I Told You So!

A Short Story

Anuradha stands there in front of the large mirror in a blue blouse and petticoat. On the dressing table, Amma’s gold Kasu mala is waiting to be worn. The gold coins with Goddess Lakshmi embossed on them gleam. Anuradha has neatly combed her hair and pinned it on the sides to keep it from falling on her face. She has managed to tame her unruly curls by massaging a few drops of coconut oil mixed with water. Amma’s tips are always effective.

Leela looks up at the clock hanging on the butter-coloured wall. There is still time for them to arrive but her beloved Anu must be ready before time. She switches the fan off before tucking the saree into Anuradha’s petticoat. The Kanjivaram silk Leela has carefully selected for her daughter is blue. Blue like the early evening sky, cloudless and clear. She deftly pleats this silken piece of firmament and carefully pins the pallu on Anu’s shoulder. The golden peacocks on the saree’s border are dancing gleefully. No words are exchanged between mother and daughter. Leela doesn’t need words to understand her daughter.

The loud ringing of the black phone breaks her chain of thoughts and she rushes to the door. But, Anu’s father has already picked up the phone. Anu hears her father speak with a smile, in a voice reserved for outsiders. He ends the call with a polite seri, seri and keeps the heavy receiver back in place with a clink. The television in the drawing room gets switched on.

Standing in front of the mirror, Anu applies some kajal and lightly dabs the pink lipstick, careful not to overdo it. Leela admires her daughter’s reflection in the mirror and smiles. Anu notices her mother watching and puts the lipstick back on the table. Leela steps closer, pulls out a packet of bindis from the drawer. She selects a small one and sticks it on Anu’s forehead.

Anu knows that Mahesh belongs to an educated family, grew up in Delhi just like her, has a steady job with a bank, earns well. Even Amma and Appa want this to work out since Chitti recommended this alliance very strongly. Even the horoscopes matched well, but there is a question that is nagging her.

“Amma, how will I know if he’s the one for me?” Anu’s voice is unusually soft and eyes shifty.

“Don’t worry, you will know when you meet him.” Anu looks up at her mother, with a questioning look. Leela can sense her daughter’s thoughts, “Don’t worry. Believe me, you will know.” Anu smiles nervously in response.

“Wear the necklace. It’s my good luck charm.” Leela leaves the room after patting her daughter on the shoulder.

Leela fries the vadas on low flame, turning them over to achieve the uniform golden color. They should stay hot till the Rajagopalan family arrives. The coconut chutney is ready. On the other side, the mustard seeds, dry red chilli and curry leaves sputter in oil. Prabhu always says, nothing tastes better than freshly cooked sambhar. Thus, she had made Sambhar every single day, for the past twenty five years of her married life. Now, she can’t get it wrong, even in her sleep.

As she puts in a fresh batch of vadas for frying, her mind begins to wander, to the question her daughter asked. How does one really know if they are meant to be together for life? Did she know when she married Prabhu? Even in her thoughts she cannot muster the courage to acknowledge her response. Maybe this was her destiny, or was her life just an outcome of the decisions other people took for her? Mostly, her father and then her husband.

Leela transgresses back to the time when she lived in a village near Trissur. To a time when she knew a certain Mahesh. Her Mahesh? Can she call him that? The curly haired, lanky, tall fellow who could climb the coconut tree in under a minute. Leela had dreams. Dreams of being a Carnatic singer, having grown up listening to M.S. Subbulakshmi. Leela was famous in her village for her singing. Her family had encouraged her to practice and her high point was when she performed at the Sri Guruvayoorappa temple. The audience of over five hundred people had listened to her with rapt attention. A certain gentleman had approached her father and asked him to get her to Chennai for playback singing, but her father had refused immediately. Leela got to know about it much later.

It was her singing that had attracted Mahesh to her in the first place. After speaking to him a few times on the way back from college, her juvenile mind had imagined spending a lifetime with him. Youth is such that it makes one believe in the infinity of possibility. Every dream had seemed achievable to Leela, until one evening.

Over the evening kaapi and murukku, Leela’s father declared that she was to marry Prabhu, the son of his friend from Delhi who had visited them a few months ago. Her objection had no meaning in front of all the virtues her father counted on his fingertips. She just stood there in silence and stared at her father’s feet as he swayed on the wooden aattu kattil in the central open courtyard of their ancestral house. Leela cried the night before the wedding and everyone believed it was because she had to leave for faraway Delhi. Even when the girls decorated her long black braid with pieces of jewellery and strings of jasmine, she wondered if her husband would allow her to sing. She had packed all her colourful silk sarees and jewellery in a sizeable steel trunk but left her dreams and hopes behind. The music inside somehow got left out at the Thrissur railway station as she hopped on to the train for the three-day-long journey to Delhi.

Over the years Leela got to know Prabhu as a person. He provided for everything that they needed, never refused whenever she wanted to visit her family and even allowed her to join the temple chorus. There is nothing to complain about. With the grace of Lord Guruvayoorappa, they have everything they need. A home, a car, a beautiful daughter, what else could she ask for? Was her father wrong in choosing Prabhu for her? Although Leela is unable to point to it, something is definitely missing. What is it? She opens her circular box of spices and adds a pinch of salt into the sambhar. Everything tastes bland without the right amount of salt. It ties all the flavours together.

Was a part of her still empty? Like a locked room in her father’s house. A room of invisible hopes, dreams and desires that could never be fulfilled. Leela has never told anyone about this room, not even Prabhu. Neither does she dare to enter it herself, but she knows, it is empty, dark and dusty. Once in a while she just stands in front of the door, looks down at the heavy brass padlock, touches the smooth, painted surface of the door which conceals the roughness of the wood beneath. The key to this room can no longer be found.

“Deee, is everything ready? They will be arriving any minute now.” Prabhu asks from the drawing room, while watching the match.

“Yes, the food is almost ready.”Leela responds equally loudly from the kitchen, wanting to be heard over the television. The smell of delicious sambhar is spreading across the kitchen.

Anuradha and Mahesh look beautiful together. She is looking at him furtively, shyly. They are smiling at each other. A smile that doesn’t need words as a companion. Her face is a mixture of so many emotions. Mahesh whispers something into her ear that makes her giggle. Her mehendi covered hands conceal her laughter. A sweet fragrance hangs around her. Is it just the flowers or maybe something else too is in the air? It is hard to distinguish.

Leela looks lovingly at her daughter as she is about to get into the waiting car, that would whisk them away to the airport. Anu is leaving. Leela still cannot believe that her little girl is now married. She has never slept without her daughter next to her, ever since the day she was born. A strange sensation creeps in her chest and claws at her throat. Tears are on the verge of spilling out of her eyes, but Leela does not want them to escape. Anu turns around to give her mother a hug.

“Ma, you were right. I just knew it was Mahesh when I met him.” Anu whispers into her mother’s ear.

“See, Anu moley. I told you so!” Leela wipes the defiant tears from her cheeks. May you receive all the happiness in the world, my child.

 

A Hazy Old Photograph

It all started one morning when one of the girls posted an old, slightly hazy picture of class 9B. With squinted eyes I looked for myself and slowly a smile spread across my face as I recognized more faces. I could clearly remember the smiling faces. More names popped into my head as did lots of ‘likes’ and comments on the Facebook picture. I must have seen the picture at least twenty times and every single time it made me happy.

With the creation of the WhatsApp group came the whole avalanche of messages, bringing along all the wonderful childhood memories. The energy and warmth radiating from my phone was immense. It kept buzzing throughout the whole day, till late into the night. As I read through the messages many sights and sounds began playing in my mind. It all started coming back to me, firstly as a trickle, gradually growing, along with the pace of the messages. The look of the majestic red brick buildings, the multi-purpose hall, the amphitheater, the red-stoned walkways covered by Gulmohar trees leading up to the canteen that sold hot Samosas for two rupees and  ice lollies for five. Soon, we were discussing our favorite teachers (with their voices echoing in our heads), the funny infectious laughter of a classmate, the banter, the fake fights and the first crushes.

It felt like it had just been a few years, while in reality it had been much more. We had been classmates almost two decades ago! It was unbelievable! What was even more amazing, was the way we could seamlessly connect with each other. Pickup from where we had left off. Maybe, we are essentially the same kids we were back then, just in older bodies (and hopefully wiser minds). A lot us put aside our work and kids to reconnect with our classmates, with our old selves. I felt proud to see the unique mix of men and women we had all turned into. We are now spread across the globe, working in various fields. We have a Doctor, a Professor, a Scientist, Entrepreneurs, Corporate Managers, Teacher, Fashion Designer and more…What a mix! Simply Terrific!

I almost felt like I was back in the school playground. As if I had taken the slide from my present day work desk and slipped down to another era. The way I smiled at my phone, anybody would have thought that I had either gone crazy or was having an affair. I was awash with a trunk load of memories. I could once again feel the innocence and the simple joys of being a student. By the time it was evening, a warm, fuzzy feeling had taken over me and I continued to revel in the wonder years of my life. It was a nostalgia induced high!

A hazy old photograph, a box full of happy childhood memories, and a bunch of friends constantly pinging from across the globe is all it took to make us all deliriously nostalgic and so…so happy!

  

Forgotten Keys!

It’s happened many times in the past, so I wasn’t surprised. A few years ago, we reached the airport and found that the keys to the suitcase were at home (He stopped locking his suitcase since then). On another occasion, we reached the airport barely twenty minutes before take-off since he somehow saw 17:50 pm as 18:50 pm. Thankfully, the then new Indigo airlines let us board the plane (sans our check-in baggage). There’s more…After an offsite he forgot his new crocs at a resort; left the car unlocked overnight and went for a trip. Thankfully, the security guard called up to inform us and my Mom (custodian of the spare key) rushed to lock the car.

More recently, when he sold his car, he gifted a nice pair of shades with it (forgotten in the dashboard)…an expensive pair that had been his birthday present from me. No wonder, I could not stop myself from laughing out loud when our toddler threw out his next pair out of the moving car. Before hubby could retrieve it, it had been crushed by another car.

Last Friday, after I had gotten myself and our baby ready, picked up my bags, the baby and his paraphernalia I could not find the car keys. I was almost certain about what had happened but I called him to confirm.

“Hi! Can I call you later? I am in a meeting”, he whispered into the phone.

“Where are the car keys?”

After five long seconds, “In my pocket.”

I was surely mad at him. It was raining cats and dogs, we were all set to go, I was getting late for office, the car was right there, but the keys were not. He had made the same blunder earlier as well….a few years ago, when I wanted to take Mom-in-Law out for lunch, but discovered that he had conveniently taken the car keys with him. This time I felt extra frustrated for some reason. I called a cab and left home after some time. On the way, I thought about writing this post, intending to shame him maybe through it, but now that I am writing it, I feel none of the anger I felt then. I was definitely inconvenienced and his apologising over WhatsApp was not helping much, but, two other things that happened during the day made me think.

Later, the same afternoon, when I wanted to go back home, I asked my colleague if she wanted to share a cab with me on the way back. She readily agreed. I called for a cab and was waiting for it to arrive, when my colleague realized that she had her car in the office parking! She would have gone home with me, leaving the car behind in office! (Her husband works in the same office and they had driven-in together that morning. He had given her the keys to drive back home.) This was a déjà vu moment for me, almost.

At night while scrolling through my phone I chanced upon a blog post by someone who has a holiday cottage in the hills. She had written about the mental ordeal of realizing that she had left the keys to her cottage behind, after travelling 220 KMS away from her Gurgaon home. What were the chances of me reading about her post on the same day ? I was amazed. Maybe our state of mind attracts certain things to us, who knows! Was this God’s way of telling me “Shit happens!”?

Today, as I write about this, I am laughing about this incident. Such is life, full of human errors and strange happenings. You feel annoyed at the moment, you worry, you feel stressed, but later you laugh. Eventually, it becomes an interesting memory from our otherwise mundane life. As far as hubby is concerned, I guess this is what makes him the way he is. The way he forgets these things once in a while, he forgets the numerous faults in me too. He forgot about the keys, while I found something else.

Did this post make you think of a similar instance from your life? Share it in the comments section. I would love to hear from you.

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What do you do? Clean Poop!

“Even after studying so much, what happened to you? What are you doing now? Cleaning baby poop!” My 85-year old grandmother commented. My mother looked at me nervously, expecting me to react.

Surprisingly, it did not hurt. It was true. Cleaning poop is part of my job description as a Mom. I had willingly given up my job to be able to enjoy motherhood. I had made a choice for myself, one that I never regretted. I thoroughly enjoy my time with my children, knowing that they won’t be so small ever again. Their innocent eyes make me melt every time I look at them. Their questions and comments, unaffected by the world of stereotypes and biases make me wonder and laugh. I am glad I could give them a gift of my time or rather, I should say, I could gift myself this time with them. I was doing this not only for them, but for myself. Besides, there is always a time when a mother has to clean her baby’s bum, however educated and highly paid or not she is. I did not feel the need to explain this to her.
 

The disappointment my grandmother was feeling accentuated the wrinkles on her face. I could see that behind her remark was her desire to see her granddaughter doing something more ‘meaningful’ with her life. I could understand her point of view and she somewhat reminded me of Amitabh Bachchan in Piku. Not only because she too discusses her ‘motion’ out loud with my father, but for her asking me not to lose myself in an attempt to be a good mother. There she was, a petite, wrinkled, octogenarian asking her granddaughter to leave behind the traditional roles to go conquer the world.

We were three generations of women in that room. I looked at my grandmother, my mother and then myself. All three are mothers, two are grandmothers and one a great-grandmother. Interestingly, I am the only one among them to have taken a break to be with my kids. My grandmother, was a physiotherapist of her own making, she was a widowed, single mother playing the role of father and a mother at a time when most women were limited to the kitchen and child-rearing.

My own mother, got just one and half months of maternity leave and managed to work for many years, perfectly juggling her responsibilities of a mother, wife and daughter-in-law. I still remember her running around the house every morning to finish her household tasks, before rushing out of the house with her breakfast of toasted bread in one hand and water still dripping from her hair, creating a wet patch on her blouse. She wasn’t alone in her generation to do this. I am sure you would also be able to see similar examples in your own family. These women refused to be bogged down by their traditional responsibilities. They did it all with élan and most importantly without complaint.

If I compare myself to them, I cannot deny that I have it much better. They worked much longer and harder compared to what I can ever imagine doing. Most importantly, if they could do it, so can we! I feel we are in a much better space than they were. We have the advantage of greater support and understanding. Luckily, Dads are a lot more hands-on than they were previously. Daycare and pre-school facilities that were non-existent earlier are easily available now. Corporates too have begun offering extended maternity leaves up to 5-6 months, along with part-time and work-from-home options. Most have Diversity programs in place to welcome women into the workforce. There are support groups, like SHEROES and Mompreneurs which are providing opportunities for women to get back to work. I don’t think there was a time better than today for Moms who want to do it all.

Sometimes, what stops us from achieving our full potential is our own selves. We just need to believe in ourselves and chase our dreams till they are realized.

“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” – Paulo Coelho

What's for Breakfast today?

When my mother asked the airhostess for a portion of Upma on the flight, I was surprised to hear the excitement in my husband’s voice about the dish. He even went on to request a bite from her and I noticed how happily he consumed a spoonful of it. He insisted it was yummy and that I will love it. I refused to spoil the taste of caramel popcorn in my mouth but finally took a bite on my mother’s insistence but immediately regretted it. After all, how tasty can Upma be on an Indigo flight? Definitely not more than the caramel popcorn.

As the Upma melted in my mouth and I popped in a few more popcorns to clean my palate, it transported me back to another time. I went back by about seven years, to a time when we were just the two of us. A newly married couple, both working, with no kids. We had a part time cleaner and a cook who made dinner for us in the evenings. So naturally, the task of making breakfast for us was on me. If hubby would have had his way, he would not have entered the kitchen at all in the morning.

I knew, that before I became his wife, he used to wake up at 7:45 AM, snooze till 7:50 AM, get ready in twenty minutes flat and be out of the door by 8:10 AM to make it in time for breakfast in his office cafeteria. He never even bothered to open the curtains or windows to let in some fresh air. His wet towel and dirty clothes were usually left on the bed and the floor respectively which dutifully waited for him to return in the evening. Oh! and the bed, never needed any making anyway. I learnt that bachelors are mostly notorious when it comes to changing bed sheets.

Unfortunately, my office was not so generous when it came to offering breakfast and I had grown up drinking milk and having breakfast at home before leaving. I needed some fresh morning air, a glass of milk and the newspaper to fully wake up and get started for the day. I felt the need to leave the home in a decent condition, to make the bed etc. so that I could return home to a neat and clean house. These were of course of no importance to hubby dearest. Those were the early days of marriage and I was slowly getting to know the man I had married and how different we really were. I was also painfully realizing the true value of my Mom (the hard way).

Every morning, I made breakfast for us, mostly consisting of fruits, some form of sandwich/ Maggi/ Pasta in white sauce and occasionally Upma. I had never really learnt cooking anything from my expert mom and usually made things based on the instructions off the back of food packets or online recipe pages. Now, Upma…the innocent little dish made of Suji is simple to make, but can be tricky in the hands of an amateur.

Every time I made it I missed something or the other, once I forgot to put salt, another time, I made it too dry and once too tastelessly gooey. The Upma on the flight reminded me of the several fiascos we had with it in the early days and how hubby would usually gulp it down with generous helpings of tomato ketchup and I could never take more than a bite or two. It finally ended up badly for Upma since it got permanently deleted from our breakfast menu and I developed a hatred for it, which is likely to stay for the rest of my life.

Thankfully for me, hubby was kind enough never to complain and gulped down whatever I made, even if it meant adding in some sauce, bhujia or crackers with it. Thankfully for him my culinary skills  improved over the years and the consumption of tomato sauce with breakfast gradually reduced.

Confessions of a Stay-At-Home-Mom (SAHM)!

I thrived in the corporate atmosphere, thoroughly enjoyed it for eight years and then came a time when I felt that there was another role that needed my attention. That there are two tiny people in the world who need me much more than the 3,00,000+ employee strong organization I worked for. I felt the need to seize the moment to fully enjoy myself with the two people I mattered the most to. It was difficult to let go of my career, of losing the person I became in office, of losing my financial independence.

People asked if I had a plan, if I was planning to join somewhere else or start something of my own, but for the first time in my life I had nothing planned, no agenda, no objectives to meet, no deadlines to run after. It felt surprisingly good, absolutely refreshing. I won’t say it was all fun and laughter, I do have my moments of doubt. I do have my ‘good days’ and ‘bad days’ as a Stay-At-Home-Mom (S-A-H-M). On rare occasions, I do miss dressing up for work and clacking in those glossy stilettoes. There are times I miss being among like-minded colleagues and I definitely miss my own money but never, even in those moments, have I regretted the decision I have taken. There are never any regrets when one truly follows ones heart!

Over the months, I have discovered various simple joys of life, connected with old friends, met a lot of new people, learnt new and varied things, picked up on new hobbies and in the process I made acquaintance with an all new ‘me’. I chanced upon a whole new world of possibilities I never knew existed. It is like opening a fresh new notebook and having the choice to do whatever you wanted to…write, paint, sketch or make paper planes out of. The options are endless. Additionally, I don’t have to worry about performance appraisals, project deadlines, meetings, e-mails and calls. No more Monday Blues (every day is a Monday or a Sunday depending on how you look at it.)

As a S-A-H-M, the hardest thing I learnt to do (and still trying) is to not have an agenda or a to-do list on my mind all the time. Throughout school, college and office we are trained to multi-task, project plan, keep everything organized, deliver as per timelines come what may and in the whole process we forget how to just simply relax. These days I am learning the art of doing nothing (dolce far niente) from my kids. It’s therapeutic!

A lot of times you may have read how hard it is to be a full-time mother and that it is the toughest job in the world! It sure is a difficult, complex, ever-evolving, challenging role, sometimes harder than a corporate job, if we must compare it that way. But, lately I have also come to believe that it is not really a ‘job’. Rather it is a ‘privilege’, a ‘luxury’. This is the only time when my kids are the most impressionable, the most delicate years of their life, when their mom means the world to them.

These are the precious years when we have all the time in the world for each other and I know fairly well that these years are going to fly past sooner than I know. Nothing seems to give me more joy than making my kids laugh, colouring with them, pasting stickers on the wall, pretend-playing and reading children’s stories with them. Sometimes I feel like I am re-living my childhood all over again.

Now, can I really call that a job? When I am having so much fun and not getting paid for it?

(To all the working moms...Kudos to you! I am really amazed by moms who are managing it all...Career, a Home,  Kids and slightly jealous of the ones who have grandparents staying together to provide full support.)

Would love to hear from you...please do leave in some comments.

(This post is also available on mycity4kids.com and has received over 1.7Lakh hits.)

The Game of Parenting!

Today morning, just as I open the fridge to take out some vegetables, my one and a half year old arrives and starts fiddling with the bottles on the fridge door. I see him pull out a bottle of chilli sauce. I ask him to put it back, he obliges and I turn my attention to the vegetables. Just as I take the beans in my hand, there is a loud crash! The big new bottle of tomato sauce has been smashed to bits. The poor bottle looks like a twisted, bludgeoned creature, lying on the floor. There is sauce splashed all over the kitchen floor, shards of glass everywhere and a shooting pain in my foot. I feel like venting my anger on my toddler but I stop and remove myself from the ‘crime scene’ to tend to my poor foot, while hubby steps in take our toddler away.

As I clean my wound, I observe myself firstly simmer and then slowly cool down as I make my way back to the kitchen to clean the huge mess. I would have reacted impulsively had I not recalled that I had lost my privilege of acting out as an instinctual human being the day I became a parent. Also, my acting out would probably not make my little one learn any lasting lesson about glass bottles being breakable.

I have learnt (the hard way) that for small children to process and internalize, even simple instructions need to be repeated (maybe a dozen to even more than a hundred times) before they finally follow. The hard part is not to repeat, but it is rather tough to stay calm, consistent and never lose patience in the process of repetition. I am not immune to it either and have heard myself start statements with “How many times do I have to tell you to….”

Another important aspect of parenting is Unconditional Love, irrespective of the behaviours our child shows. Our love for them is not so fragile that it can change and shift based on their accomplishments, acts of mischief or academic achievements. We may or may not like certain behaviours but we love them all the same. It does not matter how many times or how many ‘walls’ they make me climb, they are always the most loved.

However, our love for them does not mean a lack of Discipline. In fact the greatest gift we can give to our children is Discipline, but that too does not need the extensive use of our vocal cords or limbs. That would indeed be the worst for our children.

Even in my limited experience as a parent I have realized the importance of patience, practice and passion in mastering the science and art of parenting. The same applies to anything else we would want to master and it is true of parenting, only more so.

Just like in a video game the levels keep changing and getting tougher, the same thing happens to us as parents at every progressive stage of our child’s development. A game is always interesting and enjoyable and so is parenting, but this is one game you never want to lose!