Missed Opportunities...

I hate people who give missed calls. There are quite a few among our relatives and some among the friends too. I mean, I can understand if the person has a shortage of money at that point of time and so you get missed calls once in a while. But what about people who do that on a regular basis and laugh about it?

One of my uncles(aunt's husband) is one such person. He has so many skills - can fix up wood, electrical stuff and almost everything, is a good orator, the best chess player in our circle - but it seems he lacked the skill he needed the most - working hard to make some money. He neglected his arecanut plantation in his youth and is now dependent mostly on his second son not being on good terms with his eldest.

I don't know what to say - his eldest son is a decent artist. He was very interested in taking it up as a profession and the first day of my visit to their house was always spent in their attic where he had set up his world - full of paintings, posters and stereos and other smaller electronic items that he had assembled himself. He even used to make some sort of animated movies for us for which the ticket would be some cashewnuts! I mean, it was something to be so advanced 30 years ago in that remote village. Anyhow, he was not good at studies and wanted to go and join J J Arts in Mumbai. I think he did go to Mumbai but couldn't get admission or something, so he came back. Next few years of his life are not very clear to me and all I know now is that he has set up an electrical shop and looks after that while doing some painting of people's houses and temples and neglecting his plantation just like his father.

His second son's is even worse story. He was an intelligent boy, could play chess very well, sing very well and draw decently too. His uncle who has a small industry in Bangalore had promised to take him under his wings if he scored well in twelfth but my cousin missed that, but finally joined a decent engineering college.He used to write letters regularly to my mother from there and some of the Sankranti cards that he sent had beautifully written Kannada poems in them. I still remember some lines of them! When he wrote that he had joined music classes there, he had joked that he was learning everything except his subjects. Unfortunately he seemed to have really done that and he couldn't clear some of his papers. So today he's working in a place totally unworthy of his talents and it's a sad thing to happen to one of my childhood idols who taught me the meanings of many songs that I used to sing mindlessly and all wrong.

Wedding Bells...

Wedding bells are going to ring in my aunt's home soon and she being the dearest to one and all in the family, I get the feeling that everybody is highly excited. My mother is going to desert us for full two weeks and I'm wondering how it's all going to work out. One of the options is sending out SOS signal to my old maid to fill-in the gap but the thought itself is a bit painful. So I've postponed thinking about it till I'm really pushed to do so. I would've shamelessly asked for a working-from-home a month ago but now things are different at the office. Everybody is jumping at the mention of a 'bug' and I don't even dare stand in front of my boss with the proposal of being absent from my seat.

My mother has been giving us all some anxious moment by being temperamental and irritable. My son is the one who's getting the most affected by this, having been her darling all these years. Actually she's been working very hard, not allowing me to do a single thing as if she's taken a vow and I feel she's getting tired and worked up. But unfortunately she's never been the one to listen to anyone and arguing with her is worse than banging your head against the wall; both the parties end up getting hurt.  And as regards to my son, she seems to be gripped with a sudden fear that he is growing up to be a spoilt brat and at times I feel sorry for my son when he looks bewildered at the sudden burst of my mother's anger towards a benign mistake.

My daughter has been speaking a lot nowadays and our favourite is when she says "aphisha"(office) when we ask her where her Baba has gone.My mother says she is more reluctant to say the same when asked about me but she's slowly getting used to it. She speaks many other words too and has started getting attached to books, her pet being her brother's textbook with cars, elephants and fish.

Living Life to the Fullest

Last day of half-day working at the office and I'll be working full day after a gap of one and a half years. Not that I've really been working half day actually. Now that I've got a reliable internet connection and can work from home, I've just been taking unnecessary pressure and advantage of my dear mother's indulgence. Not that it's great work either but there is lots of it for sure. But I've decided that I'm going to work only for 8 hours in the office, not more. And I want to stop working at home afterwards too. My son has only a month of holidays left now and he's restless all the time. We've put him into swimming and started him off on badminton too but we are not able to do either on weekdays thanks to the fact that it is only my husband and I that can give him coaching in these two things respectively. So over the weekdays he's mostly irritable after finishing his daily quota of TV and ends up caned either by mother or me after having exhausted us. Promises follow but the same story the next day. Today finally I thought of fulfilling my old promise of joining him into a library but we were too late to step in. Tomorrow I'll try again, even my father hopes to find some useful books there.

I've become a Dale Steyn fan thanks to this year's IPL. Though his team is doing abysmally, he's doing a fantastic job and most of the times, all I remember is not the winner but his bowling. He's just being terrific. Of course Dravid is playing very well too and I watch only his matches regularly, may be partly because this is the last time I'll get to watch him play.

My daughter is growing up quickly, talking a lot of gibberish and making us all very happy by doing many intelligent things. She's a very loving and lovable kid and seems to have a good temperament, at least for now. She's very fond of her brother, though he treats her with a lot of indifference many a times. Of course he showers her with bursts of love often and gets upset that she's not reciprocating enough.

My son who's a huge fan of Chota Bheem stories and Panchatantra asked my husband the other day how many gold coins his boss was paying him!!