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Sunday, May 26, 2013

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. 

Thursday, May 16, 2013

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. ;-)


Tuesday, April 30, 2013

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.


Saturday, April 13, 2013

Ten Commandments of the seemingly underprivileged!


As I opened this document to write, I was completely blank. Where did all the topics go? I mean I sacked a lot of them just because it may 'unknowingly' refer to some readers ;-) But thanks to Facebook and Whatsapp, I am well connected to everybody at the meager cost of broadband internet. If it were not for internet, would we reach out for our landlines to talk to our friends we interact with everyday on Facebook? No, not in a thousand years. 

Today, I am going to highlight some of the weirdest misers I have heard about and others, I have personally encountered. I am sure this will ring a bell somewhere as you read, because chances are more that you have come across one. 
To save money, and how!

1.Thou shalt not make phone calls
Local, STD, any calls. 
They do not even use the 100 free local calls facility available in the landline hoping that it will be en-cashed one day and it can be used to fund that square plot near Infopark. But when someone else calls them, the caller is not spared for a good hour with the most mind-numbing conversation, ever.

2.Thou shall miscalculate on purpose.
When a group of six friends buy similar dresses to wear on graduation day, the total amount Rs.6500 is divided by 5 and each one has to pay Rs1300, says this little devil. When you dig deep into the bill and ask her, the perpetually shrewd friend admits having made a 'small mistake'. But you know it wasn't, even though you have to pretend otherwise.

3.Thou shall not go on vacations
They do not plan nor do they participate in any group excursions simply because pitching in the total expense can be avoided by sitting idle in the comforts of one’s own home. There are others who actually come and have fun but play evil procrastinators when it comes to money.

4.Thou shall attend all parties but never host one. These weirdos can be found in corporate corridors and are as common as dirt. When there is a birthday or anniversary of any kind, they will be the first ones to initiate a treat or demand a party. However in all the years you know them, their birthday remains a mystery or there are enough reasons to embarrass the ones who ask for it.


5.Thou shall not buy anything new. 
These are people who were born to use second hand items. In all their lifetime they do not have a concept of a new car or a phone. It has to be second hand or Chinese make and they are fulfilled to their heart's content. 

6.Thou shall act innocent. 
These are our friends who consistently forget their purses or cards and reveal the same when the bill arrives. Someone covers for them at the moment, and it is forgotten. Dignified corporate friends find it cheap to remind their forgetful friend about the 200 rupees from 'last week's party'  and thus ignore it. Mission accomplished.

7.Thou shall car pool. 
Car pooling could have been introduced to save the environment but this was a blessing for many cheapos who keep their precious machines under covers in the garage. You always have that guy who tells you where he needs to be picked and dropped in a team outing.

8.Thou shall criticize.
These are the same people who own acres of land and runs highly successful family businesses but act very modest. When the comparatively poor you save for a million years and afford to buy a new phone they criticize you of being very rich and extravagant. In most cases these people use mobile phones which have black and white displays.

9.Thou shall eat free lunches. 
These are the ones, who suggest getting together for lunch when it is not on your schedule. They persuade and suggest a restaurant, eat lavishly, burp and pass on the bill to you as if you are his single parent.

10.Thou shall calculate. These are the ones, whose outing day summary looks like this on their phones: 
Public Toilet – Rs.1 
Bisleri Rs.15.75 (when that 16.75 has gone from his wallet). 
However when you pay Rs.1200 at KFC it is not counted but instantly overlooked.


 Tell me, have you met any one of these annoying creatures ?

Monday, April 1, 2013

Caption Contest Results !

When I started the caption contest on my blog I had no idea that so many contestants would actually participate in it ! And lot of others who wished me on my Blog Anniversary... seriously guys..it was overwhelming. Anyway, I passed on all the entries to Papa, who by the way has read over 200 books and always has some by the bedside and at his study table. Well the genre of books he reads is something like a facebook relationship status - 'It's complicated'. It cannot be understood by mediocre brains like mine, so I never really interfere or borrow books from him. I am not a fan of philosophy also ;-) However he was happy to go through all the entries and gave me his top three favorite captions, and logically the first one is the winner, who will win a Rs.200 gift voucher for her next purchase from Flipkart!

And the winner is...
is..




is..


Preeti Dhingra !!! Congratulations !!! Here is to you!

Her prize winning caption was.. " Let me fly before I sink."

Papa also liked the below captions, which he thinks are worth a mention. Unfortunately I have no gifts to give them. Sorrie :-( But thanks a ton !

Flight for existence and a search for sustenance !  - Antony Fernandez

A bird learns to fish not because of talent, but because of hunger  - Karthikeyan Ravikumar

You can see the contest details here. 


So how was Easter, folks? Mine was good....ate a lot of food until the button of my dress around the tummy burst and landed into one of the curries. We had Appam and Beef stew for breakfast - authentic recipe followed through ISD call from the MIL ! There are no free recipes, people, just like there is no free lunch. 

 I have taken a pic of the stew (just in case you are hungry right now :D )


Wednesday, March 27, 2013

First day at Playschool : excerpts from an anxious Mom's diary.


Every Mom dreads that day. The day their little one goes to a daycare for the very first time.

Mine was no different; given that anxiety is my middle name. Thanks to my parents who abundantly bestowed the most exquisite gene pool to me, anxiety and tension being the two most prominent traits. 

My baby was at home from birth until he turned 20 months old, and I was at a stone’s throw at office visiting him at regular intervals and a housemaid managing him when I was not there. My mother visited a couple of times too, and things were going smoothly until one day, my maid got enlightened from the other world. She decided to play hard-to-get, increased her wages, and started being irregular for lame reasons. This was unacceptable and we started thinking seriously and browsing aggressively for good daycare centers.

And we landed one.

So my next step was… to get anxious. I started chatting with all Moms I have on my chat list asking them what was the ripe age to go to playgroup. Given that my kiddo gets hyperactive around other kids his age was a sure sign that a forty year old housemaid is no company to him. Many of my friends were happy to help me get myself together over an endless list of queries and worries I had. I got a sense of reassurance from them. I visited the daycare center a few times, and shed some tears while talking to the teacher in charge because I am an emotional mess most of the time i.e whenever I am not sleeping.  I ensured the daycare was certified, made careful observation about cleanliness, the children to teacher ratio and most importantly how engaged the kids appeared whenever I visited. I noticed that none of the kids including babies were crying and they all were engrossed in something or the other, as the big bright room had enough toys and stationery to keep tiny tots busy for a long time. This boosted my confidence a little bit. I must tell you, I’d been at the crossroads of life many times and in do-or-die situations (read examinations) too, but I've never been through such emotional stress, ever.

As weekend falls on Thursday and Friday in this part of the world, Saturday was the first day of the week. Then came Saturday, February 23rd 2013.

Before that, I will let you guys peep into how February 22nd went. Complete disillusionment. Yes we went out to buy lunch and snack boxes for him, during which I was still in a state of complete delusion. I did not sleep that night. My mind wandered around his playschool and I pictured him in the worst scenarios. I was not helping myself in the belief and faith part of prayer. Soon my alarm went off, and I realized that nights are very short when you are preoccupied. Nights are also short on examination eves, but that is a different story.
So on that day, I woke up at 5:00 a.m, that’s when my working day starts. The kitchen schedules were completely reoriented to pack his lunch, thus pushing our breakfast into a second priority. Diapers, dresses, napkins, lunch, snacks, milk, water – Check. Around 9:00 am, we left from home. My hands were sweating like crazy, while my son was humming away a random tune.

Soon we reached the nursery and were welcomed by smiling teachers and a lot of kids of different age groups and nationalities. The bigger kids had assembled there before going to their classrooms. As they left the play area seemed bigger and brighter with all sorts of toys and little rides. Four other toddlers almost the same age as him stood there playing among themselves. When he saw the big bright room, he struggled himself out of my hands and walked towards the toys. He got into one of the rides, and turned and smiled at me. I stood there for a while, and he occasionally turned to look at me, not knowing that I will not be there for long. I fought back tears. Seeing my constipated expression, my husband intervened and asked.. “So you think the parents of those kids dumped them here because they don’t like them?”

“No..”

“Then what? See how happy he is now. He may miss us, but this is where he wants to be during the day. Not at home watching those useless serials with the housemaid”.

Okay that went above my head, and the teacher consoled me that he will be fine and that they were all there for him. She also told me not to stay there looking at him too long.
I slowly left, with a heavy heart, wiping tears. I also called up the nursery like ten times and they said that he was not crying. However the nursery being a new place for him, he did not sleep on the first day.

I picked him up in the evening, and he was little tired but still smiling. He came home and caught up on sleep.

The days after, for around two weeks, he cried when we dropped him, and clung to me refusing to go. This literally broke my heart and I cried excessively on my way back to office every single day. I wailed, hyperventilated and became the loudest drama queen ever in the history of motherhood. Not to mention the levels of productivity at office on those days.

It is his fourth week at playschool now, and my prayers have been answered. Since last week he looks forward to go ,  has made new friends, sleeps and eats on time and is happy by the grace of the Almighty. The day has come that I can wave to a happy face when I drop him in the morning. The day I was praying so badly for, is finally here. That smile, and the way he waves at me is directly proportional to my sanity and presence of mind that day.

This is for all the mothers, working or not, who dreads a nursery or a playgroup and cannot imagine sending their precious child to one. I assure you, from experience, kids always love to be around other kids than with us. 

Spread the word!