A recap of June..

June was my birthday month and usually the time I post euphorically on how the day went, but let’s face it guys, birthdays are not fun as we grow older. It is almost like I did not want this day to come so soon. There were gifts, cake-cutting, photos and new clothes, but the thought that I was younger just the previous day is deeply saddening to say the least.

On the job front I can figuratively say that I am being sliced and dumped into a blender. My brain now works overtime, and even while conversing with people I have a load of stuff running in parallel in my brain. I am overloaded with work which has reflected in my behavior in the recent past and I am guilty to have pissed off some people.  Over a period of time I have turned into a workaholic and I know that because nowadays I dream software codes. To be honest, I am now a complete loser of a wife, mother and friend but a full time consultant and programmer.

Anyone who may have gone through this space earlier may know that I am a die-hard fan of SRK. However, yesterday the most unimaginable happened. It was a school buddy’s birthday and a friend posted this latest viral selfie of Madhavan in whatsapp group and all of us married women with babies(ya, plural) became sinners  and were in blatant violation of one of the Ten Commandments.

 

Such hotness that my phone almost exploded.

My brain ditched the codes and took me back to that train scene in Alaipayuthey ....how exhilaratingly he rode that bike near the beach just before the song ‘Pachai Nirame’ ...and Kadhal Sadugudu! Alaipayuthey released when I was in 11^th standard and the naïve convent school girl in me thought that wow- men are so cute! And that is the biggest lie my friends :D

Maddy had and still has such an impact that my best friend named her son Madhavan. However this picture is a whole other level. It can ruin the lives of innocent girls. Even married women with kids…and morals. Maddy why did you have to do this to us? Why? **Deep Sigh***. I showed this picture to my spouse who could say that I was clearly smitten over it and he looked at it with a weird expression as if it was Shakti Kapoor and then looked at me pitifully. When people give such looks it makes you want to give them a piece of your mind but wait, isn’t that a salt and pepper beard? I realize this is a U/A blog and that I should maintain decorum. If you have any female friends going through a breakup or a bad time in general just send them this picture. It will make their day…and night ;-) #MaddyMaddyOhOhMaddy

My parents are arriving this month and very soon, so now I have to throw out unwanted stuff because every time my Mom comes, she brings a portion of Trivandrum with her. My apartment cupboards are already full term pregnant and cannot even accommodate a hairpin. Clearing out stuff from my home is a war scene as all unwanted things seem very dear to the boys who never may have seen those objects until I ask the earth shattering question ‘Do you need this?’ Suddenly they swoop in from nowhere and act like I am throwing away their boxers. Basically nothing is unwanted. It’s time we rent another flat just to keep stuff. And our parents thought that girls were high maintenance they need more space for their accessories and stuff. If anyone reading this has such an idea in mind, you are invited to my house.

My boy who recently turned six celebrated his birthday and was spoilt to the core with gifts. He has also started asking all kinds of questions and as a result I hold my sanity and patience at the tip of my fingers now. Like the other day we were driving past the church and there was just one car outside. “That must be Jesus’s car. Does he spend the whole day here?”

‘Mmm” I hummed.

“He doesn’t go to work or anything?”

This is just a sample of what usually happens here. The kind of questions I am asked every minute of the day is baffling to say the least.

In general life is going on like usual and I feel like Incy Wincy spider trying to climb up the spout but keep getting washed out by the rain. Unlike the rhyme, in life the sun does not come so soon or may not come at all ,so Incy Wincy bought a new book and is reading under an umbrella hoping the rain will subside.

Pain that glitters.

Sometimes in life, we come across situations when we suffer immense pain, which cannot be shared with anyone. Helplessness, vulnerability and trauma can weaken the strongest of people. This is a story from two months ago and no, I dint give birth.

I stepped into a popular state-of-the-art hospital that could give stiff competition to star hotels in the region. Apparently it is meant to be visited by people who have plenty of money to spare and have chronic diseases like sneezing and dandruff. They treat your acne problem and give you a facelift that can give Sridevi a run for her money, but if you have a cardiac arrest and go there on emergency you may die. My purpose of visit suited the hospital profile. The marble floors were immaculately clean and I am sure even those 0.01% germs that escaped Dettol were handled. We walked to the reception contaminating the hospital with the germs we carried involuntarily.

‘Ear piercing’ I mumbled.

 ‘Have you been here before?’ asked the receptionist who looked like Kareena Kapoor. Obviously not, young lady. People like me can come here only once in a lifetime. 

‘No’ I said.

She started a procedure that required me to provide details as though she was issuing me a new passport. When she finished her tedious yet systematic process, I received a card that looked like it was laminated and gold-plated, along with a bill huge enough to pay for the renovation of the ground floor. I was paying them to put a hole in my ears. It was not like I was asking for a heart transplant. I paid the bill (through my nose) and waited outside the specialist’s office.

There were magazines on the table, neatly stacked size wise. I dint want to contaminate them with my germ laden hands. My son who accompanied me had no questions so far but as we waited, he remotely sensed that this could be a Doctor’s office. ‘Amma I don’t have any pain anywhere! Let’s go from here! Now Now NOWWW’ !! How can children be so unreasonable? After paying a bill like that even a fire alarm couldn’t move me.

Few moments later, I was called. It was like entering an office from Grey’s Anatomy. The Doctor stared at her computer as we sat on the pristine white revolving chairs.
She then looked at me and politely said ‘Yes?’

‘Doctor, I need to get ears pierced’. I said.

She looked at my son inquisitively. Her look sent chills down his body. He in turn, gave me a death stare.

I corrected her in a split-second ‘It is for me’.

The correction was immediately made; otherwise a meltdown with ‘Why did you bring me here-I told you I have no fever -what is this- I want to see Appa NOW’ would have echoed through the hospital which always maintains pin-drop silence.

The Doctor then checked my ear which already had two piercings. She was amused. This was not as amusing to me as the cashier already put a hole in my purse. The procedure lasted hardly three minutes and two months of excruciating pain whenever my ear touched the pillow- which means I slept like a statue facing the ceiling for two months, and suffered sleepless nights whenever I twisted or turned in my sleep. Then there were nights I woke up and cried why oh why do we have ears on both sides !?

Now it is like an achievement I should include in my bio data and Facebook profile. I also made sure that my hair does not cover it at any time because hard work, pain, patience and persistence is for everyone to see. I literally burned the midnight oil for a worthy cause! I couldn't complain about this pain to ANYONE, not even parents or friends, as I did not want to willfully invite irritating responses like ‘Did I ask you to pierce your ears?’

 ‘What kind of emergency made you pierce a third time?’

‘It was your decision, suffer on your own’

People who get the opportunity to say the above dialogues enjoy sadistic pleasure which I personally do not intend to give them. So I suffered in silence the outcome of my own decisions.

Whenever it hurts and I have no one to say it to, I look at my reflection on the mirror, how cute my bejeweled ears look. It heals all kinds of pain. Trust me.

Marching through March.

March is usually the month I scream from the rooftop that I completed another year as a blogger and then fill up an entire post about stuff about which no one cares about. However a post is a post is a post. Then I bask in the glory of one, having completed another year and two, having posted something at all.



Image courtesy: Here

I have been rather busy last month. My son started first grade, which means he now has to wear uniform for the rest of the best part of his life, which means I don’t have to invest on other clothes for him in general which means more clothes for me. I am that evil mother who calculates how much more shopping she can do when her son actually crossed an important milestone. I am actually supposed to be happy and crying tears of joy at the church. Well I am drinking wine and planning where to go this weekend to shop.

Another important development is that one of my tooth from the farthest corner of my mouth fell off as I was eating grapes. Apparently my mouth was pretty shocked by the fact that I was eating a fruit for the first time in ages. The shock was so bad that the tooth just collapsed. Nowadays teeth are equally as dramatic as us. Thankfully I dint swallow it, but yeah the dent has given me that look that I am only a broom and black cloak short of being an authentic witch.  As my son has lost a couple teeth as well and is rejoicing when new ones are sprouting from his cute pink jaws, I can only look at the mirror and sigh aloud. Obviously my jaws are way past menopause and are unlikely to produce teeth again.

However highlight of the month was not that. I made a traffic offence while taking a left from a lane which goes straight only. Which actually means the lane which goes left was waiting at the red. I smartly crossed the red. Few cars recorded their protest by honking in unison as part of their ‘holier than thou’ campaign. I realized my mistake but it was too late and kept going. I came home and cried into the pillow, the only thing that understands my pain in the house. I was so lost that I dint notice the camera flash as well. However, till date it has not been updated as an offence on the website, which means I will not be swatting mosquitoes in jail.  My son was pretty excited by the idea of me going to jail, as he wanted to tell his friends how cool his mom is compared to their boring law abiding moms.

On a serious note, I will be in India coming week, to be with my parents as one of them needs a medical procedure and has to be admitted in the hospital. They were both against the idea of me going there for this and were sternly voicing their objection which I ignored, the same way they ignored my pleas when I wanted to go for excursion in my college days. This is payback time.

That week I will be away from the baby for the first time since 2011. Now this is a serious matter, because I’d be leaving him with a bigger child who also needs adult supervision. My child may also experience the bitter taste of hunger because whenever I leave him with his dad at meal time, the food is eaten by the one who was supposed to monitor the child. I am leaving him for a few days, knowing that it will be the worst days of his life, and hoping that he will appreciate me more when I am back.

It has been eight years of blogging, and March was the birthday month of my blog. Thanks everyone who read, appreciated and criticized me. Special thanks to those who found me irritating but still refrained from sending goons to my house. Love you all!

The thin line.

How do we know when we have crossed a line? Or about to cross it? Or almost crossed it? Crossed it and left it far behind? There are ways to know. When someone ignores your texts long enough, when the speed radar flashes, when the teacher sends you to the Principal’s room, when your Dad sits you down to talk, when the spouse actually notices your outfit, when your kid says 'Mama leave me alooooonne', you know it. You have crossed the line. 

Image Courtesy: Here

There are thin lines between elegance and vulgarity, a friendly conversation and flirting, love and friendship, discipline and abuse, donkey and mule. If you don’t see these lines, it is considered to be felonious. 

  

Take for instance my help who doesn’t know when to stop talking. She talks too much and soon enough it goes to the next level, which is free advice. I cannot stand my own mom giving me opinions about things I dint ask an opinion for.  This is one of those situations when you cannot survive without the help, but cannot stand her unsolicited views about marriage and children, but nod along anyway . How great would it have been, if she knew that there is a line and the exact geographical location of that line. In the case of my help, the line I have set for her is not a thin line. It is bold and highlighted in fluorescent yellow, topped with night glow; so you can see it even in the dark. Sigh. Still she doesn’t see it. Like the dust under the bed or the cobweb behind the door. She just ignores it.

There is a thin line between the freedom enjoyed by a man and a woman. I have started going alone to watch movies at night. Previously this was a facility enjoyed only by the man of the house. I enjoy it when some women walking accurately on the shadows of their husbands look at me as if I was Geeta Phogat. Anyone here afraid to go out at night should try it, only for those looks you get from other women. Who knows you may as well be inspiring them to be independent! You get plenty of looks from men as well ;-). This is a personal line I crossed; it is never really a line for a lot of women. For others, it is not just a line; it is one of the Ten Commandments.

The playground where all kinds of lines are crossed is Facebook . It is a sinful, tempting place for people to break rules. It is the place religious people propagate their views, obsessed people write paragraphs about their one-in-a-million child who won a first prize in God-knows-what at age 4, ignorant people circulate chain messages and press-like-to-save-a-child nonsense. Finding a post worthy of a like on the Facebook timeline is as hard as trying to find a logical person in a crowd. 

Image Courtesy: Here

It is International Women’s day. All the women here - empower yourselves and do what you want to do, and go where you want to go. Noone is coming to empower you. Break your own personal barriers. There are no lines where you think there are. Try it. Free yourself from the shadows of others. Stop living for others. Have fun. There is only one life, stop living the life of another person.

There is a nonsensical dare in Facebook about publishing your age on Women's Day. Is that even a dare? If you want to dare anyone just be you, and do what you want to do. Start saying NO when you want to say it. Stop pleasing others. 

That, my friend, is the dare. 

Happy Women's Day !