Our new, extended family !

So basically there are four people in our house. Hubby, toddler, myself and the TV.

Because, when the new TV arrived over a month ago, I was told that it had the ability to listen and obey (unlike the others in the house) and hence it will be considered as a person, and treated like a new born (like other gadgets and cables and wires and the dust sitting on them).

This new age television was obviously bought on an EMI scheme, because hello, we do not believe in selling kidneys to buy television sets. So coming to the TV, it is sleek and huge. It has got a remote control, but as they say, remote controls are hard to find and getting up every time to get a hold on it may even result in drastic consequences like movement of bones and loss of calories. So the television makers have eased our lives and increased our risks of obesity and heart disease by enabling the voice recognition software. So we just sit on the couch and say, ‘Hi TV, Power on’, or ‘Hi TV, power off’. 

Mind-blowing :D 

And when you raise your hand by just sitting on the couch, the television instantly brings the volume controls and we can adjust it there itself. This is not an excellent feature for people like me, because if I raise my hand to scratch my head, all the volume controls appear and I have two pairs of eyes rolling at me. I mean- to use hi-fi televisions like these, one should be well groomed . The TV does not entertain people with dandruff watching it.

Then of course it allows you to watch 3D. Like on weekends you have bloody  eyeballs from Final Destination3 rolling into your lap or the T-Rex eating your brain.

Now the good news is, that was also the first sentence my toddler said. Hi, TV power on. Praise the Lord, he talked to the TV first! I was moved to tears . Thankfully, the TV does not obey him because of course TV is TV and it doesn't understand baby language. (Neither do we).

But believe me the clarity is like a dream. Then of course it helps indirect means of communication. Like when there are  lots of chores pending for the weekend, and everybody else act like they are completely oblivious to it and place themselves on the couch, saying 'Hi Tv, power on', and from the kitchen I go 'Hi TV, get lost'. 

Hey, I do not disrespect anyone; I am talking to the TV! But a hint is taken ;-).Am I smart or what.

And if we talk aloud, the TV thinks that we are talking to it and brings a small bubble on the bottom of the screen which reads ‘Is it noisy around you?’ and ‘Try saying that again’ and then I want to yell…hey we have life going on here, so please! And to that usually it takes a Manmohan Singh stand. Somewhere inside a maze of wires and capacitors, it might be saying to itself ‘Theek Hai’.

Oh I almost forgot, I will soon be inviting you guys for the official christening ceremony. ;-) Of course it will carry a surname, and you know what that will be :D

Angels in Disguise.

Actually I wrote this article for Blogadda's contest on 'Soldier for Women' and missed the due date. The other participants actually got lucky :-P Anyway here goes...

It was a pleasant Sunday evening. My mother, the single alto singer in a choir that comprised of at least fifteen soprano voices, never missed the choir practice at 4:00p.m. My father always dropped her at the church premises before time, parked the car, and went walking. He would walk around one hour, come back and wait for her, reading his favorite Reader’s Digest. The choir practice usually went on for an hour and a half. I never made calls to her mobile at this time, mainly because the choir master hated mobile phones, and also because my mother was not an expert in setting it to silent mode.

One Saturday, I called my mother casually and she mentioned about the charitable concert their choir was about to conduct and how the choir master made the attendance of all singers mandatory. She went on to explain how annoying the he had become over the week, due to the upcoming concert and related pressure. She spoke like a child, scared of her new teacher. Then she said, ‘But Papa has to go to see his mother tomorrow. It is important. He tells me to go in an auto’ she paused and took a deep breath. 

Then she continued with an unexpected energy, out of the blue ‘May be I will drive to church tomorrow!’

‘But Mummy you haven’t driven in a long time’, I elaborated my concern.

‘So what, it is not a peak hour, and there is not much traffic’ she retorted. 

Papa was hesitant in the beginning, but later decided to go with her decision. Miles away, I cut the call and sat disturbed in my hostel room. To be honest, Mummy drove like crazy. She bakes the yummiest cakes, stitches her own dresses, makes stunning bridal bouquets and flower arrangements, but when it comes to driving she is definitely not the best.  ‘People learn through experience. Unless you drive on your own, alone, it is not possible to face the road’ said my hostel-mate just for the sake of saying.

On Sunday evening, around 4:00 p.m. my mobile rang. It was Mummy, and she squealed in delight to say that she reached safely, and that the car was parked parallel to another one, in the same compound. She also told me not to call her for another two hours, as the choir master was already angry at a few people who hadn't turned up. After this call, I got lost in my routine hostel activities.

Around 9:00 pm I called Papa to know whether he reached home, when my call reached a rather noisy place. ‘Hello? Where are you? Why aren’t you home already?’ I asked in a single breath.

Papa said, ‘We are at a hospital here. Mummy met with a small accident…’ he paused.

‘WHAT!’ I screamed.

Papa continued, ‘Mummy is fine. As she was driving back after choir practice, her car hit a two wheeler. A young guy who was riding it fell down. He is also fine now, we are going home. Mummy is paranoid, we will call you tomorrow’.

The next day as soon as I woke up I grabbed my mobile and dialed Mummy. Mummy answered my call in a voice which clearly sounded like she cried herself to sleep the previous day.  ‘Mummy!’ I said.

She narrated the incident like this.

“Yesterday, I was driving home after choir and had reached halfway when there was a left turn. I switched on my indicator, honked a little bit, and turned just like the vehicle in front of me, when I heard a loud thud on the side of our car. I stopped immediately, and so did all other cars behind me. Some people came running at that point and many others on the other side of the road also came running. Next I know, some onlookers were banging on my window, using abusive words, telling me to come outside. I was numb, shivering and completely oblivious of what happened. I saw people trying to open my side of the door angrily. My hands sweated and heart beat faster. I felt like I was losing my eyesight as everything was blurred. Then I slowly slid into the passenger seat in front and got out through that side, as some angry people were standing near the driver’s side of the car. I saw a young man on the pavement, unconscious, and a scooter lying next to him. It was then that it occurred to me, that I was responsible for the life of this man. He looked hardly 27. At least 50 people had gathered around our car, a traffic block was thus created and there was noise and havoc. I still dint know what to do, as fifty pairs of eyes were on me, and none on the victim who lay on the pavement. I froze.

Suddenly an auto rickshaw drove into the scene and its driver walked out straight to the victim. He checked the young guy and screamed ‘He is alive..!’ and lifted him with difficulty. None of the onlookers helped, neither did I! The driver put the young guy at the back seat of our car, strode to the driver seat and started the car! I stood watching, when he yelled ‘Madam what are you looking at? GET INSIDE!’ I quickly got into the front seat and that guy sped through the streets honking like crazy, signaling emergency. I called Papa and mumbled something. He drove to the nearest hospital. The driver stopped at the porch, called the staff of the hospital and put the guy on the stretcher and rolled it into Casualty section. The driver accompanied me as we walked towards the Casualty section, and a doctor emerged. They exchanged certain details, while I answered Papa’s call as he was on the way back, and I told him the hospital name. As I cut Papa’s call and turned, the driver was gone. I ran to the porch where our car was parked, and the security said that the driver had parked the car in the hospital parking area, and handed over the keys to me. I ran to the hospital entrance and searched every possible place, but he was gone. The doctor emerged from the casualty after an hour, during which Papa also managed to reach as we waited with bated breaths.

“Good that you brought him here at the right time… that guy is perfectly fine and he can go home tomorrow” said the doctor. Soon, an old lady and a pregnant woman reached the corridor where we were, and a nurse told us that it was the mother and wife of the accident victim. They did not recognize us. If not for the help and presence of mind of that auto driver, this mother would have lost her son, and a young woman, her husband. It would have changed their lives and mine, forever, for worse.

This auto driver, who stood up for my mother who was in a helpless situation, is a real soldier. The world needs more people like him. For me, he is a faceless and nameless person, who dint even stop to be recognized for his good deed.  

When the whole world prefers to point fingers and accuse, there are this few who actually make us believe that humanity still exists, at least in traces. 

Living the Sun's wrath.

Sorry for the long gap. I was at God’s own country over the week and couldn't blog due to lack of time and electricity. The week was mostly spent on taking baths and wiping sweat off our foreheads. Here are a few excerpts from my week long trip.

Cochin was like an oven, and we were all like pieces of chicken marinated in sweat waiting to be grilled. And it doesn't grill and finish us off. The pessimistic summer believes in the concept of slow death, wherein one is bestowed with the luxury of waking up and going to bed completely sweating like a pig, no matter how many baths one takes in between. And this, I am talking about a place few kilometers away from the city or the main road, in a compound with ample trees and greenery.  And to add to it I was exceptionally blessed enough to attend a function in the city, made to wear saree, in a hall where the air conditioner did not work as expected. By the end of the function, the heat had almost deprived me of all the water I ever had in my body and reached a stage where I was unsure of my existence.

I am writing all this, from the Middle East. When I landed here few years ago, I thought I was condemned to death just by the heat. Honestly, as compared to Kerala, Middle East is a paradise.

Another incident worth mentioning was my visit to the Lulu Mall at Cochin. The much hyped mall is said to be one of the biggest in India, and shopping was considered very economic. And people turned up in such huge numbers, that if you believe in the theory that there are seven people like you in the world, you could easily find them there.The mall became nothing short of a gas chamber. The centralized air conditioners had resigned themselves to their fate.Adolf Hitler would have considered this as a cheap method of mass slaughter. We regretted driving into this mall and got out of there by walk, later in a bus and an auto rickshaw to visit other places in the city, because driving in the city is a distant dream. Or if we had to get the car out of the mall it is likely that we'd have grown old by the time we reached home.

And another fateful day, I entered the bathroom to take a shower, when a spider decided to climb up my arm. I shrieked and shook my hand aggressively only to land that aggression on the nearest tap and bruised my wrist. The pain did persist for a few days. Guess who had the last laugh? The spider. Mothers of toddlers, please check your bathrooms for any spiders or other deadly animals before you lock yourselves in. Carrying or controlling a toddler with a bruised wrist in the scorching heat is not fun.

In short the trip was nothing short of sheer awesomeness. ;-)

Just a random working day.

As I work at a five minute walk from home, my working hours starts at 7:00 am ( I chose this shift to be able to reach earlier in the evenings ). Till 9:00 am, hubby takes care of the toddler. The child would be sleeping, so you can guess the amount of work that goes into it ;-) . Jokes apart, he does wake him up on time, gives him a bath, dresses him up (in the most obnoxious tee shirt and shorts combination which I later have to replace) and gets him ready for his playschool. I visit home for breakfast soon after and one day I found the house incredibly peaceful. No TV, no screams of the toddler. Occasional cute giggles of the toddler were coming from my room, and hubby humming a random tune was emanating from another. Something was terribly wrong.

I proceeded to my room and realized that my worst fear was happening. My toddler had caught hold of my ipad, and was playing Angry Birds in it. He had wanted to touch my ipad ever since I owned it, but by words and actions I had made it clear that it was not a toy. 

Don’t judge me, I cannot afford to buy ipads and give them to my toddler to play.  But he was so happily playing that I stormed to the bedroom where hubby was ironing his shirt.

“Dint you see that he is playing with my ipad ? With music on?”

“Yes . I gave it to him. See how cheerful he is! Awww”

“WHAT ! It is not a toy! Why dont you give your ipad instead?”

“WHAT? My ipad? I paid for that through my nose!”

“Then what about my ipad? We dint steal it ! We paid for that too !”

“But that is YOUR ipad no? Its okay” he said.

I mean what is the logic of that. My ipad is a toy. His ipad contains high security political information of the country’s Armed Forces.

I left the room fuming and snatched the ipad away from the toddler and replaced it with something else. This cant be happening. Do I look or behave like a cartoon to be treated like this. How can all my stuff be considered as toys. Hmph.

So we started from home, and the kiddo was dropped at playschool, and after he waved goodbye, I waited some more time watching him play with his girlfriend (who comes to playschool in a Hummer and I am not complaining )during which he gave me a look which translates roughly to ‘Please leave!’ On our way back I casually told hubby how the summer was catching up. I missed my sunglasses which were resting comfortably in some dark corner of hubby’s home in Cochin – I left it there last Christmas. I sighed aloud.

“Yes for your forgetful behavior, you should feel some sun this time, so that next time you won’t forget” preached the hubby. “Before misplacing this, you lost another one, remember?” he added.

“Whoa! You lost one too ! This is your second!” I argued.

“ Mine was stolen” he defended himself. “But yours was not, it is there somewhere but you don’t know” he said.

“Mine was stolen too!!!”

“No your sunglass just went missing it wasn’t stolen” he insisted.

“Oh I see? Did you see somebody stealing yours? It also went missing right?”

Silence.

"Your sunglass went missing, and you believe it was stolen. Mine is missing too, and I believe it was stolen as well."

“FINE”.

Silence ruled the car for some time, and I decided to break it. I thought of ways to change the topic and the mood and came up with a mind blowing one.

“You know, Ray Ban aviators are cool.”

I am really bad at changing topics.