The last post of the year!!!

There is a poem that I first read when I was in college and fell in love with..I cud relate to some of the lines in it but not all though I knew it was true thru and thru.There was a time when reading some of my favourite poems cud soothe me and bring back a sense of calm.Today as I was trying to put into words what I learnt in the last one year, for some reason I remembered that poem and when I read it again,it was exactly what I had learnt in the past year.

I've learned -
that your life can be changed
in a matter of hours
by people who don't even know you.

I've learned
that you cannot make someone love you.
All you can do is
be someone who can be loved.
The rest is up to them.

I've learned -
that no matter how much I care,
some people just don't care back.

I've learned -
that it takes years to build up trust,
and only seconds to destroy it.

I've learned -
that it's not what you have in your life
but who you have in your life that counts.

I've learned -
that you can get by on charm
for about fifteen minutes.
After that, you'd better know something.

I've learned -
that you shouldn't compare
yourself to the best others can do
but to the best you can do.

I've learned -
that it's not what happens to people
that's important. It's what they do about it.

I've learned -
that you can do something in an instant
that will give you heartache for life.


I've learned -
that no matter how thin you slice it,
there are always two sides.

I've learned -
that it's taking me a long time
to become the person I want to be.


I've learned -
that it's a lot easier
to react than it is to think.

I've learned -
that you should always leave
loved ones withloving words.
It may be the last time you see them.


I've learned -
that you can keep going
long after you think you can't.

I've learned -
that we are responsible for what we do,
no matter how we feel.


I've learned -
that either you control your attitude
or it controls you.

I've learned -
that regardless of how hot and steamy
a relationship is at first,
the passion fades and there had better be
something else to take its place.


I've learned -
that heroes are the people
who do what has to be done
when it needs to be done,
regardless of the consequences.

I've learned -
that learning to forgive takes practice.


I've learned -
that there are people who love you dearly,
but just don't know how to show it.

I've learned -
that money is a lousy way of keeping score.


I've learned -
that my best friend and I can do anything
or nothing and have the best time.

I've learned -
that sometimes the people you expect
to kick you when you're down
will be the ones to help you get back up.


I've learned -
that sometimes when I'm angry
I have the right to be angry,
but that doesn't give me
the right to be cruel.


I've learned -
that true friendship continues to grow,
even over the longest distance.
Same goes for true love.


I've learned -
that just because someone doesn't love you
the way you want them to doesn't mean
they don't love you with all they have.

I've learned -
that maturity has more to do with
what types of experiences you've had
and what you've learned from them
and less to do with how many
birthdays you've celebrated.

I've learned
that heroes are the people who do
what has to be done
regardless of the consequences.

I've learned _
that you should never tell a child
their dreams are unlikely or outlandish.
Few things are more humiliating, and
what a tragedy it would be
if they believed it.


I've learned -
that no matter how good a friend is,
they're going to hurt you
every once in a while
and you must forgive them for that.

I've learned -
that it isn't always enough
to be forgiven by others.
Sometimes you have to learn
to forgive yourself.


I've learned -
that no matter how bad
your heart is broken
the world doesn't stop for your grief.

I've learned -
that our background and circumstances
may have influenced who we are,
but we are responsible for who we become.


I've learned -
that just because two people argue,
it doesn't mean they don't love each other
And just because they don't argue,
it doesn't mean they do.


I've learned -
that sometimes you have to put
the individual ahead of their actions.

I've learned -
that we don't have to change friends
if we understand that friends change.


I've learned -
that you shouldn't be so
eager to find out a secret.
It could change your life forever.

I've learned -
that two people can look
at the exact same thing
and see something totally different.


I've learned -
that there are many ways of falling
and staying in love.


I've learned -
that no matter the consequences,
those who are honest with themselves
get farther in life.


I've learned -
that even when you think
you have no more to give,
when a friend cries out to you,
you will find the strength to help.

I've learned -
that the paradigm we live in
is not all that is offered to us.

I've learned -
that credentials on the wall
do not make you a decent human being.

I've learned -
that the people you care most about in life
are taken from you too soon.

I've learned -
that although the word "love"
can have many different meanings,
it loses value when overly used.

I've learned -
that it's hard to determine
where to draw the line
between being nice and
not hurting people's feelings
and standing up for what you believe

That’s what I have learnt. All through this roller coaster of a year.I don’t know if I wud have changed anything I said or did thru the year.In fact even if I knew ,I don’t know how I wud have changed it

There is something magical abt the beginning of a new year.Overnight ur yesterday seems far away,a year behind.Overnight memories seem rosier and the bitter parts soften to just being rough bumps on a generally happy road.Just when I thought am too old for the fizz and pop of a New year’s beginning,past the age of earnestly thinking up resolutions which 9 on 10 are never followed thru, I get caught up and find myself writing this post.So here’s a postie toast to the fast vanishing 2008 and 2009 looming ahead.

A friend asked me to describe 2008 and he was more amused than me when I said the first thing that popped into my mind.Hurricane.Call it the influence of too many natural catastrophes in US.But the only other word I cud come up with was Earthquake.Coming back to my hurricane ,I guess I have been buffeted abt relentlessly through ups and downs thru this year.Just when I thot that I was in the clear,I wud be pulled back into storm,tossed from one side to another,battered and bruised and then thrown to one side.I normally am a pretty balanced cheerful soul who rarely got Monday blues or any other blues for that matter,but this year saw a record number of mood swings with one very confused frustrated soul who spent more time growling like a bear with a sore head than I can ever remember.Really.More often than not ,I went from being “I-am-capable” to “I-cant-handle-this”.It was suffocating at times and frustrating at others.From being a happy-go-lucky soul,I swung dangerously close to becoming a control freak.I kept watching for things to go wrong.From being a die hard optimist,I found myself trapped several times in the narrow outlook of a pessimist.My belief in people took a beating.More so my belief in me.Its been a tuf year.But I like to think of it as God’s way of tempering me.
I don’t mean to say that the year has been a bad one.There have been beautiful moments,funny ones and weird ones.After years of believing that I wudnt find a man who cud tolerate me enuf to live with me and that I wudnt tolerate anything less,I married Anup who has managed to survive almost a year with me (20 days to our first anniversary)and doesn’t look like is gonna give up any time soon.My little bro graduated,got the 4th rank in the University(I hate being a nag,Bunny,but really,I wudnt have minded if u had got that Gold medal.In fact I wud have settled for the silver one too.Well…atleast piggyhoolear didn’t get it though that really is no consolation,mind u) and is working in a God forsaken place far away from home.Really!!!Surat is really too far away from home.When someone delicately pointed out that am in US of A which is technically half way across the globe from home,I snapped at him “That’s not the point.He is too small (just over 6 feet) to stay so far from home.” I fell in love with half a dozen crafts and spent the better part of the year wishing for Santa to bring me 6 pairs of hands so that I cud spend time on my “crafty”.I fell in love with cooking .Really,mama,stop laughing.I shall confess that I totally love cooking and trying out new dishes,especially now that I have my personal guinea pig.(yeah.I mean the DH.Who else?)I became friends with a lovely girl across the globe and really Revs,Mujhe tujhme rab dikhta hai.(Don’t forget ki tune Mamta Kulkarni ki kasam khai hai.Chuckle!).I saw my first snow and experienced my first earthquake.For the first time in my life I gained some weight that has stuck with me.And for the first time in my life I have consciously tried to eat healthy.I have learned that 8 hrs at work is more than enuf and that the boss wont have a heart attack if I say no.That even if he does,it doesn’t matter cos working more than 8 hrs at the pace I do wud be enuf to give me a heart attack and kill me by the time I reach my boss’s age.I have managed to have painted toenails all thru the year.:-) And I also figured out a way to sit in a certain way so that I can see them when I paint them and don’t topple over.Owing to the dry dry dry climate ,I have spent more time this year looking after myself than I have all my life.

Its not been good all thru.I saw sides of people I wud rather not have, been blamed for things Idid not do,been judged by people who barely know me,been stretched beyond my limits ,made some really tuf choices and in general had a lot of mud slung on me.I have stumbled,fallen,crawled and staggered this entire year.I have been shocked,outraged,hurt and struggled with myself.I have learnt that I cannot brush off some people simply cos I want to.There were times when I lost my sense of humour for days together…I learnt a lot of things which in hindsight seem to have brought more definite sense of what or who I am.The good part of all that is that I have not broken. But the credit for that goes to people I love most in my life .
But now,am ready to move on.I wont be leaving all that happened in the last one year behind.I will be carrying some of it with me.Some of the things that I learnt…Some of the things that I realized….
This New year brings with it a lot more changes .We will be going back to India.I don’t pray that life be peaceful. I just pray that I keep a firm hold on my sense of humour. And as for my resolutions,I want to keep up with my crafting and make sure that I don’t spend more than 8 hrs at work…Like one lady said “I go to office so that I don’t have to spend all my time staring at the 4 walls of my house.I work cos I love dressing in nice clothes and meeting people and talking to them.I do what I can in those 8 hrs.If someone says something abt that being less,well,I cant help it”. I want to keep it all simple the way I did before…Not let anyone or anything clutter my life.I need to focus on what is important to me and do what feels right to me irrespective of what anyone thinks. I don’t need everyone to like me and if someone doesn’t that does not make me a bad person.I shud not let someone’s opinion of me matter so much that it clouds my perspective.I believe that at heart I am a decent human being.I don’t know if I am a good daughter,sister or wife.But I know that I have tried my best and that will suffice for me.And if nothing else,I know I have made my loved ones happy thru one small deed or the other.And that is enuf to keep me going.That and that alone is my talisman for the new year.

Am ashamed but I’ll admit...

2 mails from 2 different friends in the past 2 days.One an Indian and one an American.They both have something in common.I have not met either of them.I know them only thru the mails I exchange with them.Even more common,is that they both mentioned the Mumbai terrorist attacks.My Indian friend, reacted the way any Indian wud,with anger and fury.While my American friend ,who is an army veteran sent me a very unexpected mail.

//Hi, Anu,

I've been thinking of you a lot these past days.

I can't tell you how sorry I am, how guilty I feel, and what kind of depressing days I went through during the horrible, senseless event in Mumbai.

Just can't help shaking the guilt, the US and the allies have a LOT to do with the Muslim rage, and, unfortunately, many innocent Indians paid with their lives ...

Can't even tell you, how sorry I feel, how depressed I was for days, and I don't even know, what could be done for the grieving families. I don't even know, if humans can do anything about this, this is all in God's hands now.

I was just sitting in front of the TV, watching the events take place, just switching between CNN and the FOX news channel, and the reports coming through these two from Indian TV. //

I was shocked.I was really shocked by his mail.In all these days I am yet to see one article,one news channel or even one blog blame America for the carnage.It had not even occurred to me to even relate US to the terror attacks in India.And I was stunned by the sadness of this man I had never met.I don’t claim that Americans are better than most or that they don’t have their own “strategies”.The point is not if America is to blame or not.But how many Indians wud think to take the blame on ourselves?How many of us feel guilty for what happened in our country?We are all angry.Oh yeah…we are united on that atleast.We are quick to blame.We blame Pakistan.We blame muslims.We start riots and kill our own countrymen just for being Muslim by religion.We blame the politicians and blame the country’s intelligence.Oh yeah…and we blame God.We dont even let poor God out of this.We blame everybody.We are good at that.Its everybody’s fault but not ours.

We play the blame game by writing blogs,letters to the editor ,send messages to the news channels and trust me,all this bullshit serves no purpose but to calm ur own conscience.To not think and to not see the obvious.To convince ourselves that we have done our part.I must have read umpteen blogs and articles all belting the same tune.Its the government,the terrorist,the security,Pakistan everybody but us.Everybody but the common man.Do u expect me to believe that there was no one inside the country who helped those terrorists?Such a large scale operation was carried out without inside information?That the maniacs got a layout of those huge mammoth hotels without inside help?That no citizen had an inkling of this?Or rather no person who is an Indian by birth knew abt this?Of course,they did.To call that person a citizen wud be to degrade all those officers who died in that carnage,the army men who died in the kargil war and many other long forgotten heroes.Why blame Pakistan or the terrorists?Why send lists of terrorists to Pakistan government when within our own country live men and women who wud help the terrorists without a twinge of conscience?Do we have lists of those people?Everything in our country is on sale.Everything.Its just a matter of the highest price that can be offered.

You can tell me that its poverty that drives these people to commit such heinous acts of treason.Is it?Really?Whom are we fooling?And even if it is,is that even an excuse?Why shud we shut these terrorists in jails?So that some more of them can walk into our country ,kill some more people and demand that we set the captured terrorists free?Why,for that matter shud we shut anyone in jail who is convicted of committing murder,rape or any other act of physical violence in a jail? Why keep them alive?Why shud an entire nation of people pay up a part of their hard earned money as taxes just to feed these losers in the jail?For the sake of human rights? What happened to the rights of their victims?It doesn’t matter cos they are dead and we care more abt the living?And what abt the rights of any future victims?That doesn’t count either,does it?

The politicians are to be blamed.Who put them there?We don’t choose the best political party to become our government .We choose better one of all the evils.And then we blame them.Gah!!!In India ,anyone who is 18 years and above is eligible to vote.I am 26 years old and I don’t even have a voters ID.I have simply not bothered to vote. I was too busy getting an education and a career. Besides ,who is going to stand in the sun for hrs to cast a silly vote when its not going to make a difference? I will tell u why I have not voted. All the political parties that exist in India have come into power one time or the other and has anything changed?Oh yeah.So we built Nuclear weapons under one Government and set up Chandrayaan under another but we still have not managed to prevent terrorists from attacking our country. That’s one task which no government seems manages to accomplish.isnt it?But we still always manage to have a government that eats away at the hard earned money of the masses and which scrambles around with explanations for the angry upset people when something like the Mumbai attack happens.Thats one thing which all the governments have in common even though they are different in that Vajpayee is an old doddering gentleman and Sonia Gandhi is a snooty nosed diva. Wow!These days we don’t even blink when we read abt corruption charges against any politician or official.We have got used to it. In the book Maximum City (by Suketu Mehta) an election candidate ,when asked why she does not visit the posh localities of Mumbai for canvassing, replies cheerfully, “The rich don’t come down from their apartments to vote”.Only the people from the slums vote.And I suspect its not just the rich who don’t vote.I bet that it’s the educated people who don’t vote.Cos we read enuf news in the papers to believe that our one vote will not matter.So either u don’t vote or u choose the party which seems to be less corrupt of the bunch.Yeah.That is a logical solution ,isnt it?I don’t vote cos when we find out that the Government we have is a terrible one,I can say that I did not put them there.Yeah dudes,its not my fault at all but its ur fault if u voted for them.U are to be blamed for being dumb enuf to stand for hrs in the line to vote for that party.As for me,well,see,am smart enuf to realize that either way its not gonna matter and I may as well save myself the trouble.

And am no better than those people who helped those terrorists get in cos I did not do my part to keep my country safe.I did not take up the responsibility to do what I cud have done.I preferred not to care.My mom sent me a forward last week.

// Did you know that there is a system in our constitution, as per the 1969 act, in section "49-O" that a person can go to the polling booth, confirm his identity, get his finger marked and convey to the presiding election officer that he doesn't want to vote anyone!

Yes such a feature is available, but obviously these seemingly notorious leaders have never disclosed it. This is called "49-O".

Why should you go and say "I VOTE NOBODY"... because, in a ward, if a candidate wins, say by 123 votes, and that particular ward has received "49-O" votes more than 123, then that polling will be cancelled and will have to be re-polled. Not only that, but the candidature of the contestants will be removed and they cannot contest the re-polling, since people had already expressed their decision on them. This would bring fear into parties and hence look for genuine candidates for their parties for election. This would change the way, of our whole political system... it is seemingly surprising why the election commission has not revealed such a feature to the public....

Please spread this news to as many as you know... Seems to be a wonderful weapon against corrupt parties in India... show your power, expressing your desire not to vote for anybody, is even more powerful than voting... so don't miss your chance. So either vote, or vote not to vote (vote 49-O) and pass this info on...

"Please forward this mail to as many as possible, so that we, the people of India , can really use this power to save our nation". Use your voting right for a better INDIA . //

No.I did not know .But it’s not because notorious leaders hid this from me or because nobody forwarded it to me for the last 8 years. Its cos I did not care enuf to look up if there was any such option which I cud use to act responsibly for my country. It wud have taken me ten minutes of reading on the internet to find this.And I have not even thought to do so.I have spent countless hours on the internet but not a minute to look this up. Its because of people like me that the India I love has gone to the dogs.Its my fault. Though it may not seem so, I love my country with a passion and truly believe in the culture and tradition that is so much a part of India.In the past 18 months that I have lived in US,there has not been a day when I stepped out of home without sporting a bindi on my forehead, worn a bright colourful Salwar Kameez without relishing the fact that it marked me as an Indian and nodded my head in pride when someone asked me if I was an Indian.I have taken care so that I do not spoil the name of my country in anyway by my acts or behaviour. There has never been a time when I heard the term NRI being used as the derogatory abbreviation for a Non Reliable Indian by smug resident Indians and not cringed. But I was a non reliable Indian when I lived in India cos I never acted responsibly for my country when nothing more was required of me but vote. I did not choose to do it as I am sure many other reliable resident Indians have not. Am I the future of India??????

Talking abt the future of India takes me back a couple of years to a Diwali which I spent with my parents in Bangalore. We were at a shop and my brother was trying on clothes in the fitting room.I was sitting in the crowded shop on a stool and talking to one cute little boy who must have been no more than 4 yrs old.The kid was so cute that there were total strangers around us smiling at the sight of a tall female squatting on a low stool so that she cud be the same height as the 4 year old. He was well dressed in expensive clothes and spoke English fluently. After wishing me a happy diwali,the second thing the child asked me was “Are u a Muslim?” .I was shocked that a 4 year old wud ask me,a total stranger,such a question.His parents appeared to be nowhere in sight.I laughed and said I am an Indian.And asked him why he asked me that. I naively thought the child wud answer something abt Diwali being a hindu festival, when the little horror proclaimed loudly “Muslims are dirty.”. Its one of the few occasions in my life when I have been frozen with shock. All of a sudden I realized that nearly half of the people who had been smiling at the picture we made were muslims.My first instinct was fear as I half expected someone to come up with a sword and swipe the kid’s head off right in front of my eyes.With shock and sadness I glanced at the muslim man’s back whose smiling eye I had caught a couple of min back.I wondered if he had heard and I hoped fervently he hadn’t not out of fear but out of worry that one more muslim wud feel like an outsider in his own country.I shushed the little boy weakly , swallowed hard and said in a firm voice that we are all Indians and that he shud never think that way while he continued “My mom says they don’t bathe”..I struggled to explain that there was nothing dirty abt muslims without telling the kid that his mom was the dirty one for teaching her 4 year old such stuff.It maybe just an excuse to get her kid to bathe but honestly do u have to bring religion into that? That was the first time I got a sense of what caused all the communal riots in India.I wondered what they taught him in school. When I was his age,I was taught that all Indians are my brothers and sisters.His smiling mom came up 5 minutes later and wished me happy diwali and left the shop with the boy.I wondered if she asked him what my religion was.I wondered if the little boy asked his little classmates the same question before sharing his midday snack with them.So that is what the future of India looks like. Who is responsible for that little child’s viewpoint? The politicians? The media? The terrorists? Or his educated parents?

It all comes down to a matter of choice Its not abt whether we are a nuclear power or if we launched Chandrayaan, though I will not deny that I was bloated with pride on both occasions. Its not abt Pakistan or the politicians or the media or the rich or America’s strategy for that matter. My friend’s mail is enuf for me to believe that its not the entire country that is wrong. There are people who abhor violence no matter where it occurs. Here I have met Pakistanis, Russians, Chinese and Bangladeshis who are glad that am Indian cos it makes me their “Neighbour”.Chuckle.It’s not Pakistan’s responsibility to protect our country. Besides, with the state they are in, they can barely protect themselves and solve their internal problems, forget ours. Its abt the choices we make.Some souls like the terrorists and our countrymen who helped them are guilty of choosing crime.Some souls like the little boy’s mom chose to be prejudiced and to pass on the prejudice to her innocent little kid without even considering that if he makes a remark like that in public, it cud cost him his life, forget abt his future.

I have tried not to write this post cos it has been so very painful. I have been depressed abt this for so long.
Maybe its time we stopped the blame game. Maybe its time we started doing something ourselves. My friend said only God can do something abt this. But then God helps those who help themselves. And please,lets quit blaming God.He did not split us up into Hindus ,Muslims,Hindustan or Pakistan and neither did He tell us to get ourselves an excuse of a government.Am ashamed but I’ll admit that am also responsible for the state of my country.

My new motto...............

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

I need to work on this.

The great Escape - An update on the Shake-it shake-it.

Ok, so today morning we had to attend a video conference with our offshore team and the conference was scheduled to be held at an unearthly hour of 8:00 a.m. Having managed to sleep successfully thru 3 different morning alarms, all set to beep 5 min after one another, Anup and I were woken up at 7:20 a.m. by a call from poor ole Vedha who had been solemnly promised the presence of the aforesaid couple in office by 7:00 a.m.In my defense I must say that tossing and turning till past 2 in the night really does not work well with getting up at 6:00 in the morning. Sigh!! Anyway after the meeting, with just ten minutes before the cafeteria closed, I was more worried abt missing my regular cuppa rather than the impending imaginary quake.

And so when a couple of equally earth-can-quake-for-all-I-care teammates invited me to join their table,I promptly decided to do so. As we were jabbering away ,there was an announcement over the speaker system regarding the quake and that’s when we decided that we were really not keen on crawling under the cafeteria tables. So we decided to leave quickly and go back to our seats. We walked into the lobby of the building only to have two towering security guys frown at us and say “You shud not be walking around”.

Now as per the rules, if u don’t have a table to crawl under, you are supposed to stand against a wall. I for one infinitely preferred the option of crawling under my table to pretending to be stuck against the wall in the lobby with my coffee in one hand and my laptop bag in the other.No.Thats not for me. So before they cud tell me to do that, I told them “I am going to my desk, to crawl underneath. I am going”, and ran off with my teammates. We hurried into our work bay to find the area seemingly deserted with just one guy wandering abt in a fluorescent green jacket and carrying a walkie talkie.Cripes!!!The bay’s fire warden who is in charge of the drill. I almost turned around to make a run for it before he caught me while one of my teammates instinctively ducked down though there was no table anywhere within 6 feet of her and if it had been a real quake then she wud have been a sitting duck for any debris that fell. But I had a funny feeling that she was really trying to hide from the fire warden. Luckily she straightened up just in time as the warden turned round and saw us.

Owing to the unfortunate location of my darned table, I had to walk past the warden who looked at me sternly and said “You are not supposed to be walking”. Well, I smiled sweetly at him and replied “I am going to my table”. And to show him that I was in earnest, I quickly trotted down to my table, passing my colleague’s bum sticking out from under his table, his head nowhere to be seen (Did he think that his bum alone wud be safe outside or something?) and dropped to my knees, crawled under my table, popped my head out and cheerfully waved at the Fire warden to show that I am in. I wonder why the man didn’t look more pleased than he did.

Anyway I popped my head back under the table and as instructed ,tried to hold onto the table to prepare myself to move with it.Really!!They just had to make the table without any legs, didn’t they? It was the kind that was attached to the cubicle partition and had absolutely no part you cud hold on to. So I held on to the waste paper basket. Before I cud sing the Shake-it song to myself, the speakers announced that the earthquake was over .Huh!!That’s it??? I might as well have saved my poor knees the trouble.

Anyway, am glad to inform you folks that almost everyone in our bay conformed to the rules and got under the table. In fact I was as proud of them as Obama wud have been if they had done the Shake-it dance.Well, except of Anup and Vedha,who were outside on the patio enjoying their coffee and did not realize that an earthquake had struck and gone until our company manager happened to ask us if everyone got down under the table in our bay.Thats when the two men simultaneously turned to me and asked “When did it happen?”

Yeah!!That’s right. With 1.3 million people getting down on their knees and crawling under tables to hide from an imaginary earth quake, you wud think that these 2 wud at least have known it happened.
So much for the Great Southern California Quack-it.

Shake it-shake it!!!

Ok…so after a dismal post,my sense of humour seems to have returned and with it came an opportunity to write yet another loony tune. Today I came in after lunch to find a flyer on my desk and it proclaimed in big bold letters “Shake out.Don’t freak out” and had November 13th 2008 printed in smaller letters.A closer read showed the words “The Great Southern California Shakeout”.Now that brings to mind an image of people across the nation shaking their booties…In fact we cud do it to the tune of “I like to shake it –shake it” song from Madagascar.Yay!!! I just love that…In fact I think Obama shud promote this event as an effort to improve communal harmony.I can just see it..People of different countries,castes ,creed and colour all shaking it and singing “I like to shake it –shake it”,all across USA.and after that I wud be surprised if we have any more hate crimes….
Alas,when I googled “The Great Southern California Shakeout”,I was mightily disappointed to find this.

// At 10 a.m. on November 13, join millions of people throughout Southern California in the ShakeOut Drill, the largest earthquake preparedness activity in U.S. history! //

Wow!!! I was impressed.I mean, u got to hand it to these people.They are so organized.Now had this been India,people wud not have started moving until after the earthquake came and went and most of us wud have even slept right thru it.

I heard from a friend that the big one was to have hit California in September 2007 but apparently its late.(Mama,please dont panic and dont tell Poppa,cos then He wud Panic!!!If it makes u feel any better,I shall lug around a table and make Anup also lug one around)…Yeah…We make schedules for everything these days.Coding,testing,lunch,shopping,washing pots and yet nothing happens according to the schedule.So what made u think that the earthquake wud be on time?Duh!
I guess I will have to live with the disappointment that my idea of “The Great Southern California Shakeout” is not to be.On second thoughts,my version of “The Great Southern California Shakeout”, wud only serve to bring the earthquake faster than its supposed to come.Why invite trouble,man?
Anyway coming back to the drill,here is more that I found on the website.

// At 10 a.m. on November 13, 2008, millions of people in homes, schools, businesses, government offices, and public places all over southern California will Drop, Cover, and Hold On.

Yeah,so u lucky people on the other side of the globe can have fun imagining a bunch of us out here dropping to the floor like a dozen eggs and scooting under our respective work tables. (And if u are lucky ,u can even see a live broadcast of it and laugh ur heads off.)Can u imagine that?Millions of people crawling under tables for no reason at all?What next? Carry a table wherever u go?

Sigh!!!what am I complaining abt?Am gonna be doing it too and I guess I shall play the “I like to shake it –shake it” tune in my head while am under the table.

My dear abandoned blog

My poor abandoned blog!!!You are not abandoned exactly. And its not that I don’t have anything to write about. Its just that I don’t have any happy or funny things to write abt.Or maybe its that I do have but am not able to dwell on them long enuf…So u may ask me why I don’t write whatever is on my mind instead of trying to figure out something cheerful…Because what I have on my mind is tuf to write. Its one of those tuf times in life when I wish I cud run back home and hide under the bed and not have to see the sadness and the badness in the world.Its one of those times when I long to back in my homeland and really believe with all my heart that I will be able to handle it better if am back there. But am I deceiving myself? Maybe.Misery and sadness is the same everywhere and does not depend on the climate, does it?Or on geography either….
Do you want to know what bothers me so? Where shall I begin? Shall I begin with the people who have been losing their jobs here left and right? So far no one I personally know has lost their job and so I managed not to think abt it cos it was so sad. Each time the thought popped into my mind that many a Christmas stocking this year will remain empty and many will be the houses that wont have the Christmas lights hung out…It brings back memories of last year’s Christmas which I loved so much in this country.We rode around just so that I cud look at the lights and oooh-aah to my heart’s content.Let me tell u that to a certain extent I managed to avoid thinking abt those poor folks..But when a dear friend today seemed depressed,I asked him why and in turn he replied that he was saddened seeing his friends who lost their jobs and also mentioned the fact that his job may also be in danger.It broke my heart.and I had nothing to comfort him with.

What can I tell you abt the poor homeless man whom I saw almost every day for the past 18 months on my way to office? Can I describe how he had been sitting there for 20 years,depenedent on the neighboring shops and homes for food ?Can I even begin to describe the horror I felt when one day I heard the news that the poor man who troubled no one had been burnt alive by some heinous character? My heart stops at the thought that someone can walk up to a harmless man and pour inflammable stuff on him and set him alight at 9:45 p.m. and culprit is still walking free.I cannot express my outrage when the sister of the victim came forward in tears asking for help in catching the culprit.What kind of sister lets her brother sit on the roadside for 20 years,neglects him only to come back when he is dead? You can tell me that she may have had her own problems but I find it hard to forgive. My only consolation is that he is definitely in a better place than that roadside.

Should I tell you about the police shooting that happened at the junction outside my apartment yesterday?
Or do u want to hear abt the injustice that happens even after you have worked your butt off which though in retrospect does not bother me any more?Do u want to hear how tired I am of staying cheerful?of ignoring the sad stuff? of feeling outraged and helpless? of wanting to cry for all those people who lost their jobs? of not crying cos it seems absurd to cry for people whom I don’t even know? of wanting to go home cos it seems only the safe place and yet knowing its really no safer than where I am? of worrying that I am making choices that I may regret later? How do I even begin to explain it all..?Where do I start from? How do I explain the heartbreak that is really not mine?

And through all this why does what my friend’s wife told him seem to be the only thing that makes sense? That “ I need to worry about the things I can control and accept those which I can't. God is great and he has something good for us.”
In this big fat whirling mess,call it the world,life,rat race,whatever,my faith in God is the only thing that remains firm.And that is one reason why I don’t relinquish this blog which right now seems as ironic and as ridiculous as a sad clown trying hard to make funny faces for the world to laugh.So all I can do is pray and do my best to keep the people I love happy..and as for the rest,well,God will take care of it all...am feeling better already!!

May I present.....

.................my very fist tag.
Ok…Coming to the tag I promised to work on.For the uninitiated like the DH and mama and my aunts who are probably the only readers of this blog other than my friend across the seas who tagged me,a tag is “something” (um-uh) in which u are asked to write on some topic or the other.And I firmly believe that this is just a polite way of telling ppl whose blogs u read and who have not posted anything for more than 3 weeks ,”Get up and post, u lazy moron”.
So coming back to the tag, here is the deal

The tag:
Two questions in each category. Answer them and then tag your friends from the blog-o-sphere. Yeah ,except that I really don’t have that many friends on that particular sphere…In fact I have only one and that one tagged me.

Yesterday

Your oldest memory

My oldest memory?I guess that means my earliest memory.(Cos technically my oldest memory wud be what I did a minute ago which wud be….scratch my back?I don’t think anyone really wud be interested in that)..hmmm…lemme think…My earliest memory wud be playing house-house in my grandmother’s bedroom by the light of a table lamp cos that was the only light switch I cud reach to turn on.Its a memory redolent with my grandmother’s perfume,cuticura powder,clean sheets,moth balls and sandalwood…It’s a smell I associate with my grandparents to this day and that is the reason why I love the Cuticura deoderant as much as I do…The large cluttered table with rusted photoframes of saints and my great grand-parents were carefully pushed aside to set up my kitchen.The one-inch space in front of the musty dusty files on the shelves below,held my imaginery groceries and a few tiny pots to make it more real.On the bed ,alternately sitting and lying down based upon whether he was asleep or going to school ,was my baby, my patient old grandfather ,white springy hair with glasses,dressed in a white baniyan and a white dhoti with bottle green border.A quiet man ,who in spite of his difficulty in moving around,wud obediently sit up when I ordered that it was time for school and go back to lying down when I decided that he had spent enuf time eating the imaginery dinner. I dunno why we never played in the mornings…It was always in the evenings before dinner and I don’t have a memory of playing with him in the mornings.
On second thoughts am not so sure if that really is my earliest memory.It cud very well be the time when my mom had me sit on the Western toilet with my legs dangling far above the floor to do my …um…daily duty…while I clutched at her tightly,terrified of falling inside the commode and wished desperately for the comfort of my green potty.
Chuckle…

Though as my grandmother used to say, my earliest memory shud really have been the time I was standing at the window of my grandparent’s bedroom and waving at my grandfather who was out for his daily stroll in the overgrown garden at the back of the house. Supposedly, I was standing at the window and repeatedly waving when my grandmother asked me who am waving to. I replied that am waving at granddad and I believe the lady thought nothing of it until I called out to my granddad “Why are u sitting there? Come here”.My grandmother asked me where my granddad was sitting and I replied “In that pit” and that’s when my grandmother luckily decided to investigate and found that my poor granddad had lost his balance and fallen into a pit.Since I was the only soul in the vicinity he was waving at me for help while I cheerfully waved back at him.In my defense, I have absolutely no memory of the incident and really cannot tell u why it seemed perfectly normal that my granddad wud sit in a mud pit in his white dhoti and wave at me.All I can think of is that all adults did strange things and when questioned,always claimed that a child wud not understand.

What were you doing 10 years ago?

Cripes!!let me count back and figure out which class I was in.I guess it wud be 1998 and that was the year I wrote my tenth standard exams.Well,ten years ago wud be 1998 November.Correction.I wud have finished my tenth std exams and wud have been half way thru the 11th std curriculum.I cud have been anywhere from the labs to the PT ground or maybe the yoga hall..Havent got a clue.

Today


Your first thought today morning

Did DH finally run away? Chuckle…just kidding…To be honest, the first thought was that I did not have any horrible dreams, thank God!!!.I have all kindsa weird horrible dreams that seem extremely real and worry the life out of me…And I make sure I tell them to someone cos apparently there is some old belief that a dream at dawn will come true.and that if u tell it to someone it wont come true…Even after telling it ,I still worry abt it coming true .and so weird or not,any horrible dream is immediately described to the DH to make sure that it does not come true..and for good measure ,I tell it to my Mama too,though she really has much less patience than the DH for my verbose accounts of my weird dream.I guess she doesn’t realise that the verbose accounts rise from a sheer terror that missing an important detail may cause the dream to come true.
To the ppl out there gaping in shock that I cud be capable of such superstitions,well,to each his own belief…and lets say I have my own reasons.
Its almost 2 years…since I lost a very dear friend.I cant say the wound has healed..and I will never forget how I woke up at 4 a.m. in the morning,heart pounding,trying to remember who I saw in the dream,still shaking with the violence of the accident as I saw it.The more I tried to remember the face,the faster the dream receded,leaving behind only a taste of terror, a helplessness…A week later my friend passed away….My friend did not die in an accident. He died of a heart attack at a ripe old age of 23 years,with just one exam to clear to achieve his dream of becoming a post grad, poised to be a team lead in a week’s time ,nominated for a promotion due the next month.I have never been able to shake off chilling thought that it was his face that I saw in the dream.

If you built a time capsule today what would it contain?

Well,that’s an easy one.Of course ,Dad,Mama,DH,Buntu,Tofy , some food supplies,a few good books,a laptop with an internet connection,lotsa craft supplies.
Sheer bliss!!!Lets go!!!

Tomorrow


This year ….
Hmmm….This year has been…chuckle…an experience.Honestly ,that’s the only way it cud be described.I got married and more importantly , made the right choice;Marvelled at the community effort that took place at a state level that in a nutshell can be described as my marriage;realised how blessed I am that so many ppl cared; Put up with a lot of crap and then realised I did not have to;Lost myself and found myself;Got my career into perspective; Found lots of hobbies and am loving it,blogged more regularly than I thought I wud, found an amazing kindred spirit across the seas and fell in love with her,found myself a new aunt and fell in love with her;made lots of new friends and learnt the value of a smile on a tuf day.Missed my dog,my bro,my parents and my country to the point of insanity(yeah,there was a point when I started thinking I shud have become a bajji wali or atleast married a bajjiwala.That wud have kept me in my own country) . And still stayed put in the belief that they wud not expect anything less of me.

And at this point am happy and planning a banana nut cake for the evening.

What do you see yourself doing 14 years from now?

I see myself as mad as ever, as loony as ever if not more and as creative as ever…Maybe a little more patient. Actually, I don’t see that at all…mmm..hmmm..Nope.I don’t see that at all.

A turn in the maze

Its strange what the human mind can come up with as u trot down the memory lane...I think its not just a lane..Its a maze and depending on the turn which u take u come across a different memory.And its the strangest things that make u take a specific turn.For instance,this morning while I was sitting outside with my customary cup of coffee,enjoying the early morning sun and rolling a few beads on the white sheets of the notepad Anup had left on the table,gazing into space when it suddenly dawned on me that I was staring at Anup's garden,a plastic trough filled with soil and in which abt 2 weeks ago we had a couple of flowers bloom...The plastic trough had some green stuff growing on the insides under the soil…and I vaguely thought of moss..and hpw I had loved moss as a child…In Kerala my grandmother’s house had a compound wall that was the joy of any kid…The right height to look over,I spent hrs taking in the details of the neighbours houses and simply exploring the tiny holes in the rough walls….and the moss that grew on the walls was one of my favorite discoveries…thick,soft and green and in places there were tiny stalks with a blob on the end …it was velvety to the touch ,a beautiful shade of green ..I had a thing for bright colors even then and I loved stroking the moss and using a stick to carefully scrape off a piece without breaking it and planting it on a flat part of the ground,imagining a tiny house behind it…It reminded me of the lawn in my aunt’s house at Mangalore and since I had always been fascinated by the lawn,the moss to me was just a mini lawn…I was always trying to scrape off really large bits and but my love affair with moss ended when once a tiny earthworm crawled out of a bit of moss…That still gives me the creepies….I hate worms of any kind…and the thought of them gives me goose bumps..
That was the age when u really believe that there is a mini world out there and that elves and pixies do live in amongst the daisies…That was the age when I wud read abt Brer Rabbit stuffing his goods in a hollow and set out to find a hollow,hoping to find the goods of a Fox considering we had a lot of foxes in the place… It helped that my grandmother’s house was located on a large plot with enuf Mango trees and gnarly branched trees to delight the soul of any kid…My favorites being one mango tree at the back of the plot and another a drumstick tree(is it really called a drumstick tree?) next to the house…The drumstick tree was my dream come true…sloping up at a very convenient angle ,it gave me direct access to the terrace of the house..I cud clamber up the tree and either sit on the branches or climb up on the sunshade and sit there with a view of the overgrown garden and the neighbour;s house…I have spent so many lovely hrs on that spot,reading a book,watching the breeze shake the leaves of the different trees there…Even though the plot was on the side of a very busy road,it still was a world of its own…Many are the hot afternoons where I have resisted the temptation of a nap to sit up on my nest where it was cool thanks to the shady trees all around…
I knew even then that Brer Rabbit lived outside of India and I really cud not hope to find his goods in any of our trees and quite often in the midst of my expeditions,wished that the foxes in our compound had a little bit of imagination and wud atleast get together and talk so that I cud watch them…In fact my grandmother’s house has a peephole on the front door which has a small shutter and at night the foxes wud roam the courtyard and come as close as the doorsteps and I wud peep at them ,trying not to breathe lest they know am there and run away….They were a bit too small than I imagined them to be but boy, were they beautiful…and it helped to have an elder cousin who was as loony as I was and stayed up with me to peek thru the peephole whenever she came down during her summer vacation…We both were supposed to be in bed sleeping like the angelic cherubs our moms had hoped for but alas,our respective mothers were sadly disillusioned. …In fact,I think they had never had any illusions abt my cousin cos from what I heard she always drove my poor aunt nuts by staying awake all night long and going to sleep all day long…chuckle…Ok..Mama..lets talk abt my sleeping patterns in private…

And then with a suddenness that comes from realizing that u are late for office,I came back to the present and trotted off to office…A colleague wished me a happy Diwali and asked me if we celebrate Diwali in South India..and that led me down another turn in the maze…
A dark night when the entire colony decided to celebrate diwali.The flats opposite to our house had all their lights turned off and their balconies decorated with lighted candles which were a less messier option than the traditional oil lamps.
My mama gave in to our excitement and we all trotted up to our own balcony and lit a row of candles bordering the entire balcony.And the desire for perfection had me and Buntu running around trying to keep the breeze from blowing out any of the candles…and then finally to our dismay there fell rain putting out the candles on our balcony and on the neighbouring balconies…My mom tried to console us saying that it always rained on Diwali…which was not exactly consoling to 2 kids who had just managed to keep the candles all lit…
Chuckle…I guess am right abt the memory lane being a maze.It just depends on which turn u take and u come across something u haven’t thot abt in years…

ta-daaaaa!!!!

Twiddledum-dee ..Twiddledum-doo...am hopping on one foot and on the other too....looloo..lala...oh..laaaa....aha!!
Ok..In case nobody understood what that was,let me explain that it was a happy dance...with music to match..because...ladies and gentlemen,because....My parcel Arrived!!!!!Yippppppeeee..oooohooooo...!!!
Apparently the parcel had been delivered at the apartment office some days back but there was no notification left in our post box...So the two poor souls who traipsed daily to the post box and traipsed back disappointed really did not have to be disappointed..Anyway..whats done is done and over with...But boy...am I thrilled..Practically made my weekend...I have been gloating over the contents the way Rapunzel gloated over her golden tresses...
Apart from that,nothing else to say...adieu...!!!

Tattle away!!!

Ok..so it has been a while since I got round to posting anything here and its come to the point that my friend across the seas has gone to the extent of tagging me in the hope of giving me a topic to wrte abt,which I shall use as my next post.Now,to be honest,I have had lots to say but since they were all in bits and pieces and crumbs as well,it was rather tuf to write it down as a post and even more to think up a title for the post...so finally ..here comes tattle away which is nothing but a bunch of mismatched thots which keep going round and round and round in my head and simply refuse to rest...So in the hope of making them R.I.P.,here I write.
My parcel has not come.Now anyone who knows me even vaguely ,knows that am a sucker for surprises and packages of any kind.I love my mail,be it email,snail mail or parcels...well,with the exception of bills...not cos they are bills but cos they are so...well,so....impersonal...or rather they are sent only cos they want money from me...I know it sounds mad but still it is the reason why am disappointed to see bills. I dont like bank statements either...cos they are too long and drive me nuts.So I leave them to mama....She did spend 20 years looking at them...so she wudnt mind looking at them once in a while..In fact I shud think she gets some thrills from them...Yeah,mama,I can hear u snort...
But am wandering...this is the sole reason why I have not written any posts for the last 25 days...On my desktop you will find several half written posts which are half written cos my thoughts keep wandering...and then I find myself writing something that is totally different from what I started with and that for some reason seemed rather odd to me...ha ha..thats a joke..something I did seemed odd to me...when the world looks at everything I do and says "Crazy woman!!!".Ok..its not that bad...but then lets get back to my parcel cos I have been wandering and thats the second time.

Mama sent me a parcel with lotsa surprises in it thru DH's friend ,Deepu...and the sweet guy (Deepu,if u are reading this,wipe that evil grin off ur face.My mama thinks u are a very sweet guy and I wud agree with her if it had not been for the story u told me abt how Vinod ran after u with a knife after u teased him relentlessly.)Anyway,Deepu dutifully mailed the parcel but being new to U.S. he sent it thru ordinary post and my DH did not think to tell him otherwise and for that matter neither did I.(Yeah...am defending them both.)So we can't track it and its not yet reached...though its been a good ten days since he sent it..The only reason I can think of it being this late is that the postman must be walking all the way from Nebraska to deliver it and after all ,u cant walk to California from Nebraska in ten days...Ok,mama..Please dont tell me again(u already told me 7 times ) that u are sure that the postman has by now opened the parcel and finished up all the goodies and is enjoying my stuff...I dunno if it is a good thing that I dont know the contents of the parcel cos I wanted it to be a surprise or if it is a bad thing cos I dunno what the postman is having so much fun with.

Now that said and done,my right thumb has developed a tender spot thanks to me crocheting like a crazed coot all thru the weekend.Now to answer ppl who ask "thats all u did all weekend?crochet?",here is my answer.No...apart from finishing 3 crochet projects,I also baked a banana nut cake,made banana icecream & vaccummed the house..and sometime during last week I tidied the clothes cupboard again.Yeah,wud have to be proud of me.I am a marvel.Thanks.

My knee is still painful and its been exactly 2 weeks since I went to get my x-ray taken.For reasons unknown,the x-ray has not yet reached my Doctor's office.Now I am concerned abt that Thursday being jinxed.I mean ,my parcel was sent on that day;my x-ray was taken on that day...and neither have turned up...Now I must think of what else I have done that day.

I found myself an aunt..Now though I have been unusally blessed with doting aunts,its always nice to find one more...Aunts are a lot like handbags...Uncles also for that matter...u really cant have too many of them...Am not sure that statement makes any sense but what ho, am past caring.This is therapeutic if u know what I mean.I am finally getting rid of that train of thoughts that kept going "Here we go round ur teensy brain,teensy brain,teensy brain..here we go round ur teensy brain ...early in the morning"...Now where was I?Yeah...abt aunts...I spoke to this lovely lady who happens to be my mom's college friend,whose dad I have known for the better part of my life and have always thought of as a great candidate for the role of Santa Claus.
Though I have never met her,I always knew abt her.And finally 2 weeks back she called me up and wow!!So nice was she that I had to adopt her...So thats one more aunt in my kitty...though am not sure if she wud want me for a niece...For that matter am not sure my aunts-by-birth want me for a niece either but then they have no choice cos they are stuck with me...He..he...

I am having major doubts abt my crafts...cos here I am crocheting one thing after the other and Tashi had recently posted that she just finished her first knitting project which was scarf for her mom and then her colleague has given her an order for a scarf.How come I have not sold a thing?But like Anup says my creations have not been given a lot of publicity...For some reason am rather shy abt showing them off to ppl who dont know me...In fact am downright uncomfortable...:-(...Its strange ..I dont mind sending pics of the things I made my friend who has not even seen me ....But showing them to people I see on a daily basis at office..well..thats another thing altogether..I know...am hopeless...and loony as well...:-(

I have lost weight..Yippeee..In spite of an aching leg which keeps me from going to the gym,climbing stairs,bending and what not,I still managed to lose weight...My sleeves are singing with happiness where earlier they were stretched tight enuf to be my second skin with a threat that a refusal to let my arms in one day was not too far off.So what did I do?Remember the fruitwala outside my office?Well,I have been a regular customer for the last 3 weeks..I have been eating one fruit bag daily for lunch but dinner was the usual meal.Voila!!What a change!!I was surprised to find my sleeves much looser than what they were expected to become. I had only hoped to keep off from gaining more weight but losing some was a bonus...God does spoil me :-)

Coming after that last para this is gonna be very funny.I have an urge to cook.Ok. Stop laughing...Am not hungry..but just that the urge to try new dishes has been ripening for the last 2 days.Yday I tried ginger prawn fried rice and dum aloo...and the DH loved them both....Today wud have been another cooking day but for the disaster of a meeting that we had at office till late night.What with the manager frantically trying to say everything in ten minutes when the original presentation had been planned for a good 90 minutes plus the security guard glaring at the Manager and threatening to turn the lights off,I must say the samosas and the chai served were the only part that made sense to me thru the entire do.The manager raced thru one slide instead of the originally planned twenty and then turned to the room full of blank faces and asked "So do u all feel enthusiastic and excited abt this new idea?",there was pin drop silence and practically no one moved.The manager glared at us and looked at his head henchman threateningly and repeated the question and this time we all chorused weakly "Yesssss!!!" and thats when he relaxed and the vein throbbing at his temple decided to keep the explosion for the next meeting.I did feel sorry for the man ...
That said and done,adieu ,ppl...have a nice one...will be back with more.

An itch that I cannot scratch....Crafter’s syndrome

Getting ready to fly back to US after my marriage when I popped my bag of paints into my already overflowing luggage, little did I know that I was embarking on a rather perilous road.My dad says that I have always been one for puttering around and doing something creative or the other. From pop-up cards for my brother’s birthday to miniature new year cards for all my favourite colleagues,I have used every birthday as an excuse to think up ideas for a handmade cards for my folks.I still remember a terrible card I made when I was in 3rd standard with white chart paper , a strange velvety flower ,some fresh leaves from our garden alongwith the odd bead or two…and my mom displayed that card for years in her living room even after the flowers and the leaves were long dead and black.Blame it all on her for she was the one who had me painting from the time I can remember,wud churn out roses made from any oddly shaped cloth,baked and iced the most marvelous cakes I ever remember having seen,taught me how to make flower prints with a lady;s finger,dabbled in every craft imaginable and whatever she left untouched ,am currently dabbling in.(also blame her for having induced the reading habit in me ) and blame it on my dad who never thought of discouraging her or me.

But never in my life have I had that continuous itch to do some kinda crafting on a daily basis except in the last few months.And I blame it all on my DH(darling hubby).For some reason ,he decided that am happiest when am doing something creative….and for that reason he wud nag me(yes,nag!!!) me to paint every weekend.I don’t claim to be marvelous at painting but I can draw a tree and not have people ask me if that is a man.And one day while I was deep in thought and planning on dabbling in a craft sometime far in the future,DH asked me what I was thinking abt.I made the mistake of telling him abt that craft and how I wanted to do it sometime in my life….Two days later I found myself whisked off to a craft store and presented with supplies for the craft by a very determined man who refused to listen to any of my protests or doubts abt my abilities.

Am no shopaholic but there is something abt a craft supplies store that makes me go loopy…and so loopy that the thought of the craft store is enuf to make me bounce on my office chair with excitement.I positively love that shop…. Oooooh..I love it so much.I invariably have this urge to take a cart and run down the aisles pulling things into the cart with both hands….Wow!!!The ultimate dream…My normally sophisticated self begins to say things like "Gaa-gaa,goo-goo,peep-peep” and makes me smile at my husband the way my Manager’s 2 year old smiles at me when I make funny faces at her..I can walk into the loveliest clothing store,shoe shop ,even the book shop and walk out without spending anything more than a couple of wistful sighs. But in a craft store, I lose it all. I whiz around ,determined to make the most of my time there.All my five senses work together.In case u are wondering what my sense of taste has to do with some yarn and beads,well, u shud see me drool when I walk into that shop.

I drool the way I did when I first walked into the LA public library and found out that the membership was free,reading books was free,and there was no limit to the number of books u cud check out.The fact that the library is located right behind my office was just the cherry on top. J Sigh!! To quote the bag lady in Chicken soup,God spoils me.

I have heard crafters talk abt their “stash” of supplies and how they are guilty of buying beautiful supplies knowing that they cud make something out of it…and I used to think wistfully abt how I don’t have a stash and dreamt of a white room with lots of drawers and shelves all painted white,with my “stash” all neatly organized and a lovely large table at the right height with lots of proper lighting….and then I chanced upon my next hobby and the dreadful man who indulges me in a way no crafter shud be indulged promptly presented me with supplies for it….and then I was determined not to let him spoil me anymore and decided to finish off my supplies before I bot anymore…I told myself firmly I will not even think of the craft store until I use up my supplies and for some time I was pretty successful….
Unfortunately I have a habit of showing him an idea before I work on it…and that goes for all my hobbies (except cooking cos the man simply cannot read a recipe and figure out if it will be delicious or not)….And so when some of his favorites which he wanted me to work on were put on hold cos I did not have the right colors ,he promptly dragged me to the craft store to get them…
Now to all those women out there who are sighing in envy, let me tell u the man knows what is good for him and what is not…while he willingly takes me to the craft store he also keeps a sharp eye on me to make sure I don’t disappear inside a basket of wool or decide to take home one each of every single item the shop has on sale …Like my dear friend across the seas once put it “ Anup keeps a check on you cos he knows that if he doesn’t some day u are gonna tell him “Sir,wud u please move out of this apartment?The space you are occupying can be used to store 3 boxes of beads,4 ball of wool and 5 bottles of paint””.Chuckle!!!!She has never met me but she knows me so well….

And then one day as I was tidying the house I realized that I have a stash !!!and I have developed the crafter’s syndrome …the tendency to pick every single little thing that u see and instead of deciding if u need it or not,u wonder if u can make something out of it…I find myself having to resist picking up a piece of sparkly paper fluttering on the road. I also learnt that no matter what u do,craft supplies never stay tidy…they are invariably messed up………Most crafters I know have a very messy working area which try as they may invariably ends up in a disorder….Including my mom..when she started a project,every flat surface in the vicinity wud be covered with her supplies and more than once I have had dinner admiring bottles of paint and stuff….
I keep telling myself that someday when I have my white room,my supplies shall be kept in order and all marked and I wont have to pull out one thing just to get to another…and mama and I shall work together in our craft room …wow!!!amazing dream and someday I shall do it….But for now I have managed to tidy up my stash and am determined to use it up and not buy another thing …well…except that bottle of glue and varnish I shall buy today that I really need to put something together with the supplies I bought yday…Dont laugh!!!...Honestly,I need those or the supplies from yday cant be used….!!!

The tale of Chee-poo

Once upon a time there was a tiny little cat who worked real hard at her job. She caught all the mice in the slot that the cat colony had assigned her and even volunteered for some extra slot time. The cat that caught the most mice would be awarded the fishy bag award at the end of the year. All cats vied for the award and so did the tiny little cat. She worked late hours and skipped her meals. And finally she was so tired that she took 3 weeks leave to go meet her parents back in the town. The tiny little cat caught a bus and traveled for 2 days and 2 nights to reach her home. Her parents were glad to see her. Her dad came to pick her up at the bus station. Her mom had made her tuna patties and milk pudding for dinner. The tiny little cat finally felt safe .Nothing like home, she thought, as she curled up on her warm soft bed.

3 weeks of vacation seemed to fly and soon it was time for the little cat to go back to work. She left with a heavy heart since she did not know when she wud be able to get leave again. And so the tiny little cat got back onto the bus and traveled 2 days and 2 nights to reach her workplace. The next day she cheerfully went to work. She was working in her slot when suddenly her blackberry started vibrating. It was a message from the Old cat. The Old cat was the master of the colony and lorded it over all the other cats. The tiny little cat went to the Old cat and bowed low before him. The Old cat looked at the tiny cat thru half closed eyelids and handed out a package and said “Chee-poo,u have done a great job this year and have caught a lot of mice. But I believe that u can catch more if u try.”Chee-poo nodded eagerly and ripped open the package and out fell a couple of …….peanuts!!!

Chee-poo was shocked. She cudn’t believe it. She looked up at the Old cat and said “Sire, I do not deserve such a low reward for a year’s work. I have worked harder than all the other cats.” The Old cat sniffed disdainfully and said “You let me decide that.”Chee-poo protested “But, Sire, I did not……miaaaaooooowwww!!!!” The Old cat had turned around suddenly and threw a huge fish head at Chee-poo.Before she cud dodge, the fish head hit Chee-poo on her back paw. Poor Chee-poo ran away with her tail tucked between her legs. Her poor foot was swollen and painful.
She sat on the wall of her apartment and wept bitterly. She heard a noise and looked down to see the dog next door whose leftover milk she sometimes lapped at when the dog was asleep. If the dog was awake, she wud chase Chee-poo barking wildly.Chee-Poo stiffened cos she knew with her hurt paw she cud not run fast or far. She though bitterly “Yeah,just what I need. I hope he eats me up in one big gulp. Then I won’t know a thing. Besides who wants to live in this stupid place. I wud be better off being eaten”.
But amazingly, the dog did not seem to be chasing her but regarded in a quiet manner.Chee-poo was surprised and wiped her nose dolefully. The dog kept watching Chee-poo.Chee-poo finally fell asleep on the wall, tired out with her long journey and tears. She woke to find someone sniffing at her. She opened one eye to see the dog standing on its hind legs, front paws against the wall, its nose almost touching her and leapt back in fear, landing hard on her injured paw. The dog said “Fear not, tiny little cat. I was just waking u up for some dinner” and nodded towards her bowl.Chee-poo looked at the bowl in amazement. She limped timidly to the bowl and with a glance at the dog, started lapping at the milk. She half expected the dog to pounce on her but the dog kept watching her quietly.

As she lapped up her milk, Chee-poo remembered her mother’s milk cookies and a half-sob caught at her throat, making her choke on the milk .The dog hurried to her and thumped her back slightly. “Are u O.K?” she asked. The kind tone brought tears to Chee-poo’s eyes. The dog asked her in concern “What happened? Is the milk too hot for u?”She lapped at the milk and looked puzzled.Chee-poo wiped her eyes and said “No, the milk is O.k. Thank you.” The dog asked “Is ur paw hurting u?”Chee-poo looked at the dog in surprise. The dog explained “I saw u limping”.Chee-poo looked at the kind dog and found herself pouring out all her troubles to the dog. The dog listened patiently as Chee-poo concluded “Now I have hurt my paw and I cant work as fast as I used to.” The dog asked her “Wud u earn enuf to eat with a normal work day? Without putting all ur spare time into it? If so y don’t u take up a hobby and do something for urself? U wud be happier and wud not be pouring all ur energy into ur job. That way if u don’t receive the rewards u expect .U wud not be so disappointed.” Chee-poo looked at the dog and said “But what shall I do?”. The dog said “Crochet.” Chee-poo exclaimed “Crochet?!!! But I don’t have a needle and neither do I know how to crochet”. The dog waved a paw and said “I cud teach u and u can use my needle. I don’t use it anyhow”.Chee-poo looked in amazement at the kind dog and nodded agreement. The dog trotted away and came back with a ball of wool and a crochet needle and taught Chee-poo to crochet. And to her surprise,Chee-poo found crochet very interesting. She was excited and wished she cud crochet all day long.
The next day Chee-poo limped to work and caught a few mice under the Old Cat’s sharp gaze but cud not catch as many as her usual day’s work. Each time she felt depressed, she thought of her new friend and that cheered her up. She cud hardly wait to get back and start crocheting again.

In the evening, the little cat limped back to her wall and found the dog waiting for her on the other side and they sat down to crochet….Soon it became a pattern …Slowly the little cat’s paw healed and she cud catch as many mice as she used to. But she no longer worked overtime. She finished her work for the day and came back home to crochet with her friend. But strangely she was happier than she had ever been. She had made a cap for herself and one for the dog. Next she was planning to make a couple of hats for her parents. She ran to her wall and looked around for the dog who normally wud be waiting for her. Today the dog was nowhere to be seen but the crochet needle and ball of wool were on the wall. Assuming that the dog wud be back in a minute, Chee-poo started on her crochet. Still the dog did not come.Chee-poo felt hungry and saw the dog’s bowl with some milk on the ground. She jumped off the wall and drank some milk from the bowl. All of a sudden, she heard a wuff.She jumped in fright and looked around to find the dog come running full tilt at her, wearing the cap Chee-poo had crocheted for her, barking loudly, followed by the mistress of the house.
The terrified little cat fled to her wall and sat on the wall looking down at the barking dog in bewilderment. After a minute, the mistress went back into the house and the dog sniffed at her milk bowl and ran back inside the house. At the door, she stopped and looked back at Chee-poo for a long moment, wagged her tail once, straightened her cap and ran inside.

Chee-poo sat back, her tiny heart was still hammering .She picked up her wool….and looked wistfully at the door of the house, smiled to herself and continued her crochet.

The screaming witch makes a comeback!!!

The last 2 days have resulted in a lot of soul searching...or maybe I shud say the soul searching has been going on for a month but I kept pretending that I did not see it....until today afternoon in a mail to a friend,the cork flew off the bottle and out spilled feelings and thots I had not known existed or rather not acknowledged...For the major part of this year,I have had a feeling that something within me is just not right though I cud not pinpoint it.I asked Anup if I had changed from the woman he fell in love with and he said No..but deep within me,that part of me that has never been wrong,still sent rippling waves that left me feeling disturbed without knowing why...From being a person who was never scared of the world,of what ppl thought,who did just what she felt was right,I became some one who worried abt what ppl thought though I wud not admit it,stopped taking any risks and shut myself up deep inside me...There were a lot of incidents earlier this year that were traumatic..and I suspect they affected me much more deeply than I thot cos the rebel that was me began to conform to the rules...I am not blaming anyone for it...cos its not the responsibility of other ppl to change so that I feel happy...Basically what am trying to say is that I did not handle it all well,I let it affect me and change me in ways that are not acceptable...i cannot change back in just one night..but I can try,,,and try I shall...cos I must if I want to be myself again,if I want the peace I once had...irrespective of what happened in the world or around me....if I want back the strength that was once mine....if i want all the small lovely crazy dreams that I dreamt to stay alive and not die down under the heaviness of my fears...if i want to learn to dance to my own tunes again instead of a sedate walk which is not mine....if I want to learn to fly again without the fear of falling...if I am to enjoy the freedom of flying...if I am to trust again...not just myself but God too....There was a time when I took every risk knowing that God held me close...From being a woman who thot nothing of travelling alone at 3 in the morning I became someone who shrinks from going to the supermarket in broad daylight...I shoved it off as laziness but maybe it was more than that...I dont know...Last week at a fair,I saw a stall for bungee jumping...since I was in my teens,I had promised myself I wud go bungee jumping some day...relish the fear and the freedom of flying...but that day as I looked up at the not-so-tall ledge,a spark of excitement surprised me....I remembered the dream...but as I watched the young woman hold onto the ledge trying to make herself let go and jump,I said to my protesting soul,I cant do that and when it insisted,moved on with the vague excuse that it was not really high and not worth doing...and thus I managed to stay safe...Today when I was writing to friend abt a totally different matter and how I worried abt it,I remembered something I had read on the internet a long time back....
* There is a moment when a trapeze artist has to let go of one bar in order to grab the next. In that moment they are flying and have nothing to hold onto. Life can be a lot like that. We have to let go of what is in order to take the next step.
Remembering to trust the process makes that moment much easier. And it is our choice whether we focus on the freedom of flying or the fear of having nothing to hold onto. *
And something clicked....I admitted that I was scared of having nothing to hold onto where once I had delighted in the flight,of upsetting the apple cart where once I wud have cheerfully upset it and picked up the apples again.....And I acknowledged fear to be the reason why I have not been able to blog for the last 15 days...From not thinking abt what I wrote,I had gone to worrying abt writing something interesting and stopped writing altogether....I dont claim that am not scared anymore...I still am but am acknowleging it instead of pretending all is well....And now that am acknowledging it,am on the path to being the person I loved being...enjoyed with every fibre of my being...and right now while writing the post I feel exhilarated,for I have opened the door to my cage...There was a time when I felt scared of something ,I went right ahead and did it so that I wud not be scared of it anymore....and today when I started this post,I thot I wud not put it on the blog cos ppl wud not understand what am talking abt..Let me rephrase that...cos I was scared that ppl wud not understand.but frankly,it does not matter...cos I write for myself....and its my blog...and if u think this is beyond understanding then I say "Then dont read,darlings".Wow!!!The screaming witch is back with a bang and she is not going to wait for halloween this year.Yipppppppppppeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

A trip down the memory lane...

I want to sniff at a nice smelling "rubber".
Oh yeah!!u read that right.I said I want to sniff at a nice smelling "rubber" not a bloody eraser.That statement should convey the desperateness with with I long to turn time back.And yet again,wearily,I repeat,its not cos of Anup.He still happens to be Mr.Right though at times he does drive me up the wall.But am digressing.
My longing did not happen in one day.It has been building up over a period of months.Scandalous as it sounds,sometimes I wish I had not fallen in love with the man cos had it not been for him ,by now I wud be back in the only country I can truly call home.I wud have returned after a 6 month stint in US.But as fate had lovingly charted out,my life's course took me tripping along the road to matrimony.Make no mistake abt the fact that am happy.Sometimes I wonder what my life wud have been like if I had returned to India for good instead of getting married to Anup.Its a complicated thought cos I wonder if I wud have finally agreed to follow my dad's wishes and settled down with some "nice boy".Since that is something I will never know ,I wish to turn time farther back..to a time when I was 4 years old...

It was the first weekend after I joined school.I had been fascinated by the chalk teachers used to write on the board and at the first chance I got I picked some of the pieces that had broken off while the teacher was writing.At this point I shall confess that I have tried eating chalk and till date believe it tastes good.For that matter,I have tried mud,slate pencil,bits of dried cement and loved it all...Mama,please dont pull out ur hair.It was years ago.If it helps,I promise I dont do it anymore.My mama was getting ready for office and I was the epitome of goodness, cheerfully playing with my chalk pieces.And then for reasons unknown to me till date,my mom took it into her head to tell me not to put the chalk pieces up my nose.To be completely honest,it had not occurred to me to do such a thing till that very moment.I gaped at her for a moment,said O.K.,ran to stand in front of the mirror in the next room and carefully stuffed a chalk piece up my nose.After wiggling my nose at the mirror I came to the conclusion that my nose felt rather uncomfortable and in trying to get the chalk piece out,managed to push it up some more.Now it really hurt.So I decided to run to mama and blurt out the tale.She as always saved me by poking a ear digger(if there is such a thing)up my nose and nudging the chalk piece out.

A couple of months back,mama and I were chatting abt this incident when all of a sudden I remembered another childhood incident of which
she was not aware.It happened when I had moved up to 1st standard,with my days of stuffing chalk pieces up my nose far behind me.I remember sitting next to a female whose name I cannot remember for the life of me.Anyway what I do remember is that this female had a fluorescent orange eraser or rather half of an eraser.And it smelt lovely.It was a teeny weeny piece but once I sniffed at it I fell in love.I always had a thing for nice smelling erasers and to this date when I see an eraser my first instinct is to smell it.my mom always got me the Nataraj eraser which smelt of ...well...nothing at all.So every free minute I got in class,I spent smelling this female's eraser.I wonder if she remembers me but if she does I am afraid it may not be fondly for one day in my attempt to sniff hard enuf to keep the smell in my memory,the eraser flew out of my hand and up my nose.Cripes!!!I did not believe it went up my nose but I cudnt find it elsewhere.Plus there was a feeling of something inside my nose near the ridge.I gingerly felt the ridge of my nose but there was no swelling of any kind to indicate the presence of the eraser.Nothing except a dark suspicion.

I told the female that I dropped her eraser and she was quite cross with me.Later when I was alone,I cautiously put my finger up my nose and felt around for the eraser.Nothing.I came to the conclusion that I had imagined the whole thing cos I cud see no changes in the shape of my nose when I looked in the mirror.But in my heart of hearts I knew it had gone up my nose.Fastforward to a couple of months later when I had forgotten all abt the eraser and we were spending the summer hols at a grand uncle's house in Delhi.All the grown ups were asleep on the hot summer afternoon while I loitered around on the porch.For some reason I had been sneezing for some time and my eyes were watering.All of a sudden,I sneezed a mighty big sneeze and something flew out of my nose and I opened my eyes to look around for the big ball of snot.And my eyes came to rest of a fluorescent orange eraser and in a rush came memories of another afternoon when the blessed object had disappeared below my eyes(no pun intended) and had gotten me a good scolding from an irate 6 year old.I toyed with the idea of picking it up,washing it and giving it back to her.But school was 2 months away and besides,I figured she wud have forgotten abt it or gotten herself a new eraser.

Sigh!!!Uncomplicated life that was!and more often than not,I find myself wishing I cud go back to those days,to the days when bunny and I played scooter scooter on Mom's unused Kinetic Honda,the days of peeking at my first dog while she enjoyed the evening breeze and the smells it brought along,waiting to see how long it wud be before she smelt me and stood up,ears perked,tail wagging,eyes bright,marvelling that she knew I was there though she cudnt see me cos I was hidden behind the wall,smelling mama's fresh laundered clothes(for some reason they always smelt different from my laundered clothes),watching mama drape a sari and wondering why she had to do it the hard way when it made perfect sense to a 6 year old to tie ends of the sari to the 2 cupboards in the room and spin in the centre,thereby draping the sari cleanly on self(this idea was inspired by watching Draupadi's sari being pulled from one end by the kauravas and Sri Krishna feeding her more yards of sari from the wall),waiting for dad to come home for lunch and looking forward to sleeping on his tummy,waking up to find him gently move me onto the bed cos he had to leave for office,listening to all those stories of unnikapakshi and chinnaraman and periya raman from my grandmother,supplemented with mashed rice,sambhar,pappad and crumbled fried fish,planning complicated Onamflower carpets supplemented with dried coconut scrapings mixed with food coloring(it helps to have a very creative mom)...

Sometimes I just get tired of being grown up....and thats when I feel like sniffing at a nice smelling "rubber"

A verbose account of my aches and groans.

I don’t know if the nature of my job is a bane or a blessing. Last week I worked like crazy to finish what was a mountain of work only to find that someone else had been working hard to build the mountain back up..Huh!!!And come this week, I have been sitting around for the past hour and a half and no one wants any work done. Can u imagine the frustration? They never let me get used to working too hard and they never let me get used to sitting simply…I bet by tomorrow they wud have assembled the mountain again.
Anyway with all the work I had to do last week, I was real glad that the weekend came and all the work scheduled for the weekend had been mercifully cancelled.Sigh!!!So finally I had a whole weekend free to do anything. But then on Friday night ,having finished the last piece of work I had on hand, I stretched my slightly stiff neck and……ended up with a sprain.Yes,I managed to sprain my neck very badly and it hurt like crazy. Anyway I sat down and waited for the hubby to be back from his boy’s night out. And then once the man was back I went of to sleep hoping that the sprain wud go away by morning. Little did I know the aches and groans awaiting me.

Come morning I had a real stiff neck and the only way to ease the pain was to sit with my back and head leaning against a wall. The hubby rubbed the poor neck with some pain balm and that eased it up a bit…By Saturday night the pain had become bearable and I hoped to have a nice enjoyable Sunday. That was before I woke up with a migraine.Yeah!!!A classic case of a full blown migraine which made me wish I cud conk myself on the head and become unconscious. The entire morning and the better part of the afternoon was spent on the couch trying not to move. If I stayed still for 20 min then the pain wud slow down to an occasional twinge. The moment I shifted a bit or focused on something, it wud start pounding with a vengeance.Sigh!!!I cud not shift my eyes from one object to another suddenly. I had to do a kind of slow wandering act with my eyes and sort of let my vision move slowly from one object to another. The trouble with this is that I kept forgetting to do it.
My prospects of the nice relaxing weekend were flushed far down the drain. And all I wanted was to get rid of the damn migraine which when it hit invariably stuck to me like a leech for 2-3 days.U cannot imagine how frustrating it is to fall asleep with a migraine and wake up and the first thing u are aware of is a sickening pounding in ur head.U wish u had never opened ur eyes. So I popped in a tablet and waited for a couple of hrs.No good.So I popped another one.That did the trick. The migraine slowed down to a throb but it still throbbed. The last thing I wanted was to go to office on a Monday morning with a migraine.Wud send me over the edge. So in went another 2 tabs, not in quick succession though. But I had enuf of the pain and the nausea. How long can u sit in a place without doing a thing? So I pulled out my beads and then did a bit of crochet. By then my ache had disappeared except for an occasional twinge. I still cud not bend down cos that wud make my head start pounding again.Sigh.!!!Anyway to keep my mind off the ruined weekend I baked a cake.Yeah!!I know. I must have been bonkers but the cake did come out well and the hubby loves cakes. He was miserable cos I was miserable and cud not talk much.I simply lay around like an old hag blinking slowly at him. Quite depressing I shud imagine.
So that was the weekend. No household chores done, no outings,nothing.One miserable woman and her helpless hubby. I guess it was the effect of working too hard for the last 2 weeks. Anyway ,here I am at office on Monday morning,tired,with no work pending for a change and enjoying it, and as much as I want to talk to people I really cant cos if I say more than two sentences, there is a pounding which starts up in my head. And if am not careful its gonna become a full blown migraine.
To be honest, this is is a rather depressing post but honestly what more can u expect with an aching neck and a throbbing head?

At my unreasonable best!

I have a reputation (so I imagine) around here for being a very reasonable wife who does not call her husband every five minutes when he is out with the boys, does not crib at him and more or less lets him live his life in peace. But being reasonable comes at the price of ignoring a few things that all men do without fail and are so much part of male characteristics, like how they never can eat anything without dribbling it on their clothes, can’t eat with their mouths shut, just need an idiot box showing a ball and a minimum of 2 ppl running after it to keep them entertained, snore so loudly that u get used to daily dreams of thunderstorms and basically are rather funny creatures who really don’t have a clue.
I married an extremely patient man, who loves me to bits and does every damn thing in his power to keep a madcap like me happy. And I still have not figured out what keeps him in love with me.For a man who is the nice quiet type (atleast that’s the picture he presents to the world. Snort!!!) he has a married life which is anything but quiet considering he has a wife who talks non stop to him, the coffee jar, the cooker, the mixer, her spoons and her beads. So much so that when am quiet, the man suspects am upto no good.Huh!!Can u imagine!? Poor me. What’s the point of me putting up my paws daily and praying “Please God, help me be quiet and sane”?
Since they say that a fight or two helps in keeping a marriage spicy, I decided it was upto me to try and induce a fight in our normally peaceful life.(Please don’t listen to that neighbour making disbelieving noises. He is just jealous of my new doormat.) No offense meant to anyone but this was how I ranted at the hubby for making some unlucky comment abt cooking more often. To give him his due, the man never said that I always had to cook. All he said was that we shud try and cook more often but it was the perfect chance for the unreasonable lady to come out flapping which actually is pretty rare cos I married a man who simply wont fight.
Sigh!!!Anyway ,after a whole day of wandering abt with an injured air, we finally got round to the having-an-adult-conversation part

Me:“Oh yeah…I am mad at you.”
Hubby: “Why?”
Me: “Cos u said nasty things to me”
Hubby: “Like?”
Me: (defiantly, after a pause) “Well, I don’t remember exactly what”.

And the hubby laughs…Huh!!!Can u imagine the cheek? Am telling him am mad at him and the man laughs himself silly. And then he says that am talking like the woman in Friends series.

She: “Oh, am mad at u”
He: “Why?”
She: “Well, I don’t remember but I do remember am mad at you”
He: “Huh?”
She:”Wait!!I remember now. You said am boring!!!”
He: “I said what!!!!”
She: “Yes!!! You did. You said am boring and then u took off ur mask and u became Cameron Diaz”
He :( Speechless)…
She: “Ok. So there is a chance that this was in a dream.”

And the hubby laughs again.Now I tell u I was not mad cos of any dream. I knew I was mad at him .If only I cud remember what he said. I know he made some unlucky remark which really was not as bad as I made it out to be but at the time it seemed pretty unfair. Some household stuff. Anyway I was not abt to let him off the hook and decided to give him something to think abt.

Me: “Huh!!You think that’s funny, do u? Well, I’ll tell u how annoying it is. I make the bed and ten minutes later u lie down. I make it again and exactly ten minutes later u lie down again. And u never make the bed.”
Hubby: “Ok.What else?”
Me: “I clean the kitchen. You make the next meal and then the kitchen looks like a cyclone hit it. You never clean. For u, all that matters is food. Not a clean house. I clean it up and u mess it up and when ppl come they probably think the house is a mess cos I don’t clean it. And cos am so tired, I cook something quick and ppl think u don’t get fed at all. It’s always my fault.Men!!!Huh! You are all the same. All u want to do is to eat!”
Hubby: “OK, then?”
Me :( paused) “Well, there is lots more but I can’t remember”
Hubby:”Chuckle”
Me: ”Huh!! Well, u never do the laundry until I tell u.When I fold the clothes up,u pull out one shirt and mess up the entire shelf. Why can’t u take it out neatly without messing up the entire cupboard?”
Hubby: “Ok.What else?”
Me :( paused) “Well, there is lots more but I can’t remember” (uh-oh...This is tougher than I thought)
Hubby waits patiently.

Me: “Well, that’s all I can remember right now. Anyway that’s not the point. The point is that u men are all the same. None of u help out when we need the help and then u help out when we don’t need the help (huh?). And then u blame us for everything. When I was single I wud clean the house and then if I was too tired to cook, I wud eat a stick of carrot and drink a glass of milk and call it dinner. But u men invariably want a proper cooked dinner and we have to cook it for ur sake irrespective of how tired we are. Why cant u drink milk and eat a carrot? It’s healthy too. Had it been a woman in ur place she wud have cheerfully settled for a carrot. But not u stupid men….U all are the same. No wonder today no woman wants to marry a man. No wonder more and more women are becoming lesbians. Men are driving women into becoming lesbians cos they don’t help in keeping the house clean and still want cooked food…..Huh!”

I was just getting properly worked up and into top gear but then the hubby is rolling with laughter .And then he says “Bebu,u really must put that in ur blog” and hoots with laughter.
Ahem! Not exactly what I expected. Sigh! Next time I think I’ll stick to being reasonable. It’s a lot easier.

To the man and woman ....

...who are celebrating their wedding anniversary today,brought me into the world,put up with each other,put up with me and the dog(my bro was always the angel.Needed no putting up with),from whom I learnt ....

....That at times u can positively hate the person who really is ur best friend.They'll sew their mouths up before they admit it.

....That there is something good in every person.Again,they'll sew their mouths up before they admit it of each other.

....That at times killing ur spouse may seem like a good idea but u really must not.Am sure they must have wanted to do the deed more times than they have cared to admit but thankfully,they have not.

....That u can get so frustrated at a man that u want to smash his head in.Now I know why my mom banged away at the kitchen sink.

....That women can be endearingly childish and maddeningly so.My dad's throbbing temple while he tried to talk on the fone while my mom kept asking questions beside him.

....That at times what is obvious to you may not be obvious to ur spouse.Dad says "there,woman ,there" and mom goofily asks 'Where,Where?" .Mom says "there ,man,there" and Dad goofily asks "Where ,where?".You get the point?

....That at times ur spouse may goof up but u also can goof up an equal number of times.Dad breaks a glass and mom messes up his carefully organised cabinet looking for change and they both mutter "does it on purpose.I know" when the other one is not around while the kids wonder why they are so unchangingly silly when it comes to one another.

....That men invariably never can figure out how to select the undamaged perfect veggie.My dad has been doing it for more years than he cares to remember and invariably my mom says "Ur dad has brought me veggies that were plucked the day after Gandhi died".Dad always blames the shopkeeper who invariably wud have said "lovely lady's finger,sir".

....That women invariably decide to bathe and step into the bathroom exactly half a minute after the man manages to find his towel and underwear.The innumerable times my dad stood outside the bathroom door with suppressed frustration when my mom had beat him to the bathroom just a minute before.My mom always asks why on earth he can't bathe in one of the other bathrooms in the house.

....That the dog is "ours" until she poops and then she becomes - "Your dog".But if the kids are around then its "the kid's" dog.

....That the kids are "ur" kids when they get bad marks,make a sad joke,lose something and basically mess up and "my" kids when they get good marks,someone says something good abt them or they do something smart.The fact that u may have inherited ur father's bulging nose and ur mom's popping eyes is irrelevant to them.Note:My father has a perfectly straight nice nose and my mom has nice bright un-popping eyes ,both of which I have not inherited.

....That u stick up for ur spouse no matter what.The number of times they have done it.


Happy Anniversary,Pops and Mama....Wish I was home...