Pure Hearted Mush

There are several things I love about the husband but there is one that both infuriates me and makes me look at him with extra doses of lurrve. The man sleeps like a baby. In fact, better than most babies if his sister, who's seen more babies than I have, is to be believed. He certainly sleeps longer than ours does. And takes almost as many about turns in his sleep as his son.
His sleeping habit irritates me when we have to go out somewhere and the man sleeps much beyond the scheduled time but also makes me think of something my wise aunt used to say: People who have the ability to sleep soundly are people with free minds and pure hearts. She would say this looking at my brother whose sleep can survive earthquakes, babies bawling their throats out, loud jagrans, screaming sister, everything. That sort of takes the truth away from it a bit, but at any rate I seem to be surrounded by men of pure hearts.

The Monkey loves buckets....

Dear God, why?

Bliss is...

...a Cadbury Dairy Milk melting slowly in your mouth

But this post isn't about that. This post is about the joy of journalism. I'm no longer part of it in the truest sense of the term as I don't do stories that regularly, so perhaps I should edit that.

It's about the joy of meeting people and writing about them. Call it reporting, feature writing, jotting down hurriedly scribbled interview notes into a coherent form or what you will...the truth is, how many jobs let you meet a herpetologist one afternoon and two grannies who sell pizza the next morning?

Thank God I didn't change my mind in college when a pack of friends joined Sujata Khanna's MBA coaching classes and gave me long, hard stares when I refused to and mentioned the J word.

And Thank God I didn't change my mind when I discovered that rent was considerably more that the salary I got paid in my first job. (Well...should thank dad, actually)

It isn't a job that changes the world, requires unbridled imagination or extraordinary brainpower. Well at some level it does to a great extent, but hey, I'm just talking of my simple stuff, so let's not get there.

I love this for the people. A techie who gave up a lucrative career to start an e-library, an academic who's behind the best school in town, a woman who's given up shopping...

Where else do you get to meet such a varied lot?

* The Pizza Grannies, as many of you in Bangalore may have read, are raising funds for an old age home. The techie runs www.easylib.com. If you live in Bangalore and want a library with a truly eclectic collection of books, this is the place to log on.

Grrrr....again....

Why is it that most people assume that just because I'm working from home, I:

a) Have all the time in the world to jabber on phone about Sarita from B2 whose maid ran away with the presswala

b) Can look up the price of Fisher-Price toys on ebay as I'm "online anyway" and have nothing better to do

c) Will cheerfully take on work and finish even if it's sent late in the evening because I don't work in an office where I shut the computer and leave at 6

d) Will keep house looking immaculate, turn out a good meal and not look like something the cat brought in when there's a suddenly put-together dinner for hubby's office pals

e) Don't do anything much and probably sleep through/spend the day getting my nails done in the parlour, as for a couple of hours, the son is at the daycare centre.

Ok, here goeth

Was tagged by Poppin's Mom and must say, it got me thinking. Hmmm...here goes the list of 8 things you didn't know about me. If you still don't wanna know, go ahead and skip this with my best wishes :)

1. I'm terribly lazy about folding quilts, propping pillows...that whole making the bed thing

2. I cannot sleep without reading. Even if it's two at night and I'm dead tired. And it can be anything.

3. I loved telling Delhi snobs (especially the ones I had to interview in the course of work) that I travelled by auto, lived in North Delhi and had studied in 'Central School.' Of course, they still had to be nice to me as I was writing about them. Ha ha.

4. I love Bangalore but continously surprise myself by missing Delhi. Ok I'll be specific: Khan Market, INA and the Vasant Vihar Fabindia

5. I am hopeless with numbers. Really hopeless.

6. My secret desire is to be the perfect cook. You know the type that can separate eggs whites in a second without making a mess and whip up yummy pasta without resorting to readymade sauce.

7. I'm a very forgetful mother. Forget things like vaccination dates and medicine timings. (There! Out of the blogging mommies meet now)

8. I love South East Asian food. I can live on it.

DONE :)))

The Post on Blue Mangoes

I was flipping through Good Housekeeping (ok, reading the recipes) yesterday and guess what I spotted? An ad for 'India's No. 1 pre-school chain' Eurokids which literally had me shivering in my pants. Now I don't remember the exact text and I thought I'd scan it an post but then this blog would've been written next year. The copy goes somewhat like this: While painting children tend to mix up colours. At Eurokids we ensure they don't.

The visual (again if I remember) shows a blue mango with yellow leaf. To me the Blue Mango looks perfectly cute. Appetising even. But obviously at Eurokids they want mangoes to be yellow and only yellow. Considering I'm frequently taking A's crayons (kaiiiiyooons) and colouring Bob the Builder (Bobbbiilll) pink and red (not blue and yellow and as shown in the sample pic), I'm really thanking my lucky stars for having left preschool and all such things far behind. This is because I've a history of 'incorrect colouring' going by Eurokids' philosophy. Throughout school I loved painting skies orange and rivers brown and suchlike. Don't read too deeply into this now as my friend An, the psychologist might. I'm not such a rebel in real life. In fact, the exact opposite. It's only yummy looking crayons and sketch pens that bring out this rather reckless colourful side of me. I could almost imagine (a small and shrunk) me in Eurokids being shouted at by watchful teacher with a bunch of right crayons in her hand: Paint those mangoes yellow NOW. You are going the Indian Author Writing in English Way. We've chucked all those blue mangoes and red earths from here earlier!

Jokes apart, I wonder if the power-that-be at Eurokids have figured out the message that this ad is giving out. I guess what they are really trying to convey is that every child is well looked after and there is a good teacher-child ratio. This is all very nice but it's coming out completely wrong. Somewhat dictatorial. Very 1984. Big Brother is watching you type. I wish someone tells them that if they haven't figured it out by themselves yet. Now bye bye while I go paint Bobbbbiill's house crimson.

Timepass

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One reason I love this place...

...is the sunset from the balcony

It isn't easy being a mom. In my case a stay-at-home-working one. Every morning when I go to drop my son at the daycare he clings to me and cries when I leave. Every morning I wonder, 'Is this worth it? Why can't I keep a maid to look after him at home while I work?'

Really, why can't I? Because I tried it and it didn't really work. Working from home can be very distracting because unless you have a separate area from where you operate and shut out the rest of the house, you are constantly being badgered by something or the other.

Add to that a toddler who gets super excited at the sight of a computer or anything mummy does and treats it as another toy to hammer on, much to the risk of his mom's unsaved files and just-copied research.

I can shut the door and work while the maid takes care of him. But I know that in two minutes the door too would be hammered upon with frantic cries of 'maaaaaaaaammmmaaaaaa.'.
Maaaammmmma would curse under her breath and wait for a while but eventually get up and open the door with a heart melting faster than icecream in Delhi heat.

The maid could perhaps take him out to play but heck no, being paranoid mummy par excellence, I would probably be checking the playground from the balcony with a binocular. Is that the maid talking to some of her friends? Hmm...red and yellow dress...haan that's her...I hope she's keeping an eye on him even if she's busy chatting...where's he...why isn't she checking...where's he...ohmygod...aaarghhh...he's eating mud....AARGGGGH...NOOOO...get him back...NOWWWWWWW!

Little wonder then that the daycare is a better option. I know for a fact that my son's happy there, despite the initial bout of crying every morning. I can see it when I go to pick him up in the afternoon. He's happy to see mamma but he's also happy to play with his friends. I know that I'm doing the right thing. It's good for him. And it's good for me.

But still my heart does a super-depressed flip each morning when I leave my clingy baby there. And when I get back home and sit down with a cup of tea with no one around to surreptitiously dip a little finger into it, I'm so totally racked by guilt that I can almost run and get him.

But of course I don't. I switch on the computer instead, start working and keep feeling guilty for the next five hours.

Moms are the strangest creatures!

Snot Value

Had taken up a book editing assignment couple of months back. Unfortunately for me, the author (a yeng man from the IT feeilld) had decided that revulsion was the best way to grab attention. Each of his characters belch, retch, snort, fart their way through the book (or at least the pages I read). Trust me, I've great patience with bodily malfunctions, by virtue of being married to P, who bases most of his jokes on these. But all I wanted to ask our earnest yeng author was, did he have to describe his characters' morning ablutions in such great detail. Thankfully I could say no and cowardly duck out thanks to the brother's wedding. One day am sure this book would be hailed as a great work of Indian writing that nobody can exactly figure out and I as usual would lose out on the megabucks, at least some bucks. :(

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz..........

...ohgodohgodohgod
...panic is happening
...deadline's tomorrow evening
...now how many 00000s are there in a billion?
...why on earth do I need to convert everything into $$$$?
...Hedge fund sounds like a neighbourhood pool-in gardening group
...and M&A reminds me of M&Ms...mmmmmmm :)
...why did I ever agree to do business stories?
...painting toenails at women's mag office was so much better
...really

Babyspeak

The toddler can say about five-six words now...it might be seven by tomorrow morning, the repertoire keeps increasing. Like a true male, there is a lot of difference in what he says and what he means.

One of his favorite words is 'Akkaaaah' which, surprise, surprise, doesn't mean what it's supposed to mean...It means autorickshaw (don't ask why, that's another story!).

Then there is 'Auwaaah.' Since am not the smartest of mommies,it took me a long time to figure out it meant 'light' in any form — bulb, candle, the full moon...

I do hope he means 'mamma' when he says it.

And...

...it’s official. Meeting Parmanu is an excellent way to get people interested in blogging or anything remotely related to the written, sorry, the typed word.

First we saw how Alpha’s friend figured out the wonderful world of blogs. Now it’s P's turn and he thinks blogging might be cool after all. It lets you practice the art of shouting at the top of your voice to chat with great people (and their sister) over frothy cappuccino at extremely noisy café; It also gets you books. Especially the one you’ve been eyeing all this while.

Many thanks Parmanu. As a Bong, let me even apologize on behalf of the Bong lady sitting behind you on the flight :).

I must, I must, I must....

...learn not to joke in front of people with zero sense of humour. Let this be my New Year Resolution.

When A (that being my son) was doing his usual toddling/trying to run around the park this evening, a mom of two said that it was great he'd learnt to walk around so fast.

He has no choice, I said. Every morning we make him fetch the newspaper and we are waiting for the day we can send him out to buy milk.

No wonder she avoided me in the lift on the way back.

I must, I must, I must....

...learn not to joke in front of people with zero sense of humour. Let this be my New Year Resolution.

When A (that being my son) was doing his usual toddling/trying to run around the park this evening, a mom of two said that it was great he'd learnt to walk around so fast.

He has no choice, I said. Every morning we make him fetch the newspaper and we are waiting for the day we can send him out to buy milk.

No wonder she avoided me in the lift on the way back.

On my mind...

...and oh my god...one song and so many memories...my first beach party, a misguided crush, Tom Cruise in Cocktail...

What goes around...

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself

Philip Larkin, This Be The Verse


At one point in my reasonably well-guided youth, this was a favourite poem. It still is and I still believe it does contain a semblance of truth, however hard to digest. But now I find myself wondering, if this is how the beta will think 20 years on?

Since I cannot say NO in a really firm and 'I-won't-hear-anymore-of-this' kind of way, I went and met 'regard's'. As it turns out, he is a sweet, sober, ever-smiling, polite and (literally) small boy. He doesn't know about the existence of this blog of course but I am feeling a bit bad. Especially because 'regard's' paid cab fare and got me excellent kapi.
Such a bitch I am.

Was about to send my CV to the HR manager of a website who'd asked for it when I saw this at the bottom of his mail:

Regard's

Haven't sent CV. Though reminding self that this is HR which has very faint connection to editorial, where people probably put apostrophes where they belong.

Kahini, shall always be deeply deeply thankful to you for being millitant about my 'its' and 'it's' in the days of yore.

Tell Me Why

Much as I'd like to be, I'm not an automated robot. However, when it comes to word verification, my eyes (or possibly some part if my brain which sends signal to my eyes...whatever) behave like one. I'm terrified of posting comments on any blog that has WV as I invariably tend to see the slanted Ps as Bs and wavy Js as T or worse even Z. There are few, very few, lucid moments when my eye/brain/whatever actually sees the right word and types it successfully. But such are few and far between.

Is it only me? Does this happen to you too? Do I need glasses? The Kalhonahopreityzinta type?

Goaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh....