Random. Structured. Haphazard. All Me.

A Tangled Yarn of Thoughts Being Unravelled…

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  • Ps&Qs

    I constantly swing back and forth from amusement to annoyance when helping my son with his homework. Especially his language homework.

    My own language “skills” are middling to not-bad-at-all and my pronunciation of words (especially the word pronunciation) is usually correct. Of course Red did tell me that I’d been pronouncing ‘Audi’ and ‘apropos’ wrong my whole life and then sniggered his pert behind out of the room. In my defence I’ve hardly ever pronounced apropos; mainly used it in my emails and writing so there!

    Anyhoo, the offspring gets help with learning his words phonetically. And while saying them out loud every now and then his eyes glaze over and I know he’s in the land where Korra the Avatar exists and his mother’s voice correcting him is a drone that he can relegate to the background and forget. And while doing so he mispronounces a sound he’s been saying 10xs over in the last few minutes. That’s when my angry eyes come into play…

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    See, the thing is this…I was taught English (my adopted 1st language) by crusty nuns who had no compunction about rapping delicate young knuckles HARD with their even harder rulers and following that up with DAMN-YOU-TO-HELL looks for mispronouncing words or not speaking the Queen’s English; never mind that the grand dame hadn’t been our queen since well before we were born or the nuns themselves were supposed to embody compassion and not be more like her! Psst….follow arrows down

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    My flesh and blood warbles while he reads, fluctuates between accents (courtesy yours truly and Youtube) and affects a sing-song reading style which would have earned me an entire class on my knees had I dared to read things any differently.

    For those of us brought up on Wren&Martin ,English (the British variant) correctly isn’t a matter of choice. It’s a way of life. Add to it a few years of English literature classes where you’re liberally applying your penchant for poetry and prose with panache while being taught by teachers wearing a pince nez and you are stuck with correcting peoples’ pronunciation for life.

    And you know it’s a bordering a disease when you’re correcting it in your head when you can’t do it aloud.

    Alliteratively Yours,

    Moi

    P.S: This bit from My Fair Lady is rather apt for this post methinks…

  • Book Review: Sita’s Ramayana

    I haven’t ventured down the path to graphic novels at all. Parted ways with comics after grade school and just the written word was enough to hold my attention without needing the bells and whistles that illustrations provide.

    However, the senses must be appeased and of late I’ve wanted to have more visual stimulations while reading. Amazon came to the rescue with their curated list of graphic novels for beginnings, spanning genres (Go Amazon!) and I picked up a book that I’d heard a lot about but avoided reading purely because of my own biases.

    I need to mention these biases because they form a part of what leads me towards and away from books with topics such as these.

    As a child, many of my Sundays were dominated by watching the dramatized version of Ramayana on the telly. Apart from the slow pace and the excessive posturing or smiling on part of the characters; it always felt like Ram was quite the goody-two shoes and his wife excessively pure and perpetually giving in to his whims and fancies. Added to the mix was my mother’s staunch belief about not just looking at one source as the definitive stance on how things might play out. She advised me to read other books which gave contrary views on Ravan, Sita and Ram instead of taking them as flawed or perfect in entirety.

    Growing up in a country that largely espouses one religion, it’s tough to express one’s own contrary thoughts about a historical, mythological figure without ending up on some evangelist’s hit list or having to dodge trolling from all and sundry who seem to have drunk from the same spiked punch bowl of jingoistic fervor; not having one original thought in their heads, ever.

    Here endeth the anecdotal part of the book review. Onto the actual book itself. It’s a delight. Visually. It’s a delight in its simplicity. Samhita Arni (the author) and Moyna Chitrakar’s (the illustrator-storyteller) collaboration is a visual delight that doesn’t detract from the story that has been retold many times over. The book is actually two-fold in that the words and pictures both paint a story that’s being told simultaneously; without one tripping up the other. They are in sync beautifully.

    The narrative is very simple but not simplistic and manages to convey a lot of emotion without spelling everything out. The injustices of war, the machinations of man come to life in ink- both words and drawn.

    I would recommend this book as a coffee table gift for friends and family. It doesn’t mean one is embracing their (Hindu) religious identity. But for better or for worse, Ram, Sita and Ravan are a part of our cultural identities. If not for that, get it for the artwork alone…it’s folksy, bold and timeless.

  • V-Day Bloglet

    I woke up a sleepy male this morning with a nuzzle, a hug and a kiss and told him I loved him. He replied by saying, “Me too. Can I watch the iPad after I come back from school today?”

    Be still my beating heart! Such emotion will sweep me away…

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    A picture from the days of yore when I didn’t have to wrestle him down to kiss him silly!

  • Open Wide…

    I had written this post on Livejournal, my erstwhile online diary many moons ago. And I remembered the incident which inspired the post during my dental check-up today.

    I like to think my threshold of pain is about average. I know I got loud during childbirth but then again you’re expected to so that doesn’t count. Most people fear going to the dentist or any doctor who’s going to look into a body cavity simply because we’re mute spectators and we feel very vulnerable. We have to just lie back and let the doctor do what they will till they are done and we have no idea of how things are going till they deign to enlighten us.

    One could argue that going to a cardiologist or a pulmonologist should provoke the same reaction, however it doesn’t always. Those doctors seldom have their hands in our bodies. They prescribe meds, xrays and use a stethoscope or have us undergo activities which tells them how well the organ is doing; or not.

    A dentist has the total opposite effect however. They fishhook your mouth to get a better look, their scaling instruments inevitably draw blood; however little and they probe the inside of your mouth- a place seldom visited by anyone else since you were a baby and your parents were teaching you how to brush.

    Today, when the dentist was getting the plaque off my teeth, I had nothing to do but wait. She kept taking my face from one grimace to another the way she kept pulling my lips this way and that and it was annoying.

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    Like someone had more control over my face than I did. It’s like you’re a puppet in someone’s hands and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s worse when you go to a gynecologist or a proctologist because you’re most vulnerable in that pose and hoping the doctor tells you that all’s well.

    Anyhow, I kept thinking how my tonsils looked and if the doctor was getting bored while doing a “standard cleaning” without any challenges like rotting teeth, halitosis and tooth extractions to keep things interesting for her.

    I thought about Darla from Finding Nemo-

    I composed some blog posts in my head, wondered why they didn’t play muzak in the doctor’s office and how long it would take me to get home during the morning office rush. And then we were done.

    Rinse. Wipe. Repeat. And leave the doctor’s office with instructions to floss more regularly than I had been till now.

    Finis.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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  • When The Males Go the Ice Cream Route

    Normally we find depictions of girls and women gorging themselves on ice cream as a way to take away the blues or mend a broken heart. Well we find that in depictions of life in the Americas or the non-Asian part of the world.

    Indian women, with their funkier palate eat deep fried grub, things served with liquids of dubious origins et al but on the whole, ice cream works. It really works. Especially the ones with the semi-liquidy, fudgy centers…ummmmmm. But getting back to the matter at hand, even males are resorting to drowning their sorrows in ice cream when they feel the twinges of heartache and gloom.

    Case in point- MLM and his usual playmate (a 4.5 yr old girl) who we are going to call A were playing happily when another girl arrived on the scene. Let’s call her S. Now A almost exclusively plays with MLM and might have wanted a change. Who doesn’t? And S was without her usual posse and came upon MLM&A and wanted some girl time so she and A hooked up. Where was MLM you ask? Sidelined. Without a glance.

    Now before you get onto your ‘awwws’ for him I want you to know that when he came to know A he kind of severed all ties with the rest of the buddies he had and only occasionally stooped to say a hi and hello. So he kind of had it coming but given that they’re all kids and kinda dumb about life we’ll overlook all social transgressions.

    So he trudged home, told me he was sad and had a big, pouty underlip to prove it. He moped here and there and finally zeroed in on the freezer and picked up a small tub of ice cream, picked up the biggest shovel-like serving spoon we had at home carved out a chunk of the ice cream that left only a teaspoon of it in the bottom of the tub.

    When I came rushing into the kitchen to stop him, he made his most determined “fake-sad” face and said “I need ALLLLL to this to feel better”.

    Whaddya gonna do? So I grabbed a spoon and joined in…I wasn’t about to let double chocolate chip get away from me!

    Cheers!

     

  • Here Comes The Tough Stuff

    “Quite a few times it’s happened that I wrote something but couldn’t publish it because my inner crazy lady didn’t allow for anything to get sent out unless the requisite tags and categories had been ticked off. While cleaning up the blogging space, I’ve come across stuff I’ve left half-written, written but unedited or written with just the publishing bit left. This is one of them.”

    The offspring is in Upper KG or Pre-primary-2. It’s the step before 1st grade commences from next year.

    Last year, any homework he was given was just over the weekend and it was a rehash of the stuff done over the weekend. A minimal rehash. This year he’s getting homework almost everyday. Which isn’t a bad thing because 1st grade will come with homework assignments for multiple subjects irrespective of what kind of prior academic background the child may have.

    Only, the problem isn’t with homework per se. It’s with *what’s* given as homework. It would seem that the little man is anti-Hindi handwriting practice and pattern writing.

    I should explain that anything repetitive which seems non-fun from the beginning is entirely unlikely to hold his interest for more than a few seconds.

    So we try to build up his interest by getting a fun pencil box, erasers, sharpeners…the works. Or rather as much as a kid in primary school is likely to require. And what does he do? He wants to sharpen his pencils down to nubs because the shavings can be made into flowers. He wants to scribble on his homework notebook because then he gets to erase and as all know how much fun that is!

    When I tried to show him how to write his letters he stiffened his hand into near rigor mortis mode. Of course put a plate of cookies next to the same hand and Lo! and Behold! Resurrection occurs and a small hand reaches for the chocolate chips yummies at lightening speed!

    Sheesh!

  • Waterloo-Circa 2014

    “Quite a few times it’s happened that I wrote something but couldn’t publish it because my inner crazy lady didn’t allow for anything to get sent out unless the requisite tags and categories had been ticked off. While cleaning up the blogging space, I’ve come across stuff I’ve left half-written, written but unedited or written with just the publishing bit left. This is one of them.”

    Ordinarily I am a card-carrying agnostic but today I am ready to drop to my knees and give thanks to the Galactic Amoeba if it means that MLM will conk off early and give me a wide berth while he does so.

    Today has been mind-numbingly exhausting and I have begun to think that I’ve lost my temper for the last time with no clear roadmap to find it again. I just wanted MLM restrained in one place. And since they don’t have straitjackets in preschooler size…well you get my drift.

    Some days are so extraordinarily taxing that you end up questioning what the heck you thought you were getting into when you were happy to see those 2 little red lines. Let me illustrate…I’ve had dinosaurs in my food, in my coffee, in front of my face, going up my nose, peeking into my ear, poking in my gluteus maximus and all because I sought to foster his love for the wretched reptiles by buying him more dino figures to boost his pretend play and keep him from the evils of the idiot box! *bangs head against the wall*

    Right about now I have no problem if he turns into a tater tot on his way to becoming a couch potato if it means I’ll get 2 minutes of peace while I use the loo.

    Till then I’ll give my knees some workout and pray for sleep…

    “He that sleeps feels not the tooth-ache.”
    Cymbeline (5.4.176)

    Or the aches brought on by the force of nature in the guise of a child!

    Image courtesy-garthandkaceyhamilton.blogspot.com

  • Music Vs. Melody

    Getting MLM up in the mornings was usually a bit of a struggle. I tried all the methods my folks tried on me: stern wake-up calls after a point, taking the blanket away and even shaking him awake when nothing would seem to work. But because he’s made of sterner stuff and mainly because he cares two hoots about displeasing his parents; my flesh and blood would make like a snake and coil up good and proper and it was tough to get him to uncoil.

    This child has always liked music. From sudden forays into Sufi-based stuff to Cars to jarring Bollywood beats he likes pretty much most things. They just need to be uptempo. For the past few months we’ve been waking him to music. Thanks to the advent of Alexa in our lives, the songs can be changed even if I’m not nearby and that helps because this kid goes through playlists like the Flash on steroids!

    Anyhoo, after weeks and weeks of nothing but Bollywoody stuff my ears were begging for a change and I was determined to give it to them! A search for Indian raagas I hadn’t heard in a while got me to a beautiful arrangement of Raag Jaunpuri played on the Esraj by Pandit Ashesh Banerjee. And my ears felt blissful!

    See, there’s a thin line between music and cacophony. One person’s music is another’s headache. Cacofonix has been a poster child for that for years. But not everything has a melody to it. Lots of notes can be strung together to make an arrangement that isn’t jarring but it doesn’t always uplift, soothe or invigorate. Now, I’m up there with most of the Bollywood song junkies here. Most songs I like and dance to at home are the stuff auto rickshaw drivers blare over their cheap, tinny, scratchy speakers. In fact, I heard my go-to song while travelling in an auto a few years ago and it never fails to disappoint or do the trick when I need to get out of a funk.

    But a properly arranged and played melody liberates you…the gradually rising tempo, the adding of new, more complex notes and musical arrangements seem to mimic the cadence of your breathing, your exhilaration and finally your sense of joy or contentment. That’s not been happening with the daily dose of Swag Se Swagat and Kaala Chashma blaring on the speakers.

    Still, once music enters your life, it never leaves. It may take twists and turns and you may find yourself in musical alleys of folk music, kiddy movie OSTs or even a Brahms lullaby but it never leaves.

    Thank goodness.

  • The Magic That Is Whiskey

    This post was inspired over a dining table in a living room a few years ago after a particular good and smooth Kentucky whiskey tasting with some good, good company. Cheers!

    “As I was goin’ over the Cork and Kerry mountains.

    I saw Captain Farrell and his money he was counting.
    I first produced my pistol and then produced my ,rapier.
    I said: “Stand and deliver or the devil he may take ya”.
    Yeah
    Musha ring dum-a do dum-a da, Whack for my daddy-o,
    Whack for my daddy-o, There’s whiskey in the jar-o.”

    Sang Metallica or Thin Lizzy if you so prefer but they sang about WHISKEY! and that is what this is all about.

    With most people, alcohol is an acquired taste and hard liquor even more so. So when we hear McSteamy or McDreamy say, “Double scotch, single malt” we think it’s an easy thing to have. But it’s not. Whiskey can be a regular run-of-the-mill social drinker’s pleasure or there is the other kind; the kind I’m going to wax on eloquently about for a few paras.

    The sight of a whiskey should bring to mind the words “molten“. Its’ honeyed, fluid, amber color needs to inspire appreciation visually. This helps if it’s in a cut glass crystal decanter. The old-fashioned one with the heavyish top. The bottle should be then positioned to have a ray of light hit it in a such a way that the amber changes to golden and then almost molassesy again.

    Aforementioned decanter should have matching or nearly-matching fat-bottomed glasses where the whiskey isn’t poured but splashed, in a studied casual manner. It’s studied because you have your eagle-eyes on the flow of the whiskey and seeing it fill up past the cuts and crevices in the glass till it creates a kaleidoscope of amber and gold in your glass while you swirl it around.

    When you finally get to the tasting part, because unless it’s moonshine sniffing it won’t always reveal the mysteries behind it; it should roll off your tongue and down your throat in a pirouette that makes you sigh in pleasure and want to savor the next sip. Never GULP but a sip. Dainty if need be or a more healthy one but one where your lips are definitely pursed.

    The next sip is liquid sunshine, warm and comforting and eases open your senses and makes you want to step outside yourself while the whiskey courses through your systems and ignites you in a way tequila never can. You will not dance on tables after a sip of a good whiskey or bourbon but you will become, even if for a bit, a connoisseur of everything that is sensual, savory and satisfying.

    This is a feeling that truffles, champagne and strawberries cannot give you for that is the magic of a good whiskey.

  • The Little Piggies In A Woman’s Life

    The Little Piggies In A Woman’s Life

    Piggies is purely a metaphor. It doesn’t mean anyone who looks porcine, grunts or even loves to shove their face into the slop they eat or wallow in the mud. And even if there’s an insidious thread of the meaning woven through the blog…tough!

    Since childhood we all get introduced to the little piggies. Different cultures name the toes as different things or animals but we all play the same game in some form or the other with kids. And sometimes with adults too but that’s a different post for a different time and with an NC-17 rating in it ;)

    Each piggy does a different thing but they remain part of the same foot. One could intellectually masturbate long enough to derive the notion that it’s symbolic of the different roles the same person plays in life OR the different roles different people play in the same person’s life.

    Let’s go ahead with the second theory. And being a woman’s blog…we’ll take a woman as the rat in the maze.

    Every woman (post the onset of puberty and definitely after having sampled the joys of sexual fulfillment) needs people to play these roles-

    • the shopping buddy
    • the bitching buddy
    • the talking about non-personal and non-intimate stuff buddy
    • the no-holds-barred buddy
    • the sympathetic buddy
    • the empathetic buddy
    • the hand-slapper buddy (they exist to keep you on the straight and narrow)

    So they play the game of ‘this little piggy went to market’ and from time to time each piggy has their day in the sun.

    It seldom,and I mean that it’s a huge statistical improbability, that a single person can embody all these qualities for a woman. Or keep embodying them consistently without dropping the ball.

    And the cardinal sin here would be to look for this person in a member of the opposite sex. The fact that we have different physical characteristics means something here. A man doesn’t usually get the rationale behind the exhausting range of emotions a woman feels and expresses. Things are fairly cut and dry for them except for those prima donnas you wanna bitch slap because they can’t decide when their “feminine” side takes over and when they start functioning with the brain lying south of the border.

    But having these different people around can and does maintain homeostasis in a woman’s life. Each of these people holds up a mirror of her varied facets for her to see, understand and grow stronger from.

    However, each one of them have one common factor binding them all…get enough alcohol into them and you’ll have them singing karaoke, laughing like loons and possibly dancing on the tables as well.

    Amen to that!