31 August, 2011

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!!


18 August, 2011

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!

06 August, 2011

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.



01 August, 2011

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!