Mushy mushy.

Sometimes, r~ gets really mushy and all cuddly with me and I wanted to record some of the things she said before she quickly became an eye-rolling teenager saying, "Mom, pleaaase!"

* Amma, I will always stay with you (அம்மா, நான் எப்போவும் உன்னோட இருப்பேன்!)

* Amma, I won't go to space because it is verrrry far. If I go, I will take you (This, when I asked her if she will write letters to me from space :)

* Amma, how beautiful you are ( அம்மா, நீ எவ்வளவு அழகா இருக்க! )

And equally note-worthy non-mushy moments:

* (While throwing a piece of paper up) 'Now the earth will go around and this paper will go to India' -- after I had explained why it was day in India while being night in the US and vice versa.

* (One day, I got really mad at her and said I am going to send her off to a different appa and amma) -- 'அப்புறம், அவா எச்சை plate ல என்ன சாப்பிட சொல்லுவாளா? -- Of all the concerns, she is worried, they will ask her to eat in a dirty (echal) plate!

* (When I told her the beginning of 'The immortals of Meluha') Amma, I like Shiva umaachi a lot, I like him as much as 'I love you' -- she did not mean, she liked Him as much as me, she meant, she liked him as much as the emotion represented by: 'Iloveyou' :p (எனக்கு Iloveyou அளவு பிடிக்கும்!)

* Amma, don't order this for me in Amazon. I want to go to a store and buy it -- understanding the difference between online and offline :)

* (Appreciating Daadi's saree, she says in Gujarathi -- in all politeness) 'Daadi, your dress is very beautiful. Can you please order this for me from India?'

An aside: I think k and I will deeply miss Simba when r~ gets past the lovey stage. Simba is like a second kid for us now, "Radhu are you ready to go? Where is Simba?" is something we ask without thinking :-)

I kinda get now why my mom kept the dolls that L~ and I used to play with, for so many years :)

:-)

Even a part of her hugs :)

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Conversation with thatha.

Of late, I have been thinking about my grandfather and grandmother -- how my life perhaps would have been different, richer if I had had the opportunity to interact with them. Whenever mom tells me a story about thatha, my mind conjures up images of a well-built, handsome, somewhat daunting man with a volatile temper and a demure, intelligent (not the bookish sense which I fear is the only kind that I possess) wife.

Colorful scenes from his past flow like cool satin (don't ask me why I thought of satin, that's just what came to my mind -- satin and silk waving kisses in a cool breeze) when I think of my thatha -- his life as a teacher in Colombo, his love for his mother, yet another colorful character...a rather portly lady who had great sense of humor, tremendous spiritual powers and a unique (in that time) fondness for her daughter-in-law, his photographic memory for books and details, his powerful, cursive handwriting...in all a lofty image of a lofty man (in the good sense) that I unfortunately never met.

I have this secret (hah!) wish to write a book about my maternal grandparents. Nope, it will never be a best seller but it will possibly be the most satisfying piece of writing that my pen has ever produced. Because it will let me put myself in their lives and be a part of it...

Most of the stories I found interesting occurred in a place I have never seen -- Colombo. They were stories of a life I have never been exposed to...when you lived under a hostile government that had declared that "Non-nationalists must quit!". My thatha earned well as a professor but only a part of the money reached his large family of a wife and 8 children. Mom says he was a master of the English language. Poems, quotations, words were a part of his regular conversations...I have never met a person in my life who could do that -- recall an appropriate text from a classic literary piece or a poem to quote at the right time! Mom says thatha did not leave behind money for his children but something a lot more precious -- the blessings and power of his prayers.

My paatti was as different from him as could be. She was an intelligent student who stopped studying past the fifth grade to get married. Thatha decided to marry her soon as he met her...brother! A lively, handsome young man who died young :( This brings to my mind the image of the first child that my grandparents lost -- Samanthaka mani. She was to be their most intelligent child if she hadn't passed away at the age of three. How weird that I feel sad for an aunt that I never met...an aunt I wish I had met, will maybe meet if not in this lifetime, in some other one?

So many stories, so many memories I try to make my own...where are you now, thatha? Are you reading this now? My silly little words struggling to convey what they set out to convey?

I set out to write down a make-believe conversation between you and me but it turned out to be something else. The make-believe world is powerful, isn't it? No wonder children amuse themselves endlessly in their make-believe worlds -- where dreams come true, where it's possible to experience what real-life fails to deliver...and this is my make-believe world, thatha. Not entirely. But, at times like this, when real life fades, this world is what keeps me going.

Here is what I read last from your letters to my mom,

"...In other words, I am preparing for my "Last journey",

"Our little systems have their day
They have their day and cease to be
They are but broken lights of thee
But thou my lord, are more than they"

In memoriam (Tennyson)

Reply soon..."

Yes...reply soon, thatha...

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About a mom.

IBH's tag -- top 5 reasons why I love being a mom.

1. When I come home from work and call out to r~, she dumps everything she is doing midway, ignores everyone else around her and heads straight to me with a big smile on her face...almost breathless! Gotta love that feeling :)

2. Am surprised at how the dad role fits k perfectly. He is great at being a dad -- touch wood. Not that I expected him to find it a challenge...well, ok, I'll admit it. I think he is even more patient a parent than I am (See how nicely I worded that? ;). He always does the one little extra thooli-aatardu, rocking etc when I have given up and almost drifted off to sleep! And while I was teetering between being conscious and barely-so the first few weeks, he mastered diaper-changing and that is quite something!

3. Ok, I don't really have a well-formed idea for this point. So, I am just going to use whatever phrases come to mind...

An exciting, satisfying, thrilling...life-long project; scary because there is this little life dependent on you but that somehow makes your life worth so much more; an adventure every day; never realized I hadn't "played" in ages; emotionally tied to someone like I never have before; moms have got to be better people in general -- how can you be self-centered with a little one in your life?; Focused; No one knows her better than I do -- lovely feeling; love the possessiveness that's a part of being a mom; love reading, researching doing all I can to do the best for her; love the smiles, the shrieks of delight, the babbling...the milestones, the everything...

4. Woman power takes on a whole different meaning after child birth. I feel empowered. Moms rock.

5. We are mom and daughter. We are a unit. We have a little world of our own. For now, that's all that matters.

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Stuck.

Today is one of those days that I feel stuck. Stuck in life. It's one of those days where nothing goes wrong in particular, no one says anything to set me off but I just don't feel right. I don't even know why.

Ever have one of those days? A day full of minor routines, maybe one or two pieces that won't fall in place -- a server that won't work, a plan that doesn't seem to be materializing, a dream that is half-way implemented -- and it feels like I just want to curl up and go back to bed and not go about any routine or talk to anyone.

So, I stopped debugging the server, stopped worrying about the incomplete dream, and just looked at the photos I took yesterday of r~.

That didn't fix my vague blue mood or fill me with a surge of adrenalin to get going but at least it reminded me that soon, I will be home playing with her and then everything will take a back-seat. It made me smile.

Thank God for that.

Oh! And Happy Tamil New Year's Day!

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Scary stuff.

Life is one whirlwind, roller-coaster ride with a baby. Being a first-time mom seems to be even more challenging. You hardly have time to breathe a sigh of relief that the nine long months have come to a happy end, you have several other worries to deal with now, not just, "I hope the baby is safe inside", now it's a potpourri of issues about baby's health, behavior, growth, milestones, your own recovery, nursing, sleep-deprivation and a totally out-of-wac endocrine system!

Gak! I bet a few of you read this post today and decided to maybe wait some more time, say a year or two, before you have kids!

Anyway, baby~r gave me a scare today by deciding to not breathe for a few seconds while crying. That was scary! Scarier than the time when I almost drowned in the local gym pool. The latter had a kind of finality about it, I thought, "Ok, here we go. I guess I am drowing, when does the life-flashing business start? blubb blubb blubb".

The dear husband had cautioned me against swimming past the blue flags and so that's what I did.
I swam till the blue flags and abruptly stopped.

I went down.

And further down.

Only my feet did not touch ground when I thought they would and so I went almost a feet below the water surface and kept bobbing up and down like in a really weird comic routine.

The other time I was really scared was the time I lost my identity after graduating from Bits, Pilani. With a somewhat decent 8.75 GPA, related grade sheets, 10th and 12th report cards, passpost, birthcertificate and cash, I boarded a bus from Pilani to Delhi with a bunch of my friends. Now, I have never been any good at packing suitcases. And since I had everything that defined my four college years in Bits to pack, I did what I could and ended up with thirteen pieces of luggage! One of them was a regal looking suitcase with all the important documents that defined...me. When we got off the bus, I very carefully collected my paraphernalia and got down and started counting them. I counted twelve, recounted and wondered what I was missing. Of course, the suitcase. I looked up and suddenly the bus was gone. With my precious suitcase.

Then, I went a bit crazy. I tried to run behind the bus in traffic and one of my friends stopped me and made me sit down. A couple of my friends even rented an auto to chase the bus but came back because that particular bus was lost in a sea of similar looking buses.

I cried and then cried some more, didn't eat for a day. I called my dad from a pay phone and told him the whole story. When I boarded the Delhi-Chennai TN express, I was still crying and hadn't eaten for more than a day.

And then the magic happened. The train stopped at Baroda maybe? for a few minutes and a stranger boarded my compartment and handed a box of sweets to me. He was my dad's materials-supplier and the best part, he held my suitcase in his hand. My dad had managed to track down the bus in Pilani and to get someone to collect the suitcase and hand it over to his colleague. I was thrilled! He then called my dad on his cell and handed the phone to me. I was too deliriously happy to say anything that made sense at that time. He got off the train just before the bell rang for the train to leave the station.

And then my friends gave me ice cream. Yeah, I know, just like in those movies where things mysteriously appear. I think one of them bought an ice cream for me because I hadn't eaten for a day. That was the yummiest ice cream I have had till now!

Ok enough of scary experiences. I don't want nightmares! Goodnight people!

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Being a parent.

If you are one of those people that wondered what it feels like to be newbie parents and what the big deal is about, you are reading the right stuff now :p Or, if you are just being nice to me and reading my post just for the heck of it, that's cool too :)

Remember how we used to consider couples with kids a whole different set of people? People with hefty bags filled with diapers and related paraphernalia, people that were concerned more about their baby's spit-ups rather than their appearance, people that could not talk about anything other than their baby, people with a somewhat needy little one clawing for their attention constantly? We were not them. We even found it hard to imagine how life would be when we became them. Some of us even wondered what "unconditional love" meant. We heard words like sleepless, poop, diapers, doctors and wondered how we would ever inhabit a world filled with those words...

And guess what? Suddenly we are very much in that world. We are now parents that, no matter how interesting a conversation with someone is, always have one eye tracking our baby, we hardly give a second thought to what "poop" used to mean in our older worlds, focusing rather on its texture, smell and contents to smile or frown with concern, we talk less about "I" and more about the baby, we learn that absolute happiness has to do with a lot more than just some "me-time" and we worry. We worry all the time about the little life that we created and hope that it smiles back at us with that adorable, charming, heart-melting, lopsided grin today, tomorrow and forever...

We are now the parents.

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If only...

Words. Slippery little devils. That's what they are. So often, I open my mouth to express a wish, a thought, a feeling and the little devils twist and turn and change flavors so that I end up saying not entirely what I felt, sometimes not at all...how many lifetimes would I have to spend before I say exactly what I feel right when I feel it, when it would make the most sense, when it would convey the feeling it ought to convey? Instead, I churn and chew and mull over the same thoughts and emotions until the perfect little train of words that ought to have conveyed what I felt are lost in the dark, and am left with cliches, awkward pauses and silences bereft of their meaning...and I sit staring at the old email, holding a phone receiver that is silent after the click at the other end...wondering for the umpteenth time if I should have handled it better...

Sometimes, what we call "advancement" might just be another step backward...of course, a million unopened proposals floating over the web and 143s cluttering chat messages claim otherwise, but nothing beats an honest, face-to-face conversation where expressions and gestures fill in the gaps where words cannot...when I know by his walk, the way his eyes linger over seeming nothings, the way he breathes, when he knows exactly what he wants to say and I hear him say it, sometimes with words, but equally well without...ah, but what we do instead is convince ourselves that a phone call a month or a few lines emailed in a hurry between meetings to a loved one will fulfill the purpose that reading her face and laughing with her will...

We are a lazy bunch. We want to communicate and not commute. And so we type what we think is an email that is as good as a personal meeting, a chat that supposedly reflects what we think, even a telephone call that tries to share our thoughts...and we misread the silences, the symbols, the unspoken words...and before we know it, it's over - the connection and the relationship with it has ended even before it began. But, the memory remains. Like an old scar that never quite heals, a dull pain that surfaces to remind you of the unfinished chapters in your life...

If I had instead talked to you, standing in front of you, holding your hand, watching you as I said the words that painted my thoughts, would you have understood?

PS - Don't worry if you don't get what am saying, sometimes I don't get it either :)

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Lost dreams.

Is there anyone out there who is doing exactly what he wants to do? Getting up in the morning with a thrill that he is going to spend the day doing exactly what he likes doing. He is not doing it for money - although that is a great side-benefit - he is doing it for the one reason that he would rather not be doing anything else.

Anyone out there who hasn't claimed, "If I had the time, I would rather do this all day long!" Substitute photography, dancing, writing, being-with-the-kids for "this". And several years down the lane, does it matter that we worked so hard doing something else because we thought we had to - to make money for the bigger house, to save for retirement, for the kids' college education?

Or would we just look back as we are wont to do and say to ourselves, "I wish I had...", repenting for what we had not done?

I knew these 9 AM meetings at work were not good for me, especially since they are M,W,F meetings and for 2 consecutive weeks :(

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Yakity, yakity, yak.

Last weekend, one of my friends from Chicago visited Lex with her husband, daughter and parents. We were room-mates at UK several years back and it was really nice to catch up. She gave me latest updates from her life and I kept going, "Oh, you are?", "Oh cool, I didn't know!"; she told me she tried to keep in touch with our "gang" from UK and I caught myself wondering why I did not. I told her I was not much of a phone-person, I communicate better through email or in-person, but wondered if that was really true. I mean, however awkward I am on phone, a phone call now and then would have helped me catch up with her life...so, I promised her I would try to stay in touch at least from now on.

Her trip reminded me of this book I read that said women feel an extra surge of happiness than men when they talk, "relate" with each other. It went on to explain why women talk so much more than men and how they are capable of talking most if not all the time - a question that periodically baffles k, every few months he forgets the question intrigued him in the first place and proceeds to ask again :)

My friend's trip just made me realize how accurate the book was. We do like to yak, don't we? We (I?) talk to fill uncomfortable gaps, we need to talk to feel close, talk to remove frustration, talk to express...(one of my friends told me, "You know, you don't really have to express every single thought/feeling that crosses your head!") sometimes, we talk just for the sake of talking :)

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:-( -----> :-)

So, I thought I would post photos from Georgetown Kite Fest. But, for some reason, I just don't "feel up to it". I feel like moping for no justifiable reason. Maybe it's because I woke up with a start at 7.30 AM with the thought that I had made a coding mistake! So weird, but I had actually saved a password that I should not have saved to source control. So, I went rushing to my laptop even without my cup-a-coffee and tried to "fix" my mistake as best as I could (Turned out it wasn't such a big deal, my colleague told me, "Don't sweat it, Ramya, we all make mistakes!" which was nice of him). Then, I spent a tensed morning half-concentrating, half-worrying about a presentation I had to give in the afternoon. And come afternoon, all the nice things that can and will go wrong did go wrong. I fumbled to project my laptop screen to the projector screen - Fn F7 just refused to work for me! Then, I had trouble pulling the stupid projector screen down. Then the meat of it - the actual presentation - and I heard my voice whispering to myself and shaking - quite a feat! And because, I was so nervous, I gave a 2 second demo instead of what should have been at least a 2 minute demo. Anyway, it's quite unfair to let the few of you still reading this post leave on a not-so-thrilled note like this (I blame it all on the faulty female hormones), so I am going to fight my moping ghost away and upload some pics!



See (talking to myself, you obviously do see), all I needed to do was a collage of bright and sunny photos with smiling faces and I feel better already :)...although I did think the kite-fest organizers were just going to approach us to say, "Ahem...you all have been here for more than 6 hours and really, you are the last people left at the park, could you kindly, you know, go home?!"

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Similarly crazy!

You know the moment when you know you have connected with someone? That moment changes everything. You go from listening to empathizing. It can happen in the middle of a conversation or out of the blue and you have the "Aha" moment, the moment when you know exactly what the other person is talking about. I can never truly understand what you feel because I am intimately familiar with my thoughts, I hear them in my head and I know exactly how I feel. But, when you talk, I hear the words, translate them in my head and try to make sense of them. Sometimes, I don't do such a good job of translating them and they don't make sense to me (courtesy - Stumbling on happiness). But in spite of being two different people, there are moments such as these when we almost think as one. I call it, being "similarly crazy". Because at some level, we all are crazy but being crazy together? That experience is something special.

Philosophy aside, I managed two stories in a row! Some wise person once said (Was it me? I can't remember but it always sounds authentic when you begin a sentence with "Some wise person once said..." :p ) "If you want to do a better job of writing, do it everyday. Write. Write. Write. It may sound like gibberish to you initially, but it gets better." So, that's what I do. Gibberish or not. I write because I have to. And I want to.

I titled my short story, "Rayin Snegam" (Rayil = train, Snegam = love, affection, friendship...). I couldn't find an equivalent in English. I began the story with an intent to try something different - use many short sentences instead of awkwardly long sentences. But half-way through, I forgot all about the short sentences and followed where the story took me, a mish-mash of thoughts from the books I have been reading recently (Stumbling on... and Maximum city), the ever-present nostalgia that all NRIs deal with and how life changes in a moment - the regular stuff :p

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Interactions!

Strange how people "connect". I watch k interact with his friends, lifelong buddies and wonder if they ever discuss anything seriously. To an outside viewing the interaction, all he picks up are cues that point to a superficial, "fun" group dynamics. I mean you don't have to greet each other formally and proclaim your everlasting bond, but at some point in your relationship, you should have discussed something with seriousness, perhaps something that makes you vulnerable, something you did not dare to discuss with anyone else or perhaps something like "Will she say yes?" :)...because that's the kind of talk that brings people closer together, right?

Maybe not. k tells me that's not how guys interact, at least not by discussing deeply personal stuff and being comfortable in the pregnant pauses, but by making fun of each other and hiding emotions behind verbal spars and "jolly" talks. He thinks I live in a world entrenched in drama, my friends (especially women) and I playing our roles to dramatic (uptight?) perfection. He does not mean to say that we are in any way superficial in our interactions or overplay our responses deliberately, just that we are by nature drama queens and kings. We discuss esoteric topics like parallel universes and some less esoteric ones like the meaning of life; we discuss feelings - "You hurt me by saying this", "In a few years, will we remain this close?"; we discuss the ubiquitous R2I confusions; we talk about friends that were once close to us - "He hardly calls anymore...", "No emails from her for the past six months :(" and at times, we indulge in idle talk, empty chatter and plain nonsense (ah! How I miss my Bitsian days).

You get the idea. That is my typical interaction with my friends. So, when I watch k talk to his friends, it's a very strange phenomenon (to me). They go to great lengths to make fun of each other, exchange some well-known "gaalis" then proceed to discuss and laugh about topics ranging from the incredible to the downright ridiculous. To understand this type of bonding, I once decided to join in on the "fun", I tried to keep up with the jokes and trivial talks and laugh and bond. But, I guess I tried too hard because I sounded silly to myself (you know the little voice in your head that talks to you simultaneously when you talk to others? Well, it said, "Ramya, you sound silly" and signed off). I guess it will take a few more iterations before I perfect the art of this style of friendship.

Because, hidden beneath the banal talks and jibes, I do sense a kind of bonding. Not the weak kind. But then k would say I am just dramatizing things.

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Yes, lucidly written!

That little black box hidden behind layers and layers of sane, white in your head and mine, waiting for the right time to spill its black outside…Do you know what lies in that black box?

Fear.

Cold, dark fear.

Not the kind that you confess to friends and perhaps even laugh about, not the kind that dances for a few uneasy seconds in your mind and drifts away just as easily, but the kind that has an unnerving, churning, wringing grip on your stomach, the kind that fills your mouth with a bitterness that won’t go away no matter how hard you swallow, the kind that nudges you awake from deep sleep and you realize you are sweating and you are scared to open your mouth because you don’t know if you can cry for help…

That kind of fear.

Fear that some of us, the lucky ones, feel only in the middle of the night - when it’s too late to be called night but too dark to see light, when time does not exist and night blends into day.

The unlucky ones? They feel it even in the middle of the day, for a few seconds when the birds seems to have stopped mid-song, when even dogs don’t bark, the walls suddenly close in on them, without warning and then they feel...fear. Just them and the creatures of their imaginations (or perhaps a reality so aberrant, they (we) don’t, can’t even acknowledge its true nature?) – the ugly, putrid, misshapen gnomes, luring them into the dark caves of their own selves, filled with evil thoughts and terrifying accidents, ghosts of the past, secrets that have been entertained but hidden and locked away. But no-one, not you or me can stay lucky for long. Can we? Sooner or later, the dark world of our fears catch up with us, a race with a predetermined result. We still run the race, hoping to outrun the black cloud of our own imprisoned feelings, the what-ifs and hushed thoughts hiding behind the screens of our defenses and then one day, we can no longer run, we can only wait for the cloud to descend, to weaken, to break our spirits…

Perhaps you hear it (if you listen closely) when you are under water, when your feet can no longer touch the bottom, and your face is hidden away from light, when you are in another world, a blue world with the dulcet sounds of water. One moment you see the bubbles in front of you, you are laughing and floating at ease.

And the next moment, perhaps you closed your eyes for a second of rest and everything changes - the sounds die down in a whoosh and it’s as if, the bright blue world turns a nasty, inky black, the warm water turns frigid – the hackles in your neck stand up, your arms and legs flail desperately and then drop down flaccid. You stop struggling because a voice whispers, “Hush now! There is only one way to go!”, until you no longer see the bubbles or the blue, but only feel an uncomfortable creeping sensation...as the swirling black vortex swallows you…down, down, down.

Cold, alone, scared.

That kind of fear.

---x---x---x---x---x---x---x---x---x---x---x---x---x---x---x

Blame this little snippet on Lisey's story (not for the weak-hearted) or my little swimming accident. Fear is universal. Real fear lurks just under the surface in all of us, waiting, waiting...have you ever felt real fear?

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