Semblance of a Memory

Maria Mozhdah reminds me of Renu...eyebrows, nose, fingers...

Getting Over

I wish we can build this Ram Mandir in Ayodhya as soon as we can. I mean, for how long are we going to postpone the one thing that is going to make us all, I mean Hindus, happy for ever after? The only problem may be the sudden unemployment issue for some,whose only job has been urging the bhakts to do it. I guess they can gun for some other Mughal monument next. Now that we have the Statue of Unity and soon a statue of Shivaji, who needs Mughal monuments anyway! Some tombs! So against our culture, really. We don't even care to visit our ancestral samadhis in our own backyard but we want to go and gape at those Mughal samadhis! 

Anti-conversion Laws

L has spent at least 30 years of her life in Bangalore and now she's living in Hyderabad for a little more than a year and she's finding all sorts of problems with Bangalore, out of nowhere. Her latest are the kirana shops, which she believes have vanished from Bangalore but are thriving in her new home. I do miss seeing More Supermarket board in Hyderabad but there are also some five kirana shops in the 200 meters between my house and the busstop. I had to count them and some more shops nearby and then she unhappily agreed that her fears may be unfounded. I am a recent convert to Bangalore after having been in love with Hyderabad for long and it's unbelievable that she gives me unfinished sentences like, "Bangalore has become....somehow....you know..."! What!!

Stuck with the Choices

On the way to my in-laws' place, we stayed with L for a day in Hyderabad. She stays alone, waiting for her husband to join her from Singapore and for the first time her loneliness was telling in what she spoke and did. She doesn't have children and while I don't think back in 2003 that's what she wanted, somewhere down the line she made that choice with the turn life took. It didn't feature in our subsequent discussions and she's been fond of my kids, more so of Rishi, in a sort of detached way. This time she seemed agitated, more than once mentioned that it was a big place for her to live alone and the night before we started, wanted to give money as gift to the kids. I protested and she said, "You should not say no. You know I don't have kids of my own" and proceeded to shed tears. I froze, said a little of what struck my mind  but it just wrung my heart. Oh, the last thing I want is for L to start feeling sorry for her life!

Cooking for Compliments

It seems my cooking is attracting a fair deal of attention among Rishi's friends, with some even asking for recipes. This is a new crisis in my life. I've not been famous for my culinary skills(nothing else either actually) and it's been smooth sailing for me because P has been very tolerant and considerate when it comes to food and I've learnt to swallow Rishi's criticism. Now the last thing I want at 7:30 in the morning is to take more pressure on myself thinking there is some fan club of mine out there!

It takes all my energy to send Anu back to music classes after a month's break. Her enthusiasm is a wave that ebbs for no apparent reason and the girl can manufacture anything to bunk a class. I terminated my music classes in 4th standard just to watch a serial and I hope she doesn't end up regretting it like me.

Earning Some Respect

Rishi has landed his first paying job! His drawing teacher asked him to assist her for a month in return for a salary. But given his schedule, I doubt if he can take it up. He's very excited, nevertheless.

Razia is upset that whenever she talks about her workload, all her husband can say is that she should quit working and stay at home. Men have long got used to undermining their wives' efforts as inferior to their own. Women brave guilt, internal and external pressures both at workplace and home, they take pride in being good and responsible workers, they are respected and loved at their workplace and to dismiss all of it with statements like "Oh, what are you going to achieve anyway, you are not serious about your work!", "I earn more than enough for us, your salary can't even cover this and that...", "You don't have to pretend that you are working to help me or anything. You can sit at home from this very second for all I care!" is so insensitive, disheartening and smacks of ego. Just because a woman is the first one to care for a sick child or she puts her family ahead of all her plans? It's Mr. Kramers everywhere.

Re-adaptation

In the last one week, my throat was terrible because of an infection and now I've started to get back to my daily singing and my voice feels like a radio station when it's not tuned in properly. Still doesn't feel like coming from my own throat, somehow. I'm still trying.

When the hell will somebody make a decent adaptation of The Mill on the Floss!! The entire novel is a long shot, they can't even do justice to Maggie! It's very very frustrating. Maggie's character is so clear in my head, why can't they do it?

Humsafars

I'm good at making short-term connections. Like the ones on train journeys.

One week of no internet, hardly any whatsapp and much less calls, not to speak of work. And the most surprising part is that I didn't miss any of it at all! This surely must be some malady?

Sound Worships

The silence of the afternoons is much at odds with the relentless cacophony of the mornings and evenings. It is not new, though the festival season gives a phillip to it. Many popular tunes are parodied to praise the goddess and my ears also detect some "Jai Hind" by the end of some songs; this part is definitely new. The local voice is mostly pleasant on the ears except when it goes off-pitch and gets magnified by the mike. Then like in typical rural community-celebrations, you hear sundry conversations happening around the temple; men urging the 'mahiLa mandaLi' to hasten with their offerings, women's delighted giggles, which they obviously know are being heard by the village, children taking turn to sing songs in a loop...beyond a point, all the noises merge and slowly fade away from the brain....I only wish they hadn't started as early as 4 in the morning.

Contrasts

After enduring many months of construction noise in Bangalore, what struck me first in my in-laws' place is its silence, especially in the afternoons.

Loosening Up

Going through the accounts of #MeToo in India and what surprises me is how confident the abusers seemed to have been that they wouldn't be called out or that they would get away with it. It holds a mirror to all of us, the culture we have hammered into ourselves, of not making a big deal out of almost anything. It's all about society and its feelings. No, not feelings I guess but its muscle.

Panic is when you take a dear person for granted and don't respond to her whatsapp promptly, thinking you would call her up at leisure.Then finally that time comes and you call her up, all ready to talk to her in your most cheery mood and her phone rings out. You are feeling sheepish now and you write to her on whatsapp and she sees those messages but doesn't respond.

Shops near me were selling only very short chemises so I asked my mother to stitch one for me. She did and it's more like a toga and I can't feel any curve of my body. It's me in 9th standard, all over again.

Presumptuous

A new bride writes on her facebook page, "I finally found a star who shines only in front of me". Not very flattering either.

Answer?

Read this news yesterday. May be my bird was drunk too! What did it eat!

Sisterly Concerns

It's highly annoying when people presume that I have a brother. A lady asked me yesterday if my parents stayed with my brother and sister-in-law and was surprised when I said I had only a sister. All my life I've been asked this kind of questions and it's been a sadistic pleasure to see them get worried on my behalf.

Digressing

P is so busy these days, it's like he's on one of his foreign trips. It's draining me further and my enthusiasm for the impending trip is draining out too. Of course I can't say that. Holy cow.

By the way, I hate the word holy these days. Cringeworthy!

I didn't add cumin to my sambar masala because it was out-of-stock. It made so much difference, surprisingly! Not bad but just different. But really? I'll have to try it once more to confirm, though it's against my ingrained rule.

Rishi says his friends think I'm a very kind and nice mother. There must be something wrong with me.

The only way to get some people to pay attention to kitchen is to burn something. I mean figuratively.

Expectant

I'm excited to hear about Balekempa movie. I hope Ere Gowda can not only inspire many more like him to come out with their stories but can also help them to do that, knowing as he does that it's not easy. I don't know when I'll get to watch it, though. I've booked V for it already and incidentally the last movie I watched with her was Tithi.

Anu singing "Kali Ghata Chhaye Mora..." is a little bit surreal and assuring, in a strange way. But I don't want to expect too much out of kids. Sometimes it feels like we want them to be what we were, what we were not and what we could never be.

I feel like a species about to go extinct; the ones who know my module inside out. There is only one more like me. When the numbers come down to this, it's no more satisfying to be an expert. 

Five Yards of Disappointment

I'm a little depressed. I saw an ad of Vastrabharana on Saturday and was enthused. I have a difficult equation with sarees. I love the various kinds of cotton sarees, they look so good on others! And though I hardly get to wear them outside, it's a small-scale fantasy of mine to hoard them and wear them some day. Vastrabharana's location was Chitrakala Parishat which is pretty far but we've never been there before so I took everyone along. I hardly stepped in and saw the crowd and I chickened out. I glanced at some sample price tags and I just couldn't proceed. It was me in 10th standard, that ghost from the past. I hated myself at the moment. Of course since then I've made myself feel better by saying that they are simply overpriced and I could get them elsewhere cheaper. But the thing is that I spend my yearly increments only on inflation and nothing else. Affordability is in my brain than in my purse and I'd rather be a miserable saving-for-my-hundredth-year lady than a happy live-now person.

Anyway, we also went to the art gallery upstairs which calmed me because it was almost empty, so much in contrast with the number downstairs. There are some nice landscapes and portraits by the Roerichs and curious info sheets on old-time European and Asian cultures. The security personnel far outnumbered us and seemed glad to see anybody. One of them accompanied us and she asked me if Rishi was my son. I said yes and she said he's just so tall. Then she looked wistfully at me and said if only I could colour my hair, nobody could say he was my son. It didn't make me happy, for a change.