An Ice-Creamy Story!

This incident is from the time we had been married for a year or so. We were both working full time, leaving home in the morning and coming back only in the evening. Since we were just the two of us we lived in a simple house in a unique locality which had been built on land that originally belonged to a village. While the builder had managed to acquire most of it, some of the villagers had refused to give up their land and chose to continue living there with the result that the otherwise well planned locality with three storey houses all over had a village right at the heart of it.

Our house happened to face this walled village and large piece of fallow land which had not been used by the builder due to its uneven shape and probably with the hope of buying the remaining land from the villagers sometime in the future. Since this was next to a village we would sometimes find buffaloes, donkeys, pigs and dogs roaming around on this empty piece of land. I did not mind it since I preferred to see them instead of a concrete structure. In the monsoons it would turn green with wild grass and shrubs. It wasn’t a bad sight to wake up to except if you decided to go into the balcony, you may have to bear with the smell of dung occasionally.

Once it so happened that we had a huge brick of ice-cream sitting in our freezer for months. It had become so hard that it could compete with a brick used for construction purposes in its frozen form. It was way too old to be consumed and thus had to be discarded but I had to put some thought before simply chucking it into the dustbin. Had I thrown it into the dustbin in the evening there was a good chance that it would melt overnight and leak onto the kitchen floor by morning. The garbage collector usually came much after we had left for work and I could not leave it in the outdoor dustbin either again to avoid any mess outside.

 

After another few weeks of procrastination I finally decided to discard it and thought it would be best to leave it at one corner of the empty piece of land across the road from our house, where it could disintegrate into the soil. My mister felt he could do better and told me to stand back while he would toss it with all his strength far away and out of sight. He took the package into his hand and flung it like an expert shot put thrower. But, what happened next was not what we expected. He got the angle wrong and that brick of ice-cream landed with a huge thud in the backyard of a house in the village!

He and I looked at each other for two seconds. My face had the what-the-hell-did you-just-do expression on it. What if someone was to come out of the house to check what made such a loud landing into their house? I did not know what to expect from a native Haryanvi villager, what if they came out with a “Dando” (Haryanvi for stick). The next second I grabbed his hand and ran into our house. Once I bolted the door I burst out laughing at what he had done. I was thankful that it did not land on anybody’s head and laughed till my stomach hurt.

In retrospect I feel that it is sometimes these small insignificant incidents, random stupidities and emotional impulsive decisions that made us laugh or happy is what we remember for a much longer time compared to all those times we did the ideal things and walked the beaten path. So go ahead do something crazy. Make memories that will make you laugh for a long time. Have fun today, because it will be gone tomorrow.

Enjoy Life! Happy Weekend!

Mister of Spices!

It was the beginning of summer this year and I was learning to manage two kids, a toddler and a baby...learning on the job! It was a tough time for me since I was staying up nights and barely got to rest during the day too with a toddler running around the house. I was coping but small things could make me lose my cool and snap.

With the onset of summer I felt like having some Punjabi kadhi one day. It’s one of my favourite dishes, but it needs to be made well and with the right ingredients to bring out the intoxicating aroma and the flavours especially of Dhania and dried red chillies. With the right consistency and sourness of curd, it can be the best meal ever accompanied with rice. I realized I needed those key ingredients to get the right kadhi, the way I was imagining it to be and just thinking about it made my mouth water.

We were on our way back home from somewhere and I asked my husband to stop at the grocery store to get the ingredients. I just had to have the curry that day. Since our baby was sleeping in my lap I asked him to get sabut dhania and sukhi lal mirch. It had been a few minutes that I was waiting in the car when a private security guard came and asked me to park the car somewhere else. I told him that we would only be a few minutes and I could not move the car right away since the baby was in my lap. He did not seem to like the answer and continued to stare for a few seconds. It really irked me and I ended up arguing with him for staring at me like that.

Another few minutes passed and I was getting a little impatient wondering what was taking my mister so long to purchase two simple things. I finally wrapped our baby into a bundle and walked into the store to find my husband looking clueless as he looked up and down the shelves in the store. In his basket I saw a bunch of fresh coriander leaves and glossy red fresh fat chillies. These items were not what I expected to find in his basket and asked, "Why are you buying these?". He looked at me and confidently said, “Why, as you said, I got Dhania and Lal mirch.”

I was on the verge of having a meltdown at the store itself, cursing myself for not getting it myself and for believing that my husband could pick up these ingredients on his own in a jiffy and come back. I was really mad at him that evening. But, now whenever I think of it I laugh at how even simple things could be misunderstood and how unfamiliar Mr. Dutta is to kitchen ingredients.

I at times wonder how people think of comedy scenes in movies and I guess some do stem from real life instances like these. There was this another time he tried to show off his masculinity in the simple task of disposing off some ice-cream. I will tell you all about it, in another post.

Incase you are wondering...yes, we did have kadhi that day.

Want to read about the ice-cream incident? Here's the link: An Ice-Creamy Story!

The Parenting Roller Coaster

My elder son is three and a half and over the years I have noticed how there are these phases he goes through, especially since he was one and a half. He was the cutest baby I had ever seen with big expressive eyes, long eyelashes that would hold his tears, small pink lips concealing tiny white teeth, a button nose and curly black hair that fell around his face. In my eyes he is the cutest since he is mine as would be for any mother.

Once he was two I began to realize why it was called TERRIBLE Two and indeed it was. He had these phases of fascination for a certain type of things. Firstly, it was water bottles. Whenever and wherever he found then, he would unscrew the cap and pour its contents on the floor, on the bed or table. Then came the love for make-up, largely nail paints and lipsticks, which were often found smeared on the floor. The day he had his mundan I noticed him admire himself in the mirror and touching his head. The curls were all gone. He generously applied talcum powder on his head and kept rubbing his rough scalp.

I still remember one evening, when he was around two and did not speak a word, I found him struggling to open my eye shadow container. It was a circular container with four shades. Its lid had to be unscrewed to be opened. He being a child had not figured it out and was pulling at the lid with all his strength. After watching him struggle so hard, I told him, “Gol kore khulte hobe” in Bengali (It needs to be opened in a circular motion). While I told him I did not accompany it with a hand movement and I wasn’t sure if he understood since I had no idea of his level of understanding of language. He in response held the container in one hand and moved the container in a circle around his face, eyes moving in a circle with the container, lips pressed together in concentration. I burst out laughing watching him and realized that he indeed understood more than I thought. I happily opened the container for him to demonstrate how it opened (then took it away and hid it to prevent destruction).  

When I used to leave for office every morning and took him along with me in the car to drop him at my mother’s house for the day he preferred to sit next to me or on my lap, knowing that his mother would disappear soon. In the car he carefully watched me apply lip balm and if I asked him if he wanted some he would pucker up his lips in response. He felt extremely happy as soon as I applied some for him. Once I dropped him, I had to tiptoe my way out of the house. Waving or saying good bye would make him cry. The days he happened to see me leave he would cry loudly with tears streaming down his cheeks. It took all my strength to hold back mine.

Anyway, coming back to his phases, next came his love for lotions, balms, creams and oils, which he loved to smear on his hands and then liberally apply to the bed sheets or table tops. Once I even found him massaging his favourite toy car with cream. He calmly told me that he was cleaning the car when he noticed my presence in the room. His unwavering focus was commendable, an artist was busy at work. Once he turned three and began to speak sentences the carnage reduced and he entered into the “drama queen” phase much like the Bollywood heroines from the seventies and eighties.

Often when we caught hold of him to take a bath in winter, he would say “Chod do mujhe” (leave me), which would sometimes be “Chod do, mujhe kuch nahi pata” as if he was being tortured to give out some secret. When he was happily enjoying a bath in his tub and it would be emptied so he came out he would cry and say “Yeh tumne kya kar diya?” (What have you done?). Lately, if he is told not to do something, he doesn’t cry, but straight away goes to bed reminding me of the way Asha Parekh would run to her bedroom and cry on the bed with her face buried in her hands and derriere moving in tandem to her sobs.

There are many of these small things that make me fall in love with them more with each passing day and that is what makes the journey of parenting beautiful. My children are indeed the greatest love of my life. It’s not always fun, it’s not only about love, it takes a lot of patience, perseverance and hard work to bring up a child. They test your limits of energy- physically, mentally and emotionally even at the moment when you would wish for a moment of solace. While they look like angels themselves, they have the capability to tease out the devil in you sometimes.

Personally, I have found it to be a lot more pleasant when I take it easy and force the perfectionist and cleanliness freak in me to take a backseat. At times it’s best to let go even if your make-up is destroyed, bed sheet ruined, room scattered with toys and things are not running as per plan to be able to fully embrace the moment.

I often think of parenting as a roller coaster ride. The best and the scariest in the world, but thoroughly enjoyable and absolutely worth everything! So hold on tight and enjoy the ride Mommy and Daddy!

Enjoyed this? You may enjoy reading related posts: Oh my God! and I will save you!

A Quaint Love Story

During my teens, we lived next door to a couple deeply in Love. A love so unique that I enjoyed watching them when they were outdoors in the veranda or garden. An extraordinary flavour of love that I have not witnessed anywhere else and is very hard to come by in today’s day and age. Only when you watched them closely over time would you be able to gauge the depth of their love. It is nothing like the love we have grown up watching in movies, reading in books or the kind we usually imagine in our mind.

I am talking about the love shared by a couple who had lived together for more than sixty years as man and wife. They were parents of four, grandparents to several grandchildren and had recently become great grandparents too. I am talking about the time when Thatha (grandfather) was in his eighties and Paati (Grandmother) in her late seventees.

In spite of her age Paati was far better dressed than any other woman in the vicinity. She looked beautiful in her bright, colourful Kanjeevaram sarees. She would wear shades of bright yellow and scarlet reds that women half her age would shy away from. Her grey hair was usually tied up neatly in a bun, with sindoor and a red bindi in place. She loved jewellery and choose to adorn herself with several gold chains, mangal sutra and bangles even on a regular day at home. She even wore diamond nose pins on both sides of her nose. To me she looked gorgeous, a picture of beauty and grace. Paati could only speak in Tamil so I never really had a conversation with her but her cheerful smile was enough to warm anyone’s heart.

Thatha on the other hand was tall, lanky and forever dressed in a simple white shirt and a cotton dhoti, even during the winter months. He was simplicity personified. Instead of wearing sandals or shoes, he chose to wear a pair of rubber chappals and tied a string (nada) to the two rubber thongs to keep it from coming out of his foot. I found his “jugaadu” sandals amusing. He could speak fluently in English and possessed the memory of an elephant. He always had pearls of wisdom to share whenever you met him.

I would often see them sitting outside on the porch every morning. Thatha would read the English daily while Paati would enjoy the Tamil magazines. They would sit there for hours, have their coffee together and intermittently speak to each other. When Paati would get up to walk inside, Thatha would hold her hand delicately and help her, even though he himself could do with some help. When Paati would go to a doctor Thatha could not stay inside the house. He would sit in the porch with his head turned towards the road, restless, constantly on a watch out, patiently waiting for his beloved to return. As soon as she returned he would ask what the doctor said.

They, in their decades of companionship may never have said “I Love You” to each other but if you saw carefully you would see it in the their eyes when they looked at each other, the gentle holding of hands, the concern on their face for each other and the fact that they were never a few feet away.  They had been companions for so long that it’s hard to picture one without thinking about the other. The strength of their bond was such that even death could not keep them apart for too long. After Paati passed away, Thatha followed her within the year to join her in their heavenly abode.

This kind of quaint love is hard to come by, so I shall keep their memory etched in my mind, treasure it in my heart, cherish it forever and hope to come by another exceptional love story akin to theirs.

One for the Road!

Fifteen years ago Gurgaon was not the millennium city it is today. There were no shopping malls, no mega office complexes, few schools and hospitals, hardly any hotels, limited eating options and no flyovers. It was the city people from Delhi made spacious houses in to retire peacefully or even for investment purposes since property prices were enticing. The roads were so empty that people who were learning to drive could practice with ease and it was no surprise if you spotted a snake or a mongoose outside your house.

Within a decade Gurgaon transformed to become a hustling bustling independent city with its famous malls, massive office complexes, luxury condominiums, several multi-speciality hospitals, dozens of schools, plethora of restaurants, metro connectivity, busy intersections and flyovers filled with fast cars. It is no longer a haven for the old and those keen to stay away from congested Delhi. It is now home to people from all over the country and the world, all thanks to all the multinational companies that choose to open shop in Gurgaon. Just like any busy city, Gurgaon has its own set of problems, but it’s the unique set of cars and the people behind the wheel that attracts my attention. If you look carefully, here is what you would find.

1)      The Cabbies: They are hired by the many ITES companies and BPOs to ferry people to and from office one batch after other. Drivers are usually red eyed, sleep deprived and working multiple shifts a day. The drivers and the engines of their cheap so-called SUVs are overworked. They stand too close at red lights and won’t think twice about brushing past. It is best to keep yourself and your car out of harm’s way.

 

2)     The Nouveau Rich: Often an indigenous Gurgaonwala who become rich by selling his agricultural land to a big builder. They are the ones with deep pockets and political connections. They are rich enough to buy the top line Audis and BMWs and powerful enough to stay out of jail even if they killed someone. They carry guns too and would not hesitate to shoot you. They are Gurgaon’s version of the fast and the furious. Watch out for them especially at night.

 

3)     The Office Crowd: The top brass usually has a chauffeur driven luxury sedan so they don’t have to waste their energy in changing gears and pushing pedals. They sit at the back, read the newspaper or discuss business strategy on the way to office. The other corporate commuters in middle management do not have this luxury but do not take the cab either. They drive their small or mid-sized cars to office and have to worry about petty things like parking.

 

4)     The Mommy Drivers: They mostly drive their children to school and various other classes, go to the gym, spa and the mall. The size of their car can vary depending on their husband’s occupation. They are smart enough to avoid the traffic hours.

 

5)     The Two and Three Wheelers: The delivery guys on bikes, the triple riders and scooters transporting families dangerously zigzag through the traffic maze and frequently bump into cars for the lack of keeping a safe distance and not using brakes appropriately. The three wheelers go at a slow pace impacting everyone behind them, they often compete with each other, take sharp turns and seem to be unaware of the trouble they cause to others.

Additionally, there are cyclists and pedestrians who are often found in the middle of the road even when the signal is green. This unique mix along with everyone’s “me first” attitude is a deadly one that can damage cars, injure people or even prove fatal, shattering many lives in the process.

Drive Carefully, Stay Safe!