On moving and settling down.

So, we moved to Alpharetta almost 9 months back. We have gone through excitement, boredom, denial, almost-feels-like-home, jeez-we-have-no-friends...and many more phases representing a range from emotions from the totally anticipated to the entirely unexpected. I thought I should note down how I feel now and revisit after a period of time to see if anything has changed.

The first 3 months: were about saying good bye, nostalgia, remnant excitement from arangetram and from quitting IBM and moving on to a better job, adrenalin mixed with exhaustion from the move and the staying in a motel and the move again to an apartment.


The biggie was getting r~ settled into a preschool. I was definitely more apprehensive about that than my first day of work. The initial months were about figuring out where to get food (What is a Publix?!), where are the Indian grocery stores (we get chat here, paav bhaji with Tamil movie songs playing in the background!), beauty parlor (right next to HotBreads, now renamed Cake World) where I don't go any longer -- that's a long story, where to get clothes (there is a carousel in the mall and cup cakes and a train!) -- this we had to figure out as soon as we realized r's school required uniforms (was I back in Chennai?) Around this time, I met my friend from Bits, Pilani, A~ who filled in the gaps for me. An Indian co-worker of mine gave me the inside info about restaurants in the area and such. 


During this time, we went to Atlanta almost every weekend and tried to get a feel for the city (if we weren't in Atlanta, we were in Lex!) We didn't have any friends to speak of, so might as well get to know the city, right? We were regulars at the Children's museum (rocks!), Chatpati and related Indian restaurants in the area. We checked out the puppetry center for arts, an art studio for kids, a farm with animals to pet + a bonus art class...


r~ celebrated her first birthday in school (with Simba)!


There was not much time to think. The moving was done but the momentum didn't slow down...yet.

My artist at Purple Hippo Art Studio

Simba and Nala chilling out at our apartment!

The next 3 months: r~ was well-settled in school and I, at work. k was all set with his home office. Our trips to Atlanta had slowed down and we had info about all the essential services we needed. We continued exploring, went on a wild animal safari...That's when it usually begins right? The urge to change things just when everything seemed to touch a semblance of sanity. We started discovering small annoyances with the apartment -- the dish washer coughed up black gook every now and then (the apartment service folks rocked though), we were lucky to get a ground-floor apartment with an attached garage but there was hardly any sunlight in the living room -- and I thought I was running away from minor-SAD-symptoms in Lex. The reduction in living space didn't make much of a difference (surprisingly) and I loved the single-level layout but I felt the need to decorate the apartment so it was more home-like. We had friends visiting us from Lex and that was fun but we missed 'hanging out' -- something that k and I had an insatiable appetite for, in Lex. I got to know my office colleagues better and A~ better, attended a bunch of school birthday parties with r~ (where I, like my daughter, did not manage to make any new friends). I got to know the pani-puri aunty well ( we were there almost twice a week). 


r~ decided to join a paatu class -- my little girl was taking her own decisions! Another friend from Bits, also A~, told me about a bal vikas class that r~ might enjoy. So, we took r~ to Atlanta every Sunday for the class. She refused to stay alone in class which meant managing her for 2-3 hours without hopefully too many embarrassing moments. By the time, we ate and came back, it was 4-5 hours taken from our Sundays -- which was a nice way to spend Sundays since there wasn't much else to do anyways except house hunting! Around this time, I decided we had to buy a house and so the rest of the weekends and a considerable part of our work lunch time was spent looking at ranch houses. We needed a single level home, close to work and close to school, at least 3 BR and in reasonable condition. Turns out, that was not easy to find because not many people built ranch houses nowadays! Finally, we did find one soon after we decided to take a break from house hunting :)

Wild Animal Safari

And that brings us to now: we moved yet again, celebrated the new year and my birthday. I was at home, at work -- you know what I mean. r~ was at home at school. k~, well, he is at home, at work, anyways :) We talked a  bit about r2i and m2b (move to bay area :p) but decided we needed against it for the next few years. I liked my work and r~ liked her school. The place was definitely more happening and had access to a lot of fun things to do, the weather was better...so what's the catch, you ask? Friends, of course. Making friends, when you are no longer studying somewhere, it turns out, is hard. We met people we could hang out with but that's different from hanging out with close friends...


k's parents are here to visit us and that always helps w.r.t home sickness (where is home anyway? India, Lex, here?) We finally joined the local library and I felt like I could breathe a little bit easier -- felt like a missing puzzle piece fell in place. We went to a neat build your own car class at Home Depot..met a few more people, who could potentially become friends, and felt better. k, though, misses friends at Lex, the swing in our backyard, the sand box he built for r~...


We went without TV for 8 months and hardly noticed the difference, we bought a TV and then returned it, bought another and returned it and are now TV less again and surprisingly still not missing it but I think this time, we will buy a TV and not return it.


r~ made some almost-real friends, I saw her initiate and ask questions to her teacher (by herself! Huge deal...for me), today she asked me if she could go to school (either she likes school or k and I have become boring versions of ourselves here!)...


And we are back to spending inordinate amounts of time about trivial enhancements to the house -- which means, we are almost home...


Time will tell.

@Home Depot -- that week's show & tell for school!

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Shoba on Chennai

Neat article on Chennai by one of my favorite authors!

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About old thoughts.

I read somewhere that mostly our minds just go in circles spending a majority of its time focusing on already repeated thoughts and images. And those of you who know me know that this is indeed true for my mind. I have expressed the same few thoughts in several different ways and have probably come up with a few novel thoughts along the way. Few and far between. And of the thoughts that I often revisit, there is this one thought that often manifests itself into my mental space in the form of an image.

That of an old couple. What is wrong with this image, you ask. It shows that k and I would live to grow old and live to grow old together. All is well.

Now add a few accouterments to this image -- like a heavy grocery bag, snow fall and a walking stick (if you tend to be dramatic like me). Now, the color of the image changes significantly -- it's gone from pleasant pastel shades to a sort of undefined grey (if you are with my mental process still).

And this is the image that I keep circling back to in my head, every now and then. And the thought that goes with that image is that, I don't want to be that person. No really, I have no issues growing old (I believe, I have aged pretty well so far and plan to continue on the good beginning). My issue is with the loneliness and helplessness that I associate with that image (No doubt you pictured a happily chatting couple maybe pulling a grocery cart instead of carrying the heavy bag but stay with my image, will you? Makes my story telling a bit easier). So, my problem with this story is that I don't want to be the protagonist (Yes, k can be the protagonist when he makes up a story and when he puts that in a blog of his own!) here -- that old woman with aging hands, struggling to carry the grocery bag, hating the winter that she hasn't acclimatized to (in the past umm...40 years) and wishing she were in a warm, familiar place instead like...you guessed it, Madras (Oh! You didn't? Ok, catch up with my archives and then come back here for story time!)

Yes, I agree there are several glaring loopholes with my grey image -- grocery shopping will all be done online by that time (as k was kind enough to point out), we might be enjoying the snowfall inside the house in front of a fireplace and possibly with family/kids instead of standing in front of Kroger. All that good stuff. But, that's not my image. Mine is that of husband and wife who often say, "We thought about moving back to India, we just never did. And then, the kids got old. And then, it was too late." I don't want to say that when I am 70.

So, what's stopping me now? For one, the lack of a concrete vision and plan. What do we do after we move to India? Where do we work? Where do we live? For better or worse, my dad is responsible for instilling a constant need to plan and map pros and cons and I continue to do that, all the time. So, why haven't I mapped this out? I guess life gets in the way. Initially, you are a student (FOB, if you will) caught in the excitement of America, then you focus on getting that job with that big company and then it's marriage, house, kids. All big stuff. Good stuff. But then, this old thought swirls in front of you, reminds you of what you have forgotten in the moment (which might be a good thing after all) and exits. It keeps this up until you finally decide to focus on it and do something about it. So, what have I done about it? Thought thoughts :) Thinking is a good thing, isn't it?

And then there's the whole people business. Even on regular days, I like to know that people besides me exist in the background. And since I work from home most of the time, this means, I really like having a nanny at home and the fact that maami comes home to cook twice a week. I miss the general bustle of conversation that is ever present if you live in India. I guess it's something as simple as just hearing people around me. Hardly a reason to wrap up and go. But go figure my mind!

Anyway, more thoughts about this later. For now, I do entertain the mental image and think of ways I can fix it. Who knows? Maybe even if we were in India, the image would probably not change -- our kids would probably have come to the US anyway...but I still can't imagine us living in India without people. And someone "people" seems to be the missing ingredient in my flawed picture anyway. Will update if the mental picture decides to change to that of a healthy old couple walking briskly along the Florida beaches, a vast expanse of blue for company and a golden retriever running behind faithfully ;) Somehow, my mind is not up to conjuring that image as often as it does the other grey image :)

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