Xmas Hustle.

I can’t seem to remember the month of December 2017, so I am guessing that I may have been in a coma which no one is speaking to me about. I do remember the Xmas cakes and garlic breads straight out of my Moms oven melting in my mouth gulped with generous amounts of wine. Christmas, as usual, was spent with my people in peace, love, music and lots of food. I earned this break after slogging and stressing out in office trying to reach somebody’s insanely impossible goals and timelines.

I applied for a month vacation, and my boss was highly amused at my great expectations. She cut it down to ten working days. My husband was allowed more leave and he said ‘Bye, Roomie, Merry Xmas’ and went on his way. Well, my son and me had the best time ,did our Xmas shopping, ate countless tubs of popcorn, watched late night Disney, slept and woke up on our terms. It was such a jolly good time without rules and husband ! Finally the day of travel arrived. I was supposed to leave office a bit early as it was busy Xmas season, traffic was slow moving towards the airport and the flight dint belong to my Dad. I targeted to leave by 4:00 pm.

Meanwhile some logically-challenged guys at office requested project related training at 3:00 pm. I had to pack bags, weigh them, get food for my son, dress him, lock all doors, switch off TV and Gas, arrange documents, remind the driver for airport drop, pay the cleaner, park my car somewhere safe, handover keys to neighbor to water my microscopic and malnourished plants in my absence, lock bedroom doors amongst many other things.

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As I had emptied my fridge and every meal had to be arranged, I came towards my car in the afternoon with a thousand things running in my head and official calls ringing continuously. I found a car parked perpendicular to mine, completely blocking any forward movement. Who on earth parks like this as if I abandoned my car there? All hell broke loose in my head. My animal instincts woke up. I rang up a colleague who usually parks adjacent to mine and blurted ‘Hey do you know which stupid is the owner of this purple Mazda? What kind of ..what ..what nonsensical…’ …I searched for words to complete my sentences. He said ‘Anita first of all calm down, you can find him at___’ I cut the call and made an angry walk towards the human who was doomed to be at the receiving end of my wrath.

He was happily joking in his cubicle oblivious of the fire he started. I said ‘Can you move your car from there?’ What I really wanted to say  was ‘Hey pea-brained useless creature! You better move your damn car out of that place else I will scratch it with my keychain!’. To be honest I am the useless creature whose mouth goes against her brain. The guy who heard me loud and clear said… ‘I wrote my number there…dint you see?’ Oh well ! Now he expects me to walk around his car and find his number and call him whenever I have to go somewhere? Dude, I don’t even call my husband whenever I start my car. I replied to him. ‘NO!’. He looked at me closely, measuring the rising mercury levels and quietly moved his ridiculously flashy car. The fire that started in my head couldn’t be extinguished.

Later the training started at 3:00 pm and the trainees had segregated all the doubts in the world to ask me. I kept talking and simultaneously looking at my watch every five seconds trying to signal the crowd that I am not interested. However they seemed to be brimming with a thirst for knowledge. Finally I scraped through that meeting around 4:10pm. Later everything happened in a blur, packing, tidying, locking etc. , and soon we were on our way to the airport.

Wearing similar tee shirts and jackets, my son and I cuddled in the backseat of the car, when he looked up at me and asked. ‘Ma did you take the passports and ticket?’

‘Yes I did, baby’. I said confidently, after having successfully sailed through a busy day alone.

‘Are you sure ma?’



 

Emotional Modulation.

I am an emotional wreck. If the character in a movie violently dies, my tear glands start pumping up tears from the air and starts generating renewable energy. Whereas when it is comedy I will make sure your eardrums blast with my laughter. It will be so explosive that after you watch a movie with me and go home my laughter will still ring in your ears and you will regret your decision to have hung out with me. Any emotion, be it happiness, grief or anger is expressed by me and my maternal family in its extreme form. The way anger of my relatives usually pans out, we can rightly measure it on a Richter scale. When they yell you can actually feel the tremors in the neighborhood.

Even though anger dominates any other emotion in the family, I am slightly different. Laughter mostly dominates my moods. I can remember jokes heard in movies or told by my friends during meetings and get myself into a situation wherein I struggle to control my laughter. I am, but wired to find a funny angle to situations and do not keep myself sad for long periods of time. I just keep the tears for the pillows, laughs for the ones who deserve it and stay far away from negativity. It isn’t easy but with determination it evolves.

If science develops a device that modulates emotions it would be a breakthrough for my family to be sane with each other and the rest of the people destined to be around them. I would buy it in bulk and distribute it an act of benevolence for Christmas. My anger outbursts are not very common. My laughter never hurt anyone. My sadness is fortunately short lived. I do not stew in regret. Basically the algorithm which runs that device should be inspired by me. Okay enough self-praising for now; I need a device to control that actually :D Even my boss tells me to stop self-praise. It is not even appraisal time, she thoughtfully added.

Last week I was on a cleaning spree when I dug out my son’s toy bin. Expectation was to find everything from shoes to food bits from 2011. However, I was in for a surprise. At the bottom of it was a comb, which belongs to my Papa which he was frantically searching for while he was here in September with me. He had to settle for a new comb, which we bought after his precious comb which seemed to have been handed down through generations was lost. Ever since, he had been dissatisfied with the very act of combing hair. Finding it was a eureka moment for me. Immediately I took a selfie with the comb and sent it to our family group captioned ‘Look what I found!!’. The group witnessed an outpour of sentimental emotions about the comb, tears of joy and one earth shattering revelation from Papa - ‘It is the closest to my heart’! And here I am, stupider than the stupidest, thinking vainly that I was the closest to his heart!!! My heart broke into a thousand pieces. No problem, in December when I meet him I will breakup with him.

Coming to think of it, have you noticed that some people actually value objects and situations more than we do? I wouldn’t even notice if my comb was lost (because there are hundreds of them at home, you know, just in case). Papa wouldn’t notice if his shirt was ten years old, but I care too much about what I wear. I search for sense of humor in people I meet and get along better with them, whereas Papa prefers knowledge and sensibility. He hates lame jokes and wasting time on small talk, whereas that is what I live for.

So coming back to that device I was talking about. I know what you are thinking. Don't gift it to me.

Church Etiquette for Dummies.

As an uber-cool, club-hopping, midnight partying, forever socializing person that I am, one of my much-envied weekend activity is waiting outside the church for two hours in the scorching sun while the son is at Catechism. By the way, I don’t know what is club-hopping or midnight partying and if checking Instagram for the 137^th time in one hour counts as socializing then yeah I am forever socializing.

To be honest I am not a regular church goer. My partner-in-crime (legally addressed to as husband) does not believe in the concept of going to church to pray. He says he wants to retain whatever peace that is remaining. I don’t disagree completely and I don’t agree also because in marriage we are not supposed to agree with each other. It is sinful.

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When I was younger (I'm still young), our grandparents taught us to dress conservatively while going to church. My Mom always wears her new sarees to the church first. All people in church were dressed either in sarees or salwars or tunics that were appropriate for a place of worship. Now if you see, times changed drastically. People arrive at church in their luxury vehicles with a statue of Jesus stuck in the front (which needs immediate cleaning because it is starting to look like Che Guevara) and makes a grand entry in a black t-shirt with a picture of a beer bottle right there in front captioned “Beer is Life”. Inside the church, at every 100 meters there is a small board that says ‘God sees you’. I am not sure whether these people see the board (or a mirror).

So yesterday I had to pick my son fifteen minutes before the mass was over and drop him at a birthday party. Oh yes, that is a sin and I am a sinner. He is just six, it’s not like he was on his knees and talking to God from the subconscious.  In my defense, I am sure God will agree that it is better this guy leaves the mass. He is that guy whose pranks distract everyone. His Catechism teacher rolled her eyes at me as if I was Satan. “You can take him when the mass is over” she said strictly, pointing to my son who was winking behind her and making few other kids laugh. I pleaded ‘Ma’am we have to go somewhere, it’s very urgent” (otherwise we won’t get cake ;-)) and she was burning with fury. So this is a Catechism teacher with a zero tolerance. I now know why I have to literally drag my son to church on Saturdays. This is the exact opposite of how the scriptures have to be taught and practiced.

Once you exit the church there is a 45 minute wait for traffic to clear until the main exit. This is a ground for cut-throat competition because either you go first or ensure that others don’t go. The priest said something about patience but what does he know- he does not drive and travels in chauffeur driven cars. Priests often give us marriage advice also. You should see the hues evolving from myriad facial expressions in the congregation.

Then there are others whose phones do not have a functioning silent mode. In my knowledge Charles Babbage would have invented the concept of silent mode in the 1800s. The intention of bringing the phone or keeping it in full volume inside the church is something we have to ask God in fasting and meditation. I am sure He also will not be able to comprehend such complicated psychological behavior.

I am not holier than any one of you to lecture about church etiquette but I really think that keeping a gadget away and dressing better is not as hard as trying to get your car out of the church premises.

Right?

Small but Happy Things.

The systems we work on at office are unavailable due to maintenance being done on them and for us techies this means - YOOHOO !!!. It is a digital hartal which is a welcome break and an amazing opportunity to look at ourselves in the mirror and reflect on how old we have become, the scalp of our heads getting more conspicuous, the ever-growing forehead, the crow’s foot which is gaining prominence and the panda eyes that can’t be ignored. Now don’t you say that pandas are cute.

We compare pandas for all the wrong reasons. You have a beer belly and say it looks like that of a Panda. You develop dark circles under your eyes  and again call yourself a panda. Even though all of these look cute on the Panda, he went on to learn Kung Fu and became famous whereas you are stuck in your cubicle.

Some small but happy things happened recently.

One is that I have been nominated for Indiblogger awards under Humor and Personal categories.  In humor I am competing with the likes of Mr.Bean and Mickey Mouse. Not exactly, but other bloggers in that category are all exemplary in the genre and are established columnists. In the personal category, again my competitors are bloggers who have it in them to be one day shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize. Basically I have no choice but to congratulate myself for having the nerve to go nominate myself in the contest. This nerve is also known as shameless.

Second small but happy thing is that my parents were here for a month and we had the time of our lives. We went on picnics, ate Mom’s heavenly food, experienced what it actually means to live in a clean house, and my son became a bit hyper excited- well there is a downside to every upside.  Then they left and as usual I went into homesickness mode in my own house. When you’re homesick you are actually not ‘HOME’-sick - you are just missing your parents. Who doesn’t, right? Especially when you have to leave them to go back to your mundane life. The day I came from the Departures section of the airport, I was too sad to cry. Life has to go on, right?

Third small but happy thing is that one of my acquaintances became so obsessed with the three piercings on my ears that she took a picture of just my ear and looked at it like Ranveer Singh looks at Deepika. Isn’t that a wow moment? I have never felt so proud of any other part of my body before.  No, wait. I did once before when my Engineering final semester results came and I was so proud of my brain even though half of the marks came from a project which I dint do.

Fourth small but happy thing is that my son has started reading quite well and is very excited about his new skill. I am a super proud mother (except when he reads my whatsapp messages).

Fifth small but happy thing is that I have lost a lot of weight owing to excessive work, stress and other lifestyle factors but weight loss is something one should never complain about. My parents are not too happy about this, but like I said, there is a downside to every upside ;-)

When turbulences strike, when your loved ones no longer think of you as priority, count your small and happy things. I already counted five ! These are the things we live for. Laugh aloud.  Laugh like crazy, unapologetically, freely. Live for the parents who will always love you. For the friends who worry about you when you whatsapp them at 4 am. For the colleagues who make the workplace lively. For the cashier who always smiles at you. For the tiny tots in the neighborhood who wave at you. For the wine that is waiting for you. And for the person who actually pinged me on facebook and asked why I am not updating my blog – here is to you dear – you actually made my day which was not going too well.



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Cheers to little things and people that brighten up the day!


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