A touch of Paintspiration...

I SUCK at arty stuff. BIG time. We're talking crooked lines drawn with a ruler even.That's the extent of the suckiness..that however has never prevented me from enjoying art or the pretense of being an closet avant garde artiste!

I'd go through these sudden "art-attacks" where I'd stay up all night mixing paints just to get the PERFECT hue of something and then spend the rest of the time painting things which made no sense to anyone except me. These weird bits of art would go up on my wall or the door to my room and after a few days I'd tear them down and the artlust would leave my person; to return suddenly unbidden.

My mother's side of the family are quite artistically inclined and they draw and paint the kind of stuff people can recognize or even like to look at. My father's biggest artistic achievement used to be masking my typographical errors on letters and birthday cards and making the errant letters into a clump of grass or flowers :-) That soon stopped after I learnt to spell and he discovered whiteout.

Cut to circa 2011 and MLM- he's been finger painting in playschool and coming home with flecks of paint on his clothes and looking very happy at each speck and splatter. I bought him kiddie paints and some chart paper and a whole new chapter of parenting began. The separate clothes for art time, the rags, the accessories for painting and of course the display of said art. It's taken the shape of a family weekend activity that gets whoops and hollers and leaves my floors with shapes of blurry hands and feet in jhango colors.

Seeing this kid paint with so much concentration and joy infected me with the desire to paint and with me to think is often to do. I went and bought two canvasses and started off on the path that inspiration led. The paints and brushes acted like a Ouija board and pretty much guided my hand. Red was initially quite skeptical of the amount of time I spent in just lathering colors on the canvass without any other shapes materializing for a long while. I kept going on about displaying texture and he took it to be intellectual gas of a person who has NO clue what she ought to be painting and takes refuge in arty-farty terms to disguise the fact :-) but in the end both canvasses were finished with alacrity and due pride was taken in displaying both to the usual suspects.

The first one, unarguably, looks like something a kindergarten kid's drawn while the second has pretensions of being a minimalistic representation- of sorts.

The only person who truly appreciates them is my son. He would love nothing more than to play with them, rub Play-Doh on them and even add more depth to them by spilling more colors on them as well...

But this wasn't art for art's sake. It was entirely for my own sake and there are some more oddities in the offing am sure. Watch this space. Psychedelic technicolor had nothing on me!

Drooly Perfection

Feeding his Peeps!

mini artist

It's all in the mixing of the colors that true art flowers...or so mini-messyboots believes :-)

oh boy...

Being the daughter of perfectionists is not a cakewalk. Especially when you realize that they managed to infect you good and proper!!

You can't manage to put in a load of laundry without your thoughts straying to those shirts of the hubby's that you put in without scrubbing the damn cuffs and collars with the special cuffs and collars liquid! You tolerate that inner turmoil telling yourself that hubby wouldn't know the ring around his collar if it came up and tapped him on the shoulder so why should you bother anyhow? Go on and get a mani-pedi while the opportunity's been given to spare some time. But the voice of your sainted mater resonates LOUDLY in your head about the brush and detergent just sitting there, waiting for you to clean his unnecessarily expensive shirts!!
And so you do!

Then you notice that the sink's counter's got water rings from the hand soap dispenser and some other bottles kept there. You walk on by hoping that years of passive listening won't catch up with you and start a tandav inside your nogging. No such luck. What do you do? You find coasters that you aren't using and put them under the above mentioned bottles and stick your tongue out at them for good measure for messing with your alone time and making you think too much!!

You move on and find that your footsteps are moving towards the closet where you keep the extra crockeries and cutlery. It's another mammoth battle as you try to go towards the t.v. and the wine that beckons in the chilled glass (yes, the wine's room temp and the glass's chillled. So sue me!!) but your steps meander towards the cabinet and you open it to notice that the silver's become oxidized. Your mother's voice again looms up in your head and to fob it off you immediately get that empty plastic container that's been gathering dust in your kitchen and immediately dump the silverware in there and heave a sigh of relief because now it's all in one place and the rest of it's been protected from the evil atmosphere! BUT you will again be haunted by EL Madre in due time to clean it with the damn silver cleaning fluid :(

Finally, you've done most things that would sit well with the givers of your life and decide to chill for a bit and turn on the lappie to lament about your follies and foibles and pour a generous bit of vino blanca into the glass when both mater and pater both start up simultaneously in the attic that serves as your head and start telling you that they raised you better than this- drinking wine in the middle of the day, alone, for no rhyme or reason and this had better be the only glass or else young-ish lady!!

You turn up the volume of Lady Gaga on the speakers a bit more and top the glass off and say bye now..cya! and turn your attention towards this newest bit of idiosyncrasy which surely proves your OCD beyond a doubt!!

The new lexicon...

Times change and with them things assume new meaning or undergo quite a bit of metamorphosis.
Take for example Moi. Earlier I'd just have been one of the many women who are raising a child. But today, am so much more. I am a label. A new breed of people if you will. I am...wait for it...a S.A.H.M!! Ta da!!
A Stay At Home Mom for the doofuses out there who aren't upto date on the new lingo.

And while on the topic of the new lingo let's take a stroll through the garden of phrases and words that the SAHMs espouse or have thrust upon them.
These are random and not in any particular order of importance.

• Baby-sat: very simple one indeed! It doesn't indicate the past tense of someone taking care of your baby. It means just what it reads like. Baby. Sat. The thing you were so happy about at when around 5-6 months of age your baby first sat. But it's the last thing they want to do now and just act like their feet have springs attached on the bottom.

• Friends with benefits: again..simple. You are friends with some who benefits by association of playing with your baby and being hugged and kissed by the darling munchkin. And YOU benefit by palming off the precious bundle onto someone else while you deliberate how strong you should make your coffee to get through the rest of the day!

• Toilet training: a tough one. To get your child to do and also what it implies. For you it means conveying to the child, "handle your own doodoo in the long run. Mommy's cleaned enough bums to merit shivers at the sight of a wet wipe" :(

• Nanny Cam: ostensibly for spying on the nanny to prevent any harm from coming to the child and making sure the nanny isn't some kind of a Satan worshipper while you're away. But actually it's the pleasure of knowing that while you DO pay for it, someone also pays dearly for the joys of spending days on end with your dear little poochums.

• Mother's helper: can be anything from a bib, a spoon, but usually ends up taking the form of a television and hypnotizes your offspring so you can detox and count to 10 in your mind and possibly implode rather than explode.

• The first word: a misnomer if there ever was one. It starts out slowly but rapidly spirals into so many words that you never end up having the last one. 

• The last word: uttered by your child when he/she finally sleeps off for the day. The last word is followed by blessed peace and a realization that there is indeed too much noise in the world around you.

• Clean: a word on household cleaner bottles and a word you used to know but haven't been able to employ in a while and probably won't be till your child goes outside the house for long periods of time.

• Spanking: something that hurts you more than it hurts the spanked one and you usually end up apologizing for the booboos that you caused. At the end of the day, its your fault.

• Colds: hell on earth as far as toddlers are concerned. The house resembles a Mardi Gras parade with the amount of tissue paper confetti that gets strewn around. And you keep fervently wishing for the dreaded mucus to go and infest elsewhere but not in that particular nose. It's also known as Damnation without Relief- For the parents.

• Threats: what you make a few times every day/ hour/ minutes (take your pick) and what your child will counter by picking up the phone and telling on you to parents or parents-in-laws and make you look like Cruella De Vil!

• Sleep: a thing of the past. Nuff said!

Of advice and applicability...

A slight variation on the chorus of the song by T.A.T.U- 
"All the things they said (2x)
Running through my head (3x)
This is not enough..."


Ain't that the bleepin' truth!!


Get an education they said- mandated actually. I don't know when was the last time I used fractions- mixed or otherwise. The main help of being "educated" is that I can read books and express myself via written words; electronic and otherwise.


Go see the world they said- and took me to certain parts. But Monaco, Paris at 12 years is a con job. You can do BUPKISS! And not much more.Later on when you travel in your 20s, it's a much better experience although you end up doing half the number of places as compared to your first trip.


Have some coffee they said- and you did. And got hooked to the extent that while it no longer acts as a stimulant, you still can't do without it. You turn into this from this unless you have caffeine pumped into you at regular intervals.


Study a subject like Psychology they said- after I brought it up in the first place. What happened? I ended up understanding people even lesser than before. Unless they had disorders which were beautifully explained in the DSM or ICD...everyday people were quite a trial from time to time. I imagine I am too.


Get a job they said- and so you applied. It changed very quickly from a novelty and came out with it's hidden fangs and claws. It paid for the booboos it gave you but it still...


Get married they said. Oh boy..it started out as only fun and then routine set in. Lots of things came to the rescue but nothing quite binds like marriage.It nurtures, savors, aggravates, empowers and what you have left with at the end of the day is a realization that you will never have the bed ALL to yourself again.


Have a child they said- and you did. And then you wondered from time to time...is that demonic creature screaming with contorted features really me? Is that person making goofy faces and cleaning up Gods-knows-what from God-knows-where still me? Is that imp in human clothes with red cheeks running towards me with actual joy?


Sit back and relax they said at the end- and so you did. With a cup of coffee, the blog post taking shape steadily and making you look around and think- Yes..this IS my life. Those ARE my people. And I do LOVE them, quirks and all. Not because they reciprocate but because they made me to become the multifaceted person I am with my chipped halo that I've been trying to hold onto since I turned 10 and the horns which never seem to be hidden too well.


All in all...not a bad situation to be in but only if you have some good music and munchies for the rest of the voyage.

Geographical Mongrel?!

That's what I thought to myself I was. My father and Red were talking to the carpenter in Hindi ( a language that changes it's shape depending on who's speaking it, but I guess that holds true for most lingos) and they asked him where he was from because his Hindi was chaste; in a manner of speaking.
The talk progressed to him being able to pinpoint and tell my father he definitely was *not* from Hyderabad. Actually that doesn't take brains to decipher. Anyone with a ear not blocked with wax and noise pollution will be able to discern the Northeastern lilt in my father's speech. He's saved from sounding like a hardcore Bong speaking Hindi only because of his extensive tenure outside his home state.

But getting back to me- born in Calcutta, and brought up nomadically in UP, Gujarat, Rajasthan and now settled in Andhra Pradesh. Couldn't have gone further from my roots had  I tried as a conscious effort.
 Going back to Calcutta for summer hols and Dusshera doesn't entire erode your obvious non-Bong strain in the speech.
So when people ask me where I'm from I pause for a bit and say am settled in Hyderabad but have lived all over India. Saying I'm from West Bengal originally brings forth too many questions about the state which am woefully ignorant of. And it inevitably elicits the question of my spoken Hindi which is as non-Mamta Banerjee like can be. So if an encapsulation of my precedents have to be delved into tis best I jump into it at the onset, non?

But people of my nomadic ilk also seem to seek each other out. Apart from the common experiences in life, it's quite a comfort to "come home" to an individual who is also mongrelish and has enough and more of anecdotes of their own.

And now with a hybrid child in the family one can only guess how much of his Bongness, Teluguness and overall Hyderabadiness will manifest as time goes by. He will be, the ultimate mongrel!

Looking the other way...

brings us to the question- Why would you want to look the other way to begin with?
Is the sight in front of you unappealing, an eyesore, difficult to chew and digest or simply because seeing it would further reinforce that things aren't as much in your control as you would like to think?

I suspect the latter. Because usually I find (on intro and retrospection) that's how things are pour moi. And it's extremely annoying and not entirely liberating to be honest with yourself. All honesty does it make things unarguably clear about the prevailing circumstances, the likelihood of things being in the future or how they've actually gone down in the past. Honesty yanks off your glasses- rose tinted and otherwise and forces you to look at things and their underbelly.

And while a good, hard look at things is usually educative in itself- it isn't a lesson that you might have wanted to learn in the first place.
Ergo, selective vision or looking the other way.

You know there's something going down that you aren't entirely right with in your mind but to get involved and set it right the way you see it may involve stepping into a quagmire or opening up a can of gigantic worms! 

Now WHO is this day and age wants to deal with the creepy, crawlies of human behavior unless the pay offs are totally worth it? Not many of us. Because human behavior is often tidal in it's nature. The tsunamis take their time getting generated but the tides and ebbs keep occurring and unless you're quite sure of getting swept under or away, most of us are ok with getting wet every now and then.
Keeps life interesting even. Adds a headache or two in the process but hey- omelettes and eggs huh?

Here's to looking away, hoping that playing semi-ostrich leads to peace of mind and not pieces and that while your head is in the sand someone doesn't come and kick the living daylights out of you!


Salut!

I don't understand..

quite a few things but reading the paper gives rise to more things that fall under that particular ambit of non-comprehension.

For example- 

• Why is it so bad to let the Tibetans living in Nepal to celebrate the Dalai Lama's birthday? Is Nepal so utterly under the yoke of the Chinese that it feels that such an occasion merits a ban?
• How a life long coach thinks he can get away with saying that he didn't have an inkling of the "contaminated" food supplements he gave to his athletes? Dude, if they started winning more after the supplements alone, maybe it should've occured to you to check if they were merely vitamins alone? Which nutritional supplement is so kickass that it'll enhance so many athletes' prowess? Are you that green?
• The Telengana Issue- this merits more rambling so no more bullets for now. Just prose.

I've been a gypsy all my life. Indian and all that sure, but linguistically am not entirely of my native state. I have links to Calcutta or West Bengal overall because of the people there who have a connection to me either by friendship or family. But no such sense of belonging occurs to me merely because I was born and half the people there speak a language that I do.

I happen to speak two other Indian languages with far more proficiency than Bangla and can also think in them. That by itself should speak volumes right? Being able to contemplate in a language? 

But neither do I align myself with those geographical areas of India where those languages are spoken, simply because I don't feel like I belong there.

I've finally put down roots in Hyderabad courtesy a myriad of reasons, but had things worked out differently I'd be writing this blog sitting in either Bangalore or Bombay today. 

Whether it's salacious reporting about youngsters killing themselves for the sake of a "Telangana" state of not, I'd really want to know for once, what a damn state is supposed to mean to someone. Does one's identity begin and end with the geographical and linguistic boundaries. There are people in villages who probably haven't seen the inside of a major city in a while, indulging in self-immolation for the sake of the T-state. Either they value themselves very high or they place a massive premium on their action; thinking it'll spur the powers that be to conform to the demands.

And is it really the demands of the masses? Any picture in the paper, any morcha taken out seems to be a collection of ne'er do wells who have been hired or influenced to join in to swell the numbers of the agitators. If anyone were to ask them about why they're agitating and how life will be different for them if a state is carved out of A.P they'll go into goldfish mode and just open and shut their traps aimlessly.

I do believe that while people want the better things in life, they also want to live in peace. Parents don't want their kids not going to school day after day, daily wage earners don't want public transport disrupted so they can't go and earn their livelihood and even politicos don't want to go on fake fasts on and off because guess what? Someone just might have a camera focused on them for good and then they might just have to pull of a proper stoppage of food and water and not merely do a bowel-cleansing 24 hour "fasting" skit.

In states which are geographically spread over different kinds of topography, it may very well make sense of have regional headquarters or separate centers to take care of specific needs of the people, but if every time a demand for a state has to be conceded then the map's going to end up looking like scrambled eggs. And if the formation of a separate state led to ease in governing, promise of a better way of life or at least cessation of the demands of the locals then it might make sense. But when it all boils down to a power play then effectively no one wins, we all sit on the bleachers and watch the drama and impressionable young people go on sacrificing themselves for naught.

If it makes financial sense at the end of the day, the state'll be formed. As long as life can continue being in flux despite increasing agitations, it won't. So I guess there'll be more cookouts on busy junctions, more resignation drama and more students resorting to various means to hurt themselves, and the rabble rousers will just keep screaming themselves hoarse. There's just no place for sentiments in the whole equation at the end of day.

Jai (pick a word, they're all up for grabs aren't they?)!!

?

For the first time since I've been blogging I haven't been able to come up with a title. I was surprised because when blogs are born in the noggin they go through a fairly quick gestation period and the developmental activity is pretty rapid. Of course the process of the birthing is often protracted and not always normal.

Anyhow I've been thinking for a while on the offspring's cognitive processes. I know he processes things well. It's just that he has yet to master language so he can make us understand what he comprehends and how he does so. But watching him is a treat. His reasoning and deduction makes me think to myself what kind of a person might he turn out to be later on.

Because the jury is still out on the whole Nature Vs. Nurture debate I can't quite confidently state that he will definitely exhibit xyz traits. But I do know that both hold water; to an extent.
Case in point- The Mater is a pretty good artist, in terms of sizing something up and reproducing a likeness. She's fairly skilled at the arts and crafts and her brain works pretty damn fast in picking up new techniques in the same field. But I'm all thumbs. Maybe because the Pater is all thumbs? The most creative I've seen him get with a pen or a pencil is turning one of my spelling mistakes on a greeting card into a series of extremely odd-looking dwarfish flowers. But he did do it.

I guess I'm wondering most about creativity. When I used to counsel MBA students a few years back and put them through a psychometric/psychosocial test and later interpret the results for them, I'd find that most of them associated creativity merely with the performing arts. If you danced, painted, sang- you were creative. Else not.
And I remember asking them how they were at problem solving, thinking on their feet, generating solutions, how they ideated, how they perceived various kinds of situations and suddenly they understood how their high scores on creativity were justified.

I've scored a moderate rating on creativity. I think I know why. Creativity is something which needs expression. Merely being able to think creative won't cut it. If I'm able to conceptualize something, anything...it needs to get portrayed somewhere. And creativity and originality aren't inclusive 100% of the time. That's another mistake we make.
While Kaavya Viswanathan situation isn't one we all may find ourselves in, we do need inspiration from somewhere. Where would my blogs come from if I hadn't been able to develop an ability to write? Where would this ability and love for writing come unless I'd read stuff that spoke to me. And how would a style be born in the first place unless I read something good and wanted to be able to write something along those lines.


I don't make a case for plagiarism, but creativity can often be, taking an existing idea and then putting your own spin on it. Hell if that weren't possible, Facebook wouldn't be either and we wouldn't be Superpokin people or playing Zombies and Vampires with people geographically dispersed at any given point of time or day. 

But as ever I digress. Will the offspring be good at sports (his father is- I prefer to exercise my fingers by flipping a page), at music (I did manage to learn and forget how to play the sitar and the piano), be an egghead ( javagod father- says it all) or will he just branch out into a whole different direction and do something unexpected.

With schools offering ways of shaping up a child from a playschool level I really have to wonder how much of nurture is going to go head to head with nature and who will ultimately triumph.

I would dearly love it if he made it to Caltech or places of it's ilk. And would also love it if he travelled the world and took pictures and wrote travelogues that I could read.
I don't want him to emulate Gene Simmons though because why break a guitar when you can strum it? :)

Time will tell...and maybe in time he'll read my blogs and we'll see if his mother turned out to be a soothsayer or nayer and if she found an answer to the on going battle of Nature Vs. Nurture.

Happiness that only a cookie can bring...

Ma da laadla...

YES! am indeed keeping in tune with Bollywood and using song titles for my blogs. Only I doubt I'll go the E.K way and make it (K(Ma) with the K silent :p

And while on the topic of the aforementioned...let me state what territories have been explored recently (kindly understand to mean random acts of violence perpetuated against household objects that cannot fight back)-

1. The antennae of the land-line broken and kind of droopy and loose. I doubt the manufacturers intended the phone to be dragged along by the antennae in the first place. Just goes to show how important a role children play in the quality testing of objects.
2. The screen, sound, camera of my Nokia have been so affectionately attacked that the saliva in the phone has become a reservoir. The sound of the people over the phone seems to be as if originating underwater. A gross exaggeration I admit but you get the picture. The camera's been hazy and grainy after the last contact with the floor.
3. The frame of my glasses are chipped and loose. It really has become a one size fits all :( And I thought that applied to tube socks alone.

It's not that my kid is destructive mind you. Not at all! The cardinal sin that he suffers from is curiosity. What is kept so high up? Let's go explore. Why does the microwave light up and have a rotating object inside...let's touch it and see? What happens if I press that button...and the list goes on.

And there's his wish to hear how things sound ergo throwing them becomes the next logical act.

The way I see it, he'll discover something BIG one day...an explosion at the very least will not surprise his father and I one iota!

As for how to assuage his undying thirst for knowledge...well, as long as there are things for him to list, climb on and taste in this house the skirmishes between him and I are guaranteed. I guess his scurrying around is still preferable to him turning into a zombie tater tot in front of the telly. But commercials have never been more of a lifesaver for me. Especially those of fair maidens getting fairer.

Here's to all the manufacturers of fairness creams. You are the chief reason my son halts in his tracks atleast a few times in the day. May you keep preying on the mindsets of the fairness-obsessed people and keeping hiring geisha-faced girls to help out mothers like myself!

Here endeth the rant. For now :-)

Hai Rabba...

The problem with teaching your kid new words is that they may very well end up using them against you! And usually to their advantage.

Case in point- my child says 'bye' at the drop of a pin to everyone. I mean everyone. He also verry conveniently says bye to me everytime he wants me to stop talking or leave him in peace to wreck his mischief :)

Another example- The word moon. Simple, nice round word with long vowels. I first showed him the Supermoon and he became moonstruck from the word go. Actually moon :p anyhow now he sees the moon everywhere and makes me see it and acknowledge it too! Am sure it's his Telugu genes kicking in...the telugu grooms show their new brides 'din mein taarey' so our man took it a notch up- din mein satellite :D

The list runs long and is convoluted. But his speech aint! Tis simple and limited. And it's shaping my speech up the same way. 
So when you meet me next, if you find me a bit moony...don't call the loony bin on me...just remember this note and say 'bye'...I'll probably get the hint :)

Leaves...

Avian Traffic Controller

The Crooked Room

There Goes the Birdie...

For the birds...

Aunty Mat Kaho Naa :(

It's a given that if you have some much-loathed extra baggage (read fat or lard depending on how coarse you want to be) and are toting around a kid you MUST be an AUNTY!!

Well, this aunty attracted the attention of another kid who clearly doesn't have a diet chart anywhere on the horizon. This child wanted to tell me that MLM had taken her badminton racquet. The object was returned post-haste much to MLM's distress.

The chubby chicklet then felt bad for telling on MLM and started following us around to join in playing with us. She and MLM played on the slide, on the ground and she unbent enough to tell me that she knew that there were different types of birds (crows clearly did not qualify in the line-up) and she wanted to spell it out for me.

She then wanted to exchange girlish confidences and started talking about the magic rope she shared with her daddy :) I hope it was a metaphor for a good time else am quite puzzled by what that's supposed to actually stand for...

But a genial kid she was and am sure I'll have to attend more spelling bees when I see her in the park again :)