erudite, and, ergo, less popular - graces Crossword/Landmark shelves in her shiny reprinted avatars. But I totally flipped over when I found rows and rows of juicy murder mysteries by Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh (Christie, Sayers, Allingham and Marsh are together revered as the Queens of British Golden Age Crime Fiction), Josephine Tey and Patricia Wentworth! Virtually close enough for me to reach out and touch! Now I can't wait to bite into them!!! And it's great fun just browsing along and adding random favourites to my wishlist!

But if you are completely unmoved by Miss Marple and Miss Silver, Lord Peter Wimsey, Roderick Alleyn, Inspector Grant or Albert Campion and the rest of those ancient genteel-detectives, you can always search and find your own poison!

A site for all bibliophiles to flip over!! I have!

URBAN OASIS

2010-05-13T13:06:00.003+05:30

Sometimes, I travel to the ad agency where I work part-time via a little neighbourhood called Amboli in Andheri. It is a place where many of the residents are Catholics, and it's a place where things seems to slow down of their own accord.

My auto-rickshaw, which hurtles down the manic Andheri roads when it is not fuming at traffic jams, trots with leisured ease down the winding paver-blocked Amboli roads. The sun seems softer, the shops seems sleepier, the air seems gentler. There's a playground where somebody has thoughtfully hosed down the grass-less field, so that the kids can play without the swirling dust choking them. There's a street-corner flower-shop, where a maxi-wearing young lady with flowers in her hair deftly weaves myriad garlands. There are gaggles of goats and sheep by the roadside - some leaping out to surprise the auto-driver, some chewing cud casually. And there are numerous wooden or concrete crosses with the legend I.N.R.I (Jesus of Nazareth, King - Rex - of Jews; in Hebrew script, I and J looks the same).

This benign spirit seems to guard and cosset lilting lulled-down Amboli from the heat and dust of Andheri - with its buzzy busy-ness and reckless skyscrapers and frantic shops. Amboli houses are small, dilapidated, sloping-roofed shanties, or four/five storeyed small-townish apartment blocks.

That place has a character of its own - a stubborn refusal to blend in with the rest of the faceless, multi-storeyed, swanky-malls-dirty-roads urban desertscape of the rest of Andheri.

It's anyone's guess how long this oasis will hold out. Deserts have a habit of taking over everything around it.

ERROR? RIGHT ON!

2010-04-29T12:44:00.005+05:30

My maid, who lives with us, often mispronounces English words. With the unexpected effect of hitting the nail on the head!

For instance, she says "China" instead of "channel" (her favourite TV 'China' being STAR PLUS, with its plethora of primetime tearjerking soaps). Maybe she's just being prophetic, CHANNELS in India are about the only thing that are not being MADE IN CHINA at the moment.

She also says "Anyplane" instead of "aeroplane". Again, it is an insightful comment on the aviation sector, especially since any number of airlines are now fighting it out for their piece of the sky.

But the one I just love is "TOPIC JAM" instead of "TRAFFIC JAM". It is almost poetic in its possibilities. Check this out:

Elder daughter sitting in front of a pile of books right before exams, wondering where to begin. TOPIC JAM.

Packed Staffroom at our college. Teachers talking in loud voices across the room at cross-purposes, everybody unable to hear anybody else. TOPIC JAM.

Fourth lecture after recess. Poor students yawning away at my Communications class, head already full of Accounts and Economics and Maths. TOPIC JAM.

Me racking my brains, stumped and struggling to come up with new names/lines for pens/financial services/just-about-anything for clients who seem to be insufferingly insatiable. TOPIC JAM.

Newspapers refusing to budge beyond the misadventures and misdemeanours and misappropriations of Lalit Modi, even though the IPL is history. TOPIC JAM.

Me gazing at "still working"/"loading"/"refreshing" monitor, cursing slow Internet traffic speed. TOPIC JAM.

Lovely phrase, is it not?

FACT & FICTION

2010-04-12T16:58:00.002+05:30

The Copy-Kitten (my younger daughter) is a bold little mite. She tries her loudest best to argue the pants off people ten times her size (and age), and her voice is the 'most-heard' (top-of-the-volume-charts) in the playground.

But two things scare her, especially at night. Especially when she's in her bed listening to her routine bedtime story, and she wants to go to the drawing room to get a new book. So I have to suspend my story-telling and accompany her - small hand gripped tightly in mine - to the bookshelves to pick out another book.

She's scared of Wee Willie Winky. You know, the fairy fella who looks in at windows and peeps through the locks, to see whether all the children are in bed by "eight o' clock" (That's for Brits, I've modified it to 11 o' clock). The Copy Kitten calls him Winky Willie and gets all round-eyed when the curtains blow in the night-time breeze. It just might be Winky Willie, she claims in a hushed voice.

But she is re-assured by my BIG-ness (age-wise and size-wise). From the pictures of the puny, pointy-eared Winky Willie in nursery rhyme books, she has deduced that her Maa will be more than a match for him.

What scares her more are AATANKWADIs (Terrorists - she pronounces the word in the Hindi way). Whenever there are noises of crackers bursting too loudly, she'll get all worried and plaintively ask whether there are Aatankwadis around. What do they do? Where do they come from? How can we save ourselves if they do come? How will we fight them? How will the police fight them? ....

I don't know where she learnt about terrorism. I don't know when and where terrorists will strike. And this not knowing makes my reassurances rather unconvincing, at least to myself.

The Winky Willies of fiction I can combat. But as for the aatankwadis, I feel as helpless as any four-year old. And angry, at this spoiling of innocence that is the legacy of our terror-riven world.

DO YOU?

TRAVELLING COMPANIONS

2010-03-22T12:30:00.004+05:30

I travelled with Deepika Padukone today. As I was coming to work, I sat alongside a smiling Deepika, all demure-pretty with a clip in her hair and a sunny yellow dress, posing against an impossibly-blue sky and a fairy-tale cottage with a riot of flowers in the garden.

Surprised? Don't be. Ever since I came to Mumbai, I have travelled with the likes of a fresh-faced Salman Khan (with long-hair, cute-smile and his shirt-on, looking like he did in his Hum Aapke Hai Kaun days). And with Amitabh Bachchan, when he was still a beardless and helmet-haired angry-young-man with an intense gaze and a sneer on his rouged lips. And a cherubic-fresh Preity Zinta, or an angelic-vacuous Aishwarya - often dimpling down at me or gazing down at me from both sides. Or sometimes a Shah Rukh Khan from his floppy-haired, puppy-eyed days, who looks ready to break into a K-k-k-kiran every time the vehicle stutters in a traffic jam.

No, I don't travel in a Merc. I travel in auto-rickshaws. And one of the greatest amusements is to find whose image will be there on the inner walls of the rickshaw when I climb in. Glossy, glamourous and larger-than-life travelling companions I can look at when the rickshaw is stuck in a traffic jam.

And imagine myself in the company of stars. After all, Mumbai is the City of Dreams, and a little bit of tinsel gets rubbed off on me even when I am caught in the middle of suburban roads and daily chaos.

Unfortunately, all auto-rickshaws do not have Bollywood stars as interior decoration. Some have lights and blasting sound-boxes, some have shabby velvet and some have shiny rexine. But, for me, the shine is missing from a rickshaw-ride if I don't have a brooding Amitabh by my side. Or a rosy-cheeked Aamir. Or a twinkling Juhi Chawla.

I'm not choosy. Just celebrity-struck when I'm traffic-stuck.

BEHIND EVERY MULTI-TASKING WOMAN...

2010-03-11T11:53:00.004+05:30

...is a man (the AGE-OLD saying is reversed, obviously...we are the NEW AGE women, are we not?)

I have a husband who (till now), loves me a lot. I also have a husband who criticises me a lot. Oh, they are one and the same person (till now, at least).

And although I appreciate the love and crib at the criticism most of the time, on retrospecting (on the belated and auspicious - to shopkeepers - occasion of Women's Day) I realised I should value the criticism as much as the adoration.

Why?

Because the spouse's criticism...
...keeps me grounded. (Too much flattery swells the head.)
...gives me a challenge. (I thrive on 'TO-DO-BETTER' lists.)
...gives me a chance to fight back. (Shouting is a good stress-buster.)
...has become such an inextricable part of my daily routine that I would probably die of shock and deprivation if he changed suddenly and became all 'red roses and diamond rings'!
...lets us enjoy the process of making up after a bout of accusation-flinging and screaming match.

Now, I am not going to tell you how!!!

HAPPY WOMEN'S LIFE!!!!

WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH PISTACHIO SHELLS?

2010-02-15T13:35:00.003+05:30

Being a neat-freak, I would probably have chucked them straight into the dustbin.

Till the tear-drop-shaped beige half-shells of a kilo-bag of pistachios were rescued by my daughters, who demanded, "Maa, we want to play with them."

The younger Copy-Kitten, who loves her Sunday-morning pasta, went to the kitchen, withdrew enough pots, pans and ladles to set up her own restaurant, and started cooking pista-shell Macaroni (resembling the shell-pasta - conchiglie - I often make for them).

The older Lil Cat, who is now deeply into the rollicking-Roman-and-gallant-Gaul world of Asterix comics, decided to convert her hoard of pista-shells into sestertii - the coins used by Julius Caesar and his ilk.The Copy-kitten, true to her name, abandoned her presumably half-cooked macaroni, followed her sister and became a sestertii-trader.

When children propose, Mummy obliges. So I spent the better part of Valentine's afternoon (the spouse was away in Pune on post-blast news-duty anyway) mixing gold and silver acrylic paints with binder and applying colour painstakingly to about two hundred gold and silver sestertii. The new-found treasure is now safely stashed in an unsed moneybox. And I re-learnt a lesson that happiness often lies in the most trivial of things.

You are welcome to come and share. The macaroni, the sestertii, or the remaining pistachios. Or your take on the question stated in the title of this post.

WHY WOMEN DRESS-UP

2010-01-15T12:15:00.003+05:30

I was writing a kite-flying post for my other blog, Past Continuous, where I mentioned the manja - the sharp paste containing powdered glass that is coated onto kite-strings to give bite and edge to cut the strings of competing kites.
In Bengali, when a girl dresses up in all her finery, people (especially older male relations) often comment in jest, "khub manja merechhis toh!" (You've put on a lot of manja).
Presumably, it means that adornment (dress, make-up, et al) is like a weapon with which the woman arms herself (like the kite's weapon is the glass-edged string). If life is a battle of sexes, then it is only logical to step out armed with a suitable weapon.
For whom, though? To cut other kites, or females, out of the competition? And, is there an underlying assumption that women are like playthings in the hands of men, and they can pull us along like kites? Ahem, ahem!!
But the manja is a double-edged thing. It can cut other kite-strings...and also cut the palms of the inexpert string-puller. So, men beware!!! If you persist with making inoffensive but double-meaning comments to prettily-dressed members of the opposite gender, remember that your palms may get badly slashed, especially across the heartline.

IZZ ALL WELL?

2009-12-31T12:07:00.003+05:30

I am not a film critic.

I am a teacher, with a decade's experience in dealing with students who just want to 'pass'. Rare is the student who loves the subject passionately, but when I do find such gems, the whole teaching-learning process gets transformed into a vital and uplifting exchange.

I was a student, who got 'good marks' in all subjects but always wanted to study 'only English Literature' since I was six-seven years old. I had to face a lot of flak when I abandoned science altogether after my I.C.S.E and chose a 'pure arts' option. At least, my Maa and Baba never questioned my choice. Thank God I was a girl, the pressure to conform is much more for boys (as in the Spouse's case - he spent two unhappy years studying science for his plus-two before coming back to his passion - Literature).

I am a mother, and I deeply, desperately want my daughters to study any subject they really really like and do some work that they enjoy. I am scared of the pressure to perform they will inevitably face and the comparisons that will challenge their individualities, and the race for money-car-club-jet-status that can so easily trip their free souls.

So, when I saw 3 Idiots, I kept feeling, "Yes! This is exactly how I feel. This is exactly what I always wanted to say about our quote-by-rote, madam-please-give-us-notes, madam-please-tell-us-the-IMP-questions, madam-will-this-help-me-to-get-35%, education system.

Thank you, Rajkumar Hirani, Aamir Khan and Vidhu Vinod Chopra, for showing us who the idiots really are.

SHOW ME THE WINTER

2009-12-17T11:53:00.002+05:30

So, it's already mid-December here in Mumbai, and the shops are selling green tinsel Christmas trees and red Santa caps and rich dark plum cakes.

The colourful woollies newly-knitted by my mother are waiting eagerly in the cupboard. Where they are in the competitive company of a stack of other colourful woollies, all knitted by my mother down the years. Enough to warm the cockles of an army, if they felt any cold.

My elder daughter, Lil Cat, has taken out her monogrammed navy-blue school cardigan and has worn it to school for a couple of days, just because it is DECEMBER. Defeated by the clamminess and the sweatiness, she's keeping it off for now.

Her sister, the Copy Kitten, threw a tantrum and managed to get me to buy her a similar-but-smaller monogrammed school cardigan. Which is lying pristine, waiting to be inaugurated.

Our maid has gifted them two lovely bright batik scarves, and even these are hanging forlorn in the cupboard.

And the superpowers and the wannabe-superpowers and the movers and shakers have all hot-footed over to Copenhagen, interfacing and OD-ing on Global Warming and Carbon Footprints, and the Kyoto Protocol, some trying to slip in sly measures, some trying to pull a fast one, some trying to bully the weaker ones, all for their own short-term advantage. I mean, in the long term, it is like cutting off the branch on which we all are sitting, is it not?

And here in muggy Mumbai, we - all the small fry - are still waiting for winter to turn up.

COPY-KITTEN @ CINEMAS

2009-12-13T00:50:00.003+05:30

The Copy-Kitten's first experience at the movies proved to be rather traumatic.
For me.
The movie was the tear-jerking TAARE ZAMEEN PAR, the moment was the heart-wrenching 'Maa' song when the little boy is about to be separated from his mother and admitted to the hostel. The Copy-Kitten, who was around two years, woke up from her sleep, sensed the tears in the air and decided to join in at full volume.
I missed most of the rest of the movie, pacing outside the auditorium with my daughter on one shoulder, wishing for a hostel.

Now that the Copy-Kitten is nearly four, I tried again. A few weeks back, we went to see the rom-com AJAB PREM KI GAZAB KAHANI, and the Copy-Kitten behaved impeccably. She sipped her soft-drink (do they spike it with sedatives? I am NOT complaining.), munched her pop-corn, fell asleep before the interval, and woke up at the end to ask, "Maa, Jenny aar Prem ki biye korechhey?" (Maa, did Jenny and Prem get married?). Although the question was asked in a voice loud enough for the rest of the audience to turn and stare at us, I cannot deny that she had arrived straight at the heart of the matter.

And today we watched PAA at the theatre, and again the Copy-Kitten enjoyed herself. Piping up questions in a Dolby-Surround Sound kind of voice and scattering popcorn under her seat and over the silently-suffering gentleman in front of her. But she cried when Auro died. Along with me, the spouse, my elder daughter, my maid, and the rest of the audience. I cannot deny that she has her heart in the right place.

MOTHER COURAGE

2009-11-30T14:48:00.000+05:30

The past week everybody was busy about the first anniversary of the 26/11 terror attacks on Mumbai. While we remembered those hours which defy ordinary epithets, life went on - before, during, after.

This is about one such ordinary life. Almost every day, while going to college fairly early in the morning, I see a mother escorting her daughter, dressed in her blue-checked uniform, to the school bus. The daughter suffers from cerebral palsy and does not have much control over her limbs. Usually the mother half-pulls, half-carries her, but if they are running late, then the mother has to carry the daughter in her lap, cradling her lolling head on one shoulder, schoolbag slung on the other.

The mother is painfully thin and gaunt, the child is almost a teenager. It is quite a long walk from their chawl (slum) to the Highway, where the bus for that special school comes. I have never seen her lose her temper, even when she is half-running to catch the bus, even when the child is throwing a tantrum.

A daily walk of unsung courage that humbles me every time I witness it.

OUT FOR A DUCK

2009-11-19T00:28:00.004+05:30

The Copy-Kitten is having some sort of elaborate programme at school where she has to go all dressed up exactly like Donald Duck.

The teacher in charge of such superfluous entertainment called me and stuck a shiny photograph of Donald, with eyes closed and nose in the air (Donald’s, not the teacher’s), in my unwilling hands. “Make it at home,” she loftily said, “we don’t want cardboard cutouts,” (reading my mind), “You’d better make it with cotton-stuffing. IT MUST LOOK EXACTLY LIKE THE PHOTOGRAPH.” (Or else…)

Meekly I nodded, saving my indignation for later. I am poor even at darning and button-sewing, let alone such ambitious projects like home-sewing the iconic bad-tempered duck.

Donald’s bad temper was rubbing off on me. None of the shops which sold fancy-dress costumes on hire (I got the names off the Net) had anything near an exact replica. One shop (a “high-end” one) had a coming-apart-cardboard-mask you would really have to imagine hard to be DONALD, which they stuck on top of some ubiquitous Charlie Chaplin-type costume with a tailcoat. I wanted a nice stuck-up fluffy white ducktail, not a dirty black coat with a tail.

Wherever I searched, I got a duck (as in cricket, not cartoons).

Finally, when I attended a pre-programme meet organized by the teacher (which, I suspect was to catch hold of laggards like me and push us into getting the costumes done), I met a pair of parents who had brought along a Doremon who looked exactly like his namesake. A tailor, who mercifully happened to be quite close to my college, apparently specialized in such complicated costumes. You just had to give him the photo (and a rather obscene amount of money), and within two days he would give you a 3-D costume.

And so I rushed right out of the meeting into the shop of the tailor with the magic Walt Disney-esque scissors. And two days later, like a conjuror pulling rabbits out of a hat, he pulled out a Donald Duck costume in luxe velvet-with-sponge-stuffing, looking exactly like that da---ned photograph, with gloves, webbed-feet-footwear, mask, right down to the fluffy white ducktail!

Only snag is, the lookalike costume is tailormade…to fit some child three sizes larger than the Copy-Kitten.

So, as she waddles about like an overstuffed inebriated duck, I’ll have to bring out all the large child-safe pins in the house to keep Donald Duck on his feet. And keep my fingers crossed and hope that Donald a.k.a Copy-Kitten does not have a wardrobe malfunction on the stage.

And if anybody mentions how sweet cartoon characters are, especially Disney ones, especially a cantankerous yellow-beaked duck called Donald, I’ll shove an entire roasted Peking Duck down their throats…on second thoughts, down mine. Or maybe Duck with Orange Sauce…and chew all of it down really viciously. Quack! Quack! Quack!!!

KOLKATA: BACK TO THE FUTURE

2009-11-09T14:23:00.002+05:30

We are back from a few weeks vacationing in Kolkata, where the more things change, the more they remain the same. Or seem to, at least.

Kolkata welcomed us with a host of new flyovers and a not-so-new 'aborodh' (obstruction) because of some political agitation when we all got stuck for three hours on these very flyovers and newly swanked-up roads. Red or green, whatever be the colour of West Bengal's political affliation, it seems that the roads are still stuck in the STOP-RED-LIGHT mode, whenever any leader worth his/her weight decides to sulk and scream.

During our stay we were caught in the midst of the GREAT AUTO DIVIDE - that is, the divide between the new-green-and-yellow autorickshaws that have switched to LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) and the old-black-and-yellow autorickshaws that have not. They are environment-unfriendly, and so, have been rudely ostracised by the Kolkata Police and pushed to fringe roads in areas like Haltu. But many people live there, too. Don't they need environment-friendly conveyance, or are they less important that the residents of posher places like Ballygunge and Jodhpur Park?

Any such argument unarguably made us hungry and during the vacation we had a lovely time feasting at many of our old Kolkata favourites like Peter Cat, Bedouin, Coffee House, and Kafulok at Tangra. Food to die for, at prices that do not take your breath away.

The more things change, the more they remain the same? Not such a bad thing, going by our drool-worthy food experiences at Kolkata.

BLOGGING FM - FREQUENCY MODULATED

2009-10-15T01:41:00.004+05:30

I am visiting my blog after a long, long time.
The reason for the hiatus is WORK. Here goes the list:

Two daughters - way too much to handle, at least for me. It is fun and frustrating and fulfilling, but it is very definitely WORK.
Full-time job as teacher in a college - paper correction, tutorial checking, class lectures, and election-duty-whenever-there-are-elections.
New part-time job as copywriter - now that I have to go twice a week, it is simply not leaving any free time for me. Although I am lovin' it, the deadlines, the thinking from the other point of view, the variety of products we work on...

Earlier, I used to blog about once a week, sometimes twice. I would feel restless and guilty if I did not post anything in a week. But blogging is my stressbuster, something that I love to do. So, why should I get hassled about not being able to blog?

Now, I have made peace with my inner compulsive blogger. Now, the frequency will lessen. It'll have to, if I have to manage two kids, two jobs, one spouse (as of yet) and one self (which needs some amount of sleep).

Maybe once a fortnight, or once a month. Maybe, whenever I feel like. Maybe, if and when I find time. Maybe...

HOW OFTEN DO YOU BLOG?

A LITTLE BIT OF BENGALI BY MY SIDE…

2009-09-27T02:37:00.001+05:30

Living away from your hometown makes you nostalgic. You yearn for those old familiar favourites – the places you used to hang out (never mind the cribbing about the traffic and the toilets), the home-cooked food that you dissed but slurped over, the bookshops and the boutiques that came alive because of the shopowner you could chat so long with, the movie-watching and eating-out experiences which were always more about the adda, really. And, of course, the language – the familiar cadences and rhythms and syllables you had grown up with.

And so, in Mumbai, when I hear a snatch of Bengali on the streets, in the malls, inside some office, spoken by somebody on a cellphone calling up home a hundred miles away, a mother scolding a child, a wife lilting to her husband, two friends chatting about something…my heart gives an involuntary leap and my head turns to see who and my ears strain to catch a little bit of the conversation.

I love Mumbai – no two ways about that – but my soul still jumps up with a maybe-silly-kind-of-joy when I hear a bit of Bengali. And for a moment, I feel a strange-but-strong bond with some stranger-who-is-somehow-familiar.

Now it is Durga Pujo time, a time for food and festivity, and yes, a time when the stray bits of Bengali I sometimes catch in the breeze will merge and mingle in the Durga Pujo pandals dotting Mumbai. Bengalis praying at anjali, Bengalis greeting and goodbye-ing frenetically while pandal-hopping, Bengalis boasting self-importantly, Bengalis bickering good-naturedly, Bengalis bargaining at the food stalls, Bengalis laughing and bonding at Pujo-special addas.

Have a happy and sonorous Pujo.

NOW WE ARE SIX…

2009-09-20T03:44:00.004+05:30

But only five of us turned up for this time’s Bloggers’ meet. At the sylvan settings of IIT, Mumbai. We welcomed our newest entrant who has expanded the Famous Five: Manju. And we missed the amiable and gentle Harekrishnaji, who, however, remembered and called us on the phone during our anecdote-swapping. catching-up-with-what-we-have-been-up-to, dissecting-common-blogfriends talkathon.

And then it was, as one of my daughters’ storybooks puts it, “talk, talk, talk, talk”. With some serious munching and lake-viewing and thoughful-and-interesting gift-giving and not-so-serious banyan-root-swinging in between.

The Internet, as we know, is all about links. Interestingly, at this meet, three of the bloggers (with a shared geography and culture) re-enacted this virtual phenomenon of linking by digging deep into their histories and came up with so many amazing links – people who they all know, common friends and acquaintances. The other two were fascinated witnesses to this linking phenomenon. And we realized that it really is a small world.

Would you not love to link up in reality with your blog-friends, too?

THE BALM OF BOOKS

2009-09-18T03:21:00.002+05:30

Things have been rather downbeat lately.

The teachers’ strike has been called off, and we have resumed our classes, but bureaucracy has tied a thick red tape around our salaries and is refusing to release it anytime soon.

The forty days’ strike meant an enormous amount of backlog of syllabus-to-be-completed and tutorial-projects-to-be-corrected which now has to be taken up through hectic lung-busting lectures and tedious hours of red-pen-wielding.

And to top it all, all holidays have been cancelled as we have to ‘compensate’ for the strike period absenteeism. That is fair enough, but it does mean getting up early on holidays, which I absolutely abhor.

So, I definitely need a balm for my overworked brain and going-around-in-circles mind.

And for me, the best balm has always been BOOKS.

Books keep my head out of the water.
Books help me float in the mess of this world.
Books are a place I can go when everything else stresses me out.

Fo a change, this time, I put away my Crime Fiction and my Chick Lit (both are my fave escape-routes), and picked up some serious LITERATURE.

William Golding’s THE SPIRE. Toni Morrison’s TAR BABY.

Both Nobel Prize Winners. But so very different from each other. Golding, a white Brit male, very much in the centre of the world. Morrison, a black American woman, very much a marginalized entity. And they write about diverse worlds and different eras in these books.

But in their insight into and compassion about the human condition, in their moulding of language into a thing of beauty and awe, they are somehow similar.

Nothing uplifts me like good literature. Nothing makes me feel so wide-eyed and thankful and amazed. And I keep on adding to my list of great books.

WHICH BOOK/S LIFT YOU OUT OF THE MUDDLE F THIS WORLD?

WHAT ARE YOU DOING WHEN YOU ARE ANSWERING THE PHONE?

2009-09-10T20:28:00.003+05:30

I am in college, supervising an M.Com exam. The head-bent students are writing feverishly. In the pin-drop silence, a cellphone rings. Mine. Flushing with embarrassment, I pick it up.
“Hello?” (in a distressed whisper)
“HAA –LLO? MAA-A-A?” (high-pitch, full blast, sing song)
It’s the Copy-kitten, my younger daughter, calling to give me the momentous news that she has returned home from school. As I try to cut her off mid-flow because an examinee wants a supplementary sheet, she asks me:
“Bolo toh aami ki korchhi (can you tell me what am I doing)?”
“What are you doing, sweetheart?” (with gritted teeth, in a hissed-out whisper, and barely concealed impatience).
“Tomakey phone korchhi, sillybilly (I am calling you, sillybilly).”

You just can’t win with kids.

WHAT THE VISARJAN TAUGHT ME

2009-09-04T02:14:00.002+05:30

This evening we had gone to watch the Ganpati Visarjan at the artificially-created ‘pond’. As scores of Ganpatis, from tiny to tall – but always benign and divine – made their way on the shoulders of devotees down to the final immersion place, as the rotund elephant-god gradually sank into the muddy water, I kept feeling sadder and sadder. I remembered feeling absolutely bereft as a child on Dashami (the day the Durga idol is immersed, after five days of Durga Puja).

I felt sad at the ending of the festivities, at the drowning of the beautiful idols (created with so much passion and patience), at the loss of celebration and beauty. Each Dashami – and today at the Visarjan ground – even as the celebrations reached a crescendo, even as the band/dhaak/drumbeats rose to a manic climax, even as the dancers whirled and twirled in a frenzy, I would cry silently, mourning the passing away of another year, another festival.

I was surprised to see the spouse sharing my tears. He is not the type to be moved my religious emotions (maybe by dogs, Amitabh Bachchan movies and Kolkata memories – not in that order, though). So I whispered to him, “You know why the Visarjan is necessary? Because it teaches us to let go. Because it reminds us that nothing is permanent – not happiness, not beauty. Neither the carefully-crafted idol, nor the week-long joy can be possessed forever. We have to disengage…unclutch our fists and let go.”

And then I looked at my daughters, blissfully unaware of parental philosophizing, happy to be witnessing the noise and colour and dance and statues, happy with their newly-bought balloons and pinwheels. And I felt that the Visarjan also teaches us to have faith – faith that this will all happen again next year – the holiness and the happiness. As the scriptures say, Change is like a cycle: what is, will go, and what will go, will come back.

COPYRIGHT @ COPYKITTEN

2009-09-01T03:10:00.002+05:30

The Copy Kitten (my younger daughter) desperately wishes to grow up double-quick to catch up with Lil Cat (her elder sister). To hasten this disappointingly slow process (frequent comparisons of height in the mirror reveal very minuscule changes), she tries to use big big words in a grown-up manner. The only snag is that she has not learnt the meanings of all the little little words yet, so the results of her efforts are often quite surprising.

One day, demanding some medicine for a stomach ache (she frequently claims to have this, with accompanying expressive groans and grimaces), she said, “Give me some Harry Potter”. It was only after investigating the medicine box that we realized that she meant “Gripe Water” (which, incidentally, I also loved so much that I would feign stomachaches quite often).

Another day, wanting to try on her Dida’s (grandmother’s) deodorant, she kept on asking for ‘aloevera’. To complicate our confusion, she insisted on pronouncing it as ‘aloe-beral’. Since ‘beral’ means CAT in Bengali, we were all very much amused. But the gutsy little kitten stuck to her guns, saying, “Na, aloe-beral boley aekta jinis hoy” (No, there is something called aloeberal).

Last year, an over-excited Copy-kitten, dressed in her chaniya-choli finery, had announced to the family that she was going to dance the ‘gabra’. Since then, our Navratri celebrations have centred round the ‘gabra’ rather than the ‘garba’.

Sometimes, she mispronounces P as K. So the song about the POSTMAN becomes:

“COASTMAN aaya, COASTMAN aaya/ Kitney letters laya, kitney letters laya?”
(The Coastman has come, how many letters has be brought?)

In her defence, it may be said that since Mumbai is a coastal city, the mailman may be regarded as arriving from the coast.

And, of course, the Pussy Cat who went to visit the queen often becomes the KHUSI CAT (‘Khusi’ means ‘joy’ in Bengali). But that is OK with us, because she is after all a Khusi Kitten. And her big sister, the Lil Cat may laugh at her attempts, but it is all in good sport and fun, like the real kittens under the stairs play.

WORSHIP IS WORK

2009-08-29T03:21:00.004+05:30

The dedicated devotees of the God of Enterprise sure know their business.

Usually, our housing complex has four Ganpati mandals, organised by separate Co-operative Housing Societies. This year, there was a new altar, and a new deity.

The debutante deity was organised by some residents working with Canara Bank, and the mandal was topped with a bright blue banner proudly welcoming all visitors to

Ganesh worship

Their new branch shortly to be opened at a conveniently close location.

When we entered to see the rotund and smiling deity, we were also introduced to the slim and smiling Manager of the upcoming branch.

When we were given the peanut-and-nakuldana (small sugar balls) prasad, we were also handed brochures detailing the bank's services.

When we put in coins in the donation box, we were politely requested to also put down our names and phone numbers, presumably for the marketing personnel to pursue us in future.

A rather neat way of dovetailing work and worship, don't you think so?

Only, instead of the usual commercialising of religion, maybe this is a case of religionising of commerce.

The only spanner in the works? A rival bank stole the idea, and put up a banner at a Ganpati mandal ten meters away, also proudly welcoming all devotees to the dual business of worship and banking.

The Divine Belly must be rumbling with glee at witnessing this industrious fight between enterprising devotees. But if we cannot bank on Divine Benevolence, then what can we bank on?

OF THE DIVINE AND HUMAN ENTERPRISE

2009-08-24T16:39:00.003+05:30

The media has been pessimistically predicting a lack-lustre Ganeshotsav this year because of the swine-flu scare. My mother-in-law (who keenly follows each and every TV news report directly or remotely connected to Mumbai, or Maharashtra, or Western India, ever since we shifted here) has been frantically calling us up almost daily with swine-flu updates, trying to persuade us not to venture out among the vast crowds teeming with germs, because we might all catch the dreaded disease. Or, of course, in case somehow the germs miss us, there are terrorists lurking in nooks and corners, hoping for some target-practice. Mind it!

My M-I-L is single-handedly responsible for pushing up the TRPs of all news programmes which showcase Mumbai-related “sansani tazaa khabar” (breaking news).

But although many seemed scared of venturing out, there are other people who are welcoming the elephant-headed God of enterprise through their own, surprisingly original ventures.

There is a fairly newly-opened soda pub near our home, you know the kind that sells 50 or so flavours of soda for ten rupees each. Since I never soar beyond the SOUR-5 (imli/kokum/kachchi kairi/kala-khatta/jeera-masala), I cannot vouch for all the flavours, but there is often quite a crowd in front of the shop.

That day, in honour of the festive season, my mother and I took our daughters for a soda-treat (I can almost see my M-I-L becoming all pale and panicky about their health, so please do not tell her this, she is a sweet soul actually). As we were sipping our cold, coloured and contraband sodas (Me-imli, Maa-kokum, Lil cat-orange, Copy kitten- lime-n-lemon), the smiling man serving us said,

“Madam, naya flavour aanewala hai kal, Ganpati ke liye.” (Madam, a new flavour will be introduced tomorrow, in honour of Ganpati).

In answer to our obvious curiosity, he said with a flourish and a proud smile, “Swine-flu flavour.”

My first horrified and sick-making thought was that it would taste of blocked noses and phlegm. But Maa made a better, and closer, guess. “Maybe they will put tulsi (basil) and haldi (turmeric) and other such natural remedies for coughs and colds.”

A panacea for swine-flu-panic at ten rupees? Should sell like hot cakes, or at least like the masks dotting/clotting the cityscape.

Remember the much-publicised 1995 miracle when the Ganesha drank up gallons of milk in front of millions of astonished devotees all over the world? Maybe we need another miracle. Will the Divine Trunk sip a swine-flu soda this time around?

P.S: What with the Vighna-vinashak (God who destroys all obstacles) teaming up with indefatigable human innovativeness, looks like we can beat the H1N1-demon. Till then, enjoy the drumbeats. Have a happy and safe festive season.

THREE BAGS FULL…

2009-08-22T11:54:00.001+05:30

My mother has come down for a hopefully-long visit, and she has brought with her, quite like Baa Baa Black Sheep, huge bagfuls of fluffy wool. She arrived, white hair in its usual disarray, a pair of knitting-needles poking out of her bag, looking very like the archetypal Miss Marple (that wonderful old lady detective created by Agatha Christie), who always carried her knitting along everywhere.

Somewhere in the middle of a busy schedule of sudoku (in the newspapers) and minesweeper (on the comp), she plans to knit a few sweaters for my two daughters.

Now, knitting is not something I have ever managed to master (I usually end up knotting more than knitting). My daughters are extremely scornful about my (lack of) knitting skills and have already complained to my mother that “Maa toh amader kichhu i buney deye naa” (Maa never knits us anything).

As if we are all dying of cold in hot-and-humid Mumbai because I have not knitted sufficient quantities of warm woollens! Anyway, my daughters have already placed their orders with their Dida (grandmother), choosing complicated patterns from two dog-eared pattern books, and colour-schemes from the available stock of wool.

And although I should feel disgruntled, I am actually feeling kind of meltingly-warm inside, watching the three of them discuss pattern and colour solemnly, two smaller black heads nodding wisely to suggestions made by the older/whiter one. And I am not even wearing a sweater!

WHO STOLE MY LIBRARY?

2009-08-18T02:22:00.000+05:30

WAAAAHHH!!!

There is a thief on the prowl at Blogger.com.
And that nasty, nameless fellow has stolen my entire library. Tonight when I sat down at my dashboard, ready to scroll down my reading list and catch up the latest posts, there was NOTHING there. Except this AUDACIOUS, BLATANT, BOLD LIE:

"You are not currently following any blogs. Use the "add" button below to enter blogs you'd like to follow in your Reading List."

EXCUSE ME? Of course I am following a lot of blogs. I collect readable blogs like I buy readable books - after a lot of browsing, and with a lot of anticipation that I will spend many happy hours reading and recolleceting. I have (had?) painstakingly acquired and added to my library of blogs (and books - but that is in the real world) over the months.

And now there's nothing there? Virtual emptiness? All that hard work and copy-paste urls and clicking-of-follow-publicly-button down the drain? WHY and HOW? Can anyone please explain? Where do I go to file an FIR? Report the theft? Waaaah!!! Or should I just bawl my lungs out???

Once bitten, twice shy. Now, this time, I am keeping a back-up. It will take me some time before I will be able to trace all the urls of the blogs I was following and 'add' them to my list again. (HOW BLOODY TIME-CONSUMING AND UNFAIR!). But I will write them down in my good old-fashioned real-world pen-and-paper diary, a precaution against future virtual theft.

HAS THIS HAPPENED TO YOU, TOO?

CAN PIGS FLY?

2009-08-15T02:36:00.000+05:30

With the recent Swine Flu scare closing down schools in Mumbai for a week, my two daughters are cooped up at home, asking me a lot of questions about the hows and whys and wherefores of this readily spread-able malaise.

On learning that ‘swine’ mean PIGS, and obviously mixing-up ‘flu’ with FLEW, the Copy Kitten (my younger daughter) asked, “But can pigs fly, Maa? And where did they fly?”

Mentally suppressing an image of fat pink pigs flying and ‘oinking’ all over the place, I explained that pigs cannot fly.

My daughters are fond of pigs. They like the Three Little Pigs, especially the gutsy pig who lived in the house-made-of-bricks and who vanquished the big bad wolf. They like the small, unassuming Piglet, who is very loyal towards Winnie the Pooh and unexpectedly brave when it matters. They are especially fond of Babe, the adorable piglet who proves that he is a worthy sheep-pig by winning a sheep-dog competition and the trust and heart of his farmer-owner. And a few years down the line, I am sure they will like the book ANIMAL FARM, written by George Orwell – although the dystopic pigs in that book may not be all that likeable, because they try to boss over the other farm animals, believing “all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others”. But, no, none of these pigs can fly.

But PANIC can. Helped by an over-eager media, especially TV channels which keep showing the same footage and headlines over and over again. Helped by contradictory reports on the lists of Do’s and Don’ts. And most of all, given wings by rumour and by fear.

I am scared, too. Scared enough to tie a scarf around my nose and mouth when I go to the crowded marketplace. Scared enough to urge my kids and our maid to do the same when they go down in the evening to play with their friends. Scared enough to cross my fingers everytime I see somebody with a running nose or hear a sneeze or a cough. Scared enough to childishly wish that this H1N1 virus would fly, far, far away.

Are you scared?

‘AM I LIKE THIS ONLY?’

2009-08-08T03:29:00.000+05:30

The other day my daughters were playing together at home (harmoniously – which is a pretty rare occasion). Apart from ‘teacher-teacher’, one of their favourite role-plays is ‘mother-offspring’, with the elder Lil Cat enacting the ‘mother’ and the younger Copy Kitten being the impossibly obedient ‘daughter’.

Busy as I was in doing housework (you know, the usual stuff like folding washed clothes, dusting bookshelves, straightening the bedcover for the umpteenth time, etc,etc), one snatch of their dialogue was repeated so often that it caught my attention.

“Taratari, taratari, deri hoye jabey” (Hurry, hurry, you’ll be late). The Lil Cat would pretend to hold a glass of milk in front of the Copy Kitten and say this. When the Copy Kitten finished gulping down this imaginary glass of milk, the Lil Cat would pretend to button-up an imaginary school uniform, all the while repeating this sentence. Then she would give a hurried kiss to her pretend-daughter and, giving her a small push at her back, say again the same thing, while waving good-bye as the Copy-Kitten rushed to pick up her pretend-schoolbag and ran to catch her pretend-bus.

Then, within a few seconds, she would be back again from her pretend-school. And her pretend-mom, the Lil Cat, would start rushing and fussing all over again, undressing her sister, hurriedly feeding her some pretend-lunch and then urging her to go to sleep. All the while repeating like a mantra, “Taratari, taratari, deri hoye jabey” (Hurry, hurry, you’ll be late).

Feeling rather indignant, I asked them why they were hurrying through their game. In an exasperated way, they said, “But Ma, this is what you keep saying to us.”

“What? And what about the time when I read all those endless books with you and make you sit on the kitchen counter when we all bake cakes and cook noodles and stuff?” I accused, feeling hurt and absolutely horrified at this image of myself as a hurrying harridan, forever pushing my children from one task to another - wake up, get ready, have breakfast, go to school, have lunch, have nap, do homework/study, gulp down milk, go to play, have dinner, go to sleep.

“Oh, but that is only on Sundays and holidays. And we are playing Monday to Friday mummy-mummy now,” and they shooed me away.

So, am I like this only? Caught in a fast forward loop throughout the week, giving no time to stand and stare to either myself or my family. And then, pushing the pause button only on ‘Sundays and holidays’, to rest, relax and revel in the joys of family-life? Time to chill?

HOLE = HOPE

2009-08-03T15:26:00.000+05:30

Having recently purchased a black leather belt, I was very pleasantly surprised to find that it was too loose for my waist. The goody-goody guardian angel in my mind praised, “Maybe the tummy tyres have deflated a bit.” But the nasty devil in my subconscious said with a sneer, “Must have been an oversized man’s belt. Or a belt with manufacturing defects. Which explains why it was on sale. And what with the amount of ice cream you are hogging (during the break from work because of the ongoing teachers’ strike), fat chance you have of reducing all that tummy fat.”

I shooed the horned horror away and went to the friendly neighbourhood mochi (shoe-repairer) to get an extra hole drilled into the belt. The gentleman in question knows me quite well, courtesy my umbrellas with the broken sticks and my shoes with the broken straps. He asked me, “Kitney holes chahiye?” (How many holes do you want in the belt?).

Hesitatingly ambitious, I said, “Do bana dijiye.” (Make two extra holes).

Deftly poking new holes in the black leather, he aked, “Aur ek bana doon?” (Shall I make one more hole?).

Banishing a wildly improbable vision of myself with a clinched hourglass waist, I despairingly said, “Kya fayda? Do se zyada to lagnewala nahi hai kabhi.” (What’s the use? There is hardly any chance of me ever needing more than two extra holes in the belt).

Lifting his head from his work with a huge encouraging smile, the man urged, “Aas rakhney mey kya harj haye?” (What’s the problem in hoping?).

And so I agreed. And purchased MOTIVATION for the minuscule sum of two rupees. And returned home with a belt that has three extra holes to tighten around my waist. Three extra notches of hope that “YES I CAN...trim the tummy" (Sorry, Obama, for frivolously misapplying your slogan).

DO WE DESERVE TO SERVE?

2009-07-25T14:27:00.000+05:30

There is a small temple near our apartment, within the compound walls. Till a few months back, it was a non-descript semi-circular structure under the shade of a tree, which provided a convenient canopy to many parents who would sit at that spot and wait for their children’s school-buses to come.

Apart from this philanthropic subsidiary activity, the temple is frequented by many devotees (who come to pray) and by many children (who come to play) and who usually love to ring the bells and put a bit of vermilion tikka on their foreheads.

One such moneyed devotee, living in the building next to the temple, decided this year to repay God’s bounty by giving the mandir a makeover. Masons and marble came, and soon the courtyard was paved with white marble, and the semicircular structure was plated with yellow granite. The tree next to the mandir, from which the bells hung, was surrounded by a raised marble platform.

Mothers were very happy, because now they had a place to sit while waiting for the school-bus. Sometimes, the wait is rather long, and a place to rest seemed a lovely idea.

But not for long. The watchmen shooed away anybody resting under the tree, saying that “Sahib would not approve.” (“Sahib” obviously referring to the businessman who jazzed up the mandir). Soon, they put up a number of heavy potted plants on the platform around the tree trunk, making it impossible for anyone to sit there. When I asked why, they said it was to discourage dogs who apparently rested on the cool marble.

Long ago, I had been much impressed by Swami Vivekananda’s teaching that to serve man is to serve God. Our godly neighbourhood businessman has apparently decided that this is not so. By splurging on marble and granite and fancy lights, he has extended his proprietorial claim over the temple, trying to earn bonus credit points with God. But can we buy a ticket to heaven? Does piety overrule meanness? Can the divine truly be served at the cost of neglecting and inconveniencing our fellow humans and other beings?

SURPRISED BY BEAUTY

2009-07-20T18:30:00.000+05:30

You are sitting-sweating in a BEST bus, caught in a traffic jam on the Western Express Highway. You fidget, wiggling your toes encased in ‘rainy-season sandals’, grimacing at the feel of dirty wetness and street slime. The ‘synthetic-material’ kurta (another monsoon-must) is damp and uncomfortable against your back and your lap is clammy with the wet umbrella. Squinting against the drizzle you look out of the window, looking at the sad scattered mounds of plastic and debris - the dirty suburban underbelly of the city exposed by the rains. Nothing new.

And then, you raise your eyes beyond the bedraggled bulidings, and you are suddenly transported. The grey clouds have descended low, partly hiding the green peaks of the small hills of the Western Ghats in the distance. The grey softly drifts across the green, merging, separating, creating misty patterns like a child’s watercolour. You never noticed that dull grey and drab green could offer such luminous variety. And even as you look, the hazy-breathtakingly-lovely horizon is obliterated as the rain fastracks from drizzle to downpour. Nothing new.

But, your feet sliding in the Mumbai muck, shrugging your shoulders into your already-dripping raincoat, you feel blessed by this sudden surprise gift of monsoon beauty.

SOME ‘STRIKING’ THOUGHTS

2009-07-17T03:47:00.000+05:30

As an ‘aided’ college teacher in Maharashtra (‘aided’ means we get our salary from the state government coffers), I am ON STRIKE at the moment, along with the majority of my colleagues across the state, for the selfish-selfless cause of implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission pay-scales for teachers. To coin a slogan:

WE ARE ON INDEFINITE STRIKE
DEMANDING A DEFINITE PAY HIKE.

This has been a striking week for Mumbai. The overworked and underpaid government doctors went on an eight day strike, demanding better pay (but of course), and resumed work only after ministerial promises and some unfortunate deaths.

School and Junior College teachers went on a one-day strike demanding (guess what) implementation of revised pay-scales.

The bus-drivers and helpers and Group-D staff of my daughter’s school were on strike for a day, followed by the teachers the next day, in protest against the private management’s high-handedness.

All in all, a week of disruption, deviation and demands.

What ‘strikes’ me most, however, is the difference between Mumbai and Kolkata in the approach to strikes .

In Kolkata, we take strikes in our stride. In fact, the right to strike is regarded as the second most important fundamental right by most Bengalis (the first being the right to speak – wherever, whenever, on whatever topic whether we know about it or not, and preferably in a public platform like an adda). Whenever strikes are announced (and they are usually thoughtfully scheduled on Mondays or Fridays to give us the benefit of a long weekend) we cheerfully start making plans for the ‘forced vacation’. Everybody is happy, and a festive mood prevails, with boys playing cricket on empty streets and only the businessmen-types and newspaper-wallahs and TV channel people getting hyper about the erosion of work culture. Don’t they know that the term itself is contradictory – if you work, when will you have time for culture? Bengalis have ‘THE BEST CULTURE’ (you know Rabindranath Tagore, Satyajit Ray, and, er, Bappi Lahiri?), so, obviously, dada, we don’t need to work.

In fact, protest is second nature to us (we will always remind the rest of you how we protested against British imperialism long ago). Protest is ‘in the Bengali blood’, much more than work is.

So it was a kind of a ‘culture shock’ for me to see the reluctance of my Mumbai collegues when the teachers' union decided to go on strike. Everybody was upset and worried that the students would face problems, that the syllabus would not be completed on time. Everybody willingly agreed to give up the Diwali vacation to teach extra classes should the need arise. They accept the strike as a measure to achieve certain ends, but are eager to resume work ASAP.

What a change from Kolkata, where we accept strikes as a pleasure to achieve an extra holiday or two till the next call for another strike? And with two obliging political parties trying to break each other's record for maximum strikes and bandhs called in an year, strikes are party time. Literally.

And me? I am caught between deep admiration for Mumbai’s work-ethics and a deeper genetic laziness which is making me enjoy a few days of unemployment. Blame my Bengali blood for that.

DUDE OR DUD?

2009-07-13T01:44:00.001+05:30

Do you belong to the PRE-DUDE or POST-DUDE generation? At 36, I firmly belong to the generation which used the Dude-word sparingly, using it to describe boys who had real, genuine, rebellious ATTITUDE.

But this century manufactures attitude along with Yankee baseball caps (worn wrong way around), low-slung jeans (worn with chaddi compulsorily showing), and cheeky-slogan T-shirts. And so, we have a serious case of DUDE-CLONING. Every male under the age of twenty-five is either a cool dude or trying to be one. And the funny thing is, these clones do not appear to have distinctive names of their own, they are all called, you guessed it, DUDE.

Sample this: standing at a slow-moving queue at an up-market garment store, I observed two such clones talking to each other. They were carrying shopping bags full of, presumably, even more slogan-tees, low-waist jeans and baseball caps.

“Hey, dude, didja get good stuff?”
“Not really, dude, these sales are a total rip-off.”
“Y’know, dude, you’re right, dude.” And so on and so on …blah…blah…blah…Dude…blah…blah..Dude. Period. Dude.

Till they came to the payment counter. Then the smartly-dressed shop assistant suddenly became a clone as well, because these young dudes called out, “Lemme take my card out. Dude. Why’s the line so slow today? Dude? Can you pack that separately, Dude?”

The dictionary tells me that the earliest Dude was spotted in 1883 in New York. That limited-edition dude was a “man extremely fastidious in dress and manner.” Well, today’s dude has made fastidious sloppiness his fashion statement. And, he has two more added qualifications – an extremely limited vocabulary (consisting mainly of dude, and a dozen or so words like, cool, yeah, chill, and the like), and a tendency to forget first names (otherwise why will all the Raj-s and Rahuls call each other Dude?). In fact, so linguistically-challenged are they that I was almost convinced that the dude-species must have evolved from Dud. Or D-u-h?

P.S: Any Dude reading this post can dismiss it as the rant of a typical Aunty. Aunties and Dudes, divided by gender and generation, have always been on opposing sides, and never the twain shall meet. Hopefully.

A FED-LETTER DAY IN A LEAP YEAR

2009-07-06T11:15:00.000+05:30

Consider this: It was the longest fifth-set in Wimbledon history. Andy Roddick, who has saved 6 out of 6 breakpoints in this match is serving at Deuce at 14-15. He makes a mis-hit. It's Advantage Federer - the first Championship Point of the match. It has been over 4 hours of see-sawing and brilliant serving bothways and big returns and enough of classic moments. It is late, past 11 at night, and you WANT A RESULT. You move forward on the edge of your chair, biting your nails, praying, as conflicting thoughts scuttle around in your mind late. (NOTE: The kids have obligingly gone to sleep on their own. Story-reading session postponed in view of his-STORY-making session on TV).

"Roddick will hit another ace and get himself out of this 7th break point." "C'mon Federer, hit back, go into a rally, give it one of your amazing running forehands/ sliced backhands/cleverly-disguised dinky lobs, anything, man. Just get it back and in there."

And Federer does. He gets it back at Roddick and readies himself for the rally. You are with him totally, egging Federer on to hit a winner. And Roddick, brave and brilliant till this point, hits the MOST IMPORTANT SHOT OF THIS MATCH
w-i-d-e. It is the pressure of history, the weight of destiny, of the sheer expectations and importance of the moment that does it. Federer does not have to hit the anticipated winner. So with all the pent-up energy and the won't-give-up focus and give-it-my-best adrenalin, he leaps into the air. And screams. Echoing the screams of all us Federer-fanatics around the world. Primal, relieved, exultant.

As the spouse (sharing, among other things, a love for Federer) said, "When you are witnessing history being made, it sure feels good to support the winning side."

I still feel too overjoyed for originality, so I'll just mention these:

As SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE fatefully prophesied, "IT WAS WRITTEN."

And, as the SAMSUNG MOBILE advertisement wonderingly predicts, "NEXT IS WHAT?"

MOONWALKING AMONG THE STARS

2009-06-29T12:46:00.000+05:30

In the hit Hindi film, Chaalbaaz, there’s a scene where the heroine, Sridevi, does a few smooth, rubber-necked dance steps. And the hero, Rajnikanth, who plays a taxi-driver, comments, “Arrey, Michaeli Jacksoni lagti hai (You look like a female Michael Jackson)”.

That was the magic of MJ. Millions of people, across genders, across nations, across class or colour or creed, many who had never before or since shown any inclination for ‘English muzik’ knew him, knew his dance moves, knew his status as the ‘King of Pop’. Like my ‘bai’ (the lady who looks after my children and home). She has never heard of Madonna, or the Beatles, or Presley. She does not know English. But she has heard about MJ.

When we were schoolgirls, in the long ago 1980s, whenever we wore jeans in our Bengali backwater-suburb of Barrackpore, we risked being eve-teased by the local parar dadas (neighbourhood rowdies), who would catcall, “Oi jachchhe Michael Jackson sheje (There she goes, dressed as Michael Jackson)”. Jackson’s post-plastic-surgery androgynous looks and high-pitched signature ‘Aooww’ shriek had them confused about his gender. But they identified him with all that was posh and westernized. He was their reference point for American popular culture.

The first MJ-album that I saw was BAD, when Doordarshan aired the Grammy nominees for that particular year. I saw the THRILLER video long after 1982. The never-seen-before dance moves blew my mind, and I liked the foot-tapping music, although, not being too tuned to American accents, I could not make out much of the lyrics. It didn’t matter, actually. The dance, for me, made up for all that.

Over the years, as the newspapers and videos showcased the facial changes and the court cases and the weird lifestyle, I wondered. Why a man, who could make millions feel so happy just by performing his moves and music, would obviously be so unhappy about his self-image as to keep on attempting to obliterate and recreate his own face? Why a man who had the world at his feet since he was a kid, refuse resolutely to grow up? Why a man who sang ‘Heal the world’ continue to exhibit bizarre behaviour in public and private? Why a man who was so confident on stage, be so bewildered and confused off it?

In an interview with Martin Bashir, MJ had said, “All I know of people is the applause.” Just goes to reveal how completely lonely and cut off from reality he was. For him, the stage was the reality. And now, the show is over. The eulogies have been written, the net has crashed, fans have mourned, the songs are being re-played, the mystery of the debts and death is being discussed and debated. But the wide-eyed, lost-misunderstood, tragic-pathetic, vain-pained, talented-tormented Peter Pan has forever left his Neverland to go and moonwalk among the stars.

HEAD OVER HEELS

2009-06-24T12:00:00.001+05:30

That, unfortunately, has never been the case with me. My head has, is, and always will be, over feet which are encased in flat footwear. Not heels.

Once upon a time, long ago, I had tried heels. Drastically high platform heels. Wooden ones making a horse-like racket on the hard cement floor. It had not been a successful stride. In fact, it had not been a stride at all. After a failed falter, heels became another one of those allergy-inducing objects which I could see, but could not use.

And, thereafter, I have always been a Cinderella in rubber slippers. No dainty-toed high-heeled glass slippers for me.

So I know all about the platform, the wedge and the vicious/vertiginous stiletto (the lady-boss of all heels). I even know about the non-threatening kitten heels, which are less than 1.5 inches in height. These innocuous-looking low-heels are treacherous creatures, because they can tempt heel-allergic flat-footers like me. But I am, and sadly will always be, a full-grown tabby cat, and no longer anything like a kitten. And so, even kitten heels trip me up.

Any heel, and my ankle rebels. A self-defeating rebellion, as it ends up getting twisted in the bargain. But I end up all in a tumble. Embarrassing!

Any heel-thy person will diagnose my disease as vertigo. For me, heel-thy is definitely not well-thy. I am scared of heights. Not on a rollercoaster (I love them on an empty stomach). But on my heels. I prefer facing life with my feet planted solidly on the ground.

There are distinct disadvantages. Shoe shops are apparently meant for the well-heeled, as most of the shelves are devoted to the sky-high variety of shoes. Whenever I enter a shoe-shop and say, "Flat sandals only, please", I am directed to some obscure corner where a shelf and a half displays the frumpiest of designs in the most boring of colours.

Even when flat shoes are 'in', like they were 'last season' with ballerina-flats, this is usually a passing fad, and women soon abandon their firm-on-the-ground-walk for a balancing-totter. Even the once-flat Kolhapuri chappals have turned traitor and sprouted heels.

I can be the darling of feminists (who rage against the tyranny of heels and the consequent commoditisation of body-image) and the podiarists (who rage against the foot and tendon problems caused by heels). But that is a limited appeal.

Alas, I can never be a Posh Spice, who apparently even goes gymming in stilettoes (I hardly ever go gymming, so I do not wear stilettoes). All heel-addicts will rave about the sex-appeal of heels. How a shoe has to have a 'defined heel' to be in the 'sexy shoe' category. How heels transform us into objects of lust and desirability (check out any heel-vocabulary: 'stripper shoes' have 3" platform heels, 'hooker heels' are at least 3-4",'slut shoes' have 5-5 3/4 " heel...). My head is reeling after all those vertical stats.

To come back to the issue of sex-symbols and heels, I had once read that the legendary Greta Garbo (the reclusive and unattainable silent-era Hollywood beauty) always used to wear a pair of flat and comfy men's bedroom slippers (size 10 or thereabouts) under the long, trailing, lovely ballgowns she wore while filming.

That settled the matter for me. I chose the classic Greta Garbo over the upstart Posh Spice. And I'll stick to my slides and mules and unsexy-but-safe flat Dr Scholl's-type foowear. And my lovely red mojris from Mochi's, which make me feel like royalty. Even when I am not on a pedestal.

LOVE ACTUALLY…

2009-06-20T03:00:00.000+05:30

…WAS (once upon a time, circa 1990s) asking the (yet-to-be-) spouse, “Have you taken the class-notes properly?”
(Both of us studied English Honours, so being together in Honours classes was not the problem, but I had Philosophy as a ‘Pass’ subject, while he had ‘History’, and he would shrug his shoulders at my anxious query after the very few History classes he actually attended without me, and state philosophically that ‘History’ was past, so it was better to forget about it.)

…IS (now, circa 2009) asking the spouse (-since-decades), “Have you taken your cholesterol medicines properly?" (I have a job where I leave the home early, and he has a job where he comes back very late, so marital communication, and romantic conversation, is chiefly via a series of questions over the phone - asked anxiously, answered with philosophical calmness and assurance).

As the great philosophers said, "The more things change, the more they remain the same". Class-notes, or cholesterol, I seem to have been in worrying-Mother-mode for the past (nearly) two decades. Pscho-analyse that, if you will.

Love, actually = worry! (Thank God, I don't chew my nails when I am worried, or I would not have been able to write this post.)

OUCH!

TEA, COFFEE, OR...?

2009-06-16T01:39:00.000+05:30

I am in the middle of the latest book by Alexander McCall Smith in his No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series, THE MIRACLE AT SPEEDY MOTORS. McCall Smith says in the book, "The telling of a story, like virtually everything in this life, was always made all the easier by a cup of tea."

This delightfully languid series features the 'traditionally-built' (oh, what a lovely excuse for obesity!) detective-of-life's-little-problems and dispenser-of-wise-wand-warm-solutions, Mma Precious Ramotswe, and her assistant,the much-more-rigid Mma Grace Makutsi. Both of them drink plentiful cups of tea throughout the day, with Mma Ramotswe preferring the red bush tea (lovely forest-y name, don't you think?).

When McCall Smith praises the virtues of tea as a nerves-soother,temper-calmer, tongue-loosener, soul-refresher,camaraderie-builder, feel-gooder, most of us in India would echo, "How true".

Tea, perhaps, unites more people than any religion does. But, just as religions divide themselves into factions and sects and whatnots, tea is also divided into a number of different categories - of colour, cut and method-of-preparation.

We grew up knowing that there were two 'best' kinds of tea - the Assam variety and the Darjeeling variety - and, being parochial, fond-of-debates-at-the-drop-of-a-hat Bengalis, we vociferously championed the Darjeeling variety (never mind if Shubhas Ghising and his Gorkhaland cronies were trying to chuck Bengalis out of Darjeeling). A good cup of tea was made by adding the aromatic leaves of Darjeeling tea to just-boiling-water, taking it off the gas/stove, letting it soak for a while, and adding sugar and/or milk only if you liked it that way. True tea connoisseurs preferred not to let anything dilute the taste and fragrance of tea, sniffing in the aroma deeply and pleasurably and closing their eyes in ecstasy before taking the first sip of the elixir.

What a culture shock when I shifted to Mumbai! Here the most-loved cuppa is the one which is boiled with large amounts of milk till possibly nothing remains of the distinctive tea-aroma. To add to the sacrilege (from the Bengali point of view), people often add things like adrak (ginger) and elaichi (cardamom) to the over-bolied concoction! And the resultant muddy, thickish liquid is gulped down with relish, either the whole cup, or half-a-cup (the cutely named 'cutting' chai).

And coffee, the hot 'South-Indian filter coffee', is a SERIOUS CONTENDER to the supremacy of tea! Coffee, for most Bengalis, is a diversion-drink, to be taken in fancy bone-china mugs (coffee MUST be served in mugs, tea in CUPS, or so we were told) when guests drop in, especially in winter. It is emphatically NOT a dozens-of-time-a-day-drink-of-sustenance, for Bengalis at least.

And as for the new-fangled entrants like green tea, and herbal tea, all true-tea-addicted Bengalis will say, "Jatto shob! (Bosh!!). We'd rather believe in ANTI-CAPITALISM than in ANTI-OXIDANTS, you see. Tea is for pure pleasure, health-issues are completely secondary.

Not to take sides on the tea-vs-coffee debate, let me confess that I am a tea-totaller. I DO NOT DRINK TEA and I DO NOT DRINK COFFEE. Not the hot varieties, anyway. I like my tea cold, with lemon, or with ice-cream (they did a great job of that at Dolly's in Dakshinapan, the tea-boutique in Kolkata). And when I go to Barista, or Cafe Coffee Day, I have my frappe or my latte ice-cold (but no chocolate, please). And if there is fresh-lime-soda (or jaljira or nimbu-paani) I'll opt for that!

I guess that makes me a FREAK in the eyes of most tea/coffee/both- addicted Indians.What's your brew?

THE IRONY OF MONEY IN MUMBAI

2009-06-11T01:44:00.000+05:30

Mumbai media has been all agog at the arrest (and, of course, subsequent bail and release) of Sheetal Mafatlal (of the multimillionaire-multiple-chinned-husband and looking-very-trashy-in-Versace/Valentino-togs fame) for attempting to breeze in through Customs without thinking it necessary to declare gold and diamond jewellery worth around Rs 50 lakh.

While we, in our strictly-suburban college staffroom, were poring, and ooh-ing and aah-ing (only the 'ladies'), over the list (and intricate details) of the ornaments allegedly smuggled in by her, the South Bombay socialites were making the most of the photo-op by giving incredibly inane soundbytes. One Haseena Jethmalani (wife of political-defeated-debutant and high-end-lawyer Mahesh Jethmalani) apparently said (and conveniently later denied) that Rs 50 lakh was too piddly an amount for the likes of Sheetal Mafatlal (and the rest of the So-Bo brunch-packers) to bother about, and that women frequenting a salon owned by her (the fair Haseena) regularly strolled in wearing jewellery worth more than 50 lakh.

Just a few questions: if Rs 50 lakh is a paltry sum to the likes of Mafatlal (as it obviously is), shouldn’t the Customs Duty (which would be a certain small percentage of this puny amount) be like small change to her (as it obviously is NOT)? So, why not declare and pay it upfront and straightforward, honey? Or is the small change too difficult to see (and the fine print too difficult to read) through those oversized Dior shades?

Just another point: Today I went to Bank of Maharashtra’s Malad (West) branch, where most of the customers were dealing in amounts ranging from Rs 300 to a few thousands. There were old and limping pensioners, peering shortsightedly at a fistful of currency. There were illiterate women, putting their thumb impressions on withdrawal slips for a thousand rupees. There were hardworking men, whose sweat-beaded brows remained knitted into frowns under the blast of the AC, and whose grimy hands clutched at worse-for-wear passbooks containing details of minuscule savings accounts.

To these people, residing in the vast and teeming suburbs of Mumbai, far far away from snooty-snobbery of So-Bo (that's South Bombay's snob-abbreviation), Rs 50 lakh would, perhaps, be a big amount, an amount to aspire to through honest blood-sweat-tears, not an amount that can be sneered at with a shrug of couture-clad shoulders. Or carried in casually (and illegally) in alligator-skin designer luggage.

FEDERER-R-R-ROARS INTO HISTORY

2009-06-08T01:33:00.000+05:30

I AM ECSTATIC. Because ROGER FEDERER has won this year's FRENCH OPEN.

Equalling Sampras (another fave)' s record of 14 Grand Slams.
Becoming a champ on all four surfaces, a long ten years after Agassi.
Settling the debate on who is the greatest player of all time (in my mind, though, there was no debate, it was only a matter of numbers).

I know, there are the nitpicking-Nadal-naysayers who will smirk about his huge deficit against his Spanish-nemesis. It WAS a stroke of luck that Nadal got eliminated early on in this year's French Open. But then, champions are made of talent, hard work, determination, and a generous dose of luck-by-chance. And who cares, actually? The records books will write down his name as the winner, and that is enough for me.

Actually, I am not just a Federer-fan, but a Federer-fanatic. You may wonder at a sedate 36-year-old college-teacher behaving in such an uncharacteristically juvenile manner, but even I was surprised, a few years back, when I started following Federer's matches regularly, by my passionate involvement with his game and with his destiny as a tennis player. I had thought that kind of nail-chewing intensity of tension (while he played), that kind of euphoria of elation (when he won) and, yes, that kind of broken-hearted agony of depression (whenever he lost) was a thing of my volatile teenage past.

But then that is what Federer is all about. He has made me revisit my adolescence. He has made me feel again the pure see-saw of emotions that the best of sports can kindle in the spectator. During the French Open final, there was a fan in the stands carrying a banner which said ROGER and MAGIC, with the words written like a + sign, intersecting at the G.

That's Federer for me.

WHAT DOES YOUR SHOPPING TROLLEY SAY ABOUT YOU?

2009-06-06T01:23:00.000+05:30

A few days back, my daughters and I had gone to Hypercity in Malad to pick up a few things (one of our last jaunts before summer vacation ends). As always happens when the kids come along, we strolled along the aisles picking up unnecessary things from the shelves. Things like lollipops (the sweet kind), easy-to-make crème brulee and vanilla pudding mixes (the very sweet kind) and chocolate donuts (the very very sweet kind) – you get the drift?

And, with our trolley groaning under all those superbly superfluous calories, we waited in the check-out line, using our time to pick up a few more mama-please-I-want-them-so-much-otherwise-I-will-bawl-my-lungs-out stuff like bubblegum and chocolate-bars.

In front of us in the queue stood a lean and muscled television actor (Gaurav Chopra? I have a BAD TV-celebrity-quotient) accompanied, presumably, by his slim and pretty girlfriend and two overloaded trolleys. I STARED – at them and at the trolleys:

Dozens of Sofit soymilk tetrapacks – check
Tubs of low-cal yogurt – check
Countless tetrapacks of Real Active fruit juice – check
Kilos of cucumbers – check
Quite a few watermelons – check
One tiny bottle of olive oil – check.

I looked from their calorie-low shopping trolleys to the six-pack abs and the sixteen-inch waist. Then, with a sigh, I looked at my calorie-flow trolley and my tummy-tyres (spares).

It figured.

MOTHERHOOD MEANS…

2009-06-01T03:16:00.000+05:30

…getting to smell that ineffably sweet mixture of Johnson’s baby powder-cum-curdled-milk emanating from my little baby’s downy softer-than-a-petal neck, which is my favourite snuggling spot. I am doubly lucky to have a double treasure of snuggly-soft back-of-the-neck spots.
…having two extra pairs of helping hands in the kitchen in the holidays. Although I am not too sure about the helping part. But the best thing about these two pairs of small (and smaller) hands is that I just love how they hold tightly on to my hands sometimes, when we cross a busy road or when we walk into a dark room. Whenever.
…giving a contented sigh when I see the two little fast-asleep faces. I find it so amazing how they manage to fall asleep in a jiffy. One moment, they are wide awake - demanding a glass of water/ a new story/ an answer to some unfathomable question, then their eyelids droop, the stare becomes fixed-yet-unfocused, and the next moment they are fast asleep. Blessed and Glorious Peace reigns. And I rub sleep away from my own tired eyes and get up for some me-time: reading books, blogging, what-have-you. I am really happiest when they are sleeping!!!
…sitting two seats away from the spouse with the kids hogging the seats in-between. We are just back from a week-long trip to my brother’s place in Bangalore, and at the airport, a newly-married couple was sitting all lovey-dovey, hands-entwined (to put it mildly), side-by-side. And all the oldly-married couples saddled-with-children (like us) were looking at them enviously as if at a distant memory. That life when we could gaze into each other’s eyes uninterruptedly for hours on end seems to belong to a past life. Now the daily clock has been hijacked by two little terrors. And romance is a few stolen moments spent remembering the old together-days or discussing – guess what? – children!
…a job with a 1001 responsibilities, round-the-clock duties and NO OVERTIME PAY. The boss (or bosses, two in my case) are perfect little tyrants – very demanding, moody, ungrateful, tantrum-throwing divas. It’s funny - in this job, I have LOST a lot of things: my sleep, my hair, my happy-go-lucky care-freedom. And all the nice things that happen usually happen to my two BOSSES – the first smile, the first rolling over, the first crawl, the first faltering walk, the first lisping talk, the first day at school. I (and the spouse) are just the foolishly-happy witnesses/caretakers/cleaners. But though motherhood is such a tough job, I wouldn’t have it any other way, actually.

Thank you, SDG at Whims-and-Wishes for this wonderful tag about the 5 THINGS I LOVE ABOUT BEING A MOM. I thought hard and deep, but could come up with only two (the neck-snuggle and the hand-clutching). The other three points are THINGS THAT ARE BOUND TO HAPPEN IF YOU ARE A MOM - WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT!

Instead of passing the tag on to specific victims, er…parents, I leave it open for all mothers and fathers to comment or write a post about their own 5 favourite parenthood moments. Enjoy!

WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM A FRIEND…

2009-05-24T02:59:00.000+05:30

...I’ll try to come up with an HONEST POST. A ten-point honest (no fingers crossed, no bite-my-tongue) confession:

I love shopping. And even more than that, I love shopping all by myself, without the family tagging along.

I may moan and groan about being overweight, but I love eating too much to be serious about any weight-loss attempt. Whenever I lose a bit of weight, I put it right back by eating out in celebration.

I always read the frivolous Mumbai Mirror before the serious Times of India, much to the chagrin of the spouse. I’m a Page-3 junkie, and I get my fix before educating myself with the Page-1 stuff.

I love frothy, no-brainer chick-lit books, especially the ones written by Sophie Kinsella. And I can keep re-reading my tattered Agatha Christies forever and ever.

I hate it when something I cook turns out to be not-so-good, and when people (myself included) refuse to eat it.

I hate being compared unfavourably to anybody, especially the MIL.

I am really, really scared of lizards.

I am happiest on Saturday nights, when there’s the w—h-o-l-e of Sunday still remaining before week/work drudgery begins again.

Deep-down I believe that overpopulation is the root cause of all our problems.

I cry really really easily, even in front of other people, much to the spouse’s embarrassment. And when I just can’t stop, I have to pretend that something has got into my eyes and is irritating my contact lenses.
And here's a bonus confession, because honesty is addictive: I have not watched a single IPL match. I OD-ed on cricket long back. Give me a Federer-Nadal tennis match anyday. On second thoughts, any match where Federer wins. Because if he loses (as he so often does nowadays) it just makes me cry all over again.

A big thanks to Sayani, who has tagged me to write this post and has given me an award to egg me on...

So, here I am, cheering you on, trying to spread honesty, now do come up with an honest confession about yourself.

SO NOW WE KNOW...

2009-05-18T19:47:00.000+05:30

- We like our old leaders to be affable and bearded, not arrogant and bald.
- We like our young leaders to be dimpled and smiling, not demented and shouting.
- We like our party to meander and dither, not maraud and destroy.
- We like our government to be hesitant and, maybe, ineffectual-at-times, but DEFINITELY NOT hate-spewing and intolerant.

Just as it is silly to be sycophantic to a dynasty, it is even sillier to hit out at somebody because of his/her lineage, even after that somebody has shown maturity, decisiveness and grace-under-pressure.

Just as it is good to transform your state into a model of industrial development, it is not-so-good to boast all the time elsewhere because we have not forgotten your mass-murdering past.

Just as it is stupid to dress-shabbily-and-wear-chappals all the time and be a Bengali drama-queen, it is far more stupid to be the king for three decades and treat your subjects shabbily and lord over an increasingly barren state.

And the Indian voter is neither silly nor stupid, and has seen through braggarts and opportunists. We prefer our inclusive-inbetween-Centre to the rigid-rabid-Right or the looking-backward-Left. We are like this only, and Jai Ho to that.

LESSONS IN BELLY-GERENCE

2009-05-15T16:30:00.000+05:30

Every summer vacation, I re-distribute my weight. No, I do not lose any weight – far from it. But running after my daughters, doing all the housework in the absence of the maid (who also goes for a forty-day sabbatical), feasting on mangoes and getting up late has a strange effect on my anatomy.

I lose weight around my face and arms. And this reluctant-to-leave-me weight settles around my already rotund stomach. Which gives rise to various heavily-loaded situations and learning experiences:
The salesgirl from ‘Dermawear’ sees me shopping at Big Bazaar and pounces. “Why don’t you buy one of our abdominal belts?” Sucker that I am, I end up buying one, lured by promises of ‘reduction of waistline by at least two inches’. (A drop in the ocean, but beggars can’t be choosers. Or losers, in this case.)
On wearing this new-fangled contraption on another mall-sojourn, my tummy looks a tad tighter to begin with, but I end up all sweaty, hot and bothered because it clings in the heat. And the belt ends up all rolled-up like a sock around my waist. And my jeans keeps slipping down because of the sock-belt. Not an experience I’d care to repeat, initially-tighter-tummy notwithstanding.
The Li’l Cat, my elder daughter, is making sentences from adjectives. I advise her that it is better to write a sentence where the meaning of the adjective becomes clear. For instance, instead of writing “Tom is lazy”, it makes more sense to write, “Tom is lazy and he never helps his mother with the housework” (hint, hint). After following my advice for a few adjectives, she comes across the word “FAT” and writes, “My mother is fat”, claiming that the sentence is self-explanatory.
The Copy-kitten, my younger daughter, is drawing shapes. After a few shaky squares and careful circles, she draws a huge oblong blob, taking up almost the whole of a page, smiles with a sense of achievement, and proudly says, “Eta holo mamma petu” (This is mummy’s tummy).

LESSONS LEARNT:
Salesgirls encourage self-delusion.
Family brings about self-awareness.

Now that I’ve learnt my lessons, it would nice if the belly would lessen a little.

MOTHER’S DAY-TO-DAY

2009-05-11T03:56:00.000+05:30

It’s summer holidays right now. Which is supposed to be mother-daughter bonding time. So I decide to bake cup cakes with my daughters. Very excited, they break a few eggs on the floor, smear a lot of flour on themselves and eat up half the butter before it gets into the batter.

The brown, sticky demerara sugar is a big hit, spoonfuls being eaten on the sly. Of course, my daughters are kind souls, and leave a trail of sugar everywhere, some for the poor underfed ants to feed upon, and some for me to clean up. They claim I need the exercise, being rather motashota (chubby/fat/overweight – take your pick).

They take turns in turning the fork in the batter very very equally. If one does it twelve times clock-wise, the other does it twelve times counter-clockwise – twelve, OK, no more. As each is busy watching hawk-eyed the number of times the other is turning the spoon, the bowl of batter gets neglected, tilts and spills on the floor. All the more fun to scoop up with grubby fingers and lick clean.

The uncooked batter tastes yummy, they claim, between licks. So I wait for the finished products to be polished off with similar zest. There are about two dozen cupcakes, warm brown and full of cherries and calories.

They take a bite. Nibble a bit of crust. Poke their fingers into the soft centres. Fiddle around with the crumbs. Pick out the cherry bits and eat them. And then, they push away the plates. The “kancha cake” (uncooked batter) was way better, they claim.

And I am left with a mountain of cupcakes to chew through. Not a problem, except that the calories and my weight do not make for a good combination.

Did somebody say, “Mother’s Day”?

THE AUNTY DIARIES

2009-05-07T03:05:00.000+05:30

It actually started when I was all of nine. At that tender age, I became a maashi (aunty) to my cousin-sister’s son. His sweetly-lisped “Aunty” was the first trickle of something that has now become a deluge.

In my slim and svelte twenties, when people called me aunty (these cranks were few and far between), I reacted with incredulous raised-eyebrows: “Who are you kidding?”

In my burgeoning early-thirties, I was mortified. “OMG, what’s the matter with me?” Any stray aunty-call would make me start worrying about wrinkles, white hair and waistlines.

[CONFESSION BOX: There are two vegetable vendors near my building. The first one calls me ‘aunty’ and overcharges me. The second one also overcharges me, but calls me ‘bhabi’ (sister-in-law). I scrupulously avoid the former and frequent the latter.]

Aunty-fication, undoubtedly, IS a mortifying process. I used to regard it as the final crossing over into misshapen, melancholic middle-age. There are tons of ads (especially the hair-dye ones) where we see the lady-in-question hyper-ventilate with horror and shudder with shame at being addressed “aunty”. It seems to be the denial of desirability – of youth, beauty and loveliness.

But once I did become an undeniable, full-fledged AUNTY (with a lot of emphasis on the full), once the trickle turned into a deluge, I realized that there are a lot of advantages to aunty-hood as well. This happened a couple of years back, as I entered the mid-thirties (full-blown rather than fulsome).

For starters, I have regained my peace of mind. Resigned to my lifetime membership to the aunty-brigade, the aunty-calls no longer have the power to unnerve, irritate or depress me. If I do raise my eyebrows, it is merely to say, “Oh yeah? So what?”.

I am no longer combative, like a cousin who refuses to respond if people call her “aunty”. Aunty-hood is no more a disaster-zone or an enemy-territory that I am unwilling to enter. I have decided to accept, agree and adapt – the first step being the regaining of my sense of humour about the whole issue.

Aunty-fication has become a liberating experience. No longer do I have to bother about the MALE GAZE (for more on that scintillating subject, see my other blog here). I no longer feel compelled to dress/walk/behave as an object of male scrutiny. Since the males in question hardly notice me (Mumbai has more than its fair share of PYTs and yummy-mummies), I can wear what I want, do what I want, be what I want to be. Without caring two hoots for male approval/approbation. Ah, the freedom of it all!

And I know that when people like me now, it’s for my inner qualities rather than my outer quantities (quantity being the operative word here).

So you see, it is not about sour grapes at all (cross my heart). The aunty diaries are all about the seven steps to attaining nirvana, actually:
DEFIANCE to CONSTERNATION to DISMAY to CONFLICT to ACCEPTANCE to CALMNESS to BLISS.

What’s your take?

THE ADVENTURES OF A POLL-ITICAL OFFICER

2009-05-02T03:25:00.000+05:30

Or, how I almost got caught in a stampede on Polling day. A step-by-step report:

POLL-ITICAL PARTIES
On the last day of training, we met the other members of our ‘polling party’ (comprising a Presiding Officer – me, that is – an Assistant Presiding Officer, two Polling Officers and a Peon). There were several such parties under each Zonal Officer, and each party would be in charge of a Polling Station, reporting to their respective Zonal Officer. We exchanged phone numbers and listened to a long lecture on the what-to-dos and what-not-to-dos and how-to-manage-things-if-youv’e-done-a-‘what-not-to-do’.
Mystified by the Marathi, I dozed off in the middle.

RANDOM RAMBLINGS
Next day, the day before the polls, we were supposed to meet at the Central Polling Station, collect the polling materials (including the star of the show – the Electronic Voting Machine) and go to our Polling Stations to set up things for the big day.

However, the authorities had decided brilliantly to ‘randomize’ the allotments. So, our zonal officers had been changed and the ‘polling parties’ under each officer had also been shuffled out of sequence. Chaos Theory ruled. We had to wait for announcements to learn who would be our zonal officer, and then we had to weave through an increasingly restive crowd to find these fellows. People kept colliding into each other, like the random movements of atoms, and it took hours before each molecule (polling party) was formed. It was like a bad Hindi lost-and-found movie, with everybody searching for their team members. Matters were not helped at all by the fact that we were all hustled into a huge and hot basement where cellphone networks were not working. I don’t know why they did not put up lists about who-would –go-where; it would have made finding each other much easier, and the poor fellows who shouted themselves hoarse at the announcement counter could have spared their throats a bit.

READY FOR TOMORROW, SIR!
Anyway, after six hours of sweating, swearing and searching, the teams were assembled and we went in police-escorted taxis and trucks to a school building where our Polling Station was located. Our building had seven Polling Stations who were given a room each. We spent the next few hours checking poll materials, partly filling up numerous forms and envelopes, putting up signboards and arranging who would sit where. The most interesting bit was actually operating the EVM and conducting a mock-poll. There were 23 candidates contesting from our constituency, some with really intriguing symbols like balloon, whistle and comb. Two candidates were perhaps hoping to cash in on the IPL craze – one had a cricket bat as a symbol and the other had opted for a picture of a cricketer.

V – VOTING DAY; O – ONLY 42% TURNED UP; T – TEAMS WORKED TOGETHER WONDERFULLY; E – EVERYTHING WAS FINE TILL 5 P.M
There were giggly first-time voters, there were feisty old ladies and doddering gentlemen with walking sticks (one had recently undergone a heart operation). Some were clear in their choice – they strode in, hit the button straight away, and strode out, head high. Some were confused – peering at the ballot units, scratching their heads, looking at us for inspiration and taking ages to make up their minds. The rush hours were 10 to 2, with long lines snaking out of the rooms into the hot sun. Voters might have cribbed, the process is slightly long because of the various checks and balances. My team was efficient and experienced and I learnt a lot from them. It was a friendly, let’s-all-get-this-thing-done-as-well-as-we-can and don’t-worry-when-we-are-with-you kind of feeling and, although it was my first time, I sailed through confidently because of them.

ORDER INTO DISORDER
By 7 p.m, the voting machines were closed and sealed, reports all ready, envelopes filled but stomachs empty. The Zonal Officer had checked everything to his satisfaction and we were ready to leave. Only, we did not. We left at 8.30 and went, under police escort (I was feeling tired but important) to the Central Polling Station to deposit everything. Read CHAOS PANIC STATION. There was one counter to collect the EVMs and some documents of 75 polling parties. There were four other counters to submit four other sets of documents and stuff, each having a mile-long queue. Each envelope was opened and contents checked (didn't they trust the Zonal Officers?). We then had to put everything back and form another queue just to hand things over. It was bureaucracy at its duplicitous, slowest, worst.

The only violent incidents of the day took place at the EVM-deposit counter. Polling officials, who had all started work way before dawn, got mutinous and manic – queues were broken and the EVM- carrying -cases were useful weapons to push and shove. Tempers got frayed and policemen had to be deployed to maintain discipline. We had to stand on the steps leading to the hallowed counter for over three hours. I, by virtue of being a ‘ladies’, managed to jump the queue and my adroit Zonal Officer helped me in my underhand activities. Too trodden-upon to feel guilty, I took unfair advantage.

Crushed,exhausted, hungry and battle-sore, thus ended my first tryst with the democratic machinery. It was, as Pandit Nehru had said, a ‘tryst with destiny’, and, almost true to his words, it had ended post-midnight.

VOTE FOR MOTHER'S DAY

2009-04-28T02:28:00.000+05:30

My entry below has been shortlisted for the Indusladies.com Mother's Day Blog Contest.

If you did like it, do vote for me here. My name is somewhere down the middle, so scroll down a bit, and when you spot it, hit the button

Even if you didn't, do vote. I'll be checking the ink on your finger, so...

BTW, poll closes May 4, so...

I am a canvassing novice, so I may have got the poll spiel all wrong, but I'd sincerely appreciate your appreciation.

EBONY AND IVORY: THROUGH A MOTHERS’S EYE

2009-04-25T03:34:00.000+05:30

(THIS POST HAS BEEN WRITTEN FOR THE MOTHER'S DAY BLOG CONTEST IN INDUSLADIES.COM)

Soon after my younger daughter was born, the doctor came and placed a tiny swaddled bundle in my lap. Even through the sedated haze of the anesthesia, I was amazed to look into a pair of startlingly blue eyes. Which were set in a face as fair as ivory.

I was amazed (nobody in both sides of the family-tree has blue eyes). But, more than that, I was anxious and apprehensive. For nine months, the spouse and I had been preparing our elder daughter about this life-changing event. She had been told all about how God was very happy with her for being a good girl and was giving her a very special gift. She had often touched my tummy to feel her sibling kicking merrily in the womb. Every day, she would come back from school and relate the day’s events solemnly to her yet-to-be-born sister, bending over my tummy to whisper ‘secrets’ to her sibling which I was not supposed to hear. In her imaginings, her sibling would be a younger version of herself. She was prepared for the big day, eager to welcome her brand new sibling.

We were prepared, too. Prepared to understand that occasionally, our elder daughter would feel jealous, or resentful, or left out. That she would need an extra dose of love and attention to cope with the shift in status from ‘only child’ to ‘elder sister’. That we would have to be very careful not to neglect either of our children, nor to compare them in any way. Only, we had not taken into account the ‘fairness factor’ - and the discrimination that breeds in the minds of people.

When our elder daughter sat cross-legged on the hospital bed and took her tiny sister carefully in her ebony arms, our world was complete. The spouse and I fell in equal love with ebony and ivory.

But so many people didn’t. So many people look and do a double take. So many people look at them and say, putting on a wise and circumspect manner, “They look so different from each other, you would hardly think they are sisters.” Some of them look through ebony, altogether. They look at ivory and gush, “Oh, she’s such a doll”. Strangers often bend down to cuddle ivory, “She’s got such unusual eyes.” Ebony waits at a distance with wistful eyes. Well-meaning friends and relations keep on saying, “Your elder one looks so studious, she will grow up to be a doctor. And the younger one should try her luck in modeling.”

I try my best not to flare up. Not to resent such colour-crazy comparisons. To forget those who ignore ebony’s tremulous sweet-shy smiles. To forgive those who categorise fair skin with beauty and dark skin with brains. How stupid can they be? How insensitive to just cuddle one child and overlook another? How ignorant to make value-judgments on the basis of colour?

Of course, children have their own ways of coping. Ebony often says, “Maa, my favourite ice-cream is chocolate-flavoured because I am chocolate-coloured. Bonu (sister) likes strawberry ice-cream because she is all pink-and-white like that. Which one do you like best?” I tell her that I love both chocolate and strawberry ice-cream. And I hope that ebony grows up happy and confident, not minding the stupid colour-comparisons so many people invariably make. And I also hope that ivory grows up to learn that inner beauty is much, much more valuable than any outer shell of prettiness. That both of them realise that chocolate and strawberry are both as sweet and as lovely as each other.

The spouse and I try our best to make up for the imbalance in attention. He explains that skin colour is a non-issue, a mere difference of melanin content. Almost-eight ebony nods wisely, and ivory, all of three but wanting-desperately-to-become-as-old-as-her-sister, nods animatedly, keen on copying her sister (which is why we call her copy-kitten).

When I hug, I open both my arms wide, so that both can run to me at the same time, upturned faces glowing with shared glee. I divide my kisses equally. Same with the scoldings, too. Although, to be honest, an average day usually sees more scolding than hugging. But a bedtime hug is a must. For all of us.

And one of my best motherhood moments (from an unending list of countless moments) is when they fall asleep, ebony cuddling ivory, curled together, arms around each other. I look at their sweet sleeping faces, so peaceful, so precious, so alike in their dreams and hopes. They look so similar.

Of course, I know they are different – they have distinct personalities, separate likes and dislikes which will become even more distinct as they grow up. But the superficial skin-deep difference of colour cannot encompass the depth and complexity of their beings. It does not realize the shared mutuality of love which makes them equal.

And when they get up in the morning, they again look alike with their tousled sleepy-eyed yawns. Then we (the maid, the spouse and I) get them ready. Their reluctance to bathe in the mornings is similar, as is the dilly-dallying over breakfast. Once these initial hurdles are crossed, however, they are ready for school, which both of them love equally. Off to school they go, bright and eager, with identical ear-to-ear grins and matching steps, hand in hand; ebony taking care of ivory like a good elder sister, ivory looking up to ebony like all younger siblings do. Another day begins, full of the promise of exciting, and exhausting, motherhood moments – some to cherish, stamped-forever in memory’s album, some to bear with fraying-patience and gritted-teeth. Through the ups and downs and roundabouts that comprise a mother’s journey, I’ve learnt to embrace both ebony and ivory. And all the shades in-between. A mother cannot discriminate. She would rather rejoice in the rainbow of variety that life offers.

LANGUAGE: BRIDGE OR BARRIER?

2009-04-23T02:05:00.000+05:30

In this election, I have a new role. Like thousands of other ‘gormint’ servants, I have been given ‘election duty’. We are attending training sessions organized by the Election Commission to prepare ourselves for V-day (voting day). These sessions (two so far, more to come) are exhaustive. And exhausting. Our instructors have been lecturing us about our duties, and demonstrating how to successfully operate that Extremely Very-confusing Machine (a.k.a the Electronic Voting Machine).

Only, there’s a snag. The whole training exercise is being done in Marathi. And there are a substantial number of hapless would-be presiding/assistant/polling officers who are looking more and more goggle-eyed, unable to understand most of what is going on.

Including me. On the first day, I tried earnestly to follow the lecture, grasping at a word here and there, asking my colleague (who is a daughter of this soil) to explain the I-M-P (studentspeak for ‘important points’). Today, faced with an instructor who rattled off instructions from a written sheet at breakneck speed in chaste Marathi, I gave up the struggle.

Repeated requests to the instructors to either explain in both Hindi and Marathi or arrange for alternative training for us unfortunate non-Marathi types were met with refusal, either point-blank or polite. One instructor asked the Maharashtrians in the class to raise their hands. Satisfied that at least 70% were ‘from here only’, he smugly said that lectures would continue in Marathi. Some of the Maharashtrian trainees seconded them vociferously. Nobody bothered to apply the reverse logic: since everybody, even the Maharashtrians, understands Hindi/English, why not ALSO explain in Hindi/English, along with Marathi? One brilliant person turned on me and asked: “If this was in YOUR Kolkata, wouldn’t the training be in Bengali?”

Maybe it would. Maybe over there, too, boorish guardians of Bengali would speak only in their mother tongue, ignoring requests for co-operation from non-Bengali attendees. But that would have been wrong, too. And two wrongs can never make a right. And excuse me, why are you pushing me to a corner of the country? I am an Indian, free to live in any part of the nation. Learning the local language and respecting the local culture will obviously help me to assimilate better. But since I (and many of the others) haven’t grasped all the technical fine points of the language yet, wouldn’t co-operation been a more generous and sensible thing to offer than refusal? After all, the purpose of these sessions is to train all of us adequately for the job-at-hand? Will that purpose be served if the language is Marathi-only?

The questions remain un-discussed owing to the language barrier. And the barrier left us floundering, till somebody threw us lifelines in the shape of thick yellow handbooks in English. There was also a young instructor, our linguistic saviour, who finally came and explained the intricacies of the EVM in Marathi, Hindi and English. Dexterously alternating between the three ‘tongues’, he used language as it should be: to communicate, to build bridges and to bring smiles of comprehension in the faces of his listeners.

INK IS IN

2009-04-18T04:03:00.000+05:30

The ink on your index finger is suddenly IN. Because it IN-dicates that you have exercised your right to vote. Because it shows your IN-clination: you care for the future of this nation. Because it is an assertion of your citizenship – your identity as an IN-dian.

In the elections this time, because of the model code of conduct enforced by the Election Commission, there has a marked absence of posters, pamphlets, wall-paintings, sloganeering; all the loud and colourful accompaniments to the political juggernaut.

Instead, there has been a lot of visibility given to citizen groups and NGOs like Jaago Re, groups of people asking other people to come and vote. Celebrities are urging us to use the finger (not oily-smiley politicians mock-humbly begging for votes with folded hands). The inky finger has become the hottest fashion accessory.

The first round voting turnout was 58-62% - not bad. The rural populace, stoical, suffering, yet upright, has always exercised its franchise. It is the urban upwardly-mobile class that was accused of distancing itself from the democratic duty of voting. The designer sunglasses and the headphones clamped to the ears blocked the sights and sounds of the Real India. Now that the upward mobility has been halted in the tracks somewhat, perhaps there is time to look at the bigger picture.

The picture that includes all of India – the hut and the high-rise, the yuppy and the yokel. We will not be able to change this picture substantially, but, if we vote, we will be able to put our own mark on it.

So, let’s go vote. But let us think before we ink. And let us not forget that voting should be a matter of INFORMED CHOICE. Therein lies the true worth and power of that tiny dot of ink.

ASSORTED HAPPY NEW YEARS

2009-04-14T13:30:00.000+05:30

We Indians are a clever lot. Long, long ago, when the Divine Creator was chalking out the human calendar, Indians said, “O Mighty One, please do not give us only one new year’s day like you have to the Western World. They usher in the New Year on 1st January, and wait 364 days for the next one to come along. We are an impatient lot. We don’t want to wait so long. Also, we like to celebrate and we need excuses for that. So, can you please give us a dozen New Years each year?”

The Divine Creator thoughtfully stroked his long white beard (make that “the day-old stubble in the cleft of his chin”, if you want an image-makeover for the old chap), gave his trademark benign smile and came up with a SMART SOLUTION to this somewhat bizarre request: each community would have a separate new year’s day, separated from each other by weeks or months, so that there would be valid excuses for celebrating. Which means declaring government holidays, shopping for new clothes, visiting and gossiping with family and friends, and eating a lot of sweets and other calorie-rich food. Along with other activities like playing the latest Bollywood hit-songs very loudly on the loudspeaker (for the entire community to hear, of course).

The Gujaratis and the Marwaris bring in their new year a day after Diwali (being business-minded, they combine the two festivals to make the whole affair costly but cost-effective). The Parsis have their Pateti in August, and the Maharashtrians celebrated Gudi Padwa a few weeks back (along with the Sindhi Cheti Chand, Manipuri Cheiraaba, Kashmiri Navreh and the Ugadi of the Telugus and Kannadigas).

As is quite evident, the allocation of new year dates reflects a certain bureaucratic bungling on the part of the Divine Creator’s minions (a trait which has been inherited by the public sector in India). For instance, certain dates got mixed up, and the Punjabi Baisakhi, Tamil Puthnadu, Malayali Vishu, Oriya Mahabishuba Sankranti and Bengali Poila Baisakh all fall on the same day, or on consecutive days in April. Instead of breathing down each other’s necks, they could have better spaced out. Of course, our Indian indefatigible officials are trying to rectify the error by attempting to relocate some of the new years. Wikipedia informs me that the "OFFICIAL" Malayali New Year comes in August, and that certain sections in Tamil Nadu are also campaigning to shift their New Year to another date. But change, as always in India, is a slow and laborious process, fraught with debate, discussion and delays.

And so, we have a whole bunch of New Years coming up. Since I do not know how to speak either Punjabi or Tamil or Malayalam or Oriya, here’s wishing SHUBHO POILA BAISAKH and a better new year to all of you. Like every year, let us crib and cheer, embrace and jeer. What to do, we are like this only.

BUILDING BLOCKS

2009-04-09T01:58:00.000+05:30

A new storey is being added to the college-building I work in. One spanking new floor atop the existing five floors. Which means more classrooms, more students, more revenue for the college. More comfort for the management.

What it DOES NOT MEAN is more comfort for the workers slogging in the April heat to build this storey before June, when the new session starts. Their story remains unchanged, though the change the cityscape ever so often.

The volleyball ground is overrun with snotty-nosed little children running about butt-naked and dusty. Their dishevelled over-burdened mothers peep out from temporarily-erected asbestos shelters with makeshift doors creaking on their hinges. Some of the broken bits of wood and board are used to light fires on which food is cooked. Actually, food is a euphemism, because what is being cooked would perhaps not go down our pampered-priveleged throats. Raggedy clothes hang in drooping washing-lines strung between the trees. Clothes that would have abandoned by us in dustbins long back. And a line of gaunt, sun-darkened workers, men and women, trudge up and down balancing loads on their heads, making a brick-cement-mortar building they themselves will never be able to live in.

History tells us that exploited slaves built the Pyramids. That the poor workers who built the lavish Taj Mahal had their hands cut off. But that terrible irony is not just history, it is also continuing reality we witness everyday. Only now we do not cut off their hands. Because we need a new Taj Mahal everyday, in every part of every metropolis. And we need a steady stream of hungry, hollow-eyed, , hard-working workers to build for us our highrises where we can eat and sleep and chill-out.

A NEW CHAPTER…

2009-04-03T03:02:00.000+05:30

…has begun in the lives of my daughters. It is April and a new school-year has started.

For the Lil Cat, entering her third standard, it means a whole lot of new books (all warm and toasty-brown-paper-covered). It means a whole lot of new things to learn – from Marathi (she begins her ‘third’ language this year, after First Language English and Second Language Hindi – of course, Bengali is her mother tongue, so it is actually a FOURTH language), to Magellan (in Social Studies – he was the man who discovered that the earth was round), to complicated and l-e-n-g-t-h-y multiplications and divisions. But she is not too daunted, only excited and happy, diving into her pile of books with shiny-spectacled eyes.

For the Copy-Kitten, entering her first year in a proper school, it means new blue and white uniforms, a blue water-bottle and proper black school-shoes. Not really new anymore, because she has ‘practising’ drinking from the waterbottle for the past few days and clomping all over the house in her new shoes (never mind that she is clad only in a pair of bloomers above the pair of shoes and socks). She is all excited about the big yellow bus that will take her to school. Now, the only part missing is her new books, which will come next week.

The buzz of excitement is almost palpable and I am shamelessly exploiting the situation. Whenever the Copy-kitten is being naughty and disobedient (which she almost always is, except when she is sleeping), I am threatening her with dire consequences like her teacher not allowing bad girls in the class, etc. I know I should not hold her happiness to ransom like this, but as a long-suffering-from-tantrums mother I cannot help but make hay as the April sun shines.

I hope they stay as excited and eager to learn throughout their school lives.

CANDID KITTEN - A FISHY TALE

2009-03-29T12:16:00.000+05:30

Me, in full teacher-mummy mode,: "Where do fish live?"

Copy-Kitten, knitting her brows and thinking,: "In the fridge".

This was when my younger daughter was about two years old, and had not yet started going to playschool where she would soon parrot:

"Machli jal ki raani hai/ jeevan uska paani hai" (Fish is the queen of the water / Water is the life of fish).

Her answer made me THINK HARD. Really, Mumbai has no ponds to speak of, where I could show my daughters that, see, this is where fishes live. The only fish, she had seen where the ones we eat, coming out from the freezer to the frying pan.

Vegetarians will maybe shake their heads at this conditioning in cruelty, but then, when we were young, we ate fish but knew all the while that they came from rivers and ponds (both being near our home).

With ponds becoming extinct (or severely endangered) in Mumbai, it was my daughter's clear-eyed vision that made me realise once again the impact of our own thoughtless actions in destroying our environment.

A THANK YOU POST

2009-03-24T15:11:00.000+05:30

Now that this blog has completed a century of posts, I feel I must express a debt of gratitude. To N, my brother’s wife. She is the one who pushed me to start a blog. We had recently taken an Internet connection in March last year and I was dipping my foot into the fascinating and bewildering virtual world. N gave me the step-by-step how-to-open-a-blog-for-dummies guide. She made me see one of her friend’s blog to get an idea of what it was all about. And then I took one post-midnight plunge into the untested waters of Blogger.com and started to scribble.

N cheered and supported me all through the century. Despite having a hectic high-paying high-flying job, which she has recently given up. Why, you may ask? To spend more time with her two young separated-by-two-monsoons daughters (my two nieces who I dote upon). From being a MBA/corporate-exec to a stay-at-home mother needs a drastic self-shake-up, but N is managing pretty well. I had hugely admired her before (from my low-paying/leisurely teaching-job vantage point) and I think she has made a very brave move.

I am also completely in awe of the fact that she has managed to adjust to our extended Bengali family (I know, I know, she lives in Bangalore, but still, there are dozens of my relations over there, too). Being a Kannadiga brought up mainly in Pune, it must be difficult to hear yourself addressed frequently as NILAKKHI (sounding like a person clearing a hoarse throat), instead of Neelakshi (which should sound like a sneeze supressed in a silk handkerchief, and which is what her parents named her). I wince in embarrassment, but she remains graciously unflappable.

I enjoy her company hugely and really look forward to our twice-yearly visits (Mumbai to Bangalore and back; and vice-versa). We bond bigtime over the chore-sharing and the baby-managing and the story-swapping sessions (no in-law-infighting here).

Thank you, N, you are a great sis-in-law (hope she says the same about me)!

Who pushed you to write your blog?

LIFE IN THE FAST LANE

2009-03-19T18:30:00.000+05:30

The time: 6.45 a.m. Not quite morning (Mumbai mornings wake up late, though the people, of course, are up and about, including yours truly).

Up and about at high speed. On the Western Express Highway, which is converted to a Formula One race track every morning (till 8.30 a.m -after that it's a different story altogether). And so, the daily round of Formula One races are underway. Instead of foreign-Ferraris, our local F1 champs drive the proudly-Indian auto-rick(ety)shaws. From their respective pit lanes (in the bylanes of Borivili and Kandivali), the desi Lewis Hamiltons, Kimi Raikkonens and Fernando Alonsos cruise (at deceptively ‘normal’ speed) to the Highway. The wide open newly-concretised makes a tempting racetrack in the pale yet-to-be-sunlight. And then the race begins. With me as a VERY RELUCTANT PASSENGER and SPECTATOR (with wind-whipped hair, high-jumped heart and gut-curdled stomach).

At any red traffic light, the autos screech to a stop, forced into what is called a grid position. But even when cars and buses are content to wait, our intrepid auto-champions push and jostle their way to pole position (the most advantageous position in the front of the grid from where to start the race). And almost before the light changes to green, they open full throttle, slipstreaming behind the huge Goliath-like BEST buses and overtaking them like fearless Davids. They zoom over flyovers and down monstrously wide stretches of not-so-open road (often passing within centimeters of people running to cross the road) from Borivili to Malad and beyond. (I am not even mentioning the heart-stopping daredevilry of the helmetted-incognito-two-wheeler-riders who weave in and out of the more-than-two-wheelers).

What further unsettles me is the high-fiving camaraderie of the auto-rickshawallahs, interacting with all the bonhomie of members of a Scuderia (racing team). They will often casually lean out and chat with a fellow driver (riding alongside recklessly at a similarly breathtaking speed), making my heart almost leap out of the autorickshaw, too, in the process.

Turbulence, according to the Formula One Glossary, “is experienced in the area directly behind a car”. In auto-rickshaws, however, turbulence is experienced in the area directly behind the driver, especially when that area is occupied by me. I sit upright and afraid, clutching my mobile and bag and desperately dreaming of all the things I want to do while I live. With neither the hi-tech suspension or the fancy survival-cell of a Ferrari, I am always in a suspense about my survival in this auto(rickshaw) racing line. I keep having flashbacks to the fate of Ayrton Senna, the Formula-One triple world champion who died in a crash on the racing track in 1994.

As my Michael Schumacher (or whoever it is for that day) approaches the Pushpa Park bus-stop, with immense relief and thankfulness I say, “Aagey se left” (Take a left turn). Rather indistinctly, because my heart is still blocking my throat and my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth.

As the disappointed driver (he has been forced to retire from the race, not because of accident or mechanical failure, but because of passenger interference – surely that is against the rules of racing?) reluctantly turns left off the Highway, his speedometer (if he has any – many auto-rickshaws do not) and my blood pressure returns to normal.

Till the next morning, same time, same place, different race.

DEEP SEA DIVING IN THE OCEAN OF ANSWER-SCRIPTS

2009-03-14T03:25:00.000+05:30

Hello, everybody out there in the big bright normal sunlit everyday world. I am speaking to you from some underwater hideout, floundering in a whirlpool of answer-scripts. It is that time of the year when I plunge into the ocean of correction.

Deep sea diving and examination paper connection have a lot in common (apart from the fact that I have never done the former despite wishing to and that I’m forced to do the latter twice a year despite desperately not wishing to). Both give you surprisingly new perspectives on familiar things. Both can be surreal experiences. And both can leave you feeling completely bemused and out-of-depth.

Let me share with you some of the pearls-of-bloopers I’ve dug out from the 400-plus ordinary-oyster scripts I am having to snorkel through.
One student, attempting to write the agenda for a meeting, wrote, “Discussion of minutes of LUST (last?) meeting”. (Now, wouldn’t that be somewhat explicit? But then, with the younger generation, I guess so-called private things are more in the open.)
Another fellow, writing a reminder letter to a company for collecting overdue payment, stridently warns, “If you do not pay, we will be forced to take ILLEGAL action” (Methinks students are watching too many Ram Gopal Varma mafia-films of late).
An innovative student forgot the phrase “pair of socks” and placed a Trial Order for 100 “COUPLES OF SOCKS” (As long as we get one each for the right foot and the left foot, it is all acceptable, right?).
An enterprising student wrote that a candidate should “BE DRESSED IN NEW AND ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS” while appearing for an interview. I guess he meant that one should wear new clothes and carry original documents for the interview, but then dressing up in documents would definitely be a NEW and ORIGINAL way of catching the interviewer’s attention.
Interviews, obviously, are enormously important to my students. One fellow, probably feeling that the day of the interview would be an auspicious and memorable one (with the dahi-ka-tikka on forehead and the doting mother performing a puja before the great event) got all mixed-up and wrote that INTERVIEWS are SUSPICIOUS and REMINDABLE (Why? Because the distant relation of the interviewer got the job instead of the deserving candidate?).
The most common spelling mistake is PRINCIPLE for PRINCIPAL (as in Head of the Institution). Is that a subtle warning to all Principals to be guided by the proper Principles – especially when there are so many accusations of admission-related nefarious activities?
But the spelling mistake that really made my day was when a student wrote an entire answer on meetings and kept on writing MATINGS instead. “Mating is a form of group communication” (as in orgies?). “Matings can be formal or informal (as in marital and extra-marital?). One advantage of “matings” is “problem-solving” (how many of us have made up in that particular way after a bout of fierce quarelling with the spouse?). And one disadvantage of “matings” is that “they are time-consuming” (Well, now we know what all the corporate honchos do everytime they call up home and say, “I’ll be late for dinner”!).

As I go back for another running dive into the answer-pool, I’ll leave you with a deep and inscrutable statement to ponder over:

“Sinces the you or Quality pleases to the answer, to the payment will not fully. But your not problem I am paying the amount your amount in a before in my paying.”

If can make out what my cryptic philosopher student is trying to communicate, do let me know. When faced with such challenging stuff, I feel as if I’m deep-sea diving without any breathing apparatus.

(For a more serious rant on this issue, check out my earlier/angrier post here).

THE FESTIVAL OF DEMOCRACY

2009-03-11T01:59:00.000+05:30

I've been wondering...if Diwali is the festival where the rich-poor divide is very marked, then Holi is the festival which bridges that divide.

Diwali depends (partly) on how much you spend for a few moments of light. In Mumbai, this surreal city of superfluous spending, families spend huge amounts of money on lavish displays of fireworks, which light up the sky in rainbow colours and echo through the neighbourhood in a burst of crackers. Of course, the people huddling under canvas sheets under flyovers can gaze wide-eyed at the light-and-sound display, but it is all as much out of their reach as the stars which are outshone by the jubilations of the wealthy.

Holi, on the other hand, is much more friendly on the pocket. If you want to, you can equip yourself with expensive eco-friendly colours and precious pichkaris (water-dispensers). Kids in our building have been roaming around for the past week with sophisticated water-filled guns and tanks, practising their water-spraying skills on each other (and other unsuspecting victims).

But, if you want, you can also arm yourself with the even-more-eco-friendly mud and dust and mix it all up in a broken bucket and drench everybody around you (including yourself and that neighbour's-spouse-whom-you-secretly-eyed).

Holi allows us to forget our identities for a day and mingle with each other in the way the colours mingle and become one indistinguishable (and extremely hard to get rid of) shade. That is the true colour of India, the true shade of our democracy.

On Holi, all trespasses are forgiven and all divides (haves and have-nots; self and neighbour) forgotten. Happy Holi!

HPY BDAY 2 U

2009-03-05T02:22:00.000+05:30

I celebrated my birthday sometime in February and I was overwhelmed by the amount of attention I received. My mailbox was flooded and my phone beeped throughout the day as a flood of sms-es poured in.

Crossword, the bookshop where I am a regular browser-buyer and a member, sent me a card, a gift voucher for a spectacles shop (smart connection, that) and a discount coupon (smart business strategy).

My beauty parlour rang me up to wish me many happy returns and to remind me that I would get any service for Rs 100 free, an offer which I promptly accepted (resulting in a few golden streaks of hair upfront, and an additional spending of Rs 260).

Shopper’s Stop mailed me their greetings to ‘celebrate in style’ (presumably clothed in outfits purchased at their premises).

HDFC Credit Cards sms-ed me their good wishes, and the un-smsed hope of greater card usage in the next 365 days.

HSBC Bank did almost exactly the same (the differences were perhaps due to the fact that there I have a debit card).

Various Mutual Fund Managers e-mailed me their wishes, advising me to ‘invest in a happy future’.

Even my LIC agent joined the birthday-bandwagon by sms-ing similar good wishes with ditto advice.

Amazed at suddenly being showered with so much technologically-preset TLC and pre-recorded public attention, I felt like a virtual star. Nobody can feel lonely in today’s technology-enabled corporate world. I was bowled over by PR-pyaar (love). Care and Comfort for the customer is just an sms-away. I purchase, therefore I am. I buy, therefore I get wished on my birthday. WOW, that’s absolutely great for my self-esteem, is it not?.

Oh well, in the corporate PR-whirligig, I almost forgot to mention that my mother, sister-in law, brother, in-laws, cousin and some of my friends also called (I suspect they had all set reminders in their phone calendars, the way I always do). I’m just joking, many of them would have remembered, hopefully. The spouse did, without setting any reminders (not that I know of anyway).

And then, there were my daughters. The Lil Cat folded an A4 sheet of copier-paper and made a card in her crawling-uphill handwriting (complete with a Bible Verse advising me about the value of hard work – which she had apparently learnt in school that day). The Copy-kitten followed suit with a similar sheet of paper filled with scribbles in a yet-undiscovered script. On the great day, Lil Cat serenaded me on waking up (she, not me) with a rather complicated and uncommon birthday song invoking birds and animals, which she forgot midway. The Copy-kitten enthusiastically added to the chorus, with the emphasis on all the wrong places because at that time she was sitting on her potty and had to simultaneously attend to other pressures. And then they demanded, what’s for breakfast?

So that’s the way it is. Birthdays remind you of who you are (along with how old you are, of course, let's not get into that aspect of it at all). A customer. A mother. So if you want to be sms-ed and serenaded all over again next year, better get on with the job.

LIFE BEGINS AT SIXTY?

2009-03-01T01:56:00.000+05:30

My Maa (mother), all of sixty-three, and her merry gang of gal-pals (two sisters and a cousin, with some friends thrown in) never cease to amaze me. She ushered in the new year at my place, staying till February (She usually visits me twice a year). Then she was off to my Maasi’s (aunt) home in Bhopal.

There, the two sisters are living it up (she called me up to say she’s just watched the newly released Delhi-6). They cook for each other, play games on the computer, and, of course, watch endless hours of television.

They also enjoy shopping together, anything from vegetables to tablecloths to clothes for their combined brood of grandchildren. The only sign betraying their age is the fact that they often forget to take their cellphones along; the other day my brother called me saying that he had been calling Maa for over three hours and nobody picked up the phone. She had been engrossed in Delhi-6; he was about to call in the cops.

Soon, the giggly gang will be joined by an octogenarian grandfather (my mother’s unmarried and still-adventurous uncle). Then, they plan to go by train to Allahabad, Simla and Gaya (religious and tourist hot-spots where the said grandfather is a trustee with various institutions which will provide free and safe accommodation).

Next on the agenda is, of course, Kolkata, where the heart is, if not the body. Kolkata does not just mean HOME. It means a whirlwind tour of different homes of cousins and friends and relations. Maa and the aforesaid gang are maximizing returns by packing in a week-long trip to the crowded coasts of Puri.

And that’s not all. From the sea-side, it will be straight to the hospital bed-site for Maa, as she intends to fit in a cataract operation (her own) in her busy schedule. My uncle in Kolkata, who is an ophthalmologist, will do the honours. And then, within a fortnight, Maa will be back in Bangalore, which is her ostensible residence (but she is a Non-Resident Bangalorean, my brother complains).

But this footloose and fancy-free lifestyle is only part of the story. All the members of the gang have sons and daughters, whose homes they dutifully stay in and look after the grandchildren as and when the need arises (they cook, feed, tell stories, knit fluffy cardigans and give great advice). Most of the members of the gang fight various chronic and recurrent illnesses (they carry medicines instead of make-up in their handbags). All of them have to plan carefully to arrange for their finances for the tour-India trips (they are willing to forego planes for trains, AC-rooms for non-AC dormitories).

But all of them have one more thing in common – despite the diseases, despite the familial obligations, despite the financial restraints, they want to enjoy life. To the fullest, to the farthest. Kudos to that.

FREIDA PINTO - MY (UN)FAIR LADY?

2009-02-25T11:00:00.000+05:30

Poor Freida Pinto. While whooping it up at various parties all the world over in the wake of Slumdog Millionaire's super success, our poor little girl in the limelight has been hounded by bad press.

Apparently, in her baby steps up the fame-and-fortune ladder, she has been stepping on a lot of touchy toes. There was the ditching of former fiance/husband Rohan Antao (gleefully played up by the media, with photos of a mopey Antao wishing her all the best). There was the snubbing of Wendell Rodricks, the Goan designer who gave darling Freida her first break in modelling. Wendell makes delicious free-flowing gowns which can grace the red carpet as well as any other. Instead, 'international' Freida is opting for Dries Van Notens and Gallianos galore (the blue net gown at the Oscars got a very mixed reaction).
And there is the simpering smiles and cosying up to the eligible Dev Patel, a budding romance which seems constructed only for the cameras.

All this rankles. Latika (her character in SDM) was a woman who was forced to compromise, yet who always rememebered her past loves and loyalties. Freida's press-created avatar comes across as a girl who chose to compromise, and who has willingly and quickly forgotten her past - loves and loyalties included.

There seems to be a moral which is being subtly created and reinforced - the glamour of the West (Hollywood, etc) turning the head of the gullible Indian girl and making her forget her tradition and culture.

Maybe I am being over-critical, maybe Freida is really a manipulative-miss-on-the-make, but then we have never really come across a clarification from her, have we? And it is so easy for self-righteous guardians of Indian values to point fingers and say, "See, what a slum-bitch she is." I can recall a similar anti-Aishwarya Rai campaign in the press when she tried to make her mark in Hollywood. Maybe India likes to keep its heroines under a metaphorical purdah - at home in Bollywood, rather than creating a flutter abroad?

WORKING MOM-E

2009-02-20T19:53:00.000+05:30

Being a working mother, willingly or otherwise, means living life like a humanoid yo-yo: work-home-work-home-work-home....And the tired, worn piece of string that goes from sigh to high, from woe to low, and back again is called THE SELF - the liberated, emancipated, yet-tied-to-a-thousand-duties-and-doubts-exhaustions-and-expectations FEMALE SELF.

But sometimes, you get a space to pour out all the feelings-which-have-got-tangled-like-an-undone-ball-of-string.

Pentasect has very sweetly published another of my e-articles, this one on the ramblings of a working mother. It is called Is it a Supernova? No, it's a Supermom!

If you do find time to read it (and if you are either working or a mother, you probably won't), please tell me how you liked it. Like all mothers, working or otherwise, there is nothing we like better than appreciation for our efforts.

PAIN –ALYSIS

2009-02-18T02:50:00.000+05:30

For the past fornight (and still continuing) the dominant sensation in my life has been TOOTHACHE. Make that TEETHache, gumache, jawache, cheekache, earache…

I have never really realised the ease and ruthlessness with which pain can have us at its mercy – striking anytime, beginning its offensive slowly and then swiftly building-up the intensity till very soon all you are aware of is the sheer THROB of pain.

Pain makes you self-centred, distracting you totally from any other work you may have at hand, making you run away from social encounters where you have to smile and make small talk, even making you treat your loved ones in an impatient, ill-tempered way. All you want to do is curl up and cry – just the two of you, you and the pain, till it loosens its grip and lets you go.

It is all very well for the dentist/doctor to be analytical about your pain. He will tap here and probe there, asking you where the pain is more and where it is less. He will try to track its growth, asking you when it begun , where it originated, and other difficult-to-remember questions, because by the time the pain has spread its tentacles, your suffering mind is too confused to dissect and discuss it impersonally.

The only relief in these dark days have been the tiny pill of hope – the trusty but tardy pain-killers. As the pain-slaught increases, you reach for the oval pill and swallow it, skimming semi-consciously through the next hour or so, till the analgesic does its job and the waves of pain recede for a few hours. Till the next tidal torture wave.

One silver lining, though: My two daughters have got really scared of toothaches and are washing their mouths diligently after every meal and brushing their teeth with a precautionary thoroughness which gives me some amount of satisfaction.

WANTED: HORROR HOUSEGUESTS

2009-02-11T02:28:00.000+05:30

Wanted Horror Houseguest for small 2 BHK (all of 750 sq ft) already-crowded flat in Mumbai (always in a rush). The Candidate (or candidates – i.e self plus family including pesky kids – the more the horror-ier) must possess the following abilities:

- He must arrive at an inconvenient time (past midnight on a weekday, preferably).
- He must strew his clothes and wet towels all over the place, including the backs of dining chairs.
- He must make all HIS calls (local/national/international) from YOUR phone, giving the excuse that his phone gets charged extra when he makes calls while ROAMING (Well, what about the huge amount of shopping he is daily doing and stashing in your already-full flat while roaming in the malls and markets of Sale-crazy Mumbai?) And, yet, whenever you want to charge your phone-battery, you see his phone hogging the charger.
- He must demand to be hydrated with numerous cups of tea throughout the day.
- He must bathe at least three times a day, forgetting each time to switch off the geyser, put up the toilet seat or close the taps properly.
- He must liberally use your talcs, lotions, deodorants and combs.
- He must also finish off the ice-cream in the fridge and the after-mints/saunf on the sideboard.
- He must never, ever offer to help with the housework.
- He must reject the sandwiches for breakfast you had prepared for him before rushing to work (while he was still blissfully snoring), and order double-egg omelettes from the maid. You are left with stale sandwiches for dinner, a good thing probably, because you are also short of eggs for the curry you had planned to make for the said dinner.
- He must never inform you about his sightseeing/business/other activities for which he has ostensibly come to Mumbai, and for which your benighted flat is just a basecamp. So, when you cook for him, he returns late, reeking of Macdonalds/KFC/vada pao (and you can have the leftovers for lunch tomorrow). And when you don’t cook for him, he turns up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, demanding dinner and keeping you awake way past your bedtime with stories of his thrilling exploits at Gateway of India/Juhu Beach/Inorbit Mall/Siddhivinayak Temple/whatever.
- When he is not sight-seeing, he must sit on the most comfortable chair in the house, put his feet up on another, and hog the TV remote while you are forced to lurk in the kitchen.
- And, most importantly, he absoloutely must promise (and keep his promise) to return soon, preferably three (or more) times a year. And each time, he must overstay his welcome and turn your life upside-down for the duration of the stay.

Interested candidates may contact the undersigned, who has been suffering from severe guest-itis for the past one week.

NOW WE HAVE THEM ALL

2009-02-04T11:05:00.000+05:30

I am a major fan of A A Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh series, with the line illustrations by E H Shepard. (NOT the remixed, dumbed-down, sanctimonious, over-sweet, botoxed and multi-coloured DISNEY version, which is good only for kids and cakes - this year my three-year old had a Pooh cake for her birthday).

I mean the original books, which number only four. Of these, I had managed to get three earlier (Pooh-book hunting adventures recounted earlier in this blog).

Recently, at the Crossword Sale, I found the remaining book, NOW WE ARE SIX, which is a collection of whimsical rhymes about Christopher Robin's childhood, till he reaches the immensely self-important age of six.

There are poems about 'Us Two' (Who else, but Christopher and Pooh), about his golden-sunlit 'Buttercup Days', about fascinating 'Old Sailors' and 'Charcoal Burners', about the wheezles and 'Sneezles' which force you to be bundled in bed, when all you want is to be 'Busy' going round about and round about.

There are poems which will transport you back to when you were six or so, when you had your own special imaginary friend Binker, who was as fond of sweets as you were, and for whom you had to take two sweets, one for you and one for him, and both of which you had to eat (because his teeth were new, or something).

Adorable, delicious and quite quite wonder-full.

DENTIST AT WORK: TEETH UNDER CONTRUCTION

2009-01-31T00:50:00.000+05:30

I really am fed up to my teeth about my, well, teeth (or whatever remains of them). I’m a veteran visitor at the dentist’s, and I’m sure he’s planning an academic research paper on the subject of my teeth.

Various kinds of civil construction work continue to take place inside my mouth, leaving me feeling distinctly uncivil.

I’ve had root canals, metal crowns, ceramic crowns (in the inverted world of dental logic, steel crowns are more expensive than gold crowns, and ceramic ones are the costliest – figure that out), bridges and other architectural marvels in my mouth. Does that make me a big-mouth? I shudder to think what my real teeth look like under all that reconstruction. A bomb-hit, devastated, charred-and-filed to bits archaeological ruins of what was once a white and wince-free city?

I’ve had two wisdom teeth taken out. The remaining two should, by definition, make me a half-wit.

And now, I’ve got to go for another bridge-work, adding to the existing two. With the number of canals and bridges that I have, I sometimes feel like an oral replica of the city of Venice (and here I was hoping to be a Venus with a perfect smile).

So, there I’ll be again – in the dentist’s scary-chair, open-mouthed and resigned to my fate, wincing at the drill and blinking at the light. Oh, for the toothless joys of infancy/old age! Maybe, that is much less painful than the ruthless re-shaping of my dental geography.

REPUBLIC DAY THOUGHT

2009-01-27T00:39:00.000+05:30

I've always felt that 15 August is a day when we celebrate our Independence from the shackles of the past, our liberation from servitude to another nation, our freedom from the imperial British bondage.

And 26 January is a day when we celebrate our founding fathers' vision for our future. The Constitution embodies the hopes and dreams of what India should be, it is a blueprint for the future and the building blocks of the present.

And so, on Republic Day, while it is all very well to garland photographs of freedom-fighters and pay homage to past leaders, it is more important to tell our students and children about the significance of our Constitution, so that we can learn and follow about our duties and rights, about how the government and citizens can together build the nation - a sovereign socialist secular democratic republic, each nomenclature lending meaning to and completing the others. It is a time to renew our pledge that in our own small way we will contribute to the making of our nation. We will stand up for justice, we will fight for liberty, ensure equality and foster fraternity. It is a time to affirm, "Yes, we can", and promise, "Yes, we will."

DREAMS OF DISTURBIA

2009-01-24T03:40:00.000+05:30

The Copy-kitten (my younger daughter) sleeps uneasily, groping for contact, tossing her head, mumbling in her sleep. Sometimes she dreams of conflicts and protests aloud confusedly, in a variety of languages. The first dream I recall was one where she cried out, “Maithili maarti hai” (Maithili is hitting me), Maithili being her best-friend-who-can-and-often-does-turn-into-worst-enemy. Often she sits up in her sleep, crying “aamaro chai” (I also want) …some indeterminate, indecipherable object, or “amio korbo/ jaabo” (I’ll also do/go)…again something or somewhere which we cannot fathom. A hug and a soothing hand are usually enough to calm her down, but on rare occasions her phantom-struggles break into loud and long-drawn sobs that refuse to be pacified easily.

Her entire life revolves round the expression "amio", “ME, TOO”. Her aim in life (awake or asleep) is to grow up double-quick and become as old as her sister (the Lil Cat) and do the things that everybody else does. Even in her dreams she is in a hurry to catch up with the others, maybe that is why her sleep is full of unrest.

Being a younger sibling must be a competitive kind of an experience sometimes (NOT all the time, obviously). My elder daughter, timid and rather shy when awake, sleeps in peace and dreams with a smile. The younger one, spunky, confident and cheerful (if rather stubborn) when awake, has fractious and contentious issues in her dreams, battling imaginary demons, fighting to create her own space, even in sleep.

On her third birthday, apart from the millions of things that mothers usually wish their child to have, I pray for her to enjoy the bliss of calm sleep, full of soothing dreams, every single night, as much as I pray for her to have happy, busy, days.

HAPPINESS IS ...A WET TISSUE

2009-01-18T01:39:00.000+05:30

This evening, the spouse returned from a work-related three-day trip to Bangalore. Joy and jubilation all around, because the kids had been missing him madly. (Yester-night, the copy-kitten, my younger daughter, had jumped when the doorbell rang, shouting "Baba is back" in the face of the surprised andawalla - person who sells eggs door-to-door - so badly was she missing her father).

The spouse gave her and her elder sister, Lil Cat, the freshen-up tissues given on flights. Their smiles could've lit up the runway. They opened the small grey packets with whoops of joy, smelt the fragrance like connoisseurs, ooh-ing and aah-ing, wiped their darling faces many many times, stuck the wet tissues on the mirror as part of a "magic trick" and fell blissfully asleep with the near-dry and crumpled tissues under their pillows, perfuming their dreams and wafting in their sighs.

When was the last time such a small thing made me so ecstatically happy? I guess childhood is all about finding joy in the newness of experiences. But when we begin to put a material value to happiness, we lose that innocence, and childhood slips through the very fingers we use to count the costs of pleasure.

ODE TO INDOLENCE

2009-01-15T02:03:00.000+05:30

A beauty parlour offers much more than a makeover – it offers a few hours of complete indolence and indulgence, an experience so different from the rest of my rushed/panting life that it is almost surreal.

I’m not talking about the ten minute, pop-in-thread-eyebrows-pop-out kind of visit. There you are made to sit upright and uptight in a chair while a beautician painfully plucks out your eyebrows. All tampering, and no pampering.

I’m talking about longer visits, when I can leave all my daily cares outside the opaque glass doors and enter the warm and welcoming red-and-black interiors, lie down in one of the beds in the cubicles (don’t get any wrong ideas, though, it’s perfectly above board) and surrender myself to being pampered and fussed over.

There’s a head oil-massage, which I totally adore because of the way it relaxes my neck muscles. There’s a l-o-n-g two hour facial, which includes a decent back-rub and many complicated things being done to my face (including a thick mask of gooey stuff which covers my eyes and mouth and makes me feel like a sci-fi zombie for fifteen minutes). I close my eyes and go with the flow, rather, rub. My angel of a beautician takes it as a compliment when I doze off, since the whole rigmarole is supposed to be relaxing (the dim lights and soft music help).

Especially decadent is the combined manicure and pedicure, when you have two people simultaneously attending to (cleaning and cosseting) your usually-poor-and-overworked hands and feet. I feel like a thirty-minute celebrity!!!

But the pleasure comes at a price. And some pain, as well. It is not all unmitigated blissful eyes-closed floating-in-a-scented-cocoon kind of experience. When your belligerent blackheads are being dug out of their trenches, or your cussed cuticles being poked into shape, it is a painful battle for beauty. What agonies we suffer, what waxing of reluctant hairs and steaming of recalcitrant pores in our quest for beauty.

But for me, the pain is just a small part of the beauty-parlour-parcel. Even the ‘beauty’-bit is passé. What I crave is the pampering. And the forgetting of the clock and the phone for a few hours every month. When I step out, my freshly-pedicured feet are still floating on air. Till I reach home and come back to reality with an almighty thump.

E - LATED!

2009-01-10T03:43:00.000+05:30

I am e-xtremely e-lated as one of my articles was commissioned and recently published by the popular e-magazine, Pentasect.

If you want to have a look at it, you can find it right here.

It is a rather long article (be warned, please) on the contrasts between Kolkata and Mumbai, the two cities I've lived in during different seasons and have loved for different reasons. I've simplified a lot of things for the sake of contrast, so pardon the creative (ahem!) liberties (i.e, if you've the time and patience to go through it). The first and last paragraphs (of the article, not this post) are add-ons by the editor (just letting you know).

The good thing is that Pentasect has commissioned another article from me. And then there's more activity on the copywriting front as well (after a autumnal lull), so my brains and fingers are busy in tandem. Sleep has gone for a toss, but what the heck, I love this pressure, which is actually more of a pleasure, really.

THE UNBEARABLE SWEETNESS OF BEING (IN YOUNG LOVE)

2009-01-09T02:38:00.000+05:30

This evening, the ‘ladies’ of the household were all watching an episode of the hugely popular syrupy-soppy-soap “Bidaai” (running successfully, and sentimentally, on Star Plus). Almost half-an-hour of the hour-long telecast was devoted to a pair of, er, devoted lovers having a rooftop midnight tryst at a picnic with their families a few days before their wedding (hopefully, unless the devious scriptwriter decides otherwise).

What struck me was the sheer inanity of the romantic meeting. The conversation, or lack of one, was punctuated with minute-long sighs, and gazing-at-each-other and gazing-at-the-moon. There was a lot of heavy breathing, hand-holding and half-smiles. There was lot of giving-of-lavish-compliments and making-of-promises-of-eternal-love, repeated ad nauseum for half-an-hour (with, thankfully, some ad-breaks between, for relief) . There was a lot of sugar, but absolutely no spice.

The overdose of calorie-rich cootchie-cooing made me irritated and nauseated. I tried to be less intolerant and sarcastic, thinking of my college days when the then-boyfriend-and-now-spouse and I must have exchanged similar hour-long idiocies, but I could only recall spicy fights and spicier making-ups.

Young love seems so unreal, so uninteresting, so vacuous-empty and so over-sweet, it can give any mature person like me diabetes. It is very definitely a great thing to experience (once or twice, or many times over), but a very awkward and annoying thing to witness. My maid, who is usually silent and wide-eyed, sneered and made catty comments about how this shower of mutual love will dry up, post-marriage. My mother hardly looked up from the Sudoku she was doing (give her a juicy in-law drama and the sudoku will lie forlorn). Only my elder daughter was glued and giggling, thrilled at her first exposure to ‘adult’ things like ‘love’.

I guess it’s all about which side of the fence you are. If you are young, then young love is the stuff of dreams and desires (I used to devour Mills and Boon paperbacks during adolescence). And if you’ve crossed the first-love-phase, then the sighs and cries will probably make you want to puke (I picked up one of the new ‘Indian’ Mills and Boons, but I couldn’t go beyond the first chapter). What's your take?

A MOM'S GUIDE TO A-B-C

2009-01-04T02:34:00.000+05:30

This is January, 2009, and it’ll hopefully mark the rite of passage of my Copy-kitten (the younger daughter) from Terrible Two to Tolerable Three (the elder Lil Cat is, thank God, a Slightly-more-sensible Seven). Numerous A-B-C books scattered around the house in various states of disintegration have made me realize that I have also been forced to relearn my A-B-Cs since 2001. Life has completely changed (as in shaken up, turned upside down, gone round the bend and never come back, done cartwheels, been on a roller-coaster) ever the deceptively quiet swaddled bundle was placed in my arms by the doctor (twice over).

· A is for AMAZEMENT – that’s my usual reaction to life, post-motherhood. I’m amazed at how quickly kids grow (including nails, hair and feet) and learn (say a four-letter word in front of them and see). I’m amazed at how long they fight sleep off (when you’re dying to sleep but daren’t) and how swiftly they do fall asleep (while you are lying wide awake beside them).
· B is for BOTTLES – why do we have to sterilize them when the BUNDLE OF JOY is happily licking walls and chewing shoes without falling sick?
· C is for CRAWLING - the CHILD crawls for six months and then begins to walk; the mother is forever made to crawl under beds and tables to search for anything she needs – from CLOTHESPINS to CASSEROLE LIDS.
· D is for DIAPERS – environmental hazard; maternal help.
· E is for ENERGY, and EXCITEMENT and EXPLORATION and etc – the EXCESS of which leaves you feeling like a squeezed-out dishrag.
· F is for FIGHTS – whoever said that siblings learn caring and sharing has made a right royal FOOL of us.
· G is for GAMES – with complicated, ever-changing rules but one certain ending – an all-out fight.
· H is for HOME – which can be HELL or HEAVEN depending on whether the kids are awake or sleeping.
· I is for I-Me-Myself – that part of life which has almost been bulldozed into non-existence.
· J is for JUMPING – from beds and window-sills and chairs and other places that make your heart JUMP right into your mouth.
J is also for JUNKFOOD – the only edible thing kids eat quickly (refer L).
· K is for KISS – that slurpy, sticky, noisy ummmm-aa kiss that makes all the hassles worthwhile.
· L is for LUNCHTIME – which begins at noon and goes on till night.
L is also for LEFTOVERS – which is every mother’s main source of food.
· M is for MOTHERHOOD – what a MAD, MESSY, MIXED-UP ride it is!
· N is for NO – the most frequently used word to answer any question – “Are you hungry?” “Did you break the jam-jar?” “Did you hit your sister?” “Aren’t you mama’s good little girl?”
· O is for OTHER’S – which is OBVIOUSLY more preferable than whatever belongs to self. This includes sister’s schoolbooks, mother’s purse, dad’s cellphone and friend’s tiffins.
· P is for POTTY – that POWERFUL god whose colour, consistency and frequency (or absence) of appearance dominates your daily conciousness.
· Q is for QUIET – and peace and calm and serenity which have quite disappeared from your life.
· R is for RHYMES – don’t dare to mix up Mary with the little lamb with Mary who was contrary or the audience will fly into a RAGE.
· S is for STORIES – reading which is compulsory before the kids go to sleep. I always curse anybody who gifts the kids fat STORY-BOOKS, because they have to be read aloud from end to end (miss a page and they’ll SPOT the cheating immediately) at one sitting.

S is also for SHOUTING - which is the only way of getting kids to hear you.
· T is for TANTRUMS – those kicking-screaming-throwing-things fits that smart kids use for maximum impact.
· U is for ULCER – a side-effect of motherhood, along with migraine, hoarse throat (see S)and backaches.
· V is for VOMITING – you get used to see it all over the bed, all over your clothes, all over the place. It is another weapon in the kids’ arsenal, scold too hard and they’ll VOLUNTARILY vomit out their food which you took so much time and patience to put in them.
· W is for WHY? – that dreadful question which kids keep asking WHEN you don’t know the answer (and also WHEN you do); motherhood is all about being chased by unending WHYs.
· X is for X-TREMES – the kids are always extremely hungry, or extremely un-hungry, extremely devilish or extremely angelic (which only makes you extremely suspicious), extremely wide-awake (at bedtime) or extremely sleepy (at feeding/studying time).
· Y is for YAWN – kids can yawn and blissfully fall asleep; moms can only yawn, sigh and move on to the next chore.
· Z is for Z-Z-Z – the most precious thing for all mothers, who are all seriously sleep-deprived, all the time. Even if it is only the kids who are z-z-z-ing, it’s a welcome break, because it gives you time to get things done, like I am doing now.