Mobile Appointments.

My first mobile phone was a Nokia 1100. It had a white moonlight display and was gifted by Papa in my final semester of engineering, as he was overwhelmed by my marks in the seventh semester. Haha I wish !  The truth is, there were only two theory papers and a project in the final semester. The project demanded frequent shuttling between hostel, printing press and computer center, and the gadget helped him trace me.

After six tiresome and frustrating months of job hunting after graduation, I landed at a software firm as a trainee and started earning on my own. My first investment was a mobile phone (which is hardly an investment ) worth twice my trainee pay. I spent my entire salary of that month and a monetary donation from Mummy to buy it and flaunted it around for almost three years. That’s when I got married and ever since I’d been using my husband's discarded phones.

Okay I am not trying to be the super modest wife here because the very infamous nagging also happened in parallel. Whenever I shop for clothes or shoes, my excuse would be…’See this? I don’t even have a mobile..This is your old one. Poor me .’ and it always worked. Last month he bought me a new mobile, the most happening Android. ( Ya I know what an Android is, he explained it to me.)

Ever since, our appointments and reminders happen as follows.

Our son has to be taken to the Clinic for his third dose of vaccination on December 7^th. I create a reminder in my calendar and add  hubby’s name as the participant. As soon as I create, it sends an email to my hubby with the attached calendar , which looks somewhat like this:

Event: Aaron vaccination.

Date: 7^th December 2011.

Location: Muscat Clinic

Participants: Anita Jeyan

Going? Options: Yes  No  May Be

Then he clicks ‘Yes’.

Immediately this is added to his calendar as well, and I get an email saying ‘Accepted’.

Aren’t we the super hifi Gizmo freak couple or what ?  So the calendar became our Godfather reminding us for Sunday Mass, Grocery purchase, Car servicing, ATM, etc.

Later one day I reported a dearth of clothes in my wardrobe and wanted to go shopping.

 As usual I created the event on my calendar.

Event: Shopping.

Date: 3rd November 2011.

Location: City Center.

Participants: Anita Jeyan

An email pops up in his inbox.

He notes the undesirable event.

The mail continues.

Going? Options: Yes  No  May Be

May Be.

My email reads: ‘Tentatively Accepted”. L

The Banana Sequel.

Its 4:00 pm, and here I am, at office, drinking milk. Not the warm milk from the vending machine (which does not exist), but the milk I brought from home in a vacuum flask. Yes people, I am a child in an adult’s body. If my Papa sees me drinking milk at office, he will jump with joy. Anyone else seeing this might think that I am retarded. Well, I don’t care as long as there is a calcium blast happening in my stomach.

My life was very eventful during my high school days.  I’d get up at 5 am, get ready and travel many miles to attend the tuition class, then go to school, after which I’d race to my entrance coaching center ( which proved to  be unfruitful when the results came) , and would reach home by 9 pm. Pretty hectic. 

So my parents derived a round the clock, all-round nutrition plan for me which goes something like this. A full mug of Horlicks at 5 a.m…. in which the horlicks would be just a negligible percentage and rest would be whole milk. Anyway the color made me believe that it was hot chocolate or something and we had a win-win situation there. My breakfast was carefully packed in aluminum foil, which was usually toast and omlette. How many eggs went into the making of the omlette is not known till date, but a diet conscious me was made to believe that it was just one egg and nothing more. ( After marriage when I stepped into the kitchen and started making omlettes myself, I realized that one egg cant make an omlette as big as the one I used to have.  Later,I forgave them for that ). Then came lunch, which was usually a combination of rice, vegetables and fish.

However, the evening snack was my personal choice. Before going to entrance coaching I was expected to eat a banana. But I ate hot chicken puffs. Papa said it was junk food, and that bananas were healthy and some nutrition facts about bananas and blah blah….  

But bananas? In front of people ?

So years and years of chicken puffs, hot dogs, burgers and pizzas  later,  here I am, at my desk, drinking milk and wondering which fruit to crush for my baby.

 How about bananas ?

Fraud Fraaands !

I grew up watching my parents help a lot of people who were either in need or in trouble. Back in the 90’s, when we bought a second hand car, whenever we went to the city they slowed down at the bus stop to check for familiar faces. And if there were any, my parents would drop them first. However I used to get pissed at that, as I’d have to share the seat with some random aunty who would eventually ask me my grade and how I was doing at school. That’s the last topic I want to discuss about, you see.

My sister and brother in law are sponsors for the education expenses of a child at an orphanage and are doing their bit. My mother, ever since she started earning, saved a portion of her income for the poor. I am not proud to say that I’m not doing any of these, but I never turned down any genuine opportunity that came my way.

Recently I got an email from an acquaintance. Not a school friend, or a college mate or an ex colleague. Just a random face I met once or twice in my journey. In the email, she said: Hey Anita, hope you’re doing good. How is your family? I need a small help from you. I want to do a course in a XXX university here which would cost me 15000 euros.  I can’t ask my father as he is in a financial crunch from a recent huge expense. My husband doesn’t want me to do this course. Can you please send some money to my account? I will return it once I get a job. Thanks, Ms. ABCD.

Now my reaction to this is WHAT THE HELL !? or even worse.

The mail talks volumes about the immaturity of the person and her perception of others that they are fools. Her husband doesn’t want her to do this course. So she is going around begging and how the hell is she going to collect money as much as that? And she says she will return the money if at all she gets a job ! What if she doesn’t and decides to stay at home? Would that mean that as per the deal the money doesn’t have to be returned? When the husband is around, and the wife collects fund from her friends for her expenses what does that say about the husband? Anyway, I replied to the email in the most decent way possible, that I had a baby now and we are currently unable to meet our own expenses and closed the chapter.

A month later, Ms.ABCD posted on facebook: “ Browsing through my new iphone”.

The same month a bunch of pics were posted in facebook. The album was named ‘ Weekend at the London tower’. Ms. ABCD and her husband, dressed luxuriously looked all classy in the pics.

Do you think this person actually needed the money?

P.S: This was one of the very few instances in all my life that I felt proud of myself. If I had sent the money however small it may be, the above updates on facebook would have made me suicidal.

Random family amusements ..:)

The dentist finally gave me the verdict. Root Canal it is. I hurried home and the first thing I did, was to call my sister, reason being, if something is painful she plainly says it. For her, sympathy and consolation comes later. It was helpful to me many times before, as I could mentally prepare to face such situations. (The other instances I asked her this, was about threading eyebrows and recently about delivery - and for the latter any mental preparation doesn’t help)

Me: Does it pain?

She: No, not at all…They give you an anesthesia before doing it. You wont even know it.

Me: Really ?  You sure?

She: And yes, I had a small jaw ache initially, but that’s nothing to do with root canal…its because  I had to keep my mouth opened for a long time.

Me: Ohh !

She: But for you, that shouldn’t be a problem. :|

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Now that our baby is here and we do most of the talking to him (which I think is better at this stage as he isn’t old enough to respond) , the only time we get to talk to each other is during the long walk from the parking lot to the grocery shop.

Me: You know, Mummy said I have lots of patience when I give oil massage and bathe Aaron…my sister also said the same. Why don’t you ever appreciate anything about me..?

Few seconds later. (Ya that’s all he takes to find a convincing answer to death questions)

He: “There are too many good things about you that I don’t know where to start from”.\

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When Aaron was a couple days old, and we were still at the hospital, he started crying at night and my Mom picked him up. I’d been flamboyantly living like a bachelorette post marriage and now post delivery, and so wasn’t used to baby cries or waking up in the middle of the night. I slowly opened my eyes and saw my Mom pacifying the new born and he soon drifted off to sleep in her arms. I dint get up from my bed, instead peeped into his cradle through the two round holes of the arm rest of the hospital bed.

As my Mom turned, with an expression which clearly said ‘will she ever learn!’ , all she saw were my eyes, through those holes. As she walked back to the bystander bed, she murmured, ‘Reminds me of the dinosaur’.

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Although my Papa advices everyone to drive safe, one needs to be life insured and iron hearted to be in the car while he drives. He uses neither of the rear view mirrors -  I was told that it wasn’t in the syllabus during his time. That our car rests unscratched in the garage is the simple testimony to the existence of God and that he listens to our prayers. Once as we were speeding on a particularly busy road, I noticed a small cat which was about to cross. I yelled ‘Papa, don’t !’ and closed my eyes tight…In a split second I turned around and saw that the cat had escaped unscathed. Papa continued the drive totally oblivious of me, or the cat. 

Then I asked, ‘Papa, have you ever run across a cat and killed it?’ ..

Papa: ‘No, but I badly wanted to’.