Tag: retrospection

Parents: Reblogged

FortunateCaveLeave a comment

This post is more than 13 years old and when I was apparently going through an e.e.cummings phase:

the last 2 days have been quite a lot of fun. reason? took my parents shopping. it went something like this-
Me-ma why are you eyeing that suit ka kapda? you want it?
Ma-na re. expensive and i dont really need it now( eyeing it summore)
Me-mum! stop ogling it already and take it.
Ma-noooo. i dont need it now…have enough suits.
Me-but you dont have this color, oh lord! wait, i’ll get the drool bucket!
Ma-beshi bokish na( zyaada mat bolo!) but the color does catch your eye doesnt it?
Me-mammaaaaa, he’s about to make the bill, it’s a lovely color, you dont have it.BUY IT NOW OR FOREVER HOLD YOU PEACE! 
Ma-why do you have to dramatise everything to this extent.i dont want you to spend so much on a suit right now. i said no.
Me-ok. calm down. i wont force it on you if you dont want it.
Ma-dint i say i dint want it.
Me-ok bhaiyya, we wont take it. baaki sab ka bill bana do.
Sales guy-ok ma. amma you want the blue one?
Me-no she doesnt, she said she doesnt want it.
Ma-such a fuss.FINE! if you insist…bhaiyya, usko bhi bill mein jod do. (turning to me)-not a word out of you and DONT TELL YOU FATHER!!!!

oh no facepalm GIF

Last nite with the pater-
Me-this is for you! surprise!! you may thank me now.
Baba-is this black? you KNOW i dont wear black! it’s got front to back embroidery. it’s too much!
M-it’s not baba, you dont have something of this kind. Ma& i thought you’d look gooood in it.
B-it’s BLACK!
M-it’s not. take it out of the cover and see it in the light and you’ll find that it’s…
B-ok it’s blue but what are all these triangles?
M-it’s made from jute and the latest style.
B-alright,alright. dont breathe down my neck. let’s go the shop and let me see if anything catches my eye.
M-alright. exchange it. why bother that your only offspring went and bought it for you out of love and affection.
B-uff! chup thaak ma.
M-maaaaaaaaaa. baba’s being mean.

so off went the happy family to the dukaan. once inside-
B-can you show me all the dull,no-jhango colors and designs you have?( that’s what he meant i know it!)
Salesman- sir, yada yada yada.
B-NOT THIS ONE! it’s black. it’ll make me look like a sabarimala pilgrim!
M-how many of those ppl do you know that wear 1800 ka kurtas to the pilgrimage?
B-chup!
after many agonizing minutes later.
B-i think i’ll keep the one you bought, the salesman said it’s the latest design and i really dont have anything of this type. and i think i’ll take the black one also. it kind of grows on you after a while. it has a certain class to it.
AND DONT TELL YOUR MOTHER!!!
M-of course not!
once we got home-
M-maaaaaaaaaaa! guess what baba did. you 2 deserve each other..fickle shoppers. god gimme strength!

face palm GIF

Red Reblogged

FortunateCaveLeave a comment

In order to write I need to read. Sometimes reading what’s passed through my head ages ago isn’t just hugely entertaining but quite enlightening. This one wasn’t enlightening in any way; caused major eye-rolls because things with Red are still status quo in some aspects of our lives.

Here goes:

Image result for sardar gif

Red likes me to tell him Sardarji jokes.
I do it in my Punjju accent and put in plenty of “oye papeys” to punch things up.

A few days ago he told me via mournful sms that I hadn’t told him any Sard jokes of late.

To rectify the situation, I sent across a joke today that goes like this… A Sardar declares: I will never marry in my life and I’ll give the same advice to my children also! 

My Homer Simpson-loving husband mails back, baldly stating that one doesn’t need to be married to have children. Now, I know that and apparently so does Red…but who’s going to tell the poor Sardar? 

On the flip side, think of the facepalm moments of a person who lives with! a guy who tries to make sense of Sardarji jokes!

Oh teri!”

Image result for sardarji gif

Retroblogging

FortunateCaveLeave a comment

I occasionally got back and read stuff I’d blogged about earlier. Sometimes I can see an evolution in the style of writing and at other times it seems either pedantic or boring. But this one is relevant even today, hence the repost. It was written 8.5 years ago on a day when I seemed to have been rather prolific or just didn’t want to actively parent and just hide away in my beanbag and keep blogging.

I was worried that I’ll be fanning my ignorance quite a bit by forgoing the newspapers altogether but a quick glance at them has assured me am not really missing much.

It’s not quite so much as news as an announcement of the end being near. Take a look all around- honor killings up, scams are in they heyday, political parties are the jokers with the Indian Government providing the 3 ring circus. What does get the space in the papers are announcements of the Fresh Faces in the city colleges where self-proclaimed celebs go and shake a leg and lecture impressionable young’uns on personality and grooming. While their grooming and personality (or lack thereof) is highly suspect or airbrushed for the print media 🙂

I sometimes read my papers a day late since my son loves to paper our house and Red always takes off with the Sport pages first thing in the morning. While gathering the papers from last night’s yay-ness I came across a news feature of a German porn star who died after her 6th boob job went bust! Literally and please don’t excuse the pun. Hmm…that did grab my attention because the girl in question really was just a girl and 23 years old.

Hell at 23 if a person can generate that kind of income, why not live it up? What good would 800 gms boobs (each 800 gms mind you) do to a person except make them more susceptible to gravity a WHOLE lot more? And now she’s dead. Fatal beauty anyone?

This isn’t a homily on the evils of x,y,z. It’s been so long since I read the papers and found something genuinely informative. And felt up to date on the happenings around me.

It’s either the verbal skirmishes between the politicos in A.P that make the front page or the Naxals or the scams…and honestly all they make me think of is that people are inept. They do just enough to show that they have Johnsons and then they back off.
I get it, the machinery moves slowly. But for everything? The people who have the most influence and the potential to actually act seem to be mainly posturing and and everything is just for show.

Want to get something done, throw down and the gauntlet and see where that takes you and stand your ground! Things aren’t that stable anyhow whether it’s in the state or the central government. Or for that matter for most things.

The last few ‘newsworthy’ things I remember reading about my city and state either involve political fluctuations, political gripes, suicides, dogs mauling infants, slums, citizens grievances against the local governing bodies. And the list bloody keeps going on and on.

And it’s the same thing the next day. It’s a template of sorts if you will.

Small wonder then that I play escapist and read the comics, smirk at page 3 and get right back to my books.

Cynical but it works.

 

418th

FortunateCaveLeave a comment

It’s not your usual, run-of-the-mill number is it? 418? But it’s been 418 blog posts since that fateful day back in October 2013 when I sat down to test drive WordPress for my work-related blogs and found that it was actually quite fun and easy to blog here.

Since then it’s seen some periods of intense blogging followed by equally lethargic periods of lull and stagnation. blogs are like plants; you can water them, keep them in the sun, but they’ll bloom when and how lusciously they’d like. I like to think that there are times when there’s an abundance of growth and then there is some drought.

This is how it’s been since the first blog post published:

  • 2013: 364 visitors spread across 16 countries.
  • 2014: 1048 visitors from 38 countries.
  • 2015: 2201 visitors from 83 countries (best year yet mainly because OT started full day school!!)
  • 2016: 916 visitors from 50 countries.
  • 2017: 1012 visitors from 50 countries.
  • 2018: 1538 visitors (till date) from 43 countries.

It’s very liberating to be able to put one’s words out there. More so for a gabby person like myself. But it’s more than knowing that someone may have liked something I expressed, it’s the feeling of having reached someone sitting in say, Moldova (true story) through this medium.

So what’s next in 2019? Well I’d like to focus more on photobloglets and test drive bits of my other big project- THE BOOK on Wattpad and here.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for stopping to leave a comment. Critiques help more than praises at times. And every bit has been heard, chewed and digested towards creating better and more engaging content. I’ve realized at long last that as long as I can write and have enough inspiration to keep doing so, I’ll be content.

 

Salut!

Image result for l chaim

Retroblog

FortunateCaveLeave a comment

7 years ago I published this bit of rant (scroll down) on Facebook notes. I was more than halfway into my first year as a mother and the mini muffin was an adorable individual who was just getting into his groove as a tiny human hurricane.

The text is all in caps to express my overwhelmed state of mind back in the day. Suffice to say writing etiquette was the furthest thing on my mind at that time!

PARENTING 101

AVE DIAPER! THOSE WHO ARE ABOUT TO PLUNGE HEADFIRST INTO DOODOO SALUTE YOU!
NOTE: THOSE WHO ARE ABOUT TO OR WOULD LIKE TO CONCEIVE/GIVE BIRTH KINDLY BEAR IN MIND PRODUCT COMES WITH A NO RETURN&NO EXCHANGE POLICY!!
1) YOUR CHILD HAS THAT ANGELIC-CHERUBIC FACE SO YOU DON’T SLAP THOSE CHEEKS INTO PERMANENT RUDDINESS.
2) YOUR CHILD WILL TIME THE EXPULSION OF FECES&URINE AT THE EXACT MOMENT WHEN YOU CANNOT GET THE DIAPER ON.
3) THE CRYING WILL BEGIN JUST WHEN YOUR BRAIN SIGNALS IT’S TIME TO REST.
4) WILL SPIT UP FOOD ON THE DAY YOU ARE FEELING MOST CONFIDENT ABOUT DINNERTIME BEING A NON-WWF MATCH.
5) YOUR CHILD WILL PRESENT THE AFOREMENTIONED ANGELIC SIDE TO OTHERS, LEAVING THEM TO THINK YOU’RE A LOON FOR CRIBBING ABOUT SUCH A CUTIE-WUTIE IZZUMS!
6) WILL MANAGE TO MAKE YOUR ANGER GO OUT IN A POOF! BY GOING TO SLEEP ON YOUR SHOULDER, MOUTH OPEN, TEETH SHOWING&CHUBBY HANDS HOLDING YOU TIGHTER THAN THEY’D HOLD ANYONE ELSE.
BOTTOM LINE: ADOPT A TEEN INSTEAD. THEY’RE LIKELY TO BE HOUSEBROKEN.
LIKELY.
ADIEU!

Reblogged:Playing With The Hand You’re Dealt…

FortunateCaveLeave a comment

Isn’t that what it all boils down to in life?
It isn’t always celebrating the things that go well or in accordance with our plans or even making our peace with the things that don’t. It’s finally just existing with what IS.
Sometimes we are able to do it gracefully and other times it takes a lot of plodding and prodding to get through each day.

There’s a saying by Oscar Wilde that people often smugly quote- ” There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”

I’ve found that while tragedy might be too strong a word for it, it does seem difficult to comprehend and accept ,what you sought out, opted for even isn’t all that it’s cut out to be or even worse…it’s not what you want. Is inadequate.

So you shuffle the deck a few times and hope the next hand is better than the one that has you staring in bafflement.

Or you chuck the cards up in the air and don’t care if they scatter all over; since it’s mimicking life in doing so.

And some of us painstakingly make a house of cards. Trying to balance each card over the other and anxiously watching whether they stay up or come tumbling down.
In the end you either end up with a steady house you used up all your cards in making and are proud of or you decide to call it quits after you reach a plateau and are still left holding a few cards for later.

It’s all about playing with the hand you were dealt.

Reblogged: Marking Territory

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Everywhere I look, I sit the offspring’s presence prevails.

The jar of Gummybears are usually within hand’s reach although with the child-proof caps it’s still a bit in our control when we want to hand the bears over.

There are clothes clips on the futon, tigers and lions (figures) under the sofa cushions and Play Doh and khakhra crumbs all along the path he’s taken through the house. Very Hansel and Gretel and one can guess who the witch in this story is too 🙂

Point is- kids take over your life in toto! And when they sleep you reclaim it and the house which has their artwork all over the walls instead of the nice designs you and your husband picked out as newlyweds.

But then again they surprise you in the MOST UNEXPECTED manner. After a terribly taxing day when you’ve restrained yourself from leaving them on some unsuspecting person’s doorstep they turn to you and execute a deep bow and say Thank You Very Much Ayu in the cutest manner ever and all’s forgiven till the next transgression.

Damn! Check and mate to the offspring. Mommy’s still figuring out her opening gambit!