Car Scars !

I have seen a lot of passionate people, their passion varying from bikes to earrings to interior decoration, but I should genuinely admit that none were as intense as my hubby’s passion to drive cars. Any aspect of a car is known to him, may be as much as a mechanic. He works in software but I believe he was born to be a mechanical engineer.

 We owned a Maruti Swift VDi ( high end Diesel version) at Bangalore and traveled by car from Bangalore to Cochin and back, almost 550km one way, and not a second was boring with him.

The story goes like this...Long long ago, I introduced my best-boy-friend ( presently my hubby) to my parents. Years later he turned out to be such a darling with them that I (still) feel like a daughter in law in my own house. One of those days, Mummy was talking to him on phone and she mentioned casually that I rejected one other proposal of a guy who was very rich, owned several cars and that one of his cars was a Skoda . Of all the things why Mummy had to specify that, and how the Skoda part alone struck deep with him, is still a mystery.
 Since then, no skoda would be spared on the road without him overtaking it. :D Sometimes in the jam packed roads of Bangalore city, if he spots a Skoda, he goes out of his way to overtake it.! Are we mad or what :D

Coming back to the point, all other cars on the road are rated based on its technical  specifications.  For example, if a swift Ldi honks hard from behind he still won’t give way for it to overtake us, whereas he will not only give way but also make the car bow down to a Honda Accord !!. Are we weird or what:D 

Our car not only had a soap but a shampoo and conditioner as well ! So now you’d know that this car rests in the car shed only because we dint have enough space to bring it to our bedroom.

One unfortunate day, while I was parking in the basement of the closely packed parking lot of my office, I happened to glance into the rear view mirror and found that the Maruti Zen parked next to where I was trying to park was shaking. The rear end of my car had accidentally ‘touched’ it (due to poor visibility *cough cough*)…I then took a reverse and parked right, but a teeny weeny scar had appeared there. (I din't check what happened to the Zen... of course :D ). On reaching home when I told him this, he jumped out of his chair, grabbed the keys and ran to the car shed. After ten to fifteen minutes of close examination, during which a lot of undesirable ‘hoo’s and hmph’s and ‘grrrr’s were hurled at me, he said that I was careless and still unfit to drive on the main road on a non-hartal day. I sheepishly went back to my room.

The next day, my aunt invited us to her apartment and we both went very enthusiastically (as she was a great cook ). At the parking area for visitors, hubby could not find a decent place to park and was struggling amidst lots of other cars which were parked in total disarray. I requested him that I will get out of the car and tell him how much more to go on reverse but my request was dismissed with a grin and a hmph.

BANG !  

The noise alerted a sleepy security guy who came running as I hurried to the backside. A pillar had hit into the rear end of the car. The damage was awful. I turned and looked at him.

“The pillar settings are not right in this building” he said.

Baby news :)

When our baby came into our lives in June, many people asked me whether I’d continue to write. Why should I stop blogging because a baby is here? A new born can hardly read my blog and ask me to stop, I thought. But now I know the gist of that question. If I stretch out in any direction, my hands are sure to land on a diaper(sometimes a soiled one) or a baby tissue. Such is the state of affairs at my house after I came from my hometown. I literally worship my parents now…they looked after my sister and me at a time when there were no diapers and took us places when prams were unheard of. Having said that about diapers and prams, it doesn’t mean I am old and lived in the black and white era. Diapers weren’t there or we couldn’t afford it that’s all.

Now talking about the baby, he is a sweetheart. He sleeps all day and plays at night, so that when I toil at work all day I can come home and play with him at unearthly hours …which in turn means that his age in months is equal to how many days I was sleep deprived. But somehow nature has it that a mother falls for her baby’s smile even if he smiles at 2:00 am and so it happened that I have forgotten what sleep is like.  No I am not complaining, because sometimes I wonder what we did before he was born. I cant seem to remember how my husband and me spent our evenings and weekends before he came :D Of course, we talked, gossiped, argued and even fought – about what? No idea.

Walking at malls pushing a pram has become a new experience as well. As he is an infant now, we have adjusted the pram in such a way that he can see us…and I am sure one day he might blog about how he had to see my face all the time, even at malls where there were lots of hot chicks flocking around. And when he is inside he has no other option than to flash his oh-so-innocent toothless smile, which I fall for, and as a response I also start smiling and playing with him. However other people don’t see the baby inside ; they just see me smiling and talking playfully and think I am crazy or something. Well one cant be bothered about all that. Once I am out of Kerala, I can be assured that others mind their own business and not poke into mine.

However I always think that the pregnancy phase was the most beautiful one. People opened doors for me, stared admiringly, gave way at long queues,  parents pampered me to bits and above all, I had the license to eat. Well that eating habit still continues. Earlier I had the tummy and a small person inside to justify about. But now? Neither. Hmm. Certain habits die hard , you see.

So that’s all I can find to write. I am fearfully anticipating the day my baby grows up, finds this blog, and disowns me. :-(

Choir Gags

I used to be one of the forty singers of a popular choir. It was not a church choir, but one which was conducted independently by the grandson of a Christian musical maestro, who composed many popular Christian songs we sing in church to this day. Our choir master, who is a seventy-something old man, weak and frail, was very particular and strict about English pronunciations, tones and every other technical detail of Western church music. We practiced two hours on Sunday evenings, and held concerts during Christmas, sometimes on Easter and on the death anniversary of our choir master’s grandpa.

The attendance of choir members was consistent, regardless of the choir master being extremely strict. When forty of us sang in a harmony, this old genius would know who sang the wrong note, and made us sing from the start.

The two words our choir master insisted on were ‘round tones’. He pressed on the fact that for good vocal output, one should open the mouth and let the jaws loose. But most of us in the choir never did that, and the choir master kept on accusing us saying that we were tight lipped singers who sang through the nose. He was so annoyed with our lip movements and said that we were more concerned of how our faces would look when we opened our mouths, than in the tone quality of the song. He used to advice us to stand in front of a mirror at home, open the mouth in round tones and sing so that we can feel the sound from the chest. Well, you know we can do anything but sing in front of a mirror.

 Soon, our choir master became so infamous on this, that the church public commented that the dog at his house barked in round tones in fright.

One fine Sunday evening, my Mom was bathing my eight month old niece who was in turn, trying to crawl out of her grip. It was a usual ritual so my Mom kept on talking to turn her attention and said… “Does anyone want to see my little beauty here without clothes…no tickets required…it is a free show…free show…” . My grandmother also used to call it ‘free show’ when we were little one or two year olds and refused to wear any clothes. Anyway, after her bath, Mom and me quickly got dressed, waved at the little one, and sped to the choir practice. 

Soon after, our choir master appeared with black notes of a new hymn and distributed it. Along with his copy of the song was an off white envelope which clearly was an invitation card. He opened it, put on his spectacles and read through it seriously. He then slowly put the card back in the envelope raised his small, thin head looked at us, and said, 

“There will be a Russian church concert next Sunday; All are welcome. It will be from 5:00 pm onwards at the Parish hall next to the cemetery”

After a serious pause, he continued, “I repeat. This is no joke. I should see all of you at the concert next Sunday and learn how lip movement and round tones make a difference in singing”

Soon we all started whispering among ourselves. The choir master, noticed our concern, and proceeded,

“No need to worry about entry passes. It is going to be a free show”

From rags to riches...a real story.

I was three years old when my parents built their dream home in Trivandrum. It was not in the heart of the city, but very close. My neighborhood looked more or less like a slum and our house was the only double storeyed structure which stood tall in the entire locality.

Every day, be it day or night, you could hear a tapping sound from any room of our house. Soon we got so familiarized to this noise that we couldn’t hear it anymore. Behind our house, was a small thatched hut, where a man who carved little elephants out of wood for his livelihood, lived with his family. His wife, three sons of whom the youngest was retarded, lived in this hut of two rooms. However all other houses here were more or less of the same type, and so we never felt anything so special about this hut or the people living in it. You could hear the tapping of tools on wood even at nights and many a time I have wondered the practicality of this to raise and educate two kids.

When I was in high school a major change came across this hut, as it changed from thatched roof to a tiled one. Tiled roofs are not very helpful on rainy days but are certainly an improvement from a thatched house. Then Papa used to tell me how hard work and modesty paid off. Me being a teenager at that time, despised advice and stories with morals - or lets put it this way, I hated anything which had atleast a remote chance of making me a better person. And not to mention at that age, parents would always sound wrong and outdated.

Years passed. Our neighborhood changed for the better. This month I came down to my home on a month long vacation. As usual I went to the terrace, and was in for a huge shock. In the place of the tiled roof house there is now a palatial double storeyed building, with modern amenities, granite floors and was huge enough to place our house inside it. Obviously, the man who made wooden elephants moved out and sold his land. I heard that his youngest son was moved temporarily to an asylum and this was a painful occasion for them and everyone else in the neighborhood. This could have made them move out. I stared blankly at the new house, which was getting ready for a house warming ceremony, decorated in blue and yellow lights.

Soon a lady emerged from the front door, appearing all busy and tensed with a huge vessel of a local sweet in it. She called out to someone and a guy took the vessel from her and went out. She looked familiar.Papa came on to the terrace for a smoke and told, that she was the same old lady, whose husband was the man who made wooden elephants. They’d saved and accumulated the meager income, and educated their sons, by living in poverty and sacrifice. The sons made good value of the money, got placed, promoted, worked in Dubai and London for almost a decade and gifted their parents with a home they deserved for sacrificing all their lives for them.

Do you know a better real story for the same theme?