The stinks

Every time I look at RRJ and every time  I look at my parents I am so tangibly aware of time that I can almost feel it, elbowing past in the most reckless manner as if there is no tomorrow. I wish I could hold on to the present, it is a good place and a good time and I love it this way, but no, it seems that is not allowed.

One of the noticeable changes from RRJ's younger days is the number of conversations that we have now which are centered about his hair. A couple of months ago:
Amma: When are you going to the barber?
RRJ: Not anytime soon.
Amma: Why do you want to grow your hair long? I thought Christiano Ronaldo doesn't have it long....
RRJ: And I thought you didn't want me to copy anyone.
Amma: That is true, very true, I have said that. So no need to copy but still it is hard to keep it clean, you know, you sweat so much and your shower lasts no longer than a sneeze...... I am sure it stinks.
RRJ: I just took a shower, it is very very clean.
Amma [lovingly leaned over]: Haha... let me smell....Ooooh [gasps for air]  Oh my god, it stinks......very much like wet socks.  What have you been doing? [The stink was so bad that it was impossible not to laugh]
RRJ [feeling as if he is missing out on something]: I also want to smell... please please.
[Amma, still laughing hysterically, rubbed his hand on his scalp and offered it for smelling.]
RRJ [shocked by the stink, started laughing himself]: I know this smell.... it is exactly like my friend SN's football boots.
Amma [not laughing anymore]: SN's boots? And how do you know?
RRJ: We had sort a competition...... who can smell SN's boots longer?
Amma [thinking 'WHAAAT!!']: Oh, hmmmm.... and how many competitors were there?
RRJ: We started three and then one pulled out so only two...
Amma [knowing the answer fully well]: And don't tell me you were the winner?!!!!!

 I am sure he will outgrow being silly and cute and perhaps I will outgrow finding it silly and cute. But till then I must dig my heels a little deeper...... and slow time down.

An unnecessary woman- the book

There are people who live and breathe books, I, most definitely, am not one of those and yet I loved every bit of this book in which Alia, the main character, is all about reading books, quoting authors and judging translations.

On my way back from work related travel, which went rather well, with the intent of treating myself  I gravitated towards the shopping area looking for a shoe shop. Quite unfortunately Bangalore airport has no shoe shop, and tired hunting for it I found myself, quite accidentally, in a book shop browsing books. The first page and the blurb of this one suggested it to be a light read with an interesting premise which matched pretty closely with the level at which I wanted to be engaged in at that point in time. Well, it kept the promise of being sharp, witty and full of humour but while I laughed reading some of the passages, the grim realities of the back drop stared at me deploring each time I did so.

Set in Beirut, the story is structured such that while Alia's present life evolves slowly, Alia takes you back to its connections with her past. As you get to know her better, from each incident she narrates and analyses, you can figure out that her interactions with the world at large have been disappointing at all levels. Her coping mechanism to deal with this monumental disappointment was to dive deep into the world of written word and western classical music. Not only her immediate surroundings and interactions could never measure up to the immense possibilities and choices that this world could offer, it also conveniently demanded nothing in return. She is most animated and passionate when in this space for herself that allows her to be actively engaged with literature and music, it is the real life happenings that reveal her vulnerability and her unpreparedness to deal with it.

Her immense sense of self-belief  and ability to see humour in everything is so endearing that you do not want the conversation with her to end. I wish there were more such books which are light but don't necessarily lack depth.

Painting the lady with a parasol

Summer time in Kanpur can be pretty devastating unless you are prepared with stuff to occupy your mind so that your body doesn't feel the scorching heat in its entirety. I am sure this wasn't the thought process then but perhaps just a lot more time available time on hands that led my younger self to sketching and painting during the summer vacations. My subject would most often be the back cover of older copies of reader's digest that I had taken from my grandmother, a regular subscriber. They often used to have reprints of famous works of art during those times. It also happened to be a time when I was greatly inspired to try oil-pastels thanks to my father's  very good friend who once made a beautiful birth-day card for me, a bunch of flowers in a vase done in oil-pastels. It was a wonderful painting, rich in colour as well as texture, it captured the essence of the flowers so well but most importantly it was made specially for me!

The choice of subjects in my case, being reprints of famous paintings, of course often had a great disconnect with the local setting. Like this oil-pastel painting I made was of a lady with a parasol!

I was curious if after all these years I could trace the original painting. Thanks to Google and my honed-over-the-years googling skills, sifting through several images of various ladies with various parasols, was I guess quite a favourite subject with painters at one point, I could find the original…..

Finding Calvin

I had forgotten how much fun reading Calvin and Hobbes can be. I mean, reading the daily comic strip in the newspaper is a bit like having ice cream drop by drop.

RRJ has pulled out a couple of collections from our dusty bookshelf and seems to be enjoying them immensely. And so am I.

The aspect I love most- the possibility of a relationship being so fulfilling......... is only in our imagination!

And I love the parents too....

To life .....

Somewhere deep down I think it has finally sunk in that the glass is rarely ever empty. There is much happening in life that can keep one engaged positively. And this positive engagement is what I believe ensures that the glass is never totally empty. In my viewfinder is the little patch of green next to one of our favourite restaurants. It was lunch time, the weather perfect, cool blue sky in the backdrop. That little water body that you see behind the trees, on its day, can stink you out of your mind but luckily  even the wind was blowing the right direction!

In search for answers

Very brave of Dawn to pull out these ads from their archives today and put in their front page so that you can't miss the connection: when you appeal to the blind faith for the running of the state there is a good chance you end up having the blind wanting to have say in the running of the state.

Closure

Sometime you are forced to choose
   to let it go
and see the ends remain loose
  just so.

Damaging it may seem to others
  friend or foe
holding on could make it only worse
  you know

The time, the energy, the soul
  invested
infuriating it was, the whole 
  appeared wasted

Path of reason was to detach
  not falter
taking that path was so much
  though harder

The job remained undone
  years passed by
bitterness was never a solution
  in my eye

Difficult people also meet difficulties
  and get wise
they may not plan so but life can be a tease
  they realise
 
Satisfaction of completion
  had to wait for that moment
closure to that chapter did happen
  so late that a non-event

Finally!

One would imagine that after nearly a decade of teaching, an academic would become organized enough, experienced enough and composed enough to be rather unaffected by the starting and finishing of a semester. Quite the contrary, as the end-sem exam is going on I am awash with an immeasurable sense of relief, want to break into a jig and stomp on some bubble wrap if it was around. It is high time that the horns that I tend to grow and the claws that I draw out during term time can start receding and I hope that I can find the way back to being myself again soon enough.

Office-bullies

Let us say work-life hasn't been exactly a bed of roses lately. I am not sure what has majorly ticked off some of my colleagues but something surely has because I see an initiative to put me in my place. It is a big let down when people who you thought to be quite reasonable, open-minded and supportive are the ones who are reveling in their rather off-putting new avatar specially when in each others company.

In the last two decades, I have had my fair share of interactions with academics to know that we academics, however much we deny, crave for appreciation and respect from peers. To this end, it is often understood that having an impressive CV is what it takes to earn it. Once you commit yourself to that path you realize that the process of building an impressive CV could take its pound of flesh, and if one is not careful, along with it some of your integrity. As you hop on the ball and call out, "Look at me, look at me, look at me now, I can do all this and that and of course more as I hop on the ball", you may find there are still some out there whose regard is not coming that cheap. Perhaps it is frustrating- how dare anyone not care? Why is the tangible performance index not deciding the worth of my opinion on matters academic or non-academic? The likes of us must join together and show once and for all who is the boss around here, specially to the people who haven't been paying their due respects.



 

Averaging it well

Our toilet doors need a bit of sound proofing as one can hear too much. This morning one could hear people counting, I guess everyone is interested in knowing their average......

Game-point

When I could hardly contain my glee on realizing that I had won the point in spite of very nearly losing it. The sort of behavior that hardly befits a mother but I was dog-tired after 4 consecutive games and just couldn't keep up the front of an all sacrificing mother. I hope that history will judge me fairly.

Tke Kokkum race

The summer vacation that ended quite abruptly a few weeks ago was enjoyed in so many ways that one could almost forget the debilitating heat and the meltdown inducing visits to the passport office. And still, in spite of all the joy I am increasingly becoming aware of the fact that slowly but surely I am getting sucked into the kokkum race, and unless I dig in my heels it will end just the same way it ended many years ago. I know, must explain in more detail. Another time.

Hotness chillified

Absolutely gorgeous to my not so impartial eye. Those multi-vitamin tablets do work!

Paarpatra ki kahani humari zubani

The business of reissue of my passport has become very much like a soap opera: lot of drama but the story doesn't move forward. And of course with every ongoing episode one gets the feeling that this is going to last the longest of times. The theme music is the background score of 'rahee manwa dukh kee chinta kyon statee hai dukh to apna sathee hai." 

Although at the moment it seems that the world is conspiring against us but there is this glimmer of hope that me and the reincarnation of my passport are going to reunite soon and sing 'tere mere sapne ab ek rang hain, ho jahan bhee le jayen rahen hum sang hain' with THE END.

Little pleasures

Undone by the lack of sleep, the travel and the oppressive heat, RRJ hadn't been sounding his usual energetic self most of the day.  RRS leaving this morning for a longish trip hasn't helped either. "If only the IPL match could turn his way........"

RRJ: Amma, to qualify Mumbai needs to make the target whatever it may be in 14.3 overs. That is 87 balls.
Amma: Don't you think it is very unlikely they will be able to pull it off?
RRJ: I agree, but still I hope they do.

Amma  can't wait to see the look on his face when he reads the sports page about the absolutely unbelievable run chase (target 190) that Mumbai Indian have come up with to qualify for the next round!

Muffled roar

The elections are over and done with, much to my disappointment the results are as the exit polls had predicted. And the euphoria that the results have generated all around has only added to the disappointment. Is there something I am missing here? Is it in spite of involvement in mass murder we as a nation accept him as a leader or is it because of the sheer efficiency with which it was committed that we want him as a leader? Anyhow, the whole election thing kind of distracted me from feeling happy about being done with a very hectic semester. Met every deadline at the last minute.... and now, I am in the cozy comfort of my wonderful malyali side of family. I feel pampered and carefree and ready to head for Munnar equipped with a full strip of avomin.

No cheese... please

My brain is getting a little crispy at the moment. I believe it is the time of the year to be blamed. Not just the heat but also the pace at which deadlines seem to hurl themselves at me around this time. Combined with the fact that I am not a born multi-tasker, it seems like a toil that will last till mid-May. After that you are gonna hear me ROAR......

I have slowly weened myself out of the urge to bake bread or pizza as the unpredictability of the yeast behavior is hardly encouraging. Nilgiri's ready made pizza bases are a decent substitute for homemade ones. And finally I have found a great substitute for cheese also. A cup of steam cashews, ground with 4 tsps of sesame oil, 3 tbsps (or more) of vinegar, 3 pods of garlic, salt and pepper. A thick paste which I sometimes flavour with mint leaves or/and tulasi leaves. It stays for a week easily in the fridge.

BEFORE ..............

......... AFTER. 

The buds and the bugs

My garden is a collection of exactly nine pots that occupy the little space that we have outside the back door. We haven't let the fact that it gets sun only in the late afternoons and that it is vulnerable to monkey-menace come in our way to have a few plants growing in there. A few tid-bits, that may be of interest if you are growing plants in Chennai but you are too lazy to go to a nursery and most importantly you don't really plan to live off the garden produce:

Growing out of seeds- had very good luck with lime, green chillies and capsicum! Sowed the seeds straight out of store-bought fruit, into the soil and almost every seed germinated. Wasn't as lucky with sesame seeds which I think are more season specific. Looks like February-March works well for them as all of sudden I have saplings from seeds sowed several months ago!

Growing out of the stems- a type of spinach (pui shaak in Bangla) which is a bit gluey and has fat stems was planted by our house-help in one of the pots, just a few pieces of the stems planted into the soil. It grew absolutely lush green in a few days and needed minimum care. Since then we use the seeds it produces in Jan-Feb to plant new set. Easy-peasy to grow and maintain and monkeys don't have a taste for gooey spinach. The other plant that grew out of planted stems is mint (pudina). It was much harder to get mint going but once a few of the stem took roots it has had no problem except one time when the black bugs decided to make home in the pot.

Growing out of roots- failed attempts were turmeric, which were eaten up by maggot-like thingies, and ginger, which were dug up and devoured by some visitors in the night. I had kind of given up on roots when I saw a couple of purple shoots sticking out of sweet potatoes in the kitchen. The whole sweet potato was under-grounded and boss these shoots really took off. Haven't seen anything growing this rapidly. Absolutely gorgeous leaves, both the shape and  the colour.

Strong smells- my mother had brought a sapling of a tulsi plant for my garden and somehow I felt it was a good repellant for unwanted visitors to the garden. Since then at any given time one pot is reserved for a tulsi plant.  Between mint and tulsi we thought we had most of evil-doers covered but of course......

Bugs and solutions- growing a few plants makes one understand the associated difficulties. A pot full of pudina was reduced to a few sprigs in a matter of a week when a family of black bugs decided to nest in the soil. I could only watch them helplessly, creeping in and out every time I watered the pot while the plants withered away. The solution was the solution of chilli powder in water! Not kidding, it just may have been a coincidence but the bugs disappeared and in a couple of months time the pot got back to being like old times. Then there were these waxy white sticky bugs which apparently go by the name mealy-bugs who got better of me and in a very fast and focused mannered killed the lime plant in a matter of weeks.

Show time....

Sesame plant, not too thrilled about sharing space with a big chilli plant

Fast growing, sweet potato plant

Budding chilli

Fruiting chilli

Budding capsicum

Me thinks it is fruiting capsicum...... do you?

Sartorial therapy

Some experiences are more rattling than others in that they require desperate measures to get out of the funk. To infuse some crispness to my sulking soul, I wore a saree today.

Dissappointments in baking

The understanding that one develops with one's oven is a critical component of getting things right. With my new oven it feels like starting all over again. If the first cake is anything to go by, much work will be required to rebuild the shattered confidence.

The dark side of the first cake