Random. Structured. Haphazard. All Me.

A Tangled Yarn of Thoughts Being Unravelled…

Recent Posts

  • The Mine Field That Is My House

    Many moons ago I had spewed a bit via this post but last night I realized that my modest home is quite fraught with stuff that’s likely to blow up (figuratively) or cause me to blow up (literally).

    Case in point- My kid and his quest for building a dino army keeps showing up (read under) all foreseeable and some not so foreseeable places. Last night’s trip to the bedroom was an obstacle course par excellence!

    This is how it went down- focus on the word down. Now the charming child I’ve brought into this world, had locked Red and I out of our bedroom? Did I mention we’ve been co-sleeping, exclusively? It’s not fun. But since his room and ours has a connecting window that opens up from his room, I thought I’d sorted things out quite alright. Erm…not quite.

    So just on the other side of MLM’s window is a futon and ahead of the futon is a few open feet of room followed by the bed. I always keep a bit of a gap between the window and the futon for these reasons and also to make it easier to sweep and mop but that was to be my downfall in every sense of the word.

    So the space behind the futon was littered with dinos. The pointy kinds. I think the beak of a Quetzalcoatlus (pronounced as  /ˌkwɛts(ə)lkəʊˈatləs/ for those who give a damn) or a Pteranodon (drop the P while saying it and you’re gravy) poked me in my foot leading me to leapfrog over the entire width of the futon and step on a Hotwheels car that effectively got me half airborne till I broke my fall on the futon. And being the superb athelete that I am, I was suprised that nothing was broken…bones and futon included.

    So up I get, seething in anger and ready to grab the kid by the scruff of his neck and dump him in his room and his quite comfortable bed when I stepped on a marble and hopped on one foot to go and sit on the air conditioner’s remote which was parked right where I would normally sleep!

    A lopsided, ballet through the air to land in a graceless manner in a bed where a rapidly growing child was sleeping diagonally across. Naturally.

    Oh by the way, did I mention it was rather dark in the room just the LED glow from the AC spread a dim light over a negligible part of the room? Nevermind…that’s usually a given.

     

  • Out Of The Mouth of Babes

    Well…just one babe to be precise. Mine. To be more..preciser(?).

    This summer holiday has been fun for the brat. He’s always very happy with my folks and despite the heavier discipline here than at home, he manages to get away with doing his thing most of the times because we love his buck-toothed, lisping, pug-nosed, long-lashed self and he knows it too!

    Some of the funnier (and always cute, let’s not forget that) stuff he’s said to me over the last few days make me laugh each time I think about it so am sharing it here with those who peak at my blog from time to time.

    The cutest thing #1- Ayu (he always prefixes EACH AND EVERY SENTENCE with that word) if I kiss you, you’ll become a frog! And seeing my WTF expression he hastily explained…” don’t be upset. If you turn into a frog that means you are going to become a princess later.” For those who are feeling all at sea, the allusion is from Disney’s The Princess and the Frog.

    The cutest thing#2- Ayu…I made lunch for you (indicating some utensils he picked up from my mom’s kitchen). It’s DEE-LI-SHUSH! It’s rice, banana and mushroom. All the things you like to eat!!

    The cutest thing #3- Ayu…my tooth fall down (said with a really sad face after an extremely loose tooth fell out while he was rinsing his mouth). I need my tooth BECAUSE the Tooth Fairy won’t give me toys without my tooth.

    There are other cute things he’s been spouting as well but these have been by far the cutest ones uttered.

    Of course the one that took the cake was when he asked me if I knew that when he was a baby he was in my tummy and I had to make the proper astonished ‘you-don’t-say- face and send him off happy that he gave me an earth shattering news.

    Such is the world we live in.

    Amen!!

    6365

  • Movie Review-Captain America: Civil War

    Image courtesy Google Images

    It’s been AGES since I saw a movie on the same day it released. Probably not since 04 but then that’s too far into the past for me to dredge up the when and wherefores.

    I generally enjoy the offerings from the Marvel universe. Captain America is the typical boy scout but he’s easy on the eyes and then Iron Man? Forget about it! uttered in a pseudo Italiano-Americano accento!

    I was waiting for this new installment of Captain America because I wanted to know what new person, event, catastrophe they could throw into the mix to make the movie engrossing.

    And they came up with a fairly plausible one- a wronged soldier who goes vigilante and wants to bring down the wrath of…well himself on the Avengers! As far as plots go, not bad. The action is as always, over the top but damn enjoyable. Iron Man does seem to enjoy top billing in the Avenger movies maybe due to the guy who plays him but I find that I missed the chemistry between Pepper Potts and Tony Stark in this movie. Gwenyth Paltrow probably being too busy in promoting Goop!

    But back to reviewing the movie- in a nutshell? Eat at home and save yourself the money for the popcorn and soda because it’s nearly a 2 1/2 hour-long movie and you need munchies while the drama unfolds and the super-powered punches are thrown all over the place.

    Thor and The Hulk being the big misses here especially because they did have some screen time in the first Avengers movie and did what they were supposed to and in the second one there was a nice little thing happening between The Widow and Hulk.

    C.A.C.W- is about friendship. Redemption and essentially Big Brother trying to control the “greater good” and Tony Stark’s need to have the last word.

    Read the wikipedia page for the spoilers because I don’t want to be the reason someone doesn’t go and buy overpriced popcorn to watch this movie.

    I was surrounded by high school and college boys who were whopping along with Iron Man and shrieking whenever someone got slammed into concrete or some or equally hard surface and realized that these movies make you feel younger and somewhat mindless. But it’s fun so it’s all good!

  • The Right Way To Kvetch

    When faced with a “to kvetch or not to kvetch” kind of a question, do yourself and especially those around you a favor, don’t. But since kvetching isn’t like Solitaire aka an activity that can be done all by your lonesome, a wee bit of a gander at The Ring Theory of Kvetching prevents you from tasting your feet unduly and also spares those around you from wishing you a few lightyears away due to well…your kvetchiness!

    The concept is simple and can be applied to multiple scenarios. Or so I hear. Draw a circle and write the name of the individual who is afflicted, emotionally distraught or just vulnerable due to upheavals in their life. Around that circle draw a bigger circle and write the name of the people who are impacted the most due to closeness with the afflicted person (let’s call them A for the sake of my thumbs since this post is being typed out on a phone, real time). These people are typically immediate family members, best pals et al. And then keep adding circles and also adding the names of the people who are gradually more distant in relation to A. You don’t have to map everyone including the neighborhood grocer but relevant people and those who might want to look in on A during a difficult phase.

    Now the Ring Theory simplies things and quite easily too- don’t dump on the people in the smaller circles and especially not on A. And your opinions and advice and anecdotes which may be best suited for a situation such as a person recovering from a bad bout of ill health, can ideally be directed towards people in the outer circles since they are less likely to take offence, listen with a less distracted air because they are less emotionally vested in the individual in the smallest circle.

    And why is this theory important or even necessary? Well I’ll quote my own experience here. A little over two weeks ago my father had a severe health crisis and it was touch and go for a bit. A good bit. Everything in our lives was put on hold just to hear the doctors’ updates about his progress. He’s pulled through and will make a decent enough recovery but during those days when he was in the hospital and had tubes coming out of him, some people who came to “support” us and look in on him were clueless about what to say. Or what they ought to have said.

    Rather than just hold our hand and send good vibes our way they spoke of people they had lost. Why avoiding specific medical interventions (something my father *had* undergone) was the right way to do things and a host of other inputs which were irrelevant, offered in a manner not sympathetic or even remotely helpful.

    To such people I think I ought to mail a printed copy of The Ring Theory of Kvetching and maybe even send a framed copy.

    Bottom line? It’s not merely enough that you mean well. If you can’t translate that into action or words that do what are supposed to in a particular situation, then your presence doesn’t amount to anything significant for the people you want to be present for. No one is taking a roll call to see who showed up and who didn’t. So if you do show, make it count.

    Here endeth the lesson.

  • Book Review- Fowl Language

    This book speaks for itself. It’s non-preachy and basically talks about the incomprehensible, inexplicable turns a person’s life takes once they become a parent. From juice boxes to joy, partying to poop and basically the utter, utter delight and nerve-wracking situation that is parenthood. Brian Gordon is someone every parent and non-parent should read (although parents will be the ones nodding along like bobble heads while the non-parents pat themselves on the back on having dodged that particular bullet!) to see the humor that often escapes us during parenting. Especially during poopy-times :)

    Pick up your copy today. I did! :)

    Screenshot_2016-04-09-09-48-22

  • 36

    36

    Ask a woman if she’s easier in her mind about being 36 years old versus being 36 in the waist and you can bet you’ll be on the receiving end of the MOST disdainful look which roughly translates to, ” Yeah right! AS IF! What kind of question is that anyhow? How DUH ARE you?!” and it goes on and on and on.

    For someone who *is* 36 and enjoying it (so far), the fear of turning 36 in the waist wasn’t too far in the horizon. The girth has been expanding and innate laziness and a bad case of unstickittoiveness led me to think that henceforth denim (the wonder material and no, it’s not Lycra) might be something I could find and fit into with great difficulty.

    And I’ll tell you why this is. The craze for skinny, low riding jeans for women seems to have taken over the world where the words comfort-fit are possibly the worst things you can say to a salesperson apparently. Each stack of denim, whether in the time-tested brands of Levis, Lee or Pepe, seems to have variations of skinny over and over again.

    When a person like me, who hasn’t been remotely skinny EVER, heads over to shop for denim the sales people seem to gulp and summon their courage to tell me nothing is available in my size and probably won’t be unless I start to shop in stores which cater specifically to those of us who are more than reasonably well-fed.

    I told Red I wanted a pair of new jeans on my birthday, the old one long having given up the ghost with all the thigh chaffing and splitting at the seams from my ever-expanding ways. He took it well although I suspect he had some scenes playing out in his head of me storming out of the trial rooms ranting about how only skinny people could shop off the rack these days for basic clothing yada yada yada.

    And contrary to his usual manner of tasting his feet while he talks, he did not ask the sales girl to get me the largest size they had available. He merely gave me the floor and told me to pick what I liked and try it on. Phew…birthdays sure good days for husbands to learn tact. Sadly the next day they go back to square one.

    Anyhoo, I picked a pair to try out and entertained scary thoughts of my own about all the huffing, puffing and jiggling up and down, hopping on one foot just to get the jeans on and then shimmying like you know who (the ladies who like to dance around poles with minimal to no clothes on) just to get the pants up to my waist when a miracle happened………….wait for it………………………………………………………………………………..The pants rose like magic (but not like extra-large clown pants) to meet me on their own. I was able to button the waist without doing the Lamaze huff-puffs and when I squatted to see how tightly the seams were being tested, they didn’t even whimper! Ask women how often they moon the trial room mirrors when test driving new jeans and you’ll have a bunch of women fit to cry their eyes out!

    Manna from the heavens on the first pair of jeans?! Someone up there (or down there) wanted me to have a happy birthday for sure!

    And what is the point of this rambling and avoidable description of me fitting into jeans? It’s not about the weight entirely. The older you get you do mellow but you also realize there might not be going back to certain things. A 28-inch waist for one. Not only because your kid would miss head butting your extra bouncy tummy and your husband would end up needing pillows to lean on instead of you but also because somewhere you made your peace with the flab. You certainly don’t want to nurture it but it’s there so what’re gonna do? You love to hate it!

    Finding something that goes right, the way it’s supposed to, the first time around is a nice change from everything that you need to and have to work at. A pair of jeans that slid up the on the first try without any grunts out of you and were soft enough to sleep in as well, sometimes makes all the difference.

    Now if it had turned out that my waist was 36 instead of my age, that would be a descent to a whole new level of madness and a totally different blog post altogether! We are talking a new level in the Inferno for God’s sake!

    Salut!

  • Oh The Bleeding Hearts…

    Various dictionaries define the term “bleeding hearts” in almost the same terms but I like the Merriam Websters version the best viz: a person who shows extravagant sympathy especially for an object of alleged persecution.

    I have NO clue how Sea World functions. I’m not meant to. I’m meant to go there, buy overpriced tickets, even more highly priced snacks and bankrupt myself buying souvenirs in the toy shop. But what I do get out of it is an inedible memory and an experience that brings forth my inner child or that person who still loves to be thrilled!

    For most of us seeing a killer whale up front and personal is an unimaginable feat. To see an orca breach, do flips with a body that weighs God only knows how much and then high-five its trainer, is a mind-blowing experience. Unless you live Orlando or San Diego and have taken all your visitors to see Shamu so many times that you could yawn your way through the Believe show and not feel a whit of regret!

    So when I read in the papers that Sea World will be closing the orca exhibit owing to pressure from environmental groups and animal rights activists, I was quite miffed. I’ve been waiting for ages to share the orca experience with my kid and I feel that professing sympathy and empathy towards the voiceless can sometimes go overboard. I mean this isn’t like whaling for blubber or decimating the population of a particular aquatic breed out of greed or necessity. This is a rather harmless form of entertainment. Or so I would like to believe.

    The number of orcas that Sea world has bred over the years isn’t such a huge number that it has impacted the wild orca population. For that matter neither, as far as I know, have they been confined to water tanks so tiny that they can barely move their flippers. Is it really that bad to explore the extent to which animals as intelligent as dolphins, whales, seals and sea lions can be taught? Is it bad to teach them behavior which isn’t in their nature but which they seem to take to remarkably well nonetheless? Who gets to decide on the animals’ well being?

    If we look at physiological needs alone, which most animals barring humans can comfortably live their lives on; then feeding them, keeping them in their natural habitat and providing opportunities to mate ought to tick all the boxes according to Darwin. So ideally a close approximation of the same should count for something?

    I am against those so-called astrologers who stuff parrots into cages smaller than a shoe box or those who keep their pet monkeys on a leash that can just as easily garrote them if they take more than a few steps in any direction. But is a giant corporation like Sea World incapable of providing for the health and since we *are* talking about it, the happiness of these beautiful aquatic creatures?

    I guess if these activists went to a show every now and then instead of looking for issues they can raise the red flag over, they might be happier people too. I really wish people would protest against all these protests! It gets to be tediously righteous.

    Just my two cents worth.

  • Book Review: Ghachar Ghochar

    It’s been a long time since I’ve done a book review. Better late than never, especially for a book like Ghachar Ghochar.

    image courtesy Amazon.in

     

    A friend and fellow reading afficiando who also wears other interesting hats was cleaning house and put up a give-away of her beloved books. Red lucked upon this particular one and the result was a Saturday night discovery of a impactful new book that both of us finished one after another.

    Written very honestly and without sounding judgemental, Vivek Shanbhag does a creditable job exposing the follies and foibles of the nouveau riche whose lives become complex on account of their wealth but whose bourgeoisie never really goes away.

    Written in Kannada originally and beautifully rendered in English by Srinath Perur , the book holds up a mirror to the middle class society and mentality globally (IMHO) but more specifically in the Indian context rather than just the Kannadigas.

    Points in its favor are the novella form and the simple and yet engaging narrative which people will be drawn to whether or not they belong to the strata of the people portrayed. The individual character sketches too, are very believable and seem to take shape effortlessly on paper without too much of anything seeming contrived.

    And while this book isn’t something that makes me spout superlatives, its stark and unflinching honesty is what makes it stand apart from a lot of other reads of the same ilk.

    Reader rating-2 thumbs up.

  • The Laundry Bugbear

    I can totally understand why certain people cross over to the dark side and embrace OCD. Well, given that we’re talking of OCD am guessing the embracing is a compelling act, ‘cuse the pun, por favor.

    So laundry…yeah. It’s a necessary evil if you want to wear clean clothes and in case you don’t have a Centurion card to back up the expense of new clothes every day. The second biggest reason of laundry being a must-do is kids. You can always tell the significant other to turn the undies inside out and make do if he can’t find a clean pair (not that it *ever* happens in this household..ahem ahem) but you can’t tell your kid that they don’t have their favorite monster face undies or that their dragon tshirt that they wear as a uniform each time you go out to eat Chinese is still languishing at the bottom of their hamper.

    But the act of doing laundry is something that has become a god-awful elaborate ritual. Earlier it was maybe putting the washing machine on a different mode for delicate clothes or a heavy load but now it’s a 3-4 step process in actually washing the clothes.

    Take a gander at this-

    1. Pre-treat whites and colors with separate bleaches for whites and colors respectively and keep aside for 5-10 minutes. But first test on an inner seam to make sure the bleach doesn’t bleach anything else except the damn stain and your son’s favorite tshirt isn’t missing a stegosaurus head or triceratops tail at the end of laundry cycle.
    2. Use a special cuffs and collars liquid for the rings around the neck and well..wrists. These rings give me a slack-jawed look each time I see them. They rate right up there with the rings of the crop circles that has the world goggled. I just don’t understand how people who bathe regularly and one of whom I personally scrub till spanking red, gets rings around the collars. EVERY TIME.
    3. Check on the pre-treated clothes and give a scrub if needed to get the stubborner stains out. It’s always needed.
    4. Scrub seams, near the buttons a bit more delicately of the rest of the clothes.
    5. Choose appropriate load in the machine.
    6. Add appropriate detergent- powder on the days we’re washing jeans and everyday tees and the special liquid one for the Lord and Master’s clothes and school uniforms. Damn private schools!
    7. Add fabric softener or yet more bleach depending upon how well each member of the family has fed themselves.
    8. Finally, close the lid and send a prayer up to the Gods of Laundry and Washed Clothes that the clothes at least appear washed even if they don’t look sparkling clean.

    And that, ladies and gents, is how I do laundry at home.

    One the last few occasions I’ve asked Red to do the laundry (the last time was in mid-2015) his shirts still had the sleeved rolled up, I found 50 rupees in the pocket of his cargos and the drum of the washing machine was clinking like a Vegas slot machine when someone hits the jackpot all because the loose change hadn’t been kept aside.

    Nuff said about why he will never do laundry unless I’m there to micromanage it entirely!

    How do I get out this vicious cycle of cursing a blue streak while I look at the dirty clothes and wish there wasn’t any dirt, pencils in the world or that Indians didn’t need turmeric in their food?! I’ve actually thought about switching to all-white foods but I don’t see these two eating cauliflower and white sauce with rice forevermore.

    In the meanwhile, Clorox will be my best friend for ever and ever and ever!

    Amen.

    P.S: If this post reads slightly in the Cinderella vein, it is. Although instead of a buff Prince Charming, my version has a charwoman with a washboard.

    Image courtesy http://preparednessadvice.com

     

     

  • There’s A Great White Under The Bed

    It’s only 3 inches long but my big toe did come in contact with its great gaping maws…and this isn’t the first time there was a “dangerous” animal lurking where it shouldn’t have been. We’ve had similar incidents earlier also.

    Want to know what else is going on? Well there’s a mini Giant Octopus hiding behind the sink in my bathroom. Probably waiting to wrap its tentacle around my wrist when I reach for my toothbrush!

    Or the crocodile that swished its tail at my nose last night when I turned over in my sleep.

    The only saving grace has been the Stegosaurus (aptly named as Steggy) who was nice enough not to squish me when he landed on my head before MLM’s bed time.

    Between coiled up snakes at Red’s feet during breakfast and Giant Squid’s surfacing in the shower cubicle, MLM’s toys are everywhere! Day and night and in every kind of scenario. The only place they aren’t in is the damn toy box.

    Is this the same kid who used to go to Gymboree and do “clean-up, clean-up” after playtime was done? I can’t see hide nor hair of him anymore. It’s prehistoric reptiles and marine creatures as far as my myopic eyes can see and my toes can step on…sadly enough…