Random. Structured. Haphazard. All Me.

A Tangled Yarn of Thoughts Being Unravelled…

Recent Posts

  • A Chef Named Rinse…

    I kid you not! I’ve met quite a few people with interesting names but this guy was something else!

    A young man who is a chef at the Marriott in Kochi, specializing in salads. And he totally knocked out of the park a lovely fresh raw papaya and mango salad!

    I was unfortunate to have eaten a sad, sad version of a Thai papaya salad at an eatery a while back. It made me all blah. Stuff you like to eat getting tweaked till it no longer has the essence of what it’s supposed to be like; is just messed up.

    But the salad I had for lunch after a mini-swim was really the right note to strike on the first day of the Christmas break. Palate cleanser 101 and full of flavor.

    I am joyous.

    Amen.

  • When You Can’t Sleep…

    in the middle of the night, you catch up on stuff you’ve recorded on tv for just such a situation.

    Red and I’ve been watching The Voice for a couple of weeks now. We usually end up watching movies or sitcoms and usually avoid the singing and dancing competitions but while surfing channels on a Saturday some time back, we heard some utterly beautiful voices singing and we were hooked!

    Some of the things they sang were known to us and some we had to look up on Youtube to hear the original but The Voice had become a weekend staple by then.

    When this guy won the 9th season of the show it was no surprise to anyone! His voice is clear, rich and powerful and he can do crazy things with it. Not Freddie Mercury tonal range crazy but the kind of stuff that wows you when you realize that he’s just 22 years old!

    I’d conked off extra early yesterday putting the offspring to bed but when my mandatory 6 hours of sleep were up I got up restless and started prowling around the house. And you can count sheep only for so long without thinking lamb chops and becoming hungry in the bargain so I opted for entertainment instead.

    Hearing good music is a liberating experience in itself. Whether you can appreciate the technicality of a song, the chords or tone; just the sheer feeling evoked when a person’s voice seems to travel right down your body and spark an indescribable feeling of joy and contentment. It’s almost like being in a rapture.

    As a person who’s a second-rate shower singer on her best day, it’s fabulous listening to voices belt out notes which capture my attention and make me think, “Oh my god…someone can actually DO this! Someone is actually capable of bringing out this kind of a sound from within themselves. Damn!” Some of them get looped in my head and I keep humming them till the brat says enough and takes me though the painful-pleasure of listening to his perpetually-looped musical choices.

    But getting back to The Voice and Jordan Smith and his scrumptious coach, Adam Levine, it was well worth not getting back to bed because that boy can sing and how! And when someone that good gets that perfectly-well deserved award it’s entirely like the icing on a particularly good cake.

    And while his parents cried into Adam’s jacket and the other contestants thought about what could have been for them, Jordan belted out a line of Climb Every Mountain (kinda cliched if you ask me)…I had just one thought going on in my head….who’s going to clean all that damn confetti off the stage?!

    Good night and good morrow.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Bloglet: From Highs to Lows

    It’s my personal view point that very few things have the kind of power to reduce us to feeling tiny and insignificant like technology does.

    Take this particular case…I got my brand new laptop. Tis pretty. It’s not black but I let it slide. Lovely big screen, faster RAM and more memory for me to store all the delicious little junk I end up storing…like squirrels and acorns…

    Anyhoo…it’s all good, we’re bonding and I can’t get the @ sign to work! Instead it ends up giving me the ” sign again and again.

    I call my 24/7 tech support aka Red aka The Hubster aka He Who Married And Repented et al spewed forth and finally while typing out this post I “accidentally” found out that the bleeping symbols had been switched on the laptop. They were in their usual spot but the keyboard functions required to get them to do their thang were switched.

    For crying out loud! It’s enough to drive a person to commit a crime.

     

  • 2015: A Retrospective

    2015 is about to come to a close and yet there were times it seemed to drag itself out unendingly!

    Biggest news from our side is that the brat is now in a big kids’ school. He’s only in first grade but he seems to be changing perceptibly in front of our eyes. He’s learning loads, expressing himself more and socializing way more. He’s a year older, more specific in his tastes, choices and behavior as well. He is also acting up a little more; not something we are thrilled about. Of late, during some particularly stern parenting moments, he has packed his bag and threatened to walk out of the house.

    While the temptation to laugh out loud at his antics is difficult to tamp down; the fact that his little face gets solemn and he scuttles around dragging his trolley bag full of his favorite things is also something we mull over. Seeing the way our child thinks and expresses himself is always a learning experience for me and Red. Even the parts we aren’t crazy about. He’s still quite naive and childlike compared to other kids I see his age but no complains there. Last thing a parent wants is for their babies to grow up before their time.

    We took our first holiday abroad as a family this June and loved it! In fact Singapore has become the de facto destination in the offspring’s mind; that’s how much fun it was!

    There have been solemn moments too. The incidents that have happened and continue to happen around the world and in my country have given a lot of us pause and certainly given me a lot of food for thought. Whether atrocities and hardship happen on our doorstep or not; it’s a sign of the times we live in. And no one is insulated beyond a point. When my best friend and her family were stuck during the Chennai floods and storms I remember standing on my balcony and thinking that a couple of hundred miles away there were people who literally didn’t know where the next drink of fresh water was going to come from or the next meal. And how unfair it was that they were caught unprepared and terrified beyond comprehension. Really gives you perspective. Not that you should feel guilty for what you have but how you should enjoy and appreciate the stuff you have good, down to the last atom! God knows when the tide turns. But moving on…

    The year has been interesting too. Good songs,good food, movies (good and bad), memorable times spent with family and friends, less than good times have also cropped up but what’re you gonna do? Shit happens. You learn to skirt around the shit in the future. Read this to for more funny shit (‘cuuuse the pun)

    While we wait for December to end on a funky note, we are geared up for another family holiday with my folks and plans for more getaways are already being made for 2016. God knows if they’ll materialize ultimately but the fun part is in the planning.

    Knowing me, I might not blog till the new year or just have a blogging burst suddenly..so on that wonky note…happy holidays everyone.

    Here’s hoping you wake up in 2016 without a heavy head!

     

     

  • A Bloglet: A Mother Realizes…Yet Again

    When you’re sitting in front of a mini monster with curious and wandering hands, make sure you forgo the quilled earrings. It doesn’t take long for little buds to become danglers.

    Wear in haste and rue in leisure.

  • Movie Review- Tamasha

    I went and saw Tamasha yesterday. And here’s why I liked it:

    • Deepika Padukone and Ranbir Kapoor work. Totally work. Their chemistry is palpable. Helps that Kapoor isn’t an aging Khan and an actual contemporary of the lead actress; playing his own age.
    • Corsica is beautiful. And the fact that they moved away from Capri and Greece is a novelty also.
    • The premise of the movie is always relevant for those who have been raised by overbearing albeit well-intentioned Indian parents.
    • Makes sense because the course of “love” doesn’t always run smooth and neither do people always know what they want in this day and age.
    • Because people do change their minds or it is changed for them so often about crucial things in their lives that they lose touch with who they are.
    • Because we grow up too quickly and childhood remains a dream.
    • Because life is extremely exacting and we aren’t always up to the challenge it throws down.
    • Because we all may have fantasies about that other person we could have (should have) been; in a different time and place.
    • Because getting into a relationship is the easy part. Staying in it, is what becomes tough.
    • Because the line dividing expectation from reality sometimes becomes too firmly etched to be erased or altered.
    • Because it was entertaining and I’m a soppy romantic deep down :)

  • Sanities and Tensions…

    The brat is keeping us massively entertained with the things he’s been learning in school. And while he no longer has the problem with his hearing that he did before, he is still prone to quite a bit of distractibility. That coupled with things that are repeated while he is in a group, like the school assembly, and the things he ends up hearing and then repeating at home are genuinely worth LOL-ing over.

    Sometime in the past week he came home and started assuming poses of being in attention and at ease and had me follow suit. He told me to be in “tension” and then in “sanities”. I could barely muffle the snort of laughter that came out of my mouth and was immediately told off by a rather disgruntled little boy!

    Yesterday there was a parent-teacher meeting in MLM’s school and among the many things discussed were his need to learn more patience. Yeah…not gonna happen in my lifetime! His homeroom teacher said she led the kids in meditation everyday for a few minutes and recommended that we try the same at home for more impact.

    This morning Red decided to do an impromptu meditation session for the three of us just after we got up. The way Red instructed us did NOT resonate with the offspring so he usurped the role of leading us. These were his instructions:

    “Ok…first you IN HELL. Then you EXIT.Good. IN HELL again and EXIT!”

    Have you ever tried inhaling and exhaling when your entire body was shaking like a mini earthquake?

    I was feeling like Santa viz belly shakes like a bowl of jelly. And sadly with the lard am carrying, it won’t take me too long to get their either.

    All in all, it was the most novel way I’ve ever started any of my Sunday…In HELL and Exiting..

    Oh lord…I love being this kid’s mother. Life is a lot of things but seldom boring. Even when he’s hopping around singing this song.

  • Co-Sleeping…A Parent Reflects

    One of the first things I bought when I got pregnant, was a cot for my baby. It was nice, smooth with rounded edges and had teething shields on both the rails. It worked well when the brat was a teeny-tiny infant and it also worked as a mini-prison of sorts during time outs when he started getting his bad-monkey groove on.

    And one day he and I both slept off on my bed and after that there was no looking back. He wanted that big bed! He wanted that big bed to turn cartwheels in, to go up and down and round and round in and somewhere along the way he also slept there.

    We’ve got him his own big boy bed in his own room and he has slept there on and off but it just took one bout of cold, cough or fever for him to end up in my bed and NEVER LEAVE!

    But last night while we were having our usual story-time tussle (another blog post for later) before he slept off, I realized that each night when I reach out I can usually connect with one or the other of his limbs and unless it’s his butt which ending up near my face; it’s comforting to have him close by and I actually like it.

    Right from the time he was born, he smelled ‘nice’. That smell that’s particular to babies which is a mixture of sweet, soft, baby powder, drool and cuteness. Add to that whatever lotion or powder you now smother your child in and you have a unique aroma that you associate with your child forever.

    And while my night-time sleep is often punctuated by a bop on the head, sheets being tugged away entirely, hot breath right on my face and a knee to my sternum in the first hour of hitting the sack; it’s also quite lovely to have a soft, squishy bundle to well…softly squish.

    Plenty of parenting manuals, how-to books advise against co-sleeping, I for one am beginning to think that our kids grow up too quickly as it is. One day they fit in your lap and then they don’t. They have the rest of their lives to sleep in different beds, holding onto different people. A few more nights of cuddles and elbows to ribs won’t hurt anyone.

    And while I write this I know fully well I’ll be grumbling while I get the offspring into a “normal” sleeping posture from his usual one of the Vitruvian Man so I can make some space for myself at the near-edge of the bed.

    Here’s wishing you all adequate space to sleep.

    Good night.

  • After School Huffiness

    The brat got off the school bus with two holes in the school uniform that hadn’t been there when he’d got on the bus in the morning.

    When I asked him (with a slight frost in my voice) he told me that a “Screaming Death” had made the holes.

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    For the uninitiated, a Screaming Death is one from the stable of Dreamworks Dragons. It’s an ultimate badass dragon ergo also the love of MLM’s life ever since he laid his dragon-loving eyes on it.

    Anyhoo he flat out refused to tell me how his school uniform happened to get ruined in that holey fashion and kept saying it was the dragon who did it. I told him that because of his behavior the tv was off-limits and I wasn’t going to talk to him till he told me the truth. And he threw a tantrum. A typical one with the screeching and minor feet stomping.

    And then it got atypical. He sat and watched me ignore him for a bit and got out his trolley bag. Then this is the conversation that took place between us:

    MLM-“Ok Ayu. I’m leaving.”

    Me- Bye.

    MLM- I’m going to count to 3 and you are going to put the tv for me.

    Me- snorts in derision. “Yeah…not going to happen kid.”

    MLM- ONE. TWO. THREEEEEE! Ok. FINE! I leaving now.

    Me- B-Y-E.

    MLM- while making a show of pulling his suitcase along and grumbling the entire time, “I’m not going to be your friend,grumble grumble. I’ll go and live in Kolkata (where my parents live) and never come home again!grumble grumble. I’ll watch tv there every day because (mentioning his grandmother’s name) loves me and you are MEAN!!”

    Me- So go already. Bye.

    MLM- Going till the main door and struggling to open the lock. “Open the door! I can’t leave, it’s locked.”

    Me- opening the door for him…”Don’t forget your shoes. Bye”.

    MLM- Struggling to get his trolley over the doorway…Ayu help me. I can’t leave…”

    Me- Helps him put the bag outside the door and leaves.

    MLM- Comes back in a bit and says, “I’m hungry”. I want to be your friend again. Please give me peanut butter and jam sammich?”

    Me- So when do you want to leave the house and go stay in Kolkata?

    MLM- I’ll go tomorrow. After the birthday party (mentions a friend’s birthday party he’s supposed to attend tomorrow).

    Me- rolls eyes heavenward and goes to make PB&J sandwich.

    Two minutes later I get a hug and someone plants a kiss in the vicinity of my hip and says you’re my best friend. These sammiches are DE-LI-SHUS!

    And life goes on.

  • Reflections On Ambient Sounds

    One lingering memory of Durga pujas at Barasat are the acoustic version of retro Hindi songs of Salil Choudhury playing in the neighborhood somewhere. Right from Yeh Kya Hua to O Sajna, Barkha Bahaar Aayi…they play them all.

    And it sounds just wonderful. Seeped in whispers of the years that’ve passed while trying to make it to Calcutta to attend the puja from whichever part of the country we might have been in…..

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