All about Maids....

One thing that intrigues me about maids - how generous they are with respect to resources in their employers' place. All the maids that I've had with me have come(obviously) from tough conditions at home but I've not had a single one being careful with water. They leave the taps leaking and even reprimands don't get them out of that careless attitude. Another thing that irritates me is their generous usage of the water heater - even if you tell them the water is already hot enough, they will switch it on again and take bath with piping hot water, even in summers. My last maid was alone at home the last one month and my telephone bill this time is unusually high. Ugh! And my new maid within a week of her joining has already given me enough hints that she'll ask me for a loan soon. My husband says that's how most of us do when we checkin into a hotel - make the maximum 'paisa vasool' of what you pay.One thing is for sure - these people will not have any sympathy for us and we on our part will always be condescending towards them.

Yesterday I watched Phantom movie and it's got me craving about the comics all over again. I was a major fan of them always and one summer when I was about 10, one of my father's friends lent me a load of Phantom, Mandrake and Flash Gordon comics. I still remember my joy at seeing them and the bliss with which I dedicated my every bit of free time to them! Reading them in the stillness of the afternoon with the cool breeze of the Kharva open verandah or the shade of the cashew trees is one of the most peaceful things in life for me.

My son's best friend is a girl and yesterday when I went to pick him up from school, she was giving him a fond goodbye. She was pulling his cheeks, cuddling him and me, I didn't know what to do. I looked at her mother for some clue but she was busy looking elsewhere so I looked at my son. He, highly bashful but very happy looking at the adoration, was standing stiff as a pole and saying bye bye. My husband is already joking if he should meet the parents.

Waiting for the Mahatma...

Another 20 days to go at the max and I want them to get over fast. I know that I have a tougher job after that but I'm having all sorts of trouble in my last month. I'm feeling week all the time, I can't sleep well in the night because my thighs ache sleeping on the same side and I have to keep shifting. And my doctor says I should sleep only for half an hour or so in the daytime! It would've been much easier had I been working but now that I'm at home, I'm finding it extremely difficult not to doze off. I think I should've been better prepared with a new stock of books or something but even there, I cannot have my preferred posture of lying down on my belly and reading. And on top of all this, I don't have the company of my mom like I did last time and my son thinks I'm as energetic as ever!

My young maid left yesterday and I've got an elderly one in her place. After I had given my old maid the notice, I realized that I could talk to her like an equal which I never did before. We talked mostly about various recipes but to my surprise, we talked quite a bit. May be it's just that I've never had the time before, being busy either with work or my son or my husband, in that order. But I've decided that after next one year I don't want resident maids anymore. I feel too conscious of their presence and the fact that they don't have the same hobbies as I do, they don't have the same topics that I prefer makes me keep thinking that they must be getting bored. It's all very easy for my aunt to say I should not leave such a 'high paying' job but she doesn't understand the flip sides of it at all. Who the hell wants to spend all her weekends just getting ready for the next week's grind? And with two children! And it's not that one is going to be jobless if one is at home - there are so many things one can do! I want to read lots, want to be a good cook, want to make my son learn music and finally when I get more time, want to join one NGO and try and clean up this damn stinking city.

A New Life...

My maternity leave starts finally and I feel as if I've retired from work. I'm almost certain that I won't go back to my old team when I join back and if the rumours of our shifting are true, I may find it difficult to join back at all. So it was almost a sort of farewell yesterday with both the parties in a confused state as to what exactly to say. Today it's been a strange feeling for me not having to do much till my son comes from school and I think I'll spend most of my limited energies trading online and blogging.

I also sacked my maid today and much to my surprise and relief I'm finding her relieved too. She's a young girl and I'm sure she must've been tired of the work she has to do for 3,500 for a month though for the quality that I get, I always find her overpriced. Anyways, there it is - I'll soon have my 4th maid in 6 years and I'm increasingly discovering that I don't like the resident ones. My aim is to be self sufficient soon but God knows if that can happen anytime soon.

Tired...

I have a bad cold and am still wondering if I should go late or take the whole day off. The fire drill has given me more time to think and I know that if I think more, I'll choose the latter. Only problem is that I'm supposed to save all these leaves for the rainy day, that is my delivery. But I don't have too much of work in the office either and I can make my kid very happy if I stay back...

Actually I'm tired of this 'saving for the rainy day' exercises of my life. There used to be a time when I was so reckless as to stay back just to watch a movie on TV. It's not that I'm proud of that but of late it feels like I'm doing nothing at all. Keep stacking up all those magazines where they write about beautiful places, near and far...What the hell for? I haven't even seen places which are some 3-4 hours from my native place, shame on me!

The kind of hectic life we spend, we hardly have time for anybody else. Thank God, my sister stays close by and at least once a month I get to see her and my parents have been taking all the pains to come here once in a while. Of course had I not been carrying I would've definitely gone home a couple of times but I need to spend more time there. 8 hours of journey is hardly anything and in a year I spend only a week ever since I've shifted to Bangalore. It is strange that I used to spend at least 25 days when I was in Hyderabad!

It sometimes feels so futile when you meet some relatives and urge them to come home with the least intention of having them. I have many relatives I don't care to see again in my life, especially those who call me only when they want us to take life insurance policy as an agent. Or they want us to donate 'generously' for some function in a temple or some nonsensical thing like that. I know there are many people who treat us purely as a moneybag and won't even believe us if we say we are in need of money.

My mother's sense of fashion is amazing and hasn't changed over the years at all. I know there are many mothers who are just behind their daughters' life to dress up better but my mother has been just the opposite. It's one thing to dress me up in gunnysacks when I was a kid or a teenager and we didn't have the wherewithal to be otherwise but a week ago she got two dresses stitched for me and both of them are of the same size from top to bottom - the size of my 7 month pregnant tummy! I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. I've never criticized my mother on this so far for the fear of hurting her 'judgment' but this time I will.

Moving On...

The kid has gone to my native for the holidays and I've been thoroughly jobless ever since. He was so irritable about having holidays and not going to his beloved grandmother's place that it had become very difficult to please him in any way. In between came the Ayodhya dispute also and we were a bit nervous not so much about the verdict as the effect any kind of postponement of travel would have on the kid. It's a relief that things are alright so far and the credit should surely go to the Muslims.

Bangalore was tense that day, anybody could see that. The busy old airport road looked like carrying a Sunday crowd in the morning while at 3 in the evening it was packed with anxious workers returning to possible safety. Thanks to my penchant for paying the bills at the last moment, I found myself on CMH Road at 3 and without any auto in sight to get back home. I went to a shop to get some vegetables but the guy had pulled the shutters down and even warned me to get back home quickly as the time was up. What surprised me was that even in my area most of the shops had shut down. I mean, most of them are Hindus and surely would know people around. Would they go and smash others' shops? God knows the mob mentality though.

It still feels as if the kid is having his afternoon nap and may wake up anytime calling me...:-)

My Son, Growing up...

Being in a small place has its own ups and downs. On the good side, if you want any advice on any kind of child trouble, you have enough of number of people with enough experience and you feel you are safe. But on the down side, these advices can be conflicting at times and also, people expect you to implement them without fail. We got a lot of advices almost everyday and we sifted through them, argued a lot and managed them. Similarly it is for every milestone of a kid. People ask every time they meet if the kid has started smiling yet, if he is rolling and if not, immediate reaction is disbelief and then the examples of children who've done it in record time would be narrated. After initial periods of worry, I learnt to take these comments in the right spirit. The kid took his own time to do everything and we waited patiently. He was choosy in the songs he wanted to hear to sleep, had a good appetite and the rare smiles he gave us were brilliant. He wasn't much into socializing and he is still not. He would never smile at strangers on our evening walk and would almost never go to any outsider's hands.

Another thing which have us quite a tough time was his sensitiveness to sound. He would wake up even at the smallest sound and outsiders would never understand why we would be talking in whispers and so would wake up the boy immediately. There were even some who would ask us to wake the boy up from his sound sleep just to have a look at him! Grrr....I wonder how people never remember the troubles they had to take to pacify a kid irritated after woken up like that.

So our days flew in my little place...

My Son....

Writing about myself is not going anywhere so I guess I'd better write about my son. He's been the centre of our existence for more than 5 years now and now that I'm going to be a mother again, sometimes I wonder what it's going to be like, my son taking a backseat.

I don't know where to begin really. There are a lot of images in front of my eyes, right from the time the doctor showed me the wailing thin long red kid that he was. Right from day one he had his fists open, contrary to my popular belief. Gazing into his large eyes that were the only prominent features of his tiny face, I used to feel that he knew me very well. He was a very temperamental guy right from those days, grunting when we didn't pick him up from the crib and howling when he was under-fed. I remember my mother and aunt laughing that at the rate he was feeding, I could retire only at the age of 70.

Then we came home from hospital and our relatives came to see him. Traditionalists were happy that it was a boy and though general opinion was that he was thin and dark, nobody converged on who he looked like. That was the time he first had colic troubles. Oh God, I'll never forget those evenings when he would cry himself blue and I would be scared that he may not be able to breathe again! The only advantage of this was that the tired soul slept very well after that, though he hardly troubled me in the nights as such.

My mother's constant worry was to make the thin baby put on some weight and going against the family traditions(there are horror stories on how new mothers were fed), I was fed very well. So by the time my husband returned from Malta, the boy was decently heavy and had become fairer too. His colic was subsiding but he had developed constipation. So the funny activity for the whole household once in every two days was to force him to excrete with the help of a piece of a tender slimy creeper! Those days!!

Seeing Myself...

This Friday, one of my teammates quit and he was the first one to leave my team in a long time. I had kind of prepared for my speech but got a bit nervous somehow. He's a good guy, not great but good. Unlike the previous two ex-teammates of mine who embarrassed me by going ga-ga over how good a human being I am in their farewell mail, this guy wrote a usual thank-you-all one and I was expecting that. So I was all set to get back to work when I saw this guy along with his batchmate who's the next to go standing next to my seat. I've hardly interacted with the other one who's in another team but it was him who started off on a farewell note. It was as if he was going to make up for all that we'd never talked about before. And they both talked for one hour! My teammate was mostly playing the supporting role but this guy was like - how he thought I was a strict person when he saw me first, how brattish they were when they came in, how proud they felt entering the office first, how they wondered if they really deserved it, how people back home thought about them, how good our team was compared to others, how they came to love the product, their salaries, their apprehensions about the next job, how naughty the other one really is, how cute it looks that all the heads of our teams(My colleague, my boss and myself) have food together every day! He even said he felt nice observing that I had interest in cricket and I had espnstar open quite a few times!! I talk quite freely with my teammates but I wasn't prepared for this barrage! My boss came and joined for a while and went off. So did couple of others and it became quite awkward for me in the end when people started giving us glances. I don't know what all I said.

I'm not very good when people have high expectations from me but it happens to me every now and then. Someone coming and telling me about the kid they never wanted to have, another on how he wants a child but his wife does not and so on...I try my best to give them the advice I think is the best but I really don't know if I'm doing the right thing. I think men need women to confide certain things and given that I'm older than all these folks and may look trustworthy(which I assure I am, I've never gossiped about these things), they come to me I guess. Alright, may be some use I am!

Hissss.....

Today the kid excitedly called us up and said he had seen a snake in our yard and that he screamed and dropped everything he was holding and ran into the house. It seems the snake was medium sized and he was scared that it would bite him. Actually he's very fond of the snake stories that my husband tells him but it was his first live encounter with one, that too alone.

When we were growing up, we lived in the middle of trees with a Nagabana nearby which used to have visitors except for us only on Nagarapanchami. Huge anthills were very common in the area and so were big snakes. Pappa who used to come in the middle of the night after his AIR duty never used to carry a torch with him and somehow managed not to get bitten by the snakes he almost walked on. I have seen a cobra, a king cobra and umpteen number of water and rat snakes in my childhood. The small stream near our house would be dammed in the summer to provide water to the nearby plantation and the mud bank was our bridge to the other side. After 6 if we were returning home after playing in the empty paddy fields, we would see many a water snake creeping up the mud bank and hurrying back into the water seeing us. Rat snakes would often find our house a good source of food thanks to the mice which periodically nested in the crevices of our wooden roof. Long snakes would show up even in the daytime scaring me out only to return back relieved that it was only a ratsnake.

Greener Pastures...

People are quitting every other day and the number is only increasing. Half the mails in a day would be for the parting gifts and sendoffs. People's farewell mails are sounding very much cliche, with some of them being the exact copy of another. I won't blame them of course. Who the hell cares anyway! The moment someone announces his retirement, you become worried for a while but then you also know he can't help it either. For the pittance that they get, any hike outside would be lucrative enough.

Two of my peers are travelling and are in the thick of things. Both of them depend a lot on me to help out on functional issues but I know I won't get any credit for that. Sometimes petty thoughts cross my mind that why I should be helping them so much when I won't get anything in return. But I feel silly about myself the next moment. What is life if I had to think only about gains all the time! That would only make me unhappy, right?

I generally talk to some of the people among our support staff. Today I had gone to the small cafeteria on our side to get coffee but the milk wasn't pouring out properly. The lady in charge tried to correct it for a while and said the pantry one was better. I agreed with her. She continued and said but it is generally very crowded. I agreed again. Then she said in a complaining tone, "but you never go there. I've never seen you!" I didn't know what to say for a second. I mean, I couldn't imagine that someone really kept track of me like that!

Pani Pani Re...

It burns in the daytime and rains like crazy in the evening. My cold is just refusing to go away. Native is very cloudy these days it seems but no good rains yet. Hope it'll be a good monsoon this year. I hate mother having to worry about that well in the summer.

The first time we had trouble with this well I remember very well. I think none of us will forget that year. There is a bore well nearby but mother thought it wasn't respectable to go fetch water in the daytime so in the nights when the whole neighborhood would be ready to sleep, we four would start off with pitchers towards the bore well. Pappa would be doing the pumping, mother, V and I at regular distances carrying the water home. It was quite a tiring thing to do for a whole month with the water quantity not being great at times. Sometimes we even had to return empty-handed and try later. And then, just when the summer ended, mother was down with Typhoid. When I think of it sometimes, it feels like a nightmare.

When I was a kid and we were in the rented place, our well always used to go dry in the summer. It was an event for me to go and look at the water going down every morning. Clear water would turn muddy and one day the pitcher would hit the rock at the bottom. Then it was time to go to Anuradhakka's place which is about 100 meters away for the drinking water and the plantation well for other things. Anuradhakka's well is a huge one and I've never seen it in bad shape even in summers, thank God for that. They were very nice about it and though we felt a bit apologetic in the beginning, soon got over it and treated it as our own.

I think we as a people will have real trouble with the water soon. Already we are over-dependent on the tankers in our area with every other day one bore well being drilled. There is bound to be water-scarcity soon.

There is a rumor that they are going to salvage an old lake in front of our house. I didn't even know it existed!

Passing Years...

At home with a slight fever and not at all feeling guilty about it. I mention guilty because I have a boss who I've never seen taking a sickleave! Actually work has become a bit monotonous of late - the same old issues, spools, debugs, sqls and solutions. But I'm also sure if it were to change drastically - say my work is full of java, I will hate that too. It's silly but that's what I am.

Once in a while life becomes better though - like when I get into arguments(some of them quite bad) with some of my senior colleagues who think they know everything and I win the battle. I love it! But the frequency with which I'm getting into such situations makes me wonder sometimes. I mean, do I have a short temper or do they? But with me it's always "give respect, take respect". People who start off on the offensive with a "what do you know!" ring tick me off immediately. It's easy to make it a gender-bias but I've not yet taken it that way. May be they curse me behind my back but at least people come across better next time.

Then...my mother has an aching leg and I'm pushing her to see the doctor immediately. What with all the recent terrible illnesses among our family and friends, I'm a bit skeptical but I hope it will not be anything major. Was just thinking about her and realized that I've hardly done anything for her. One of her longstanding wishes is to visit Kanyakumari and I want to do it this year. I mean, I'm someone who keeps dreaming(only) of travelling all over the world but have hardly seen anything within my own country, state or even the district! My mother keeps bringing it up but when we go it has to be full family and one or the other gets into some busy schedule. But this October, we shall go!

The kid is in my native place and getting into fights with my mother every other day, mostly over buses. His craziness for buses gets manifold there because most of the private buses have pretty lights inside them. Whenever a bus he covets is denied to him, he calls me up and says, "If you send me here next time!!" but we both know how much he loves the place.

Hungry now...with no maid for a month, we both are finding it tough to manage home. But I've forgotten how it is to eat outside and cannot give up home food. So here I go...

Empire of the Son...

That's what it's been in our house for so long but I'm turning a rebel now. I'm not giving in to his demands as easily as I used to and can finally sense some control. But my husband spoils it often;he always wanted to be the preferred parent(which I tell him he can never be!) so he seizes the opportunity to be the pacifier and score some points. But all in all, I think things are improving in the household. May be story books have also helped. He gets occupied with them so he doesn't need me glued to him all the time.

The kid has got obsessed with waking up early in the quest of being the first one to brush everyday(!). We were late risers in the house in general, even clocking 8 sometimes and doing everything at breakneck speed afterwards. After getting badly reprimanded one day about not brushing till 8:15, the kid swore that he was going to wake up really early and kept an alarm at 7. But then he realized that the maid was up and had brushed by then so the next day the alarm was at 5 and he surprised us by sitting upright in the bed when it rang and even brushed! Now, I cannot wake up at 5 for sure. I guess I've done it only on some special occasions and I wasn't going to give up my sleep so easily. So I've found a trick. I've kept my watch time an hour and a half behind. So when the alarm rings at 5, it's actually 6:30! But one day I know he'll find out and we'll have a major fight.

Talking of fight, I've given up fighting with our auto-drivers. They are mostly corrupt. The minimum it takes to my office is Rs.36 but I've had people who finished at 54! I used to fight with them; some people even get offended if you ask them if their meter is alright! I've had to get down and walk some times because I protested about the flying rate. But now I've settled for 50 Rs. So instead of gazing at the meter and going through a range of emotions - anxiety, irritation, anger, shock, relief - all in the space of 20 mins, I've just decided to look outside and enjoy the morning traffic instead. So everybody is happy now. You should see the competition among the drivers to have me as the passenger!

P.S: Here is my analysis of auto-drivers in Bangalore -

Tamilians - The most corrupt.
Telugites - not many but mostly corrupt.
Non-muslim Kannadigas - 50-50 with people from east Bangalore contributing more to the corrupt side.
Muslims - Mostly honest.
Others - not enough data.

Blowing My Own Trumpet...

The family went to Mysore yesterday. On the way, we realized that the kid was interested only in having a long journey by his favourite Rajahamsa and had no interest in the destination as such. For all he cared, we could've had a daylong trip in Bangalore itself as long as the bus was good and had twinkling lights inside. Considering that, I must say he bore the visits to Mysore palace and Chamundi Hills with quite a dignity!Both P and I have been to Mysore but it was long ago. I have been to both the palace and Chamundi Hills as part of a school trip but realized that I had no recollection of the palace whatsoever. I wish they could let us go upstairs where the ladies' rooms etc are there. Can't imagine why they don't let us go there. We had an elephant ride on Rishi's bidding but I didn't like it much. The poor beast was hungry and stopped to eat even the smallest leaves on the path. I must admit I was also scared a bit.

Actually I remember my school trip to Chamundi Hills quite well. I remember the monkeys, the bangle carts which are gone now and above all the Gopura which I used to think would fall off any minute. I stared at it hard this time but it was firm much to my disappointment. I was a kid then and may be the drifting clouds gave me that feeling...

People in the office ask me when we will buy a car. I tell them we don't have a real need for it because we've got used to public transport thanks to the kid's obsession with buses. I guess many go for a car just because of peer pressure and we've withstood that for so long. What disgusted me about the whole thing was when the Alto driving boss of mine made fun of a colleague who drives a Maruti 800! That really made me wonder what all this fuss about a car was. I mean, do you buy it for your convenience or for someone else? But I'm just wondering if the kid will succumb to it when he grows up - like asking us why we don't buy a car because all his classmates have it. Anyway, at the moment there is another important reason not to buy it; we don't have the money as we've invested quite a bit in the house.

Summer has set in but irregular power cuts are the order of the day. P says we'll soon have global warming and no fan. That's not going to be pleasant even in Bangalore where summer temperatures have seen a steady rise.

Talking of resources, people really don't care about them unless they are made to pay for it. It's a common misconception that illiterates are not civil and lack manners etc but educated and well-to-do people are highly irresponsible, socially. People wash hands with full tap on and don't even bother to close it fully. Toilet flush would be running, toilet rolls left to roll on the floor, napkins wasted. I don't think all these guys understand that there may be people who are dying somewhere because of lack of clean water. Whatever my shortcomings may be, I definitely feel proud of myself in this aspect ; I'm a responsible citizen. I want to become better; I want to tell people of their mistakes and make them better, at least around me. Hope I'll have the courage to do so.