Random. Structured. Haphazard. All Me.

A Tangled Yarn of Thoughts Being Unravelled…

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  • Nothing Surprises Me…I’m A Mom!

    Ermm…that’s a contradiction actually. Nothing does surprise me because a child’s mind is SO elastic that it works in ways I can’t begin to imagine and wish it didn’t.

    And yet when the unimaginable (for adults) happens it’s also a surprise because the offspring chose to do (read destroy) yet another thing in his own special way.

    This is what we call predictably unpredictable!

    My child, who shall be referred to as Mommy’s Little Monster (MLM) hereafter, has always has a fondness for CDs. The round shape, the shiny surface and the fact when it’s put into a drive it emits sounds and images makes it totally magical for him.

    He also has a VERY strong procedural memory (again a mixed blessing) and is ALWAYS doing what his father and I do. CD changing in our house is nothing short of a battle. And changing CDs in the car is CHAOS personified with one of us adults having to rescue the CD from being inserted upside down or with too much love (read FORCE)!

    A few days back I tried to play one of my CDs, a rare occurrence, and found that the car music system was literally spitting it back out at me. Naturally I suspected that tiny hands of terror had been busy at work.

    Today I finally got around to taking it to a repair shop for an estimate of whether the CD player was to be put to rest once and for all or if there was still life left in it. The technician opened the entire bracket to see what was wrong with the unit and out tumbled not ONE, not TWO but FIVE CDs.

    Everyone was amazed. MLM was clapping for joy and chanting, “Look Look, so many CDs!”

    And me? Well..am unsurprisingly surprised. And waiting for the estimate on the stereo. I have a feeling they’ll go by the DNR (do not resuscitate) instructions I gave them.

    I have a feeling the remaining CDs will make  interesting wall decals until I get someone to keep their grubby little hands to themselves!

    Image

  • Being Firm…

    It’s extremely easy to be firm. Till it isn’t.

    You decide you won’t let your child indulge in excesses or in things out of turn but somehow it’s always easier to do so when work or personal life comes knocking on your door.

    20131017_154922

    Sometimes it’s SO easy to just rationalize it all out and say, “What’s the harm? Just another cartoon (substitute it with candy, sweets, gallon of paint..yeah we’re weird in this house).” And before you know it, you’re not FIRM. You are the exact opposite of FIRM; but the exact word is eluding me at this moment.

    G&A busy painting the BRIGHTEST picture ever!

    And it’s eluding me because am surveying cycle tracks that have gone over liquid paint and then made further tracks in places and in colors that shouldn’t be allowed via cycles.

    But am quite sure that this is the absolute last time I allow for this kind of laxity.

    I’m being firm you see!

                               

  • durga


    durga
    Originally uploaded by ag80.

    Didn’t have the handycam or the regular camera around when I took this one.
    The white stuff, which I used to think of as thermocol is actually something called ‘shola’ and is a kind of tree sap which is fragile but hard enough for designs to be carved on it.
    The tiaras, the jewellery is all made from shola and looked gorgeous and was painstakingly done by the potter-artisan for about 1 month prior to the puja.

  • save me NOW!!!

    I bribed a colleague with the promise of a book he’s been asking for and came out of the afternoon invigilation. Didnt get away with it entirely, I’ll go back…eventually.
    The worst thing about these MBA students is that they’re too cocky by half. Majority of them have taken educational loans, amounting to above 6 lacs to do this course. And in most of the cases their fathers/parents are the guarantors. So why screw things up for yourself by cheating. I told a student yesterday, ” If you haven’t studied all sem then no amount of time is going to be enough to make up for it. So don’t cheat to compensate. But if you must, do it well and don’t get caught.” I feel sorry for their parents. All their kids are capable of doing is fantasizing about colossal pay packets but ask them a question or two and their entire MBA base is flimsy!

    I’ve slacked off plenty myself. My last year of M.A was horrible. I didnt score well because I’d got into a rut I coudn’t get out of and neither did I have anyone who took any effort to kinda get me out of it. Be a mental health professional and people think you’re entirely self-reliant 24/7 :o(

    Anyhow, I just wonder how much they’ll be able to translate their training into the actual work requirement when they join a company. Not my problem at the end of the day, but we do take plenty of effort with these guys and this kind of cavalier attitude bites.

    Dumbasses!

  • y-a-w-n

    I was telling the significant other (much to his uncontrollable amusement) that the invigilation duty they’ve assigned me for is just about the worst punishment for me yet. Especially since yesterday, when they have me doing double shifts. That works out to 6 hours totally of monosyllables of not even that.
    And many of the smart alecks in the bunch dont even bother to hide the fact that they’re casting furtive glances here and there. Oh how my hand itches to rap them on the head HARD!!!
    I think my school teacher grandfather’s ghost has possessed me :o(

    Last few weeks have been slightly erratic, been feeling QUITE sleepy but not able to sleep when I want to. Then there was this to finish. I’ve wanted to read this book since I saw it for the 1st time in the Queens Public Library way back in the early ’90s. But they had strict rules about books of the adult section (although nothing typically adult here, more of Hell and Damnation and all that jazz) and I was restricted to Babysitter’s Club and the Sweet Valley Twins and 3 Investigators et al. The thing about King’s books is that even the portions which tend to sag, or lose the tautness, keep you hooked for the final confrontation or dhamaka as it were. I read ‘Needful Things’ and there were parts I was disappointed because it was touted as a great horror story but it was phantasmagoria above and beyond anything else. But curiousity regarding how it would end kept me up for nights on end. That by itself is the mark of a GOOD author, I feel.

    Anyhoo, have to go and see which bunch of beasties I’m going to strike fear into today. The sad mockery of strong coffee they offer here is pretty much the only thing that keeps me going throughout the day…

    SIGH!!

  • neonate


    new kitten2
    Originally uploaded by ag80.

    This lil (and it’s LIL) kitten was discovered by Ma today morning on our chairs. The proud mother is a lady of the night and enjoys the lascivious company of the local toms.
    Anyhow, there must be more lil ones somewhere but this the only young’ un i could find.
    The mom ran away the moment I opened the front door so I didnt linger too long. The baby’s eyes haven’t yet opened and it’s a tiny, shivering, scrawny bundle…
    extremely cute-rhapsody material.

    chickenfeet2003 waiting for your benedictions for the new arrival :o)

  • durga16


    durga16
    Originally uploaded by ag80.

    Got these pix in the email from another bong friend of mine. Now I’m an agnostic at last count and for me the Durga Puja takes on a more cultural hue rather than a religious one.
    This is a large part of what being a Bengali is all about :o)
    What I really look forward to is the amazing karigari of the artisans who are basically from the potter-clan/caste.
    Each image is vividly different from the other and very arresting in it’s depiction.

  • good clean fun.

    I dont know how many of you will be able to (or want to) watch this movie but where Indians are concerned, this is as close to a must-see as it gets.
    The best things about Lagey Raho Munnabhai (LRM) is that it conveys a lot of homilies without being preachy at all.
    Picking up from where they left off, Munnabhai&Circuit get tangled with things which take them on yet another journey which needs to be tweaked in the andaaz of the bhailog.
    The show in entirely carried out on the more than capable shoulders of Boman Irani and Arshad Warsi. The one jarring note is the manner in which Vidya Balan feels that she has to screech out, “GGGGOOOOOOOOOOOD MMMOOOOOOOOOOOOOORNING MUMBAI” throughout the movie. You’d think that 1/2 down the line Rajkumar Hirani would have got the picture that too many repetitions of that particular line were not going to endear the mallu kutti to the audience. But apart from that, she’s quite pretty with a freshness that’s very appealing and refreshing.
    And that’s the USP of the movie. It entertains without resorting to ‘ma-behen’ ki gaaliyaan, machismo-laden heroes stripping at the drop of a pin, huge dance ensembles popping out of nowhere at the snap of your fingers.
    While not a laugh a minute kind of a flick, this movie will make you emit regular bursts of laughter throughout.

    What to watch out for- Irani’s perfect enactment of a Punju and Circuit’s trademark dialogues, delivered in his own inimitable manner.

  • a stitch in time would have SO helped

    An old “patient” of mine got back in touch with me after a long while. The reason patient is in quotes is because I never counselled him face to face. He had gone to USA to study and had a depressive episode there. He tried to get in touch with the shrinks in USA but he didnt have his medical insurance there and they werent able to get a proper handle on his family dynamics and this boy just slipped into a bad state. 
    To make things worse he already had a case of     endogenous depression and was a Marfan to boot!    . Not a good combo when your self-esteem and image in below-zero. 
    This is the kind of rigmarole we used to go tbrough- his father would come and meet the shrink I was working with. The shrink would prescibe meds and write out various possibilities which would lead to alteration of meds and how to tackle them. The father would then courier the entire bunch of meds to USA and the son would take them and try to come to terms with his malaise.
    Now the best thing in his case would have been that he go to a doc of Indian origin but Gujju bhais being who and what they are, decided to save money for the car and not go in for therapy. And deeper he went into depression with OC features clouding up the horizon.

    Finally a long-distance therapy was proposed wherein via email and phonecalls we’d try to tackle the more serious of his problems while the meds would work out the rest. I’d recommended to his father that he has a better chance of recovering and succeeding in life back home, but they weren’t up for it.

    Today I get an SOS offliner on yahoo saying he needs help, he’ll do whatever I say ought to be done but to not abandon him. Jesus! I was thinking that maybe a lot of money might have gone waste but atleast he would probably have regained his original functionaliry by now. Inside he’s suffered major setbacks because of his symptoms and based on what he’d written the OCD is pretty much well set to become a full-fledged co-morbidity on its own.
    Oye ve!

  • duckies


    duckies
    Originally uploaded by ag80.

    had gone away for the weekend to a resort just outside the city. the ducks were a nice surprise. noisy, gaggly and quacky but it was fun to run after them just the same.
    yet again, wishing the mobcam had more range :o)
    well in lieu of a proper camera i think this came out quite well indeed!