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!!