Tag Archives: retrospection

Parents: Reblogged

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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

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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:

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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!”

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Retroblogging

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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

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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!

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Retroblog

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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…

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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!

Reblogged: Like A Phoenix

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A lot of blogs turn out to be a plunge into some deep chasm of thought. It’s not. I suddenly get a notion in my head. It often cries for a platform. Some days I can give it one and other days it’s shunted onto my list of things-to-do-but-not-now-maybe-later.

After a long time I napped in the afternoon. It was my own fault. Sunday comes every week but I don’t indulge in heavy meals that make one languorous. Today I did and as a result I stretched out next to my mom (another factor in inducing sleep) and conked off the moment the head and pillow connected.

That Red kicked me out of the room and took charge of MLM was probably the biggest reason for being able to sleep for 2 hours.

When the mind is relaxed it seems into sink into itself. Not like a balloon with air going out of it but almost like it heaves a small sigh of relief that you aren’t stretching it to all ridiculous lengths and just starts emitting little blurbs of thoughts like a person lazily blowing bubbles. Or as in my case, a contented person emitting little burps.

So the mind burped this thought- everything that grows brings with it something that had to break.
It wasn’t a “Whoa horsey” kind of thought either. It was reflective.

An empty land becomes an apartment complex. It’s dug into and practically eviscerated but it’s growth. And breakage. The homes are built and we “break” the space which earlier existed and coop ourselves up into an affordable number of square feet and call it home.

Relationships grow and break your notions of what is and what should be. Things are seldom tweaked. It’s usually a structural kind of change that happens and the mind fits itself around the new thought, the new idea and tries it on. Sometimes it fits and other times you’re left with something that is chokingly tight or so loose that you just can’t work yourself into it and it just hangs uncomfortably around you and your life.

It was a very A-Ha experience as Red calls it. Another realization. One that you might have already had but didn’t allow yourself to dwell on for long.

And every time the phoenix that is the mind, rises above and tries to make sense of things, of relationships, of movements in life of the ground that is now a tall building that you have to call home, the people who are moving on, playing different roles, the child that is growing up…

Yup…Sunday afternoon naps are quite potent.

Am glad the next one will take another few months to come about 🙂

At the end of the year…

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It becomes inevitable that we make resolutions…even if it’s a resolution that no further resolutions will be made 🙂

And the gospel truth comes back to me: we always keep the promises we *want* to keep. Those that get swept under the rug or get the short shrift aren’t necessarily the ones we may not have cared about, but that we were less than committed to it can’t be denied.

Every year is unique…just because our routines don’t vary dramatically doesn’t mean the year hasn’t been different. Every year leaves its own imprint on our lives, in our memories, our consciousness and definitely influences the way we view things around us, the world at large even.

I started this year on an overall positive note for me personally. I had a job I was enjoying. MLM’s surgery had gone off well and he was heaps better, Red was in a job that he was feeling very upbeat about, my parents had bounced back well from their bouts of bad health reasonably well, we bought a new apartment and MLM had settled in VERY well in his new school and was giving us regular glimpses into what he was learning and how happy he was. So all good?

Well not entirely…this year was tinged very deeply with how the lives of some of my closest friends also went. It wasn’t total doldrums of despair and devastation but roses weren’t in the horizon all the time. The baggage from 2012 viz the fatigue and the feeling of not having achieved anything specific stayed with me for the most of 2013 and of course life throws curveballs and you either manage to hit a few else you strike out. Needless to say 2013 was not the year of the home runs 😦

But over the last few days, while I have been in a very lethargic phase; your typical garden-variety, grade A slug, my mind’s been working overtime in thinking and sifting through loads of imagery and experiences from the past year and in some cases the years before and honestly I haven’t done enough!

My father bought me a book by Stephen Covey on proactivity and while I was working I used the book quite a bit to quote from in my line of work, looked at it as a resource but didn’t really apply many of the principles in my life.

I do wish for a few things in 2014 but the one I’m sharing now seems to be the need of the hour (make it the year). I’m putting it in this post so it’s documented for me to come and check whenever I feel like I’m straying…

“I hope to become more realistic this coming year. I’m not a head-in-the-clouds kind of person but I don’t think I have as much of a reality check as I need, as my life demands.”

But till the clock strikes 12 and the new year is truly upon us; inescapably so…I’m going to continue in this current mode for a bit…no sense in rushing things…I’ll have resolutions staring me in the face soon enough.

 

 

2013- In Retrospect Part Deux

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Since I last wrote our much-awaited and severely yearned for trip got cancelled due to personal emergencies. It was a huge disappointment.

But what was an eye opener to me was my own reaction to it. I had anchored so many things to this trip, it was supposed to be the biggest Fix-it for everything that hadn’t gone according to plan and when it fell through I was numb for a bit.

But numbness has its upside; it insulates you from feeling much of anything. So I got back to business and we’ve been trying to have fun as a family ever since and it’s not been a bad trade-off.

MLM is happy wherever you take him provided he has his Play Doh, bouts of t.v. time and space to run around in.Thank Goodness for that. To be a child is truly a joyous thing. Your ignorance about the world safeguards you from many things that adults can’t seem to escape.
Of course the flipside has to be considered too…their world is a smallish place, consisting of their immediate surroundings and ONLY what they understand at a particular time. So being denied a candy can cause heartbreak having to leave the playground and go home can be devastating 🙂

But this year I’ve been very fortunate to see some spectacular things in nature-a vast array of sunrises and sunset, each one different from the other.

I got to spend a good amount of time at work as a facilitator for activities pertaining to Early Childhood Development and the experiences you have while spending time with the kids is indelible.

I’m surrounded by lots of light and cool breezes throughout the day and that by itself is extremely uplifting…where you stay and how it impacts your moods does so much to tip the balance of your life.

Yes…quite a bit to feel good about. And now with Christmas upon us…we’ll channel in the Yuletide cheer with a lovely bottle of rose wine, apple juice for MLM and a red velvet Christmas cake-hopefully.

A few snapshots of good times in the last 2 months since we moved in.
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