Unaccustomed Earth

Everytime I read a work of Jhumpa Lahiri, I end up sad and depressed for days on end. I thought this plethora of feelings that I go through, had something to do perhaps with my ageing process ;) or to the fact that I empathise a lot and thus create all such trouble for self.But I was kind of relieved on browsing the net for her works, almost all the reviewers admitted to being haunted /daunted on reading her works. I read The Namesake when I was pregnant with Achulde, it did not leave a nice feeling and I decided not too read her work again, atleast for a long time, then.
So when one of my closest buddies, gave 'The Unaccustomed Earth', her latest work, as a gift, I was initially reluctant to even start reading it. But I soon found myself, sitting late into the nite, such a page turner effect the book had.Its a collection of short stories and what is common across the stories is that in each of the story, one of the characters , mostly, the protagonist would have a secret to reveal that would turn out to be the crux of the whole story.And in each story, the secret is brought beautifully , in a unique way, mesmerizing style of writing.She is a skilled writer, enviable indeed, engaging , confident and completely in control.I loved the first one on Ruma and then 'Hema and Kaushik' the best.The latter haunted me for days on end. The only glitch was that , the moment the venue shifted to Thailand and clue was given on the timeline(2004), it suddenly crossed my mind that , Tsunami would become part of the backdrop and it turned out to be right. That was the only time, I found myself out of the book and not engaged/engrossed, the surprise element (if she intended any) was lost.But that didnt reduce the impact of the grief by an iota even. I was saddened and disappointed by the decisions taken by the protagonist(Hema), and somehow I wanted to shake her into making the right decision, all the time knowing and to be honest ,consoling self saying its just a work of fiction!!!
Maybe it was reminding me of one of my best friends, who is now in a very difficult situation in her personal life, and has not been doing anything abt it, I just dont want her to be another Hema. I want her to take control of her life and make things easy for her and others in her life. This is to you girl, hope you reach where you ought to be, where you belong to, pretty pretty soon, touchwood.

Bhakti Margam

Nowadays Bhakti is the flavour of the season and the TV channels are loaded with Bhakti serials, atleast the malayalam channels. My Achan was an ardent fan of Swamy Ayyappan which ran for almost 2 yrs and , when they started running short of original stories on the diety, they introduced stories on experiences of Devotees and in no time, it got so boring that even Achan gave up after sometime. But even now I see a torrent of such serials like Devi Mahatmyam, Krishna Guruvayurppa, etc etc.Since Achulde and Mommolde play with the remote quite often, the TV would be running in the background, most of the evenings in our home though no one would be watching as such. One such day, it was showing a story on the Goddess killing an Asura and most of us sitting in the family room were passive viewers. The Asura entered the scene,the make up was intended to be scary, the blackpaint on the face, the Jada , the big moustache etc, he was doing the roaring laughter coninuously for 5 mts on entry, the tyical demon laughter and I was beginning to wonder whether Achulde would appreciate this act at all. I didnt want my child to have a disturbed sleep and was abt to reach out for the remote to turn it off, when the monster on TV decided to do the Attahaasam once more and immediately from behind my chair , I hear a meek 'return' ' Hee haa haa haa'. That was Achulde standing there and imitating the Asura's laugh. He was enjoying the show. Apparently, he had not even realised that , it was something that was designed to scare the viewers!!! He was enjoying it thoroughly thinking its a joke :)

Happy First Brithday to you Mommolde :)

Its been a long time indeed and what better excuse do you need - it was Mommolde's first birthday . The star birthday was on 31st, but I had to be at work on that day, eventhough it was a saturday!!
And on his DOB, the husband was away in Beijing, on a 5 day tour!!! So we decided to celebrate on 14th , Valentines' day.
Achulde's First b'day was a gala affair, we'd even roped in an event manager, who managed the whole show for us including getting the return gifts, caps and blowers and all things nice. We had asked for a live cartoon character(in attire ofcourse) (Winnie the Pooh, as that was the theme for the party)- that was the anti-climax of the whole show, the guy was so thin, he looked awfully thin even in the Pooh attire :), now all that brings a smile to one's face.
We wanted Mommolde's b'rthday to be equally good.We had Pooh as the theme, this time too. Out here in TVM, they've event managers doing weddings etc on a large scale, but nothing on a small scale. We'd booked Travancore Hall of South Park, we but we had to do most of the arrangements ourselves, with the help of the Hotel boys. This time we were not planning on a large scale anyways, just family . And we didnt have much of friends in TVM anyways.
We'd purchased party poppers and snowflake spray, when we went shopping for the return gifts , and I gave clear instructions to a couple of hotel boys on how to just twist it to pop it and to spray on a certain height so that it would snow down beautifully. All was set. The cake cutting was set for 7 in the evening and all the folks arrived on time. Though we had party caps and eye masks, most of the kids refused the eye masks and opted for the cap only.
Achu and Mommo were sporting Offwhite Sherwani'is and both the kids for a change, didnt resist self''s attempt to dress them up in this attire, that by itself was a major achievement for self. :)
And at 7, we 4 got together to this side of the table and the crowd assembled on the other side and all started singing the Happy Birthday song.I was trying hard to get Mommolde to touch the knife atleast. Achulde was already blowing the candle and then suddenly the Hotel boys made their way into the crowd . The one with the spray had atleast forgotten half my instructions, for he was spraying the snow at just his level, the spray didnt have time to turn to snowflake, so it decided to just stay as lather on the guests' head. Same is the case with the popper man - he was miles away from the party scene, pop goes the contents into air!!!:) My attention wandered from the cake cutting and I couldn't control my laughter and I noticed that the whole crowd 's attention was in that direction, all laughing loud and running away from the scene. Then the "Snow Man", decided to focus on us and all of us were like ' Run for your lives'. The husband was like' M, focus here, we should be cutting the cake, not looking elsewhere!!!' etc.
Finally off went the boy and we returned to our second attempt at cake cutting. By then a naughty lil friend of Achu's(Kanna Baby) decided to join our side of the table. Kanna baby for a change had decided to wear the eye mask!!! He walked over from the other side in style sporting the Cap and eye masks and Mommolde got all curious as well a lil worried at the same time( He was seeing someone in a mask for the first time in his life).This lil fellow decided to position himself by my right side, a lil behind me and Mommolde who was on my left arm took a sprint and landed on my right arm and started climbing over my shoulder, trying to take a good look at Kanna Baby,with his back towards the cake and the crowd, there was no way we could get him to look at the cake , let alone making him cut the cake!!!
It was so funny, this time for a change, we were quiet relaxed and laughed our hearts out.
Finally, the husband somehow managed to get Mommolde to look our way and all of us cut the cake together :)
Achulde was really happy as he got to play for a long long time with all his friends. And we had a nice time with family and very close friends.
Man, Mommolde is already One, one year just whizzed by!!!

Broken

Scroll to left, and then to rite, scroll up and down’ was my New Year’s resolution!! Before you jump into conclusion that this mite be a new form exercise that I plan to start practicing this year, let me clarify,
No ,no, I did not mean scrolling in person, but ‘scrolling throught the recipient list of my compose mail window, before I click “ the sacred” send button !!!
Don’t believe that? Well , that’s just a subset !
My being absentminded is not by design, I’ve resigned to the fact that I am just designed that way!!! So my resolution for the new year was the latest in the series of the futile attempts at trying not to be very absentminded and careless atleast during workhours.
Checking recipient list was included in my mental checklist, after I caught myself just in time before clicking on the ‘post’ button after composing a weekly status report’. Now ‘post’ sounded unfamiliar, where’s the ‘send’ I normallyclick! That’s when I realized, I was about to post in BB (my company's Bulletin Board) my project status report!!! Heights of carelessness and that was when the mental checklist was revisited , re-vamped and re-introduced!!
All was well in my world, until today, when I got a mail from ‘A’, my team member , cc-ing my supervisor ‘B’, citing reasons on why he needs a release from the project and asking me to commit on a specific release date that he had in mind. Now,the project is in a very crucial phase and he is one of the key personnel in the team. I could not commit to any certain date, until the KT was complete and the new TM has scaled up well. But the same time, I did not want to discount that fact that the person had a genuine reason for the release. I decided to draft a mail noting down all points and send out a mail to my supervisor and once I was done with the composing, instead of saving , I clicked on ‘ send’ and went on about my activities. It being an exceptionally busy day, I had //commented the mental checklist process for the day.
The very next moment I get a ping from A, “I got your mail, you sent the mail to me, not to B!!!
Jaws dropped, I didn’t plan to send it at all ,rite-away in the first place, wasn’t it still in my drafts?!!
I cross checked my drafts and sent, no surprises here, it was in ‘SENT’ and not in ‘DRAFT’.
Ms. ‘Carelessness Personified’ had ’ replied ‘ instead of intended ‘forward’.
‘No problem, I’ll forward him,myself’ stuttered the embarrassed self .
’ I’ve done that for you’—he pings!!!
Then comes his reply, just a oneliner “‘ Looping in ‘ B’”!!!!
I ran to my supervisor’s desk and updated him, before he could sit down and read the mail himself,and he, who by now is so used to my “speaking on ‘mute’ during conference calls‘ and ‘moving files to wrong folders’ syndrome couldn’t contain himself and laughed out loud.
I was back at my desk, embarrassed, trying hard to contain it all, realizing how I’d royally broken my ‘New Year’s resolution’
Can it get better than this?
Stupendous Achievement , even before first month of 2009 is over!!! :)

The effect of my Nazar

My amma always says that we should never talk or even think that our kids look healthy now or thats its been sometime since the last infection. The moment you think/say, your baby is bound to fall sick the next day. The beginning of this week, I couldn't help noticing that its been atleast a couple of months since Achulde's last tryst with antibiotics , though Mommolde has been very regular with the attendance!!! And I even went to the extent of admiring his chubby cheeks!!! The very next day, got a call from his day care at noon. A call from the day care is something I am yet to learn to take with minimum composure. The moment I see the caller ID , I panick and I dont even bother to say Hello, its always ' What happened?" This time, its fever and I couldn't believe my ears, he was bsolutely alrite, in the morning. We took him to the Doc. He did try his best to behave and when the doc took out the thermometer, i could see him trying so hard to control the outburst, he managed not to cry for the first 1 or 2 mts and then , started out full volume. Then it was 3 of us holding him, while the doc examined, and Achulde as usual was in top form!!!
It turned out to be a middle ear infection, and that happened thanks to me , alone. Achulde had a mild cold last week and a running nose. So the good old very knowledgeable self, did the good act of making him blow his nose forcefully, very well knowing that , it mite lead to ear infection!!! As always, I thought that its just for the books!!!
Now he's on antibiotics, and we are all plotting new dramas and trying old tricks, to get him to take his medicines.

Happy B'day to you Happy Nuyea

Achulde thinks 'Happy Nuyea' is something similar to 'Happy Birthday'.
Once he noticed people wishing each other a Happy New Year, he also started doing the same. He even went one step ahead. He wished Happy new Year a Happy Birthday.
When one of his Appuppas called us to wish , he grabbed the phone from me and started singing.
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you Dear Happy Nuyea
Happy Birthday to you!!!
:)
His 'Teecha' at the day care was telling me that one whole day, he was going on abt saying ' 'Achulde Happy Nuyea' 'Achulde Happy Nuyea' :)

Mommolde

Extremely unfair, not to have a post on Mommolde, you'd think.
Lil Mommolde has started taking baby steps. He'll turn one next month. His star birthday is on 31st, but I have to be at work that day, we have a major deployment on that day. He turns one on 10th Feb. Maybe we'll celebrate it on the following weekend.
I'm sure I'll have a tough time, convincing Achulde that its not his b'day and Mommolde would have to be given the privilege of cutting the cake.
From a practical PoV, it would be better to let Achulde do the honor,lil Mommolde wont mind this time.He can just initiate the process and leave it to Achulde to take care of the rest of the matter