Radio Parul

Interview with Kiran Manral, author of The Reluctant Detective

2012-01-25T08:52:00.000+05:30

Kiran, a warm welcome from me and the readers of Radio Parul. Congratulations on your first book. I am looking forward to talking with you about the book, your inspiration and everything else. Let's warm up with a few questions about our industry.

They say this is the best time in India to get published. Everyone knows at least one person who is writing or has written a book. What are your views on the subject? Some people say that a lot of this writing is strictly mediocre. What gives?
I think there is a growing segment of people who are interested in writing from India that they can relate to, which is not exoticised or romanticised. Also, there is an entire generation of people who have grown up with English as their primary language in education and who are more comfortable in this language, reading and writing than their mother tongue. Also 'being an author' seems to be a glamorous profession these days, and with authors from very diverse backgrounds, giving up day jobs to get into serious writing, it seems to be here to stay for a while. Apart from this, there is a demand for writing that spans the gamut from that which is easily read, to that which is, err, meatier. A lot of the writing might be mediocre, who am I to judge or comment on that, a lot of it might be in a language and syntax that the modern Indian reader is comfortable with, but I feel there will be a shake out, and eventually the spate to get published will abate and the wheat as they say will separate from the chaff.

A website published this photo-article recently. Would you have liked to feature in this? Why or why not?

Oh. I would be very flattered if they had selected me to be featured in this. But simultaneously I would feel a trifle offended, you know. I would actually rather not be on a list which categorises me according to my appearance. The way one looks adds or detracts nothing from the work, just makes for pretty pictures at launches and in interviews. At the end of it all, the writing has to hold the reader and get him or her to read the book.

Some time back, this had made an appearance in Tehelka.com. What do you feel about this?

Why? Why do writers have to be glamorous? Or sexy? It is an add on if they are, and if they consciously choose to project themselves as such, but I think it is grossly unfair to expect them to be so. Are we asking movie stars to start writing and reveal their intellectual side? I see this is a manifestation of the hyper-aestheticism that has taken over our society, where everything seems to be judged on the basis of appearance and externals. From people to things, we are in pursuit of external beauty, and demand that everyone and everything conform to the notion that beauty is goodness and desirability essential.

A lot of people seem to revel in sending brickbats to Chetan Bhagat and Chetan-bashing is a sport almost at par with cricket. Your views?

That is unfortunate, because Mr Bhagat has completely redefined publishing in India and drawn in a completely new segment of reader which hitherto never touched an English fiction book ever in their lives. I travelled to Nainital, Almora a year or so ago, and visited a relative's home where his young, college going son had every book Mr Bhagat has ever written. I asked him if he had read any other author and was told that he found Chetan Bhagat the 'easiest' to read. And reading Chetan Bhagat had given him the confidence to start reading, and enjoying books in English. Which, for a young boy, with a shaky grasp of the language, was a huge positive. All said and done, Mr Bhagat's sales figures are the stuff writers get wet dreams about, so all those who bash him, write such best sellers and then do your
bashing.

It is being said that it is not sufficient to be a writer anymore. One needs to be actively and intensely involved in marketing and publicizing. What do you feel about this trend? Do you think it takes away the time that writers should be spending on improving their craft?

No. Let's be realistic. Marketing a book takes around a couple of months away from the rest of the year one has to write, and at the end of the day one has to make people aware of the product, ergo, the book. People will buy if they are curious about it, and they can be curious if they read a bit about it. But yes, I do feel, things have got a little too aggressive these days, authors are every where and at all times. But then that is a personal choice they do make, as to how much time and effort are they willing to devote to promoting their books. And yes, the days when the readers were content to have the authors as a jacket cover photograph are long gone. Readers want to interact with authors, see them as flesh and blood people and be able to relate with them. And if an author wants their work to sell, it seems to be the norm to do the promotions that go with the territory.

About the book

How did it feel to hold your first book in your hands?

You've been there before me, Parul. You know the feeling. It's like holding one's child in one's hands. Inexplicable joy, pride and an overwhelming sense of responsibility about what one has put out there
in the world.

For the ones who haven't read it, could you describe the book in a tweet?

A curious suburban housewife gets down to snooping about two murders in her neighbourhood & becomes 'The Reluctant Detective." (Ah well, use deckly long post for this tweet).

So it's not a detective novel, is it?

Nah. Not at all.

How do you feel about the cover? Who did the design? How has the response been?

It was designed by Mishta Roy. I was ambivalent about it initially. It looked lovely, and I am a shoe-aholic, so I did love it visually. So far, people seemed to have loved it. It has earned the moniker of 'Woh Jootey wali kitaab' at bookstores as the wondrous Aneela Babar of www.golkamra.blogspot.com tells us.

What do you want the reader to feel when they turn the last page of the book?

A sense of sadness that it is over. And a hope that there is another Kay story out soon.

Tell us about something about your central character that has not been covered in the book. Will Kanan Mehra make a comeback or are you done and dusted with her?

Something about Kanan Mehra that has not been covered in the book? Perhaps the fact that while she enjoys the life of leisure she leads, within herself there is this niggling fear that she should be doing something more with her time. Kanan Mehra should make a comeback. I can't be done and dusted with her.

So many books these days inspire movies? Have you dreamt about the same happening to the Reluctant Detective? Tell us about what this movie would be like. Which books do you feel have been successfully turned into movies?

I haven't actually. Not when I wrote it. But now that many people have read it they seem to think it would be great as a movie. And who am I to dissuade their train of thought. I am of the old school of thought that believes that few books can translate into a movie successfully. Amongst the classics are of course, Satyajit Ray's movies based on Tagore's works. Rebecca, Gone With The Wind, and more recently The Lord Of The Rings series, The Bridget Jones series and One Day. A lot many more elements need to come together for books to make the successful jump to the screen, than a regular screenplay does, to start with there is the reader's perception of a character who is described--and the actor chosen to play that character needs to fit in with that perception in order for that entire movie to work for the reader.

How do you feel when your book is classified as chick-lit?

Strangely enough, I haven't read much chicklit. One book of the Shopaholic series. The Devil Wears Prada. And a couple of Indian authors I read in the course of my professional reviewing. As for my book being classified chicklit, hah. It cuts away half my potential readers immediately so from a purely mercenary point of view that hurts. But other than that, if whoever reads it, enjoys it, I really don't have an issue with any label given to it.

About the author

You are almost forty, aren't you and have written for newspapers and magazines for many, many years. Why did it take this long for a full-length novel to arrive?

I am over forty. Yes. I have written for a while. Why did I not write a full length novel all these years. Simple. I never thought I could. Also, I was too busy trying to meet deadlines and ensure that the
business of living was taken care of.

Do you have an Ideal Reader in mind when you write? Tell us a little bit about inspiration, muse and the process of developing the story.
I don't actually. I just write. Inspiration for this particular story came from the demographic I come from, the mid thirties woman, who has been a career woman but, post marriage and babies, has given it all up to be a homemaker. And finds nothing to occupy herself with. I find this all around me, a huge pool of manpower, trained, efficient manpower that is out of the workforce because we have such terrible childcare in this country. So a lot of it was drawn from real life and the people around me, and I placed the protagonist in a situation that was close to home, and yet something that shook her daily routine. Nothing that was radical enough to shake her too much out of her comfort zone.

Which authors have inspired and influenced your writing? Which books are timeless reads for you? Which book was the pick of 2011?

Authors who have inspired me are as the cliche goes, too many to name. P G Wodehouse, Jerome K Jerome are my gods. After them Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Roald Dahl, Stephen King, J R R Tolkein. In some way, I think they've influenced my writing. Authors I enjoy going back to over and over again, strangely are the classics, Tolstoy, Charlotte Bronte, Hemingway, Steinbeck and the
like. My book for 2011 would be 11/22/63 by Stephen King and the Steve Jobs biography, oh yes, I finally finished it.

What else do you do other than writing up a storm?
I am bonded slave to my eight year old, I run a house (and that's a full time job), I write freelance articles, I look after the creative aspects of an advertising agency business I co-own with my husband and I do work for India Helps, a volunteer network I initiated that looks to provide long support and rehabilitation to disaster victims. We've worked with 26/11 CST victims as well as 13/7 blast victims.

Tell us about the facets of popular culture that fascinate you.

Movies. Surely. I love to see how the 'Bollywood' still exists and there is a breakaway movement within Bollywood for themes and movies which go contrary to the formula, which are very different in terms of treatment and narrative and still reach out to an audience.

Which is the strongest female voice you have ever heard in a book? Do you ever feel that is missing these days in books? Why is that happening?
The strongest female voice I have ever read in a book. That needs much narrowing down, I would say Toni Morrison's Beloved, Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. From the male authors, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Flaubert's Madame Bovary. In recent times, Sarita Mandanna's Tiger Hills had a fabulous female protagonist and a strong voice. There are strong female voices out there, but not as strong as any of these. I have wondered on this too. We don't have the kind of female characters in our books these days which could haunt you. I wonder why too, there are enough and more women out there writing.

Does your son read? Do children read enough these days? What can a parent do to get their children interested in reading? Which books are the best gifts to give to children?

My son, alas, is a non reader. I have done everything in my power to get him attracted to books but alas he doesn't take to the written word that easily. It is only now that he can be induced to sit down with a Roald Dahl or a Superhero book. I wish I had the answers to the next two questions. Of course, I blame this lack of interest in reading completely on the Y chromosome.

Could you share some interesting bits and pieces about you?

Hmm. My shelves have to be stacked colour coded. My primary uniform is black tee shirt and denims. I will die before being caught in public with a chipped manicure and no lipstick. I was an ideal student in school, terribly boring and well behaved, the nerd so to say. I cannot read one book at a time, I skip between two or three books. I also am ruthless with books I cannot read through and put them away forever. I cannot cannot bear the smell of raw onion and run the minute mile if it is in the vicinity. And yes, I am the world's official expert on horror movies.

What's next? What's on the wish-list? What themes would you like to explore for your future books?
More books with Kay. I think she can go on bumbling through various wierd situations. And I am writing something that is rather dark and grim, which I've been grappling with for a while. I don't think we have much horror writing in this country, and am putting down my name to rectify it. Mine, of course, wont be out and out horror. But perhaps more in the realm of Dahl and Poe, slightly macabre and haunting.

Given a choice, what would you take, popular success or critical acclaim? Why is that?

Both would be ideal but that never happens. But I'd go with popular success, it will pay the bills.

Anything else that you'd like to add?
BUY MY BOOK. EVERYONE. That's it.

Thank you, Kiran. That was fun!

***

Curious about The Reluctant Detective? Visit the blog. Yes, that's normally the answer.

Ek pyaali chai

2011-12-12T14:05:00.000+05:30

A cup of tea, let's just put it this way, gets the attention it deserves in this household. We have been struggling with the prefect brand of chai-patti for the longest time and the discussion has been on-going long before chai latte became de rigeur in cafe parlance. Bhai, Taj Mahal used to taste different back in the day, my mother claims. I normally pipe in with increased pesticide levels as an explanation for this moodiness on the part of Taj Mahal. We should try Tata Tea, muses the husband. Sometimes we succumb to the organic promise of goodness and buy the brown packets of Darjeeling and Assam tea sold in Fab India. Do you remember the Society Tea ads, the husband and I, memories still firmly rooted in the eighties, ask each other. A quick trip down memory lane comes free, even if chai patti does not. I'd like to try the tea the pavement chaiwallah sells, it smells divine, says my mother, gentility struggling with the taste-buds. They use Wagh Bakri, says Mahesh knowledgeably, the source of this information a mystery. They boil it over and over again, the levels of caffeine would be through the roof, I observe. We all look at each other in silence, hoping that one of us will lead the charge to drink this lovely sounding beverage.

Pramod overhears this discussion in the car one day. Oho, didi, he looks at me in the rear-view mirror, you should try the tea we drivers drink. The chaiwallah brings it to us at four sharp, it will wake you up alright! I am not the one sleeping at four, I want to remind Pramod but I am too distracted by the promise of good tea. Really, do you think I could, err, get a cup, I ask hopefully. He goes silent at this. Clearly, the memsahib perched on top of a car, sharing a cup of tea with the driver-folk is not the done thing. I sigh and look away. False propriety equals the loss of a perfect cuppa.

And all this before we arrive at the actual making of the tea. We have had an unnatural level of turnover with cooks and I have come around to the point of view that part of the reason is the premium this family places on their cup of tea. The cooks are not too bad to begin with. Sure they put in too much sugar or milk but those are minor problems which we hasten to put right. Don't boil the water so much, you have to steep the chai-patti, not scald it to death, someone will offer. Always cover the chai ka bhagona and let it brew, brew, brew, someone else will poetically add. Arrey suno, boil the milk separately and then add it to the chai, I will shout in the general direction of the kitchen. And make sure you remember that some like it hot! The result is normally undrinkable and fed up with our endless instructions and their inability to please, the cooks wave goodbye and never return.

There is just so much that can go wrong with tea that it is a miracle that there are people who can make the perfect cup at all. Brew it too little and it lacks flavour. Too much and the customers are complaining about the bitterness. My mother often gives up and blames the water in Mumbai for all that goes wrong in the kitchen. Paani hi kharaab hai, she throws up her hands and well, how does one beat that? The kharaab paani does not good tea make. There are other issues to be mulled over. To add ginger or not to add ginger. Ditto elaichi. What about sugar? One could always serve it separately, I suppose but that's not how masala chai is made, the purists clamour. The milk of course deserves a chapter of its own. Full fat means the ghee will float on top, making everyone screw their collective nose in disgust and return the cup to the kitchen. Fat-free is also not acceptable, given how watery that renders the end-product nectar. I wistfully look at the tea advertisements where the family is happily united over a cup of tea, marital alliances are being made, women are coming unto their own, mothers-in-law are being pleased, husbands are proclaiming their undying devotion to their wives. Needless to say, that is not really the case when chai is served in this household.

It is no surprise then that filter kaapi has made inroads into a kitchen that is home to the UP-centric kashiphal ki subzi and boondi ka raita. The first jolt to the heart in the morning is now provided by perfectly-brewed coffee. But come four in the evening and everyone's favourite discussion is back in the house. Thoda zyaada pakk gayi, nahin?

There we go again.

By The Water Cooler - Preview

2011-11-26T12:34:00.000+05:30

A little late in the day to be doing this but while trawling the internet for reviews of By The Water Cooler, I realized that Google Books offers a pretty good preview of the book. If you haven't had the chance to read it yet, and what a misfortune that is really, you should at once proceed to this link and read some for free.

Once done, you should then hop over to flipkart or infibeam or indiaplaza or kindle as the case may be and make me richer by...alright, let's not get into that. My depression medication is running a little low.

Keep a struggling writer in business, kind reader-folk.

No, it's not them

2011-11-14T12:28:00.000+05:30

It's not Kiran and it's not Y. They, in fact are the friends that I didn't want to drag into all the murkiness. Even so, best to clarify. My apologies to both these dear friends in whom I take immense pride.

An open letter to the plagiarist of my voice

2011-11-14T10:54:00.001+05:30

Dear Plagiarist,

I must admit, at first encounter I was misled, fooled. When you wrote in to express your admiration of my blog and my books, I was flattered. When you asked for my advice I told you what I knew in good faith. I did not read your blog. I hardly ever add new subscriptions to my Google Reader, preferring to stick with the old dozen or so, keeping their links warm even when they go on breaks. And so, I did not know what tricks you were up to. You were even less popular than me - there was not much chance of anyone figuring out what the hell was happening, that you were indeed the thief of my voice.

I am no stranger to plagiarism. It is rampant on the web. I have seen friends fall prey to it when entire blog posts have been lifted and passed off as the thief's own. I have bristled in indignation. We have all come down on such people in herds, criticizing them vociferously. In most cases, such people tuck tails between legs and slink off, only to resurface again somewhere else later.

But you, you don't lift passages. You lift my style. I wouldn't have known this had this eagle-eyed friend not pointed it out. It piqued my curiousity enough to read your blog and honestly, my heart sank. Just a random phrase here, a certain turn of phrase there and you were running a diluted Radio Parul of sorts. I tried to be flattered about it at first but the nauseating feeling continued. You see, inspiration needs to be credited. Had your banner declared in a bold font that your blog is nothing but a tribute to me - a fan-blog, if you please - it would have completely taken the edge off but now, I only feel robbed of my words.

Everyone knows what a tricky thing the writer's voice is. If we read and admire any author, we tend to get influenced by them. I have shouted about my own love for PG Wodehouse from the rooftops and every time a 'What, ho?' leaves my mouth or my pen, it is a tribute to that master of wit. But I am no Wodehouse, I am just a small-time writer with barely two books under my belt, none of them astounding successes. When you get inspired by me and pass it off as your own, you are doing me a great disservice.

It is easy to call someone out when direct lifts are being made. How do you call someone out when they take your life - your easy-going husband that contrasts your own hyper self, sleepless children, adventures in resorts, hotels, planes, your childhood and how you want it to influence your children, your difficulties with the help, your everlasting affair with books - and write about it in a strikingly similar style and show no remorse? Perhaps you, dear plagiarist, justify it to yourself saying that these are common themes and anyone could talk about them. The only problem is that you would be lying and you know it. Had it been a little less subtle, I would have had no qualms in reporting you and believe me, I know what I am talking about. I am a writer and understanding copyright laws is important for me. But you, you are copying themes, making a mish-mash and then reflecting in stolen glory.

I know there are bloggers out there who lead lives uncannily similar to ours. I don't want to name my friends in this letter (which is all about you, really) who could be my long-lost twins, so similar are our attitudes and values and yes, even lives. The only difference is - their voices are their own. And so, when they get book-deals and publish articles, I rejoice and revel in their success. When you do the same, it's a direct hit on my own creative process. If you need me to jog your memory, although I suspect there is no need for that, perhaps you should read this post once again and remember how you lifted it. And this. And this. And this. And Chapter 14, page 135-138 of Bringing Up Vasu - That First Year too. I know I am not the only one you copy from. It is only a matter of time before the others figure it out too. Do consider that.

So do me a favour - get real, get original and get a life. You cannot borrow from someone for all your life. Do the decent thing by me, by you and your family - I'm sure they can take no pride in someone who is swelling up like a toad (a completely original phrase that you will not find even on Google) in work that is only a derivation of the original. Derivation, without credit is also plagiarism, my friend. Plus don't you want to be the real thing for once in your life? Try it, it feels great.

Right then -ouch- we have reached the end. I have no doubt in my mind that you will read this, just like you do every word I ever write. I also have no doubt in my mind that you know who you are.

I wish you well, provided you stop your stealing ways.

Parul

A series of unfortunate events

2011-11-09T11:16:00.000+05:30

It all started with Bikram Yoga. It's pretty hardcore, this Yoga, sort of like a decathlon for the spiritually minded, done under conditions of very high heat and humidity. My problem of course is that I cannot resist a new type of exercise. I signed up for the year - the economics made it worthwhile only to go for the annual membership - and started my ninety minutes of torture a day. I loved it and like I do with most things, it was only a matter of time before I was overdoing it, going for a class every day of the week. I was looking and feeling great. This could go on.

Mahesh came home from work one day groaning and moaning and generally feeling under the weather. I braced up for a few days of nurse duty. I am the official horse of this family. I never fall sick, I like to boast, not to mention tempt fate. No headaches, no aches and pains, nothing. Just robust good health, often bordering on a bit too healthy, if you know what I mean.

The next day though I wanted to sleep during the day, something I am always loath to do. Sure enough, the thermometer showed a raging fever. I cursed Mahesh soundly for having passed his bug to me.

The following week we were supposed to be in Delhi for F1 and in Bangalore for Metallica. I was certain I would be well in time. How could I not? Metallica!

That week is a blur. The children kept wandering into our room every now and then, the baby quite obviously puzzled to find both parents in lamlet position. The help and my mum were all severely overworked because as we like to flatter ourselves, we contribute a lot to the running of this household.

Just in time for Diwali though, my fever broke and feeling slightly better I ventured out to buy some candles and do a bit of celebrity spotting. Just making sure you are still paying attention. One of my ribs on the left side hurt a bit, specially when I coughed. Nothing to worry about, said the good doctor, probably something you pulled while trying to cough out your lungs during the illness.

On Chhoti Diwali though, the pain was unbearable. I offered a fractured rib by way of an explanation, scaring the spouse enough to call the doctor again and ask him to do something. An x-ray and CT scan later, I was told to show up at the hospital and admit myself with immediate effect.

By the time I hobbled to the room I had been assigned, I could not walk. Resist the wheelchair, resist the wheelchair, resist the wheelchair.

I was diagnosed with pneumonia. Now, I was under the impression that pneumonia is something that happened when you fell into barfeela paani and so on. Clearly, Bollywood does not render an MD redundant. They performed a thrilling procedure called bronchoscopy that comprises sticking tubes down one's lungs to pull out vile matter. I wouldn't suggest you try it at home.

I watched TV all the time, missing my children, missing the concert, missing Diwali and I was obviously quite the trooper. I only whined for all my waking hours.

I stayed in that room for ten miserable days. Finally though, I was declared well enough to go home. Obviously with some reservations about Bikram Yoga.

I reached home and oh, the children had grown up. The thing is - I never really paid any attention to how they feel about me, sort of assuming that they take me for granted. That is what maintains world order, right? Mahesh and my mom had reported that they were very supportive. They understood that mom's unwell and will be back soon. No trouble, really, no trouble at all. Except that they have both clung to me ever since I came back home, not letting go, not leaving anything to chance, just making sure that I am around. And I can say this with some conviction - nothing beats feeling this important. I feed them and tell them stories and play with them and take them to the park - I haven't written a word since I got home - and yet, it doesn't seem to be enough. They are such cool people, you know, full of newness and wonder, brimming with ideas and concepts and just to see them, to watch them as animation marks each word is delightful in itself.

It's not going to last. It never does with me. I will soon forget this whole episode and start getting impatient over things, over mussed bedsheets, over writer's block, over petty insecurities and anxieties over money, career, appearances and so on. And that is why I am writing this here, just to remind myself that the Big Things are right here in my house, that perfection grows in my own backyard and that if ever I need proof that I am twice blessed, I need to walk where the building blocks are strewn over the carpet and the soft toys are spilling from the baskets.

Diyas, mithai and all sorts of goodness

2011-10-25T11:53:00.000+05:30

Wishing all the readers of Radio Parul the best Diwali ever. I sort of disappeared these last few days. I'd have liked to declare that that was because I jetsetted off to an exotic destination for a surprise holiday but the real reason was less glamorous and contained antibiotics galore. Yes, after ten days of high fever, a hacking cough that has left an aching rib in its wake and many, many pills later, I hope I am finally ready to kick back the covers and get some Diwali in the house, yo. These images are from before my illness. Latest ones should hit press anytime between today and tomorrow. Hope you guys are having yourselves the kind of Diwali you like, quiet, decadent, sinful, with/out the teeming millions, take your pick.

That's my cake stand. I don't bake much and so it needs to earn its living in other avataars.

Kartik. Made by Amma (M's mom). Appropriated by yours truly.

The laddoos hadn't been made yet. Ferraro Rochers fill in.

Annapoorna. I always wanted one of these in my dining room. Making sure we don't run out of rations and so on. These are inflationary times.

Hehe, what's Diwali without a little Instagram, eh?

Diwali kab ki hai

2011-10-08T21:32:00.000+05:30

That's the question we ask each other as soon as year starts to turn a little old. And now that it's really around the corner, I am wondering how to bring it in. I started with the silver odds and ends today. Maybe with some white jasmine, it will make for a good decor decision. M took some pictures while I cleaned the incense holder and the chaabi ka guchha and the anklets and so on. And my hands are having their own Scarlett O'Hara moment now ('you've been working like a mule'). Tomorrow, we will see what we can make of the wooden pieces. You know, if there is enough interest, maybe I will write a series of posts like this between now and Diwali, sort of like an inspirational mood-board for Diwali. Only if there is interest though (putting up pictures takes a lot of time). Let me know and I hope you are having yourselves a wonderful festive season.

Ek baar se dil nahin bharta

2011-10-03T12:20:00.000+05:30

In hindsight, having a second baby is probably the smartest thing I did. Well, it does not entirely counter the-world-is-upside-down-ness of having the first one but once that is done and you are left to sob at what has become of your life, having a second one is, all things told, a Very Good Idea. Before you flush the contraceptive down the toilet (assuming you are getting any in the first place, ha), you should know why.

The first and foremost reason is purely economical. Let's admit it, in the first flush of impending motherhood, we all did some really stupid things and there were some very evil people out there to take advantage of us, some of which rhymed with Pisher-Frice. We bought expensive equipment of all shapes and sizes, bottle-warmers and food-zappers and dabbas with and without lids in all the colours of the rainbow and jungle gym mobiles with matching playmats and very soon, you were contemplating a bigger house. I am sure people wonder why parents start talking of a bigger house as soon as the line turns pink. How much space can a new baby take? You can just bung in into a spare drawer, can't you? Well, here is the demystification all spelt out for you - it's not the baby, it's the baby's accessories. About the time baby is getting ready to blow out the candle on his first birthday cake, you will be coming to your senses. Why on earth did you spend this much money on...all this? Well, the only thing to do is to get another baby and force him to Lie. Down. On. That. Jungle. Gym. Dammit.

Then there is that whole concept of siblings keeping each other occupied. How do they do this? Do they come out singing 'Rakhi ke bandhan ko nibhaana bhaiyya more' from the womb? Do they know that their task as far as we are concerned is to keep themselves out of our hair? Do they love each others company to bits? No, haha, au contraire. The thing is - and this is the pillar on which your parenting strategies should be based - they want the same thing. Always. Be it the end of a cucumber meant to be discarded under normal circumstances or a half-chewed bookmark which they very helpfully took out of your novel or The Kohinoor, they both leap at the same object at the same time with the same intensity and can keep themselves busy drawing parallels between the Kashmir situation and their own. Two parties. Want same thing. What to do? Now, all you need to do is ignore the screams emanating from the playroom. Sort of like the UN.

Third reason. School admissions. Sibling points. Enough said.

Then there is the whole Senior Vs Fachha angle. Look, the first time around you were a babe in the woods. Inexperienced. Raw. Nervous. Bewildered. The second time around you can get the pleasure of looking at the first-timers and shaking your head in pity. People will come up at you and ask in wonder, two- two aa? How do you manage? In response, you can look in the distance, looking like the very picture of sobriety, propriety and piety. These cheap kicks help. When you are clutching at straws, that is.

It is also quite rewarding to press the older one into good behaviour because oh my god, child, you are the didi/bhaiyya...you must/cannot do that! And the younger one can always be asked to emulate the older one if they ever want to achieve the dizzying heights of accomplishment on display at that level. One day, beta/beti, you too will do potty in the bathroom.

Any other reasons why people should go for the second one? Feel free to share.

Love bookshelves?

2011-10-01T18:58:00.000+05:30

Then you really need to see this: http://bookshelfporn.com/

What colour is October?

2011-09-29T16:30:00.000+05:30

What colour is October, asked the child today. These are the parts I am unprepared for. I am used to the other part, specially since I mentally gave up on ever getting eight straight hours of sleep in my life. I think I also understand food and its importance as an essential weapon in any child's armour. I get the 'I am bored' too and normally address it as any self-respecting mother should, which is with complete empathy and zero activity. What? Boredom fosters creativity, don't you know. At least my parents broadly held that view and we turned out to be....well, boring.

But what colour is October? Is this my cue to break out some hackneyed prose? October is the colour of festivals, my love, I could answer, fighting hard to keep a straight face. It is the orange of the marigold and the white of the jasmine. It is the red of the flame that lights the diyas, the red of the Pujo pandal next door and the red of the gerbera that will soon float in the brass urli that I will pull out for Diwali. It is the colour of good over evil, son and of unity in diversity. I could say all this and it would sound most evocative, wah wah but it would mean nothing.

So what is the colour of October? I could dive into memories I suppose and call to mind the Octobers gone by and try very hard to remember what colour they were. Misty white, with that famous nip in the air heralding the arrival of winters in right earnest? All the colours of the rainbow drizzled onto razais that were being brought out to see the sun before they could be pressed into service? Oranges and peanuts, perhaps. Or the murky brown of tea, endless cups of it.

I could delve into synesthetics too, substituting one sense for another and ask myself how Octobers smell. Wood-smoky, isn't it, brown and autumnal.

What colour is October, he asks again. I flip the calendar to the next month. He looks at it, understands and smiles. October is purple, he says.

Now you know.

Mausam and many other things

2011-09-24T13:07:00.000+05:30

I sometimes get crushes over cities. We all do. Books have got a lot to do with it. Some authors have the talent to transport us to the towns they write about and once we turn the last page, we find ourselves missing the streets and cafes and people of these places that we have never visited. It was Marrakesh some time back. Now it is Edinburgh. And Varanasi. I have never been to either. Edinburgh is of course due to the deluge of Alexander McCall Smith novels. I find myself fantasizing about buying sun-dried tomatoes from Valvona and Crolla and drinking espresso at Big Lou's cafe (unlikely as in real life I am a Mocha kind of person, not to mention the fictional nature of the cafe) and walking down Princes Street. You know how newly-learnt words keep popping up from everywhere, it seems that cities that we would like to know better do the same. And so, when we sat down to watch the not-so-awesome Mausam yesterday (more on that later), I was quite excited to note that parts of it were shot in Edinburgh. Beautiful, beautiful Edinburgh. Any readers there? Hello, I say. Let's have an Irn-Bru sometime, yes? (Note to self: Don't go reading Trainspotting now.)

My other love-interest is Varanasi. Benaras. Yes, of the pan and saris and the ghats and the aartis and the colourful language and the food. This one is obviously within reach and I was exploring flight and hotel options before sitting down to writing this post. I finished the first draft of that novel, you know and I am letting it stew for a week before sitting down with it again and figuring out the glaring anomalies and the unforgiveable errors, all this while the dreams of Benaras running at the back of the mind. I don't even know if I should just let this day-dream be, having spent enough time in UP to know that the reality will be nowhere near what I imagine it to be. And yet....

Also, while the novel stews, I can pay some long-due attention to my poor, neglected little blog.

The children. The boy is in Singapore with his father. The house is quieter, emptier, lacking an essential ingredient let's say. Maybe next year, M can take both of them for a vacation and then, well, I don't know what I would do. Something fun, I suppose though you would be correct in betting on moping. And consuming junk food.

So anyway, what was wrong with Mausam? *SPOILER ALERT*

I love Pankaj Kapur. His turn as Jehangir Khan or Abbaji in Maqbool is probably one of the finest acts in Indian cinema. (I know I am sounding like a pundit here but indulge me, won't you?) And so, when he takes on the mantle of director, we - perhaps unfairly - automatically expect great things. The problem with Mausam is that it's set between 1992 and 2000's but it's released in the time of Facebook where finding someone, anyone takes only minutes. I think the audience of Mausam will be polarised basis their willingness to suspend disbelief. We love love stories, we do and it's pretty enough a film I suppose with even our jaded Punjab da pind looking fresher than they have in the longest time. But how many times can two people miss each other? Why is it so difficult to track down a squadron leader of our air-force specially when he has not gone missing behind enemy lines? Why is there no forwarding address left? What is the point of Harry's damaged hand in the story? The problem is not that there should be answers to these questions, the problem in fact is that we are asking these questions in the first place. The film doesn't lift you and make you an invisible participant in the goings-on. Comparisons are odious but I will still stick my neck out and say that the acting gene got mutated from the senior Kapur to the junior. (I of course, am talking about Shahid, not Sonam, whose primary task is to look pretty and wraith-like.) The high point of the film for me was the fine rendition of Abhi Na Jaao Chhor Kar from Hum Dono. I really just hope Pankaj Kapur acts a lot more, directing be damned.

It was not a day for the arts. After the debacle of Mausam in the morning, my mum still had a Jagjit Singh concert to look forward to last evening. A bit of a fan, she had prepared her requests for the ghazal-maestro and was sent off in the evening by Raagu and her amma. As it happened. Mr Singh suffered a brain haemorrhage yesterday and has been admitted to Lilavati Hospital. Hope he feels better soon.

The street - II

2011-09-19T13:27:00.000+05:30

I stood by the street again and looked around nosily, hoping for bits and pieces of people’s life-stories to spill out of them as they walked by, pieces that they reveal in their clothes and their shoes and their conversations on their cell-phones. There is a temple next to the bus-stop and as is probably quotidian, a boy walked out of the gates carrying a pot of water, flowers floating on the top, probably the remains of the morning aarti. He walked over to the tree next to me and poured the whole thing, water, flowers, prasaad et al into the roots and walked away. A couple of men walked over and one of them sat down on the small boundary that the government has built around the tree. One of them took out a box of matches and I assumed he would light a diya right there, probably recite a mantra. After all, it is not unusual to see men offering water to the sun in the morning, holding their hands up and pouring the water down as the morning rays catch the water and wink at us. And then there are the barefoot pious who walk to Siddhi Vinayak. Prayers and rituals are all around us.

This tree too had been claimed by the temple. There were threads around it and red sindoor on its brown bark and flowers strewn all around. Hark back to the Aryan ages, really. But the men were not there to say their prayers. The one with the matchbox struck a match and held it out to the other, to light his cigarette. They settled down to enjoy their nicotine break. Right on cue, a homeless woman, fat, dirty with matted hair that has probably never been washed appeared on the scene. She started mucking about in the soil of the tree and uncovered two bananas. Then she spotted the men and started bristling. Hey you, she started off, what do you think you are doing. Smoking next to the holy tree? Is that done? Wrong, wrong, wrong!

I have seen this woman about. She is always pregnant. Where does she have her babies, I once asked my mother because mothers, as you know have all the answers. By the roadside, said my mother with supreme confidence. I was haunted by that response for sometime.

And there she was now, giving quite an earful to the two men. It was rather enjoyable to see this reversal in the power-equation. The two discomfited men now rose to their feet. They would have probably shooed this woman off on any other day, turning up their nose at her bedraggled state. They looked awfully guilty now though. Caught on the wrong foot! Sitting and smoking near a holy tree! What has the world come to? Finally, the homeless woman had her fill of scolding the two office-goers. Scratching her head and clutching her bananas, she walked off, still muttering under her breath. The school-bus arrived and I walked home too wondering about socio-economic classes and religion and propriety.

We meet again, dear reader

2011-09-11T18:51:00.000+05:30

Bit of a break there. There could be many reasons for the absence. I have been falling asleep at nine, eight-thirty, hell even eight, basically thirty seconds after the children go to bed. Right party animal I am turning out to be. I look back sometimes, at my own (mercifully) brief periods of wild partying and find myself tiring even at the memory so perhaps it is just as well.

It goes without saying that I am exhausted by the end of each day.

The writing goes well and I hope there is a bunch of readers out there who are waiting for the next novel, that I am not doing all this in vain though after five years of absence from real office environment, I don’t think I have any options left.

It’s Ganpati Visarjan today and the drums –dhols, actually - are resounding all over the city. I find myself a little removed from the whole thing, as I am perhaps from pretty much any festival. M is flying out tonight to London and is wondering how early he ought to leave for the airport to make it for the two o’clock flight. He looks so distressed at all the travel he has been doing. Except Hong Kong, which was really rather nice. It’s a great city to live in and like always, I found myself comparing Mumbai unfavourably with it upon my return. I bet Mumbai wasn’t too happy to find me back either. If you don’t like it, move – like unimaginative people who don’t appreciate such sentiments like to say.

Hong Kong is not like Singapore, I thought. Or like Bangkok. It’s tres international in look and feel and vibe. We stayed at my sister’s for a couple of days, in an absolutely ravishing apartment with the sea splashing down a few feet away from the building, before moving to Disneyland. I buy into the whole Disney thing completely. I have no reservations in hanging my cynical hat at one of the Mickey-shaped hat-stands at the entrance - only metaphorical, though the rivets in the pavement really are Mickey-shaped, you know. The rides were pretty average and I left my beautiful new sunglasses behind at the Space Mountain ride. Steep price to pay for a below-desired adrenaline level ride really but I was more absent-minded than usual. The Lion King show was pretty astounding though. We went back for the parade the next day and it is a bit of a shock to see the Cinderella and Snow White of our childhood suddenly assume an Asian persona and identity. Complicated, these things.

And then there was Macau which would be a nice place for a bit of debauchery I suppose for two young people but when you are traveling with two small children, the highlight of the trip becomes the ferry ride, the rocking movement of which manages to put the baby to sleep. The Venetian is a pretty nice hotel, plush and large and quite golden really but when M went to the casino after putting the two kids (and me) to bed, he found it all not really to his taste and he came back via a trip to Starbucks. I had to let him in, some problem with the key and we stayed up for a while, eating the potato pie that he had brought and looking out at the lights of that strange city-country, full of casinos and not much else. The world is such an intoxicating place and one can get addicted to travel, the more you see, the more you want to see.

Mere Brother Ki Dulhan. Pure candy floss of course but nicely flavoured. Not unputdownable, unlike Bodyguard which was eminently putdownable and never to be picked up again.

Anyway, so a short, rambling post just to write something in the blog. It’s been more than a month since I last wrote. Well, you do know I wouldn’t go away without saying a proper goodbye and this isn’t it.

And again....

2011-08-08T13:27:00.004+05:30

That post about Mumbai has appeared in today's DNA.

http://epaper.dnaindia.com/epapermain.aspx?queryed=9&username=&useremailid=&parenteditioncode=9&eddate=8%2f8%2f2011

Page 6, if the link is not working.

In the papers today

2011-08-07T11:41:00.002+05:30

Feel free to skip this if you don't want to see me staring at you in the face.

http://www.deccanchronicle.com/channels/lifestyle/books/writers-block-868

Same interview in Asian Age:

http://www.asianage.com/parul-sharma-743

Big bang is not just a balloon bursting

2011-08-03T16:34:00.000+05:30

Since we are covering the sights of Mumbai and getting over our issues with the city, one weekend at a time, it was only a matter of time before Nehru Planetarium popped up in the iterinary. Ever since I planned the trip and started telling people about it, I met an entirely new way to say the word - planet-oh-rium. It was difficult to say if this was the long-lost twin of planetarium but I knew that my journey towards growing up was well on its way that it did not matter. Not too much anyway. Planetarium, planetorium, do you want to come along to that place where they show the stars and the skies, that is the question.

Five hundred seats for the 3 pm show and a boastful House Full sign in the ticket window. Was astronomy facing a resurgence of sorts? Turned out, two schools had decided to take their students for the show. The teeming millions, at least some of us, were there before the show started. Like hungry sparrows, everyone was pecking at food, the crumbs making their way to the floor before making their way to the birds that hovered around. It was pouring, like it always is these days but people had braved the inclement weather to turn up. There was a model of a GSLV on display. Adi dutifully counted down and waited for blast-off but was most mature about the rocket's reluctance to launch into space.

There is an inscription at the door, thanking the kind folks from the Birla group for contributing to the planetarium. A good cause to donate to, I must say.

We went inside. There were niches in the wall in the hall where you could weigh yourself as per the gravitational pull of different planets. Instant tip for weight loss - weigh yourself on the moon. Also works really well for ageing.

What a show. It dwarfs you, like it is intended to I guess. It's all very scientific and it strips the universe of romance. It is all so magnificent, so vast, so insurmountable, and so very matter-of-fact. It's all energy, then matter. Sure there are constellations, the Pegasus and the Orion and the Ursa Major or the Saptarishi Mandal and sure you have heard stories about them or heard astrologers predict your future based on the position of the planets. But wait a second, let us take you eighty light years towards the planets and let's see what you now think, missy. Not recognizing any familiar shapes anymore, are we? The Big Bang, or the representation of it scared the little boy, though he was quite brave about the whole thing. It can get a little overwhelming. That dome and stars dying to give rise to supernovas and galaxies coming into being - it's all quite baffling. The cosmos often comes hurtling down at you and while it is delightful for grown-ups, it's easy to understand why a little one may seek his mother's hand in the dark.

As for me, I loved it. In fact, I'd like to go again sometime. Nothing like a generous dose of the cosmos to make one feel insignificant, I say. Maybe I will even stop reading my monthly horoscope at astrologyzone.com

Of Mumbai, of India

2011-07-28T11:28:00.000+05:30

I bitch about Mumbai a lot. It is dirty and incomprehensible and bursting at the seams with humanity, adding more all the time, everyday. There is no fit between our personalities. Mumbai likes it raw and in your face and stripped of all beauty. I like to cover all ugliness as best as I can. But we are stuck to each other for good. I feel guilty about criticizing it, it being my karmabhoomi after all but still, ranting against it is in my grain. We have an uneasy relationship at best. I think it knows that I'd rather be in a more intimate town, less people, cobbled streets and pretty roadside cafes. I went to Brugge once and after wandering the streets for an hour, wondered where all the people were. I will never have that happy problem here. My sister spent some time in Edinburgh and said that I would have liked it. Basically, I have not been giving Mumbai a chance and that's unfair, I decided. My children were born here, for them, it is also the janmabhoomi, they know no other home. It occurred to me that maybe I should take them to the parts that I do like. Our first step was Prince of Wales museum. I have written about it here. It was incredible to hear Adi look at the buildings of South Bombay and turn to me with shining eyes and say, I like those buildings, mama, they are so old. I could have burst open with joy. I spend so much time controlling his life, the toys he plays with, the shows he watches, the children he makes friends with that I have forgotten that there are some things that I have passed on to him just by the virtue of being his mother. When I look back at these years, I know that 'look, mama, old buildings' will be one of the moments I will remember and cherish. I took him to the Gateway of India and tried to give him a mini history lesson. He heard me out patiently and said, yes, but what is on the other side of the gate? Could we go there? We could but we'd fall into the sea, I said. Then we bought him lunch at the Taj. Most posh, though I cannot go into the Taj without remembering the horror of the attacks. The city has been peppered with bomb blasts as invisible landmarks. Look at that, that is the Bombay Stock Exchange, the artery that pumps money into this economy, it was attacked in 1993. That is The Oberoi Hotel, terrorists struck there too and look, this is Dadar station, close to your mum's ex-office, there were blasts in trains there too.

How do you explain a country to your children when you don't understand it yourself?

The weekend after the museum-trip, I took them to Taraporewala Aquarium. He liked the fish but was most fascinated by the whale skeleton on display, The aquarium is somewhat clean, there are signs everywhere exhorting people not to spit. How is it that we have been civilized for five thousand years but still don't know enough not to spit in the open? I read in a book by Shivani once that an old woman had silenced a couple of English ruffians who were troubling two young girls travelling with her with just a few words - this is very un-British of you. I wonder if we have ever responded to being called un-Indian as an insult. I watched this documentary recently. Nothing new there, what baffles me is how we went from there to here. How did we forget so much?

There are potholes on the streets right outside where I live, the manhole covers are missing on the pavement. There are claims made that complaints can be registered online. I did so. It's been many days but no one has responded. I am determined not to ask of my friends - arrey, BMC mein kissi ko jaante ho kya? I am determined to walk the right path, if only to see how long it takes. My next step is our ward representative. Just finding his name is a struggle. If even that fails, I will ask to see Priya Dutt, the MP from Bandra. That I will have it sorted out, I have no doubt.

After the aquarium visit, the family was carted off to Swati Snacks, that divine cornerstone of the chaat culture in this part of the nation. Much food was consumed.

This is only the beginning. When you start, you figure there is just so much to absorb. The malls don't stand a chance.

Mumbai, you bloody beauty, I continue to be in two minds about you.

The street

2011-07-21T21:44:00.001+05:30

I spent some time out on the street today. I don't walk anywhere anymore. I don't even drive. I have become the much-dreaded, much-reviled 'Driver, gaadi laana' memsaab. Anyway, the driver in question was on leave today. Although Pramod, well, his job description goes much beyond driving, doesn't it? He is what Jeeves was to Bertram. I am Bertram, yes, in my bumbling, absent-minded ways. But I like to flatter myself that those are traits borne of my writerly life. Who knows where the truth lies? To come back to the point, I went to pick up Adi from his school-bus. I was terrified I'd forget and recently Padma had told me a story about how a kid from a nearby school had been dropped off at his regular stop. Except that no one had come to pick up him. He was found later, crying and bewildered, by some passerby who noted the mobile number given on his id card and called the parents. Yes, these are the stories that parents have to live with. It's a surprise we are able to sleep at nights at all. And so I reached half an hour in advance. Fortunately I'd carried my book along. Corduroy Mansions by Alexander McCall Smith for those interested in details. Fine book, for those interested in reviews. I stood under a tree on the pavement and tried to focus on the text but given that I normally read in the plush confines of the car, this turned out to be awkward. I gave up after some time and looked up and down Linking Road and decided to people-watch instead. A few minutes later, the car right next to me, in the same spot where we park everyday got towed away. It was all most exciting. Three lithe young men in dirty overalls got down and rammed their rods of steel under the car. One of them opened the door-lock in a surprisingly swift and effortless move with a steel ruler, released the parking gear and lo, the car was gone. Lo, as in take, aye lo, yeh toh gaadi le gaye. Lo, as in lo and behold too. Being rather shamefully mean, I wanted to hang around to see the car owner turn up and to witness his expression of dismay which I thought would be most comical. Then I remembered how years back, my own car had been towed away and suddenly things were not that funny anymore. I looked away and saw rats diving into the gutter than runs underneath the pavement. How removed I am from this world, how consciously I avoid all forms of dirt and filth. What an escapist I am, in my life and in my writing. Just no place for the ugliness of the world. Even the book that I am reading, its comforting presence under my arm is delicious because it is gentle, because it describes a London that is warm and people that are far from being cynical. A cyclinder-wallah passed by, in that funny facing-the-wrong-way cart of his, filled with LPG cylinders. He stopped abruptly by the side of the road and took out an empty cylinder and placed it on the pavement. Then he sat down on it and took out his snack, a vada-pav wrapped in a bit of newspaper. He ate quietly and without hurry and I looked at him surreptitiously, aware that it was rude to stare while he ate but unable to help myself. A couple of other parents arrive and I try to make conversation, a little awkward like I always am around strangers but determined to forge ahead anyway. The school bus pulls up and the kids swarm down. Should we take a rickshaw home, I ask the sweaty, tired little boy with his hand in mine. He looks up at me and I am startled by the eyes once again, so much like mine. Naah, let's walk. And so we do.

Leela

2011-07-21T16:31:00.000+05:30

I picked up the book because it was co-authored by the brilliant Jerry Pinto. For that, and for the pretty face on the cover.

The pretty face belonged to Leela Naidu, once described by Vogue as one of the most beautiful women in the world. I did not really know anything about this woman but Jerry's writing is always insightful and humorous and we would see who this Leela was.

I soon figured that Leela had already touched my life on various occasions.

She had played the role of Dona Maria Souza-Soares in Trikaal, one of those movies that have haunted and puzzled me since childhood.

She had played Anuradha in the black and white film of the same name that stole my heart, one late night while I watched television on my own.

She was also the wife in The Householder. I always meant to check who the actress was when I went through a Merchant-Ivory phase, watching everything that they had made. Somehow I forgot to do it. The lapse may have been because the gorgeous Shashi Kapoor played the lead.

Leela: A Patchwork Life is the story of a woman with a sometimes charmed, often chequered life. She was born to a leading Indian scientist and a French journalist. She travelled and lived all over the world with them. She married Tikki Oberoi, yes, of the Oberoi hotels. She also married Dom Moraes, the poet. She spoke French and English and Hindi and read poetry and played the piano and loved Chopin and had twins and experienced firsthand racism of the worst kind while she was still a child and made documentaries for JRD Tata and met Mahatma Gandhi when she expected to meet Mickey Mouse and more. Much more. Hers was a life full of experiences and people and wonder.

It is difficult not to admire her. It is more difficult not to envy her. All that beauty, elegance, enigma, spirit and courage seemed to be too much to be fitted into one slim frame. It seems to be a strange coincidence that she died a day apart from Gayatri Devi, that other blend of the Indian and European.

The book drew me in completely and I was often tempted to check or re-check the various literary and cinematic references contained within. When I finished the book, I was saddened, feeling as though I had witnessed the sorrow that she had experienced in the loss of her children, of her parents. There is a quality of the unattainable about the story too, almost as if she was flowing with the flow but hoped to find salvation along the way. Perhaps she was too sensitive to this world but she also did something about things that affected her. It is ironic that she did not want the narrative to be one of female pain and yet, the strains of melancholy are almost palpable, in spite of the numerous funny anecdotes that the book is peppered with, including one with a naked Russian Count.

I am planning to watch and re-watch some of her films next. I may have found my next obsession. Specially since I am done with Woody Allen, having watched every single movie the man ever made over the last few weeks.

This is not a review, not by a long shot. There's something to be said about Jerry Pinto that he was able to move away completely from the book and make it Leela's story by Leela. By the time I turned the last page, I had forgotten why I had picked up the book in the first place.

On the first day of school

2011-07-15T16:10:00.000+05:30

The iDiva column will be something of a regular feature from now on. Do read the one about the first day of school here and I have no Facebook likes yet so press that button, yes?

I can't believe I just said that.

Misfit

2011-07-08T15:53:00.000+05:30

I recently showed up at the gym where I keep an annual membership. The security guard took one look at me and moved to block the door. Under 'reason for refusal of admittance' he wrote - have never seen her before. It took some convincing before I was finally let through the glass doors behind which lay the key to eternal youth and fitness.

Gyms are funny places. You just need to take a look around before you start seeing the broad types of people who haunt these centers. There are the walking-talking advertisements of gyms as a whole. Found in both male and female types, these folks have a simple and single motive - to make others feel awful about the way they look. You will be trudging along on the treadmill, taking a look every now and then at the timer and wondering if it was working alright because it seemed to be terribly slow before one of these specimens swoops down on the next machine. They will start gliding at speeds that make you giddy and then decide that they had a good warm-up and now may be a good time to push it a little bit. This is when they fire themselves with a bit of plutonium and really start to whizz by. I often take my glasses off at this point and clean them, convinced that the blurry vision is caused by an errant speck of dust. It isn't. It is just Ben Johnson here running as if chased by a packs of Dobes.

Then there are the sulks. These people don't want to come to the gym. They would much rather have a wrestle with the Dobes once they are done with the racers above. But their doctor thinks otherwise and the family, bloody ingrates are in cahoots with the medicine wo/man. They move around slowly and look at everyone with such mournful eyes that the sun gets blighted by a grey cloud cover and everyone feels that they will never be happy again. I have often seen the people who work out next to the sulks burst into howls of misery, such is their power to suck joy out of life.

There are some young men and women who probably treat the gym as a place to scope the dating field. They are dressed attractively and hair is opened and tied up many, many times, sometimes with a becoming swish of the head. Make-up is in evidence and lashes are fluttered. The men are obviously very humorous because these young ladies are often found in the throes of helpless giggles.

There are also the models. We are not worthy, the gym people want to scream and fall down at their feet. With their perfect legs and toned midriffs, the models keep to themselves, working out with a stern 'we are people too' look on their faces.

I could also tell you about the corporate paunch and the housewifely saddle-bags but it is not in my nature to be mean.

The first step in the noble endeavour to regain fitness is obviously weight training. Obvious to the trainer, that is. The first week was tough. The trainer would hand me some weights and ask me to rock some squats or burpees or presses or *insert choice of torture*. Two minutes later, he would tell me that I could start whenever I was ready. I am ready, I squeaked from under the weights, but I don't think they want to be lifted. Tch, tch, went the trainer, look at you, long break, no stamina, no yoga also aa, oho, oho, chalo koi nahin, we will make double the effort.

Double the effort is trainer-speak for double the pain.

I think I go into some kind of an exercise-induced trance once the session is over. Spirits, the evil kind, mind, take over my body and soul and everything in between and demand sacrifice. We want carbs, they chant, bring forth a loaf of bread and sacrifice it at the altar of your fitness. And don't forget the butter. I don't really want to eat bread, or pasta, or paranthas, or anything that tastes super-duper divinely delicious, as long time readers will testify, with or without their hands on Jane Fonda DVDs. But there's only so much I can do with the supernatural. Only after I have stuffed myself to the gills are the spirits somewhat appeased. Then I need to take a long, long nap to shrug off the remaining effects because one cannot really be too careful with these things. I normally wake up after four hours with a 'where am I' trembling on my lips and a ravenous appetite brought forth by the exorcism.

A few days later after starting the program, I weighed myself with the trainer watching on. And the fat, like a loyal friend, had stuck to me though thick and thin. The trainer looked at the scales with a sense of amazement and wonder misting his eyes. I too tried to look puzzled. What happened, what happened, he moaned. No clue, I said because I know him to be a man of science and logic and my account of the ghost figures wouldn't have gone down very well. I think this impacted the good man a great deal. He has since decided that personal training is too fast-paced a profession for him and has taken to one-legged yoga in the upper hills of the Himalayas. Beats the traffic, I say.

I love exercise and cannot recommend it enough.

Yes, we do need an education

2011-07-01T10:25:00.000+05:30

It's been a strange mish-mash of a week. Adi started kindergarten. At a big school. The kind with strict teachers and seniors and prefects and tiffin boxes and diaries that need to be checked. I did the drop and pick-up. I always think that he would have a tough time letting go of me, giving myself more than is due clearly. He didn't cling when he was two and started playschool and he didn't look back now. The teacher is always the greater goddess.

This was the first time I was forced into the whole school-gate parent phenomenon and I found myself surrounded by hoardes of mothers, each with her own set of insecurities and anxieties and nervousness. We all give ourselves too much credit, don't we, believing that we can and should control each and every part of our children's destinies. We are actually just the folks who buy the post-school lollipops.

I looked at my boy and he looked so tiny in that huge auditorium. I looked at the prefects and had a quick surge of nostalgia, of remembering just how important that was back in the day.

I accompanied him in the school bus amidst much excitement from him. He peers at every single bus on the road, hoping that it is his. Come Monday and there will be no Mama to remind him to take his school bag, assuming of course that she remembers that little detail.

I am struggling with the tiffin, figuring out the perfect meal that will be
1. not messy
2. not sticky
3. not dry
4. not oily
5. palatable
I have finally zeroed in on cut fruit and have since had the pleasure of opening the dabba to find it empty.

I looked at the kids in the school bus and they looked perfectly normal to me. Somehow we are always being told that kids are beyond comprehension these days. I think at best they are significantly more informed than we were, what with the internet exploding and similar. A ten-year old was immersed in an Agatha Christie, a couple of younger boys were discussing Raold Dahl. A very charming young thing told me that she likes reading science fantasy fiction. As far as I am concerned, kids who are reading will do just fine. Books even out a lot of wrinkles in the otherwise messy fabric of life. Just a personal belief, that's all.

I come home to find that the little one has been driving Mahesh bananas.After Adi steps out, she insists on packing a bag with a tiffin-box and a water-bottle, puts on her shoes and points at the door and screams. Today I had to take her out for a drive just so she would quieten down for a few minutes. This may be taking hero-worship to a different level. I think we may need to send her to preschool earlier than was planned. Tragic. I wanted to hold on to her a little while longer. It's a paradox of parenthood - you wait for the time they would start school and let you have a few free minutes to do your own thing and then when they do, you find that wasting time on the internet is not that fantastic after all.

Yes, I am writing. The novel is well into its middle now. I have no idea how it's reading. Mahesh likes it but well, he likes staying in this house.

Last evening Adi told me that he needed to buy a Mumbai Indians t-shirt. So we went to a nearby store and he helped pick out a Metallica tee for me too. I am preparing for the concert, you see.

Our tomatoes don't get squashed anymore

2011-06-17T12:36:00.000+05:30

They seem to be built of steel. I didn't see this myself but apparently a few days ago, there was a news report on the telly on how hundreds of kilos of tomatoes are stuffed inside trucks and then a hundred people sit on top of them and even then they keep their shape (the tomatoes, not the men). Like you, I have also seen hundreds of tomatoes stuffed into plastic crates in supermarkets that don't show any sign of wear and tear. Quite naturally, these same tomatoes also don't burst open and send forth juicy trails that need to be wiped off with a napkin or the back of a hand, depending on how you eat. They have thick skins and no flavour. They look pretty, cut into perfect slices for a plate of salad but they do taste quite, how we say this politely, crappy.

I crave for the tastes of my childhood. The gobhi that doesn't taste like plastic. The kheera that can be bitter sometimes. The papaya that has not been artificially ripened. The brinjals that don't have an unnatural, waxy shine to them. The tarbooz (watermelon) that does not leave a bitter after-taste in the mouth. I picked up some veggies from a farmer's market in Bandra recently and I wanted to cry with happiness at just how divine they tasted.

I have forgotten how to eat according to the season. I have forgotten the amazing taste of new potatoes. Melons are not ripened by the hot loo winds and so they are as readily available while it's pouring here as they are in the hot summer months. Mangoes are around in winters too but damn, they don't taste the same. California apples, kiwis, figs and fruit from all over the world is available at the premium food store around the corner. I get a twinge about my carbon footprint but stash it away with the rest of the things to be guilty about and put the pack of 'foreign cherries' in my shopping basket anyway.

Pesticides in everything. We know that. We are a third-world country with too many hungry mouths to feed but still, this may not enough to justify the killing fields of Punjab.

I have been trying to switch to organic fruit and vegetables, more so ever since I found this wonderful website run by the amazing Raj Ganpath who advocates eating real food (I hope to post my own success story about fat loss and strength gain soon).

The thing is, even leaving the expense part aside, the options in Mumbai seem to be limited. Thanks to Brown Paper Bag Weekend, I learnt about MOFCA sometime back. What is MOFCA?

MOFCA is Mumbai Organic Farmers and Consumers Association (MOFCA)

MOFCA is a cooperative association of organic farmers (working within a 200 km radius of Mumbai) working collectively with consumers from Mumbai towards the betterment of local seasonal organic food grown and consumed within our region.

I tried to register for their Hari-Bhari Tokri last season. Unfortunately they had already reached their numbers. This season though I have registered and am quite looking forward to getting some real bel-waali (vegetables that grow on vines) subziyaan like bhindi, gourds, lauki and karela. I attended a meeting last evening and they seem to be doing some good work. They don't have a website yet but here's a concept note that they had mailed across that will explain their ideology.

Hari Bhari Tokri- Version 2.0
From the experiences and learnings of the first season we would now like to present you with an updated proposal; Hari Bhari Tokri - Version 2.0

Before we get into the details we would like to reiterate the goals we had set before ourselves at the beginning of the first season; i.e. the promotion of sustainable farming methods in the Greater Mumbai area through;

Demonstration and sharing of sustainable farming techniques.
Creation of an alternative market model with shared risk and fair
prices for farmers and consumers.
Consumer education in order to create and sustain the demand for
Seasonal Local Organic food.

At the onset of our next season, we would like to keep these goals as
primary and try and stay away from becoming “just another vegetable
vendor”.

Starting this season we propose the concept of “Farm Sharing”.

20 farmers have pledged their lands and labour to the practice of sustainable farming methods of cultivation for this upcoming monsoon season (2011).
MOFCA will support them with sharing of technical know-how and other
farming resources, creating an assured market and a fair, consistent price for their produce and creating and managing the supply chain logistics.

In order to sustain this project MOFCA is looking for shareholders for
the upcoming season. As shareholders you will be helping to promote
sustainable farming throughout the community. In return you will have
access to part of the produce grown by the farmers.

We have available to us a total of 4 acres of farm land, cultivated by the 20 farmers partnering with us for this season. We are estimating a yield of 100 kg. / week from each acre which will give us a total of approximately 400 kilos. We have 200 farm shares available this season for public issue.

Being a Shareholder means:

You share both risks and rewards

Traditionally, farmers have borne the brunt of nature's vagaries while
consumers have become increasingly disconnected from the process of
food production, and from the human and ecological communities that
support this process. Shareholding is the first step towards restoring
the balance and harmony in our local food web.

As a consumer-shareholder, each week during harvest time you will
receive a share of the harvest. The cost of this is included in the share
price for the season and is fixed for its duration so as to be fair to
both farmer and consumer. Variety and bumper yields are our shared
rewards and scarcity and losses, our shared risks. In all situations, an
uncertain and variable harvest is the medium through which we learn
to respect Nature and to live in community.

Consumers and farmers have the opportunity to know each
other

The farmers will know who’s eating the food they are growing; and
the consumer will have some peace of mind, knowing exactly how and
who is growing the food that their family is eating.

You help partnered farmers to better plan their growing cycle.

Wastages that occur from excess produce not being sold will be
minimized, which in turn will reduce losses to the farmer and keep
costs to the consumer under control.

The liabilities of large projects are shared

The liability of larger projects which need to be undertaken for the
long term running of such a project are shared amongst all the
shareholders and not the responsibility of a few individuals.

You get weekly supplies of organic vegetables at a fair, pre-
determined price

Your share as a partner entitles you to quality organic vegetables
grown on the farms. Without intermediaries, you benefit from
reasonable, predetermined prices that will be paid direct to the farmer;
these are not subject to economic fluctuations or false scarcities. In
order to make this possible we have factored the cost of vegetables
and logistics for one season, into your share value.

The coming growing cycle is the monsoon season which begins in May
with sowing and we expect a harvest from July to October. For this
season we have 200 farm shares available for public issue, each worth
Rs 3,000/- (Rupees Three Thousand Only). This share amount will be
taken on registration and the shareholder will not have to pay weekly
for the vegetables.

For more information, you can get in touch with them at hari.bhari.tokri@gmail.com

People in Mumbai, the final orientation meet will be held on 19^th June, Sunday at 10:30 am at Peddar Road, 701 Prabhu Kunj, Next to Cadbury House.

Do go if you are interested. Hear Ubai talk passionately about the work he and his friends are doing and sign up for the Hari Bhari Tokri if you like. We need this community of green citizens to grow.

People on Twitter, err, Tweeple, please tweet this post. Share, spread the word, link to this post, mail to your friends in Mumbai. Let's get this thing going. Thank you.

Tasting literature

2011-06-11T18:41:00.000+05:30

We were talking about Kindle the other day and since then I have been thinking of what real books constitute these days. It all came together for me when my mother told me about how the famous poet/lyricist Gulzar spoke of how we have forgotten to put our fingers into our mouths, wetting them to aid turning a page. The loss of this practice has made us forget how to taste a book, he says.

Only Gulzar could have said it. And it sounded better in Hindi.

Delurk Divus - you can't shake me off, baby

2011-06-08T11:26:00.000+05:30

I completely forgot about this year's Delurk Divus. May 12 came and went and I forgot to pain everyone about saying hello. Well, I remember it now and don't think you are going to get away without waving at me, stranger.

So yes, you, the long-time reader who has been around for years and has never missed a post. And you, intermittent reader, who comes by when s/he has nothing better to do. And you, friend from real life, who also happens to read this. And you, blog-friend who doesn't comment anymore because come on, don't we talk enough on Facebook already? And you, first-time visitor who just happened to come over and found herself right in the middle of the delurk party. And you, the one who doesn't fall into any of the above categories. This is me, waving at you and asking, who be you? Say hi, use a nick if you are shy about real names, tell me a bit about yourself. Where are you from? What do you do? Do we share any interests? Do you want to keep reading me or should I shut this shop already? Heh, needy question, I know.

It's just one day! Tadah, Delurk Divus 2011 now open and I wait for your comments, all agog. My hypothesis is that nobody reads blogs anymore but hey, prove me wrong and I might just go back to blogging regularly again.

What's age got to do with it?

2011-06-07T17:30:00.001+05:30

I found this in my drafts and thought it deserved to be posted, even if it is more than a year old. Try it for size, people.

***

Every time I am found complaining about the terrible twos, mothers of kids from other age-groups reassure me that it is in fact not just the twos. Pat, pat on my head they go and say with equal parts glee and sadness that the threes, fours, fives, fifties and sixties all come with their own challenges so I might as well just jump off the nearest cliff now. Others kindly remind me that I will get to repeat this experience soon enough and isn't that a really happy thought? So I figured I'd do the only thing that needs to be done in situations such as these and made a meme out of it (popping a Valium was the other option). Simple enough - write down the age of your kid/s and tell me five things that are fantastic about that age and five that are completely cry-in-your-pillow terrible.

Adi for example is two years and nine months.

The Good

He has a sense of humour. He increasingly sees the funny side of things and laughs uproariously. Not quite reading 'Yes, Minister' yet but it gives me hope.
He is interested in books. We look forward to reading him stories at bedtime and otherwise and love to watch him get all involved and animated. We also like the fact that we can blow up more money at bookstores than ever before and blame it all on his reading requirements.
He shows affection. The kisses, hugs and 'I love you's are flying thick and fast now and noone's complaining. We are loved, baby!
He is showing clear signs of the things he is interested in and giving peeks into his personality - the music and the sports and the gadgets and one can almost see the parts that are me and that are M. Very nice. We now also know the exact areas that our therapists should look into.
He is becoming independent and while I am not entirely sure whether it is a good thing or bad, I like to see him try to do things on his own because hey, I have another hapless babe coming right up.

The Bad

The temper. We have a wicked one ourselves and now we have another one to contend with. The rage, the fury, the desire to throw things at people's heads and then proceed to bite off the latter with one's fangs, to pinch and to cause bodily harm - yes, it's all there and it's so not nice. For the recipient. It may of course serve the purpose of violent catharsis for the temper-holder.
The automatic NO!s - delivered right at your doorstep, ma'am - as soon as you place a request for just about anything.
There is a flip side to his showing affection which is his ability to display equally well the lack thereof. Very free with 'I don't like Mama/Daddy/Nani/Thatha/Paati etc. Equally free with the 'Don't talk to me's and its ruder versions.
The illnesses - they started the moment he turned two and started pre-school and they have been with us since. The doctor's bills have been mounting and nobody but nobody will be happier to not be seen at OPD every two weeks than yours truly.
The desire for control - yes, yes I know the independence cannot come without it - but good gracious, he doesn't need to control which side each parent will sit in the car, which colour tees are acceptable for the mater, the exact number of times the doorbell needs to be rung, the sending off the mother to her computer (go, work, mama), does he? Oh, he does.

I am sure you have your own fairy tales and sob-stories to share. Go ahead, tell all, either in your blog or in the comments. Non-parents, comments on our plight are welcome, just don't look too happy.

It's a panda, what's not to love?

2011-06-06T17:21:00.002+05:30

I took Adi for Kung Fu Panda 2 while M watched over the princess, probably his favourite job in the world. This was the first time that we had reversed roles. Many are the joys of weaning, I say. The movie is absolutely delightful, possibly better than Part 1 even and will be counted amongst the all-time greats of Hollywood if I have anything to do with it. It's such a tough job balancing wit and wisdom and comic timing and such fine storytelling. I love Po, can you tell? He is the most adorable character in any movie, anywhere.

I don't like those 3D glasses though. They are so heavy and I need to wear them on my own glasses and wearing two pairs of glasses is not recommended even for the most ardent fans of spectacles. You become one yourself. Spectacle, I mean. They kept hurting me on the bridge of my nose and I fished for something in my bag to soften the impact. I could only find a coin so I balanced the 3D glasses on that and proceeded to thoroughly enjoy myself. When the movie ended, I took them off and was about to drain the last of my Pepsi and saunter off when Adi asked me what was resting on the side of my nose and much like an accomplished magician picked up the forgotten coin. From my face.

Complete Tina Fey moment, I tell you.

Did Adi enjoy the movie, you ask. Yes, I almost forgot about him for a moment there, didn't I? Well, he keeps telling me to 'do inner peace' so maybe concepts are still a little on the hazy side but overall I think a good time was had by all.

I'd like a poster of Po and the fabulous five, I think. In my room, not the kids'.

Pity we can't just move to Goa

2011-06-05T08:13:00.000+05:30

We took the kids to Goa for a couple of days last week. Like always, we pressed the intrepid traveller in our four-going-on-forty into good behaviour with many threats of the Goa trip being cancelled if

he did come out from under the dining table right this minute and start eating his breakfast
he did not stop throwing all cushions from the couch on the floor and proceed to jump on them with his shoes on
he did not stop fiddling with the water dispenser/my iPad/iPhone/computer/dishwasher etc right this instant

It worked. Some of the time.

Goa was wonderful like it always is and only it can be. But more importantly, this time we were able to have a holiday and did not feel upon our return that we needed another holiday to get over this one. Part of it had to with the fact that we went with friends, also with two kids in tow and the little people did a remarkable job of keeping each other busy, discussing Ben10 and Tom and Jerry and other elements of under-five popular culture. We were so encouraged by this behaviour that other than the beach and the pool, we also took them out into the city and I finally managed to see the famous St. Francis of Assisi church. We got rained out though and despite making a mad dash from the car to the church, the kids took a spot of the water. Adi insisted that every drop be wiped off. Most fastidious.

There were attempts made to eat out at restaurants. Most of them did not end very well. Cutlery was played with, glasses of water were demanded and spilled, exotic-looking food like kiwi-tarts were ordered but not eaten and I normally ended up thinking longingly how a couple of cocktails would hit the sweet spot. In fact, given that I have recently watched the four seasons of Mad Men, I had quite a hankering for Old-Fashioned. Strangely though, I couldn't get one. Must sort that out in Bombay.

I have decided to not fight the food battle with Adi because there is absolutely no way I can win and we need to pick our battles from the rather vast array of options provided. Ragini is different though. Probably because she has been left to her devices a lot more than the firstborn, she can eat on her own and does so very well. On this trip, she demanded mangoes and watermelon and cheese omelettes and fed herself and the furniture really well.

I walked along the shore and felt at peace and later my feet looked like they had had an expensive pedicure. I have to buy a house on the beach in Goa. How wonderful it would be to have something like Diane Keaton's house in Something's Gotta Give, all noisy ocean and windy, blue skies. I'd need a dog though.

The maid situation continues to be dicey. This is also why I have not managed to blog much lately. I don't even know if anyone comes around to even check on this blog anymore. The updates have been so infrequent of late.

Letters to a little girl - twelve

2011-05-28T12:26:00.002+05:30

Dear Ragini,

The last letter of the advice series. One never believed one would get here so it may be time to heave a huge sigh of relief.

One. Twelve months. But a lifetime of change has already been set into place. I believed I could do it better the second time around but I hadn't really accounted for the differences. You walked a bit later. You started eating on your own much, much sooner. You screech, which he never did. Already the differences in personalities are too numerous for me to keep up with the comparisons. It is time to let the two tickers and the two critters write their own destinies without my running a constant comparative analysis.

Perhaps part of it has to do with your almost sharing birthdays. That reminds me, I got away with a joint birthday party this time. The theme was supposed to cars and butterflies but the cars ate up the butterflies. The next time, you will be two, kiddo and I have a feeling you will have a lot to say.

I do hope you will like cars though.

This time you were asleep through the proceedings.

Six teeth on the last count. And many, many bite marks on the family.

First book. Good Night Moon. Not terribly imaginative, I know, but come on, it claims it has lulled generations of children to sleep. Not my children, no. MY children have made their parents cry uncle, aunt and assorted relatives before they have deigned to close their eyes.

Weaned at one. Taken to the bottle. Much heartbreak on the part of the mater despite wanting it very much. Confused emotions are part of the game.

You are a climber. No height is too much. Have limbs, will clamber. The sofa bears the evidence of the little feet and the grubby hands.

Unfortunately, there is no interest in TV yet. Bye, bye, Katrina Aunty.

There is a very strong streak of independence and self-reliance. I am quite happy about it, except when I have to scrub mashed bananas and cheese out of the carpet.

Well, the last of the advice then and I am done for good.

Wrong advice does more harm than no advice.
False modesty is worse than genuine arrogance. I have found arrogance when justified to be quite attractive. Maybe you will too.
If you are ever caught in the drudgery of housework, rule number one is to wipe as soon as you spill.
As a houseguest, don't help yourself to the newspapers before the hosts have taken a go at them.
You can never have too many towels. There is a Hitchhikers reference in there but that's not the point.
Fidelity is so rare that it is precious and underrated at the same time.
Drink milk.
Being a parent, a good parent requires you to put someone else ahead of you all the time, for the rest of your life. Only if you are ready to make this life-changing adjustment should you consider having babies.
You can give and take all the advice in the world but there is no substitute for living life and learning from experience.
If you want a simple life, you will need to cut out the clutter. Don't waste time on envying others their lives, don't fret about what others think of you, don't try to be popular or to please people. All of this is unnecessary noise. Focus on the real stuff that makes you happy and spend all effort on those - work, travel, kids, hobbies, whatever. If you find people to be a waste of time, it is perfectly ok to cut them down to the few who do make you happy. When it comes to friends, quality over quantity.
Base your opinions of people only on their direct interaction with you. Which is also why it's futile to try to know celebrities.

In the end, I sing to you….(only figuratively, thank god)

I hear babies crying,

I watch them grow

They'll learn much more

Than I will ever know.

And I think to myself

What a wonderful world.

Happy birthday, my little girl. You rock.

Love,

Dear Readers,

I have said all that I had to in the last twelve months. Any advice that you'd like to offer will find pride of place. Go ahead, offer some wisdom to a tiny young thing. What are the Big Truths that you have learnt in your life?

Well then, this was fun.

Stanley Ka Dabba

2011-05-12T21:39:00.000+05:30

When the invite for the preview for Stanley Ka Dabba landed in my inbox, I was pretty much given to sigh and give it a virtual toss. Who will look after Ragini? Who will cook? What about laundry? And other existential questions that crop up when one is maidless, cookless and clueless in Mumbai. I talked about it to Adi. Yes, yes, he nodded sagely, we must go for a movie and I hope it is not scary like Rio. Um, sure, kiddo, I said and proceeded to do the hundred things that were left on my to-do list. As it happened, things took a turn for the better. I found two cooks and a maid and enlightenment under a tree. Said enlightenment described as never finding fault with any maid for anything that they do for as long as I live. If I want to preserve my sanity and finish that novel that I have been warming for months now, I have to embrace stains and badly cooked food and dirty windows as friends.

Of course, Rohini may have given me a parting gift in her maid when she moved to Hyderabad. We wait with bated breath for her arrival from her village.

So yes, things got better. Mahesh has taken a couple of days off work so that was one kid taken care off.

I spent the whole day shopping for their upcoming joint birthday party on Sunday and was bone-tired by the evening. But sharp at six, the little punter was found hanging to my leg. The movie! Let's go! You SAID you'd take me! And so we landed up at Pixion Studios in Bandra where a small preview had been organized. We met Kiran and her brat and caught up with them before lights were dimmed.

The movie is brilliant.

SPOILER AHEAD

Little Stanley has no dabba (tiffin) during recess but plenty of supportive friends and a superb imagination. The back story is not provided conveniently to the viewer but you are left with a lingering sense of disquiet at what is happening at Stanley's home. Where are the parents? Are they dead? Where is he living? There are heart-tugging scenes of Stanley trying to fill himself up with water, his clothes getting dirtier and his appearance scruffier by the day. Finally the friends decide to call Stanley's bluff. Stanley offers a cock and bull story about parents having taken off in a plane. No matter, say the friends (super casting by the way), we will share our food with you till the prodigal parents return. But they also need to account for Khadoos, their Hindi teacher with the insatiable appetite who'd rather eat the kids' food than let them share it with Stanley. The kids outsmart Khadoos over and over till he finally loses his temper and orders Stanley to stay away till he can produce a dabba. Stanley stays away from school. His friends have no way to get in touch with him. The school is auditioning for a concert that Stanley would have been perfect for. The story builds towards the climax. But come on, I cannot really tell you how it ends.

The characters are all people we have bumped into. The pretty, considerate, amiable teacher that we all love and have a bit of a crush on. The nasty one that we want dead. The strict South Indian lady who teaches Science and never sees the lighter side of things. The principal with the immaculate accent. Yes, we have met them all.

One thing is clear - the people who have made the film seem to have insight into children and their world.

Adi of course found the whole movie very disturbing. Children are both blessed and cursed with such a huge suspension of disbelief. Nothing is implausible in the narrative. They can identify with the movie to the extent that they are in the movie. Hell, they are the film! Adi was Stanley, hungry (would you believe he ate six Parle-G biscuits while he watched the film, he has probably never eaten the same ever in his life...the only reason they were in my bag is because Raagu eats them....and then followed it up with wafers and then ate dinner after getting home?) It was a bit of a As God is my witness, I will never be hungry again moment for him.

He gamely kept up with the movie but then towards the end there came a scene where Stanley's uncle slaps him. The boy broke down completely. He bawled and sobbed and wept. I tried to explain things to him but he would have none of it so we stepped out of the theater to let the others watch in peace. Fortunately Amol's wife was most sporting about the whole thing and made Adi talk to 'Stanley' on the phone. Finally, he calmed down enough to be taken home. We missed the end but any film that can impact anyone so deeply is obviously made very, very well. The acting was pitch-perfect.

Watch it! You won't regret it. And if you have a fussy eater on your hands, take them along. They might just end up appreciating you and your cooking a lot more.

Linky post

2011-05-12T11:35:00.000+05:30

If you like fashion and green fashion at that, check this out. These people are doing some interesting work. I like the concept of their Trunk Show Hosts. I'd totally do it, if I didn't have to....well, let's not into all that I have to do these days. More on that later.

In lieu of a Mother's Day post....

2011-05-08T13:37:00.000+05:30

....you could perhaps read this.

The family has gifted me a spa voucher for Mother's Day. I told them about it as soon as I had signed for it. You?

For my madcap son, on his fourth birthday

2011-05-06T17:52:00.000+05:30

Dated for the 4th of May, 2011

My boy, my boy
Come talk to me
Tell me where the years took flight

Man, four years! I can only shake my head in disbelief at that. I guess the sleep deprivation has dulled my senses, specially the ones that mark the passage of time. All I can say is, I am glad he is not turning two. That, my dear friends, was one hell of a party, except that it was more hell and less party. It didn't look like it at the time but we did make it past that, and then another year and look at him now, he is playing with the globe and wants to know where Angola is.

This last year was extra-important in the overall scheme of things because as soon as he had finished cutting the cake and blowing out the candles, he was presented with a baby sister. Hey look, a birthday present for you, a baby! Enjoy the responsibility, happy birthday. He does take his role as Ragini's older brother very seriously. What sort of a baby have I got, he queries, I am asking her not to eat tissue paper and she is biting me. Tough times.

The shyness keeps coming and going but there is more evidence of a social being, someone who perhaps can tolerate the human race. Somewhat.

It's really difficult to encapsulate a whole year into one milestone letter. All I can say that some things remained the same. I am as far from being a perfect mother as conceptually possible. The house is messy. The maids are forever quitting and staging walk-outs. I regularly have nuclear meltdowns of my own, some of them quite capable of stunning even the kids into silence. I yell and scream and say No! No! No! much more than I should, despite all those e-mail forwards that instruct me not to, if I want to truly enjoy these years. In fact, I think there is way too much emphasis on enjoyment. There is no time for all that touchy-feely nonsense, I say. Not for me.

But there were things that changed too. The house became...well...fuller somehow.I fretted endlessly about sibling rivalry, about the boy feeling neglected when the princess arrived and all sorts of things that only I can think up. Well, I should have spent all that time worrying about something else because he clearly adores her. More than anything, she amuses him, like a pet almost and I think we can live with that.

He still looks like me and like M and on good days, like distant granduncles and aunts. On my side, ha.

There is still no interest in food. He eats to keep us happy. The foodie gene has mutated.

He speaks English like a native of Bandra, which he is I guess and these days has taken to the upsetting habit of adding a questioning No? after every phrase. Mama, that boy no, he is my friend no and he wants me to come to his party no so you will take me no? I respond calmly, meaning I clench my teeth and shout - Adi, you don't have to say no after everything, no?

His Hindi on the other hand seems to a nod to our colonial past. I do think I saw him shed a silent tear when Bob Christo died. Daddy, what is that long thing with which we clean the floor, he asks the other day. Abey, angrez ki aulaad, jhadoo bolte hain usse, said the frustrated father. I think M and I should spend more time conversing with each other in Hindi. It's just that we cannot spell bad words in Hindi when we need to (and we do need to...at least I do).

He is a bit of a geek, there's no getting around that. He is fascinated by all things gadgety and electronic. We visited someone recently who had remote controlled curtains. You know the rest of the story. Let's just say peace was bought with a Spongebob DVD. He loves to read and write and know things. Most tiresome, when I am trying to focus and write the magnificent total of a hundred words everyday. But it's a fair trade-off. It's amazing to have a super-bright kid around. These days for example we are very heavily into saving the environment. We like to spot The Green Triangle on things and then we want to put them in 'a magic machine' that will throw out new things. Now to figure access to this magic machine.

So yes, fun year. Very tough, no doubt but rewarding in the non-monetary sense (always a toughie, that one). One whole year of being a mum to two. Surprises will never cease.

Happy birthday, Aditya. Live very long and very happy.

When October comes

2011-05-04T20:43:00.000+05:30

I may have mentioned in passing my slight liking for this little-known group called Metallica. That episode where I dragged my mother, M and a one year old Adi to Bologna, Italy for attending a concert was just a momentary lapse of reason (to mix my metaphors and music). And now, they are going to be here. I am looking most nonchalant about the whole thing, not at all childish and excited and what-not. I am not playing Metallica on loop from morning to night. I am not playing their videos to the kids as part of their essential education. I am not tucking them in at night singing 'Exit...Light! Enter....Night! Hold my hand, we are off to never-never land'. No, my son cannot head-bang with the best of rockers. No, my daughter does not own a onesie that says 'I am with the band'. No, I have not been ogling at Metallica tees on Linking Road, wondering just which one to sport for the big concert. No, I do not give the Peace, Bro look to anyone who wears one of those tees. No, I do not get goosebumps when I think of the time I heard the first strains of Ecstasy of Gold. No, I am not praying to every God there is to keep the kids healthy at the time of concert. No, I did not snarl at Mahesh when he mentioned that he might want to attend the Delhi GP instead of looking after the kids while I troop off to Bangalore.

Um. Why are you giving me that look of disbelief? Why?

Now, tell me, who's going to be there?

Random pictures from Bologna, 2008. Because.

Wrapping Vrapping

2011-05-01T21:10:00.000+05:30

We have a fairly well-stocked little wine chiller. In the days of yore, read when I was not nursing, I rather liked my wine.

Understated fact.

These days though the wine chiller lies rather forlorn in one corner of my used-to-be-study-is-now-laundry-corner. A good thing that has come from this tipple-less state of things is that we now often dip into our stock for gifting purposes.

This evening too when we were about to leave to visit someone, we got out a bottle of Australian Chardonnay 2004 vintage. Normally I am a huge fan of wrapping things in newspaper and then tying it up with twine or a red ribbon. Something like this:

Image courtesy here

It's all eco-friendly plus I have matching newspaper bags left over from Adi's birthday party last year. This also meets the approval of the pintsized environmentalist who likes to wag his finger at me if I let the tap run for one second longer than I should and counts Reduce, Reuse, Recyle off his fingers at least ten thousand times everyday (teachings from summer camp, where would we be without you?) and insists that I get a shopping bag with the green triangle on it.

For wrapping a wine bottle though, I'd rather go all Martha and use some colourful paper or a piece of fabric. Something like this:

Image from Google Image Search

By the way, for a first-class tutorial on an easy-peasy, lemon squeezy (hehe, yeh toh wine cooler ban gaya) way to wrap a bottle Japanese-style, check out this video.

Anyway, today there was no ribbon to be found in the house and the kids were getting antsy and we needed to have left ten minutes back. So I ended up wrapping the bottle in a bag from Cottons. I don't have a picture but know this, if you are in a time crunch and have kids crawling all over you and you need to wrap stuff, there's nothing to beat a Cottons bag. I shop there only for the bags. Kidding. Also, Cottons Jaipur doesn't have a website? Strange. I'd imagine that's the kind of place that should be shipping abroad all the time. Anyway, at least they have me, not least for the bags.

Do you have any fail proof wrapping secrets? Share, no?

Letters to a little girl - eleven

2011-04-26T12:49:00.000+05:30

Dearest Ragini,

Late for the eleventh letter. Small problem, given that you and the big brother have been diligently falling ill. I need to do something about you two. Perhaps a drastic change in diet and nutrition? Or maybe I should send out a mannat into the big, bad universe promising to give up ice-cream if you two show some semblance of staying well for ten days at a stretch? What, what, I ask, little girl, what?

Alright, so the troublesome facts out of the way, let's focus on the good things. The boy was always fascinated by the dining table, spending hours pondering over the problems of the world under its wooden canopy. These days he likes to lead you under his small desk and looks like bumped heads are a small, small price to pay for getting to be in such a marvellous, luxuriant little nook. Sometimes I think I will never understand kids. Specially my own. Sometimes I also wish I could get to spend five minutes under a table of my own before the world came crashing down.

The battle with food continues. I wish you were less of a gourmand, who likes to turn up her little button nose at everything that the kitchen has to offer. Uff, this soup, take it away, I cannot bear to look at it. You expect me, ME, to eat this kheer, you incompetent blot on the face of chefs the world over? Ha, ha, nice joke, thinking I will partake of this fruit because here's the thing, see, I will not.

I did say we were going to talk about pleasant things. Just a minute while I tackle one last thing. What is with the sleep, huh? How can you stay awake between 5 and 6:44 am because 6:45 is when the alarm goes off for the other kid. I can almost hear you murmuring in your sleep.

Must. Not. Sleep.

Must. Stay. Awake.

Up. Till. 6:44. Oho, that's the alarm. Finally. I shall now snooze while bhaiyya takes over, zzzzzzzz.

At least I have seen all of this and then some more before so yes, you are fighting with an experienced hand, punter.

The good stuff is also aplenty. For one thing, the two of you can and do spend a lot of time playing with each other. And since Adi is most proprietary about you, proclaiming to the neighbours the other day that Raagu is his daughter and always, always referring to you as my baby, going as far as looking most worried and saying, I have to teach my baby so many things but she just doesn't listen to me, what do I do, what do I do, complete with much hand-wringing, I am hopefully looking forward to the year when both of you will keep each other entertained by discussing your parents' many flaws and said parents will take off for a nice little vacation somewhere. Hope springs eternal and just keeps springing.

I tried dragging you to watch Rio yesterday but thanks to the phlegmy, eww, chest and what-not, you and I had to beat a hasty retreat, leaving the world of cinema to the old and venerable four year olds amongst us. He told me later that he had rather imagined Rio to be about cars. Rather unfair, given that the poster had a gigantic blue bird spread over it. Oh well.

Right then, on to the messy world of advice, little one.

Everyone comes across a lovely bathroom every once in a while where there are small, individually packed mini-soaps in a silver dish, perfume bottles, flowers in delicate vases, a case of lovely make-up and folded, fragrant hand-towels. You will feel a slight sense of adventure, a rise of the inner criminal. You want to do something that is not altogether right, something that needs to be carefully executed. One word of advice. Resist. (She will find out.)
Spare a second look for old houses. They say so little but hide so much.
It's perfectly alright to ask the waiter to pronounce the dish for you. Even if you are dining at the French Laundry. Consider it part of the bill.
There is no point in stating a problem again and again. Either come up with a solution or keep silent while you figure out a solution.
If you have to start a sentence with 'I don't want to say I told you so but...', stop right there.
Ditto, 'I don't want to hurt your feelings but....'
Don't laugh at people who cry while reading 'Love you forever'. I have my reasons for this one. Ask me sometime.
Have ambition. Plenty of it. How else will you change the world?
All of us run the risk of ending up as characters in someone's book. That's just the way it is.
It is alright to treat astrology and palmistry and janam-patris as guilty pleasures. Just don't take them too seriously.
The ocean is a pretty good show. Watch it alone for maximum enjoyment.
A fight will intensify in direct proportion to the frequency of the words 'always' and 'never'.

That's it for this time. Next time will be the last letter. But not the last of the wisdom, heh.

Love,

Ma

What's cracking Mahesh up

2011-04-19T07:50:00.000+05:30

This. I don't get a lot of the references but still, TamBrahm readers - yennjoy! I hope someone will come up with a UP rage equivalent of this soon. We also have tons to rage about, you know?

Also, quick request. A friend is diving into the thrilling world of market research and needs us to fill in this survey. It's not boring and will take two minutes max. No, you will not get a plastic tumbler if you answer all the questions but not everything is about free gifts, yes?

Have a thrilling Tuesday, all.

Look Ma, One Hand

2011-04-16T11:50:00.000+05:30

I am not going to waste the limited time that I have describing the reasons of absence from blogging. Suffice it to say that M has been travelling, the maids have been more absent than present, the kids have been...well, kids and I have discovered that while there are many things that I can do with one hand while a baby hangs from my hip, there are some that I cannot. I can eat a sandwich if I don't care too much about the sequence in which bread, filling and chutney goes into my mouth. I cannot however change the bed-linen. I can pull Adi away from whichever dangerous adventure he has decided to embark upon just in the nick of time. I cannot however give him a bath. I can answer the door with one hand . I cannot sign the courier slip though. And so on...

We have been going to a lot of birthday parties. Somehow I always thought of Adi as being quite shy and reserved in school. So when I get these phone calls from mums gushing about their son or daughter's best friend ever, namely the youngest Mr Ramanathan, I am quite flummoxed. I see him in social settings now and while he is still quite hyper-energetic and needs a tight leash to prevent bodily harm, it is quite something to see him have something that I still haven't managed to master, i.e. emotional maturity. He has all these friends and they seem to have conversations and bonds and relationships that exclude me, ME, the mother! Didn't I start this blog just...oh wait, it has been almost four years. That explains it.

After seeing some really fancy parties that brought to life jungles and beaches and various Disney films, I struggled with what to do with the kids' upcoming birthday party (joint, obviously). So I ventured into a discussion with the boy.

Me: So hey, your friend must really like animals. He had an animal-themed party? What do you like most, Adi? What kind of a party would you like?
Adi: I want a regular party.
Me: Really? What is a regular party?
Adi: With wafers and cake, that's all.

And so it has been decided that we will have a 'regular' party. Sometimes, I am so proud of him, I feel like someone is pumping air into me at a furious rate and I am going to blow up. Not the best analogy for overwhelming maternal pride in the offspring, I agree.

The kids have been falling ill at quite a pace too. The days just buzz by and sometimes I feel like I have had the toughest bloody day of my life and then the next one dawns and is a greater exercise in character development. The tragedy here is that this is also possibly creatively the best phase of my life. Possibly because I spend so much time on my own, I am brimming with story and novel ideas that are begging to be put to paper. But obviously, that's the one thing that I cannot do with one hand.

Not technically, otherwise.

This is the time that parents of two older kids should step in and tell me that it does get better.

I have been shouting at the kids a lot too and feeling miserable about it later on. They seem none the worse for it but still, I am never one to shy away from a generous helping of mommy-guilt. Recently, I had another one of those little chats with Adi.

Me: Adi, do I scold you a lot or a little bit?
Adi: A lot.
Me: *face falls* And do I love you a lot or a little bit?
Adi: You love me a whole lot.

I am hoping that means that he knows that all that yelling is coming from a place of love and consideration. Sigh.

The only consolation is that if I make something of a career in writing, I will be able to look back and say I did it my way and I did it on my own.

See you again, next world cup

2011-04-04T11:33:00.000+05:30

It's too important an occasion to not record in the blog. I was six when we won the World Cup in 1983 so memories are a little hazy. It was a different India, celebrations were loud I think but not riotous. But what kept it alive for me for many, many years to come was a story in Target. I think it was called 'See You Again, Next World Cup'. I don't remember who wrote it either, possibly the altogether brilliant Sigrun Srivastava. The story was about a young boy who is alone at home, watching the World Cup when a stranger, a boy of similar years knocks at his door. The stranger's scooter (bike?) has broken down and he is afraid he will miss the match. The rest of the story was about two boys bonding over cricket and forming a friendship that went beyond everyday ordinariness. A powerful story, simply told.

Twenty-eight years since then. We have lived an entire life in the meantime. School, college, jobs, marriage, kids before we relived the overdue magic of success and victory and celebration once again. Given that the BFF was a cricket buff of the worst kind, I used to be a pretty avid cricket watcher till life got in the way. Also, I am intensely aware of the fact that I don't get the technicalities of the game, unlike a true fan. But hey, I can't read musical notes either but that doesn't keep me from enjoying concerts and the lord knows I have trudged some fair distances to see my favourite bands in action.

We watched the quarters, semis and finals, all in the same way. At home and the latter part with the telly in our room on mute as Ragini slept, stirring once in a while when I let out a particularly loud epithet. Maybe in another era, the same match would mean friends, pizza and much beer but both the kids were unwell and we had to cart them to the doctor in the morning. Medicines were dispensed and they were both looking better by the afternoon when the match started. M and I settled down to watch and curse and whoop and pump fists and got very excited when we spotted friends in the stadium on the telly.

Of course, there was much tweeting happening alongside and it was great fun. A sample of my tweets:

I think I will give my hairband to sreesanth. His need is greater than mine.

(Yes, we were not only about the cricket.)

Incidentally, after the semis, at one point, I tweeted at Rahul Khanna and people, he replied! Much excitement followed. Rahul Khanna. Imagine. Rang rang mere rang rang mein and so on, you know.

Now of course we are soaking in the post-World Cup bliss. In a country that is rocked by scams, a gender-ratio that has us bowing our head in shame and inflation through the roof we need to grab at every small chance at happiness. I am.

What about you then? Did you have fun?

Letters to a little girl - ten

2011-03-25T10:15:00.000+05:30

Dear Ragini,

It's been so hot these last few days. They say the mercury never hit it this high in March these last fifty-five years. And yet, your brother has fever and both of you have runny noses. You are trying to stand up on your own two feet and will probably walk soon. At least it looks like it. No pressure.

You are the original gunda number one and are often seen staring at things with a frown on your face and smoke billowing from your nostrils. The bull baby to beat all bull babies. I turn my eyes from you to your brother and shake my head in terror and amazement. How do you babies go from such these tiny little things to those school-going, song-singing, birthday-awaiting, Holi-playing, mess-creating individuals......how? I feel as if each day in the last four years has been interminably long and yet, I have no clue how the years just buzzed past. Panic, panic, the kids are growing too fast, must blog more often, must record everything, must hold time still, must not let anything slip away. Must schedule for a nap next year sometime.

There was something about the supermoon yesterday. I missed it, being too busy.

Advice!

Understand that there is always a kinder explanation for things.
There is no such thing as a decor rule. Do up your house the way you see best. There's only so much 'keep the basics in earth colours and bring a splash of colours through accents' nonsense that one can take. B.O.R.I.N.G. It is more fun to have an interesting house than just a pretty one and anything interesting demands flaws.
Please don't try to be superwoman. Even if it's fashionable.
Know the history and politics of your country. You need to have a view. Read about Gandhi and our freedom struggle and the partition and the Kashmir issue and don't be afraid to ask questions on the issues that interest you. Please don't ever be the apathetic person that says she finds politics boring.
Don't be insular. It's very limiting and will make you narrow-minded. Don't decide where you belong to till you have seen a bit of the world. It could be a small house that is at the end of a winding staircase in Jaisalmer. It could be a villa up from Lake Como. It could be an apartment in Mumbai. Choices come from getting out and about.
You are really as gorgeous as we think you are and we WILL beat the shit out of any man who tells you otherwise.
The question to ask yourself is - did you try? did you try hard enough? and then just let it go.
The best thing about fears is that you need to stand up to them only once to tame them.
Oil your hair before washing it. They might say it's a myth that it will make it long and shiny but what is the downside?
Know your debit and credit balance at all points in time. Know exactly how much money lies in your wallet, in your bank accounts and in your investments.
Always keep the money in your wallet well-organized. Only if you respect money, will money respect you.
Count every penny but give in good freely.
Splurge (whatever that means to you) once in a while, make it count, enjoy every moment of it, know when you can afford to do it and know when you are doing it.
Don't save the good china, eat in it. Precisely why I have never held back even the most expensive toy from you.
Do not, do not, do not treat books badly. It's the one thing that is not allowed even for newborns in this house and never will be.
If someone doesn't keep a secret once, don't let them have another one of yours. Ever.
Yes, Pink Floyd was really something. If you disagree, please come up with some real and convincing arguments.
When you sit down to write and don't know where to begin, start with describing the present. Much like this letter.
Please resist the temptation to correct people for their diction and/or grammar to their face, however strong the urge.

I love you, my pride and joy, my little bull.

Ma

P.S. Some time has passed between writing this letter and posting it.

By comparison, Kalpana rocked

2011-03-21T14:56:00.000+05:30

Old-time readers will remember (hopefully only with a little frustration) my travails with Kalpana the cook. Kalpana had very limited culinary skills but what she lacked in the kitchen, she made up in the parlour, so to speak. A social butterfly, she flitted from flat to flat collecting gossip like pollen and propagating it far and wide. Our tryst with Kalpana came to a somewhat untimely end over an unfortunate disagreement over some rotten paneer. She thought we should eat the paneer, we disagreed. Better that than to come to an untimely end ourselves, we decided as we bade her a loud goodbye (slamming doors do tend to be rather loud).

At that time of course I had thought Kalpana to be a complete *insert choice of invective here* but life is funny and since then it has thrown at me so many colourful characters that I have begun to think of her in the fashion of an old, partly senile but still affectionate relative, with something resembling fondness.

The fault no doubt lies with me, as it always does. I had mentioned in one of my letters to Raagu that people leave jobs because of bad bosses and a kind commentor had pointed out that it could well be the reason that my helps keeps showing me the slammed door. I think there is a grain of truth there. I am extremely moody and function in the style of a benevolent dictator, expecting my word to be treated as law and in return I am willing to shower all the largess of the world on their well-oiled heads. Well, one knows what happens to dictators, specially these days (Muammer, old chap, not partying too hard these days, are we?). Even long-standing, experienced hands are finding it difficult to dictate in peace. People just keep rising and uprising and throwing about coups carelessly. How is an honest dictator to earn his (or her) bread, I ask. People have no consideration these days.

Anyway, one needs to change with the changing times and all that nonsense and I have taken to the show-and-tell mode of pedagogy these days. Look at this dirt here, I say politely to my help, perhaps you ought to clean it like this and I jump at it grabbing my mop or broom or duster as I go along. This, as anybody in my immediate family will tell you, is very unlike me. What comes naturally to me is to fly into a massive rage followed by much spluttering in indignation and showering of spittle on the offending party. But we live and learn, kind reader, we live and learn.

Recently, I asked my cook what she thought of the new regime of cleanliness that I had personally displayed to her. I had cleaned corners that she did not know existed. I had scrubbed dishes such that their colour had changed like treacherous chameleons. I had uncovered a new layer of the marble tile in front of her amazed eyes.

So hey, I asked her, you go to another house to cook too, don't you. Don't they ask you to maintain this level of hygiene?

She looked at me and smiled conspiratorially. Arrey didi, she spoke, wahan toh itna ganda rehta hai ki main toh unke ghar mein paani bhi nahin peeti. Main toh sab kuchh aapke yahan hi khaati-peeti hoon. (It is so dirty that I don't even drink water in their house. I eat and drink only in your house.)

Glad she approves of my style of working. Sigh, changing world order.

In light-hearted defence of what I write

2011-03-20T17:53:00.000+05:30

Long before I got published, a certain section of books was being slotted as chick-lit. I cringed when I first heard the term being loosely tossed about and I still do. Chick lit can mean many things to many people but by and large, any book that is written by a female writer, has female protagonists and does not fall under heavy or serious literature is termed chick-lit. There is a certain amount of condescension in-built in the term. By the virtue of the values that have come to be associated with it, the term broadly suggests that women writers offer and women readers lap up non-serious writing.

I am often amazed when writers themselves have no issues seeing their work slotted as chick-lit. Of course I will be accused of paying too much attention to semantics but maybe the term itself has something to do with this - chick ( often a condescending slag to describe a girl) and lit (not quite literature, you see).

Let us just take the broad parameters that are used to toss books in this pile - woman protagonist, an urban setting, themes such as work, relationships and friends, the use of humour as a literary tool. Now, just change all the woman parts to man parts (oh, wait) and what do you have - oh dear, just literature, wouldn't you say? Some of you will jump and produce from the hat at this time the lad-lit. To this, I have but only this to say - why do we have this need for over-categorization? In my opinion, there are only two kinds of literature - good and bad. Everything else is irrelevant and often detrimental. Let's face it - when it comes to women writers, there is an urge within the community to slot it differently and that's why we not have the broad chick-lit, but also mommy lit (apparently my first book contributed to this), historical chick-lit, hen-lit, working girl lit and so on and so forth. Whatever be the genre, this practice aims at making woman writers and readers intensely aware of their gender. Fluffy or trashy writing is just that, whether it's written (or read) by a man or a woman. Ditto for genuinely engaging, funny, fine story-telling. Let's please not use genres to put the little woman in her place.

I have worked in marketing communication long enough to know that this is probably a case of targeted marketing. Maybe that is also the reason why these books always have similar covers.

After reading many reviews of By The Water Cooler, I have concluded that I am being slotted as a chick-lit writer myself. Well, I refuse to tow the line. I am a writer. I am a humour writer, just so you don't confuse me with a mystery writer and go looking for whodunnits in my books but I am not and never will be slotted a chick-lit writer. And when it comes to my readers, I am willing to be read by dogs and cats and giant pandas, not just chicks.

I hope some filmmaker somewhere is echoing my thoughts when it comes to the chick-flick.

Also, just an aside but Jane Austen dealt with women protagonists and her themes reflected the concerns of women in that day and age (marriage to a suitable boy, the lack of options when it came to financial stability, obligations to the family and so on). Ms Austen was also unarguably one of the wittiest writers we have seen. Would we then call her writing the original chick-lit? Lord, I hope not.

Of course I will be told to take a light-hearted view of things. Fortunately, the thing about being a humour writer is - I already am.

The obligatory birthday post

2011-03-16T12:21:00.000+05:30

Adi and Raagu's old lady turned 34 yesterday. Everyone told me to have fun. I tried and got very tired. In order to make time for the morning coffee date and the bookshop raid and the nice and expensive and romantic Italian lunch that M had planned for us, we had to work twice as hard and about four thousand time as fast as on any other day. We had to pick Adi from school and there were no autos to be had. We had to walk back home. The heat was awful. I was wearing new slippers that threatened to scrape the skin off my small toes. Adi was fortified with Frooti. Even so, he wanted to be carried after a while. Not easy.

The Thai massage place that we had booked into assigned me to a thug. He meant well no doubt but probably underestimated his own strength by about ninety percent. I just wanted him to leave me be. He looked very hurt when I started to offer feedback so I clammed up. But I am never going back.

I heard from old friends and new and also from those who wished me only because Facebook reminded them to. Sometimes I think of Mark Zuckerberg as a giant puppeteer, running our little lives for us, every twelfth person on this planet under his massive thumb.

There were cakes. Adi blew the candles and cut them for me.

M asked me what I wanted and I thought and thought about that. I want so much and so many things. Bags and shoes and iPad and more books and more book-deals and money and to be loved and loud laughter and the cure to my kids' never-ending cold. Also school admissions and travel and a dog. I am not done wishing yet and clearly sanyaas seems very far away.

And yet, something is changing as I get older and go hurtling down the thirties. Or maybe it's just having the kids. I find myself ill-equipped when it comes to discussing the dark side of the world with my boy. I didn't know how to talk to him about what happened in Japan. The earth shook. And a giant wave came in from the ocean. What happened to the people? Is India also going to shake? I don't want to lie but it's just so much easier to protect him from the truth, when the truth is so vast and so cruel that I myself do not understand it. It's just Nature. It is not always fair. It only understands its own laws. And some of it, maybe a lot of it has got to do with us, the way we are, the way we misbehaved. It is so important for him to see me happy that I find myself making an effort at it even if being manically depressed seems so much easier. Perhaps that is why we have kids, to give ourselves a fighting chance at happiness.

Birthday year begins and I have resolved to write more. More stories, more posts, more novels. Women writers have to write in the face of so many difficulties. I have Mahesh, who does everything that is humanly possible to make the time for me to write but still, small children are like water and they flow in from all the unseen crevices, their needs filling up the time and shutting out the words. I need to balance the two. How, we will see.

Children, hear it from Boo

2011-03-10T13:35:00.001+05:30

Antu has been reading my book.

So has Business World.

And since is all about plugging myself, do check me out in Outlook's special supplement this month. I was being intelligent on the topic of women on the web. I think.

I would have written more but Ragini just bit me on the fleshy part of my palm (bye, bye, mound of Venus) and so I think I ought to retire to a corner and whimper in pain as I nurse that particular wound. Also, I suspect Adi is smelling something fishy in the task that I had given him - sorting out the hundreds of blocks in his room by colour. Oh well, it was good while it lasted and I did manage to get this post out.

***

Things I have been meaning to write

2011-03-09T10:52:00.000+05:30

The cook bunked again. Yeah, yeah, I know, Happy Women's Day to her. I had to cook in the morning and cut my finger while chopping the veggies. A little later, I wanted to give Ragini her brekker and sterilized my hands with alcohol. Let's just say that my screams could be heard all the way across the sea-link in Worli. Mahesh asked me if it was a character-building exercise that I was undertaking on purpose. I did not kill him, being the kind of perfect woman that Star Plus wants us to be. Woot.
I recently had the good fortune to catch Band Baaja Bride on NDTV Good Times. The big, fat Indian wedding brought to you by an anchor who has perfected the art and science of yawning with her mouth closed. Must add to favourites and watch religiously.
Ragini has proven yet again that all the toys that a baby needs for super-duper holistic development is a tissue-box and my iPhone
Blackberry and iPhone should understand that the most relevant positioning platform for them is that they help feed babies, both as aids and as food itself.
Gerber and Heinz should advertise their baby food claiming that it tastes exactly like the week-old crumbs that hide in the carpet collecting dust and dirt and grime from all over.
I have found the perfect way to end all left-over food related guilt and hassles. Now I just eat whatever the kids don't and have officially kissed all dreams of fitness goodbye. Sometimes I feel the inexplicable urge to hang a sign saying Use Me around my neck.
Note to self: resist temptation to watch movies such as Audrey Rose at bedtime if you want to sleep for the two hours per night that the kids concede you. A better option is Mard Number One starring Manoj Tiwari, the posters of which are currently plastered all over town.

And what have you been up to, my precious? Leave a comment and tell, do.

Delhi junta, take note

2011-03-04T18:46:00.000+05:30

My sister is moving to Hong Kong soon. It's good for her because HK, I am told is a fantastic city. It's good for me because it gives me a new place to travel to. And it's good for you because she is selling all her fabulous stuff before she moves and you could pick up her awesome music system at a great price. Please take a look, kind readers and do spread the word to your mob. (What, I can do cool slang too.)

e-mail me at parulsharma1503(at)gmail(dot)com for expected price and such like. It was bought and put together in 2006. All original receipts are with her and will be handed over with alacrity.

Stuff!

Denon integrated amplifier PMA 665R

Denon 5CD changer DCM-280

Jamo Speakers D570

Yamaha tuner.

Letters to a little girl - nine

2011-02-28T10:38:00.000+05:30

Dear Ragini,

Well, what can I say? Any later and we can combine the ninth and tenth letter and make it a combo-pack and give some plastic toy free with it.

Right then, first the milestones, except that I don't know where to begin. Any hopes that I may harboured in my secret heart of you being a docile, calm and collected child have been dashed, aided by that big brother of yours. Anything that he does, you need to copy with immediate effect. And he has a lot to offer, here, put your palm to your open mouth and make ba-ba-ba sounds. You rush to obey him. Both of you look very pleased with yourselves. It doesn't matter that the house resembles a pen full of sheep and we feel like we may have wandered into a farm. Actually, that would not be a bad idea. A relaxing day at the farm sounds good right about now.

You have been hauling yourself up and holding on to the guardrails that I have so thoughtfully put in the playroom and you have been cruising along and looking most superior. The battle of the formula has started. We are at loggerheads here. I would like to wean you. You don't agree. So naturally, you continue to nurse multiple times a day. And night. Sometime early this week, you decided that waking up at four every morning was the best way to wish your parents Suprabatham. Wide awake, you would strain your ears to listen to the strains of the morning raagas that must surely be playing somewhere in this household and not finding anything except the gentle snores of the pater, you burst into loud wails. Much consternation followed. Hopefully, that phase is in the past.

My twitter update this morning read, Saturday is like any other day, when you have a baybay, oh yay, yay, yay. Not going to tip Yeats in the poetry department anytime soon, eh, but the sentiment, my dear, the sentiment is what you need to pay attention to. All my days are spent writing stories in my head, whole novels even and none of them are being put to paper because the minutes become hours and the hours give way to days and the task of raising you and your brother fill all of them up. Well, soon, soon, soon, as the ticker in my brain tells me. Cannot forget that it's a privilege to have you here with us and to look after you. I come close, oh yes, many, many times each day but not too close and when I do come too close, then your father takes the day off and lets me off to collect my thoughts and just be for sometime.

Good old Taatha Paati are in the house and you have taken to them surprising quickly given that your normal social self points fingers at all strange faces and bawls her lungs out. But perhaps they are not strange faces and somewhere you understand that they are willing slaves to your princess act and it's alright to give them a chance to serve your babyness.

As usual, we have a revolving door policy when it comes to maids. One leaves, mayhem reigns supreme and then another one comes and so on and so forth till both of you are grown up and off to college. You know, I write these letters to you and give advice borne of my so-called and supposed wisdom but when it comes to maids and help, I have really learnt a lesson from the two of you. I used to get so emotionally invested in their life-stories, most of which would turn out to be complete cock and bull tales later on, they would ask for money and I would part with it and then they would leave and I would be most hurt and upset, my noble intentions of supporting their kids education and so on nipped in the bud by their early departure. You and Adi on the other hand are not at all affected by this come in and go out of maids. If someone is around, very nice, come to our room and play with us. Oh, you need to leave? No problem, safe journey. Stoic as they come. Perhaps you are already better judges of character than I can ever hope to be. Either that, or early cynics.

Advice!

Learn to say it with flowers. Easy, mostly inexpensive and hasn't gone out of style in hundreds of years so there's got to be something to it.When in doubt, go for tuberoses. Perfectly fragrant and so beautiful.
Backpack through Europe before you turn 26. Your budget will depend on your college grades.
People don't leave jobs because of too much work or too tight deadlines. They leave because of bad bosses.
All parents like to hear how wonderful their kids are. Praise a new baby when you see it, you will make a new, tired mum or dad happy.
Chocolate, not vanilla.
Figure out your signature perfume early in life.
Uncool as it may be, the truth is that we all become our parents. You will start seeing it for the first time in your thirties and from then on, it only gets more pronounced. Tough but true.
Cricket is important if you are an Indian. You will need to work with that.
A perfectly brewed cup of tea requires good quality Assam or Darjeeling tea, boiling hot water, sugar and warm milk and patience, patience, patience. It is an underrated drink.
Interesting over beautiful. Funny over handsome. Brainy over brawny. For the long run.
See it happen in the eye of your mind to make it happen. Everything wonderful that sounded impossible came true for me because I dreamed hard enough and believed and behaved as if it was already in the bag. People call it various things - the secret, the power of positive thinking and so on. It's nothing but wanting something badly enough to work towards making it come true.
Learn how to change a spare tire. You are not really a driver till you can do that.

That's it for this time. Keep calm (me) and carry on (you).

love,

Ma

Now for some horror stories

2011-02-12T18:46:00.000+05:30

Now that I have told you about the lovely time we had in Dubai, let me also introduce to you some scum of the earth that crept out from whichever dark, dank corner they had been festering in.

At Dubai airport, as we made our way to the check-in counter, one of the staff directed us to the queue meant for business class despite the fact that we were in fact travelling cattle class, thanks to M's Platinum status. There was a person already checking in and we waited for our turn, a feverish Ragini in my arms, M carrying the two strollers and keeping a watch on Adi. As the counter got vacated, the man behind us happily marched to the counter and slapped his passport and ticket down. What the hell's going on, we spluttered, how can you just cut ahead of us like that. You should have come in first, said the fat man, smugness dripping from every fat-filled pore. Clearly the concept of a queue was lost on him. He is business class, said the lady at the counter when the official who had asked us to join that queue in the first place tried to take up for us. We made a hue and cry and I as usual completely lost my temper and wanted to beat the shit out of the asshole (ugly pun there). But as it turns out, there's precious little one can do when the airline officials are completely spineless and grade one morons to boot.

What kind of a man would cut a queue to get ahead of a family with two small children?

A very, very small man. That's who. I hope he dies a slow, painful death.

I am still so angry. If that man ever meets me in a dark alley, he better watch out.

In the meanwhile, I better sign up for Karate classes. Or whatever's the quickest way to knock the living daylights out of fat slobs.

The trip had started off on a bitter note, as you can tell. And the rule is, if a trip starts off like this (with the lady of the house exploding in the choicest cuss-words picked from only the best gulleys in UP), it cannot go too well. Ragini was uncomfortable during the flight, M struggled to make her sleep and just as she was about to drift off, the stewardess took it upon herself to come and cootchie-coo to her. Most unhelpful. Yes, I am putting it mildly. What we actually felt is not suitable for a PG rated blog.

I am still so furious.

And then we landed. Collected our strollers at the gate. Wondered if Ragini's diaper-change could wait. Made our way to the belt. Our luggage was priority so it should have been there by then. It wasn't. But.

But.

A suitcase very similar to ours was doing the rounds and doing the rounds and doing the rounds and....you know where the story is going.

Someone had walked away with our suitcase!

(Old time readers will remember that this is not the first time this has happened to us.)

Airline officials were called. They were most helpful. Apparently this happens all the time, the world being full of idiots. The by now dizzy suitcase was pulled off the conveyer belt and the name tag read. Aditya Kishor, for all who are interested.

Well, let's look for this Aditya Kishor on the system, said the airline official. The mobile number that was retrieved belonged to a travel agent. Although he understood the situation, he needed the PNR number of the passenger to check if there was a number he could share with us. The kids were hungry and impatient by now. M told me to take the kids and go home while he sorted things out. I was about to comply when a porter (the people who help pull heavy luggage off the belt?) ran up and informed us that Aditya Kishor had been found. Bless the porter.

Now this guy had already cleared customs and left the airport so someone from the airline now needed to go and explain the whole thing to the customs officials before he could be allowed in. Why didn't you just take his suitcase out, you ask, you clever, clever thing. Because God only knows what was inside the suitcase, right?

So Aditya Kishor saunters in with the airline chappie after a few minutes. He's a young man, possibly in his twenties and a self-satisfied air about him. There is no apology, no explanation, just 'someone from my group took your suitcase by mistake'. I am telling you, human decency is at an all-time low these days. We sent a few angry words his way but it looked like water off a duck's back.

We got out of the airport and saw this fellow take off with his group, the collective IQ of which could not have crossed into double figures, all tight t-shirts and silver chains and cigarettes, taking off in SUVs.

So basically what I am saying is that travel is not without travails.

I didn't want to paint an unnecessarily rosy picture.

I must be growing up.

I also need to buy a bright yellow suitcase. And then paint it with a red DANGER sign.

Notes from the city of blinding lights

2011-02-06T22:57:00.000+05:30

Ek bhi bulb fused nahin hai, yaar
My first thought as the plane began to descend over Dubai was that their electric bill must be a bit of a whopper. There were lights everywhere. The whole city was lit up and it looked like strings of fairy lights had been strewn all across the desert. It was not a very long flight, just over three hours and the kids had slept part of the way, making me feel like Angelina Jolie, just picking up my stuff and sauntering off to new lands and they had kept awake some of the time which was broadly when I had wanted to tear my hair out, throw a last salaam at the in-flight gathering and jump off the plane sans the parachute. Pins and needles were poking me in places that I did not know existed, thanks to the baby who had slept in my arms at awkward angles, but it did allow me to catch The Social Network (with subtitles this time yo). We stepped off the plane and marched to immigration where the sheer length of the queues that greeted us was enough to break me into a sweat. Mahesh suggested that I break out my 'look at me, poor abla nari, travelling with small kids' card there and then and so I did. A kind Arab official directed us to a shorter queue and we were done in no time.

Notes to self: I need to get over my fear of taking the stroller on elevators. Freezing in terror at the thought of taking a stroller on a moving staircase is most unlike Angelina Jolie, I say.

I don't know about you but I am living my life in the fast lane
We took a cab to the hotel and realized that the cab drivers in Dubai do not believe in slowing down on turns. Every time there was a sharp turn, we would be thrown to one side of the cab and there we would remain thrown till the cabbie finished turning. Most unnerving. At first I thought it was just that one cabbie but soon realized that it was a Dubai thing, much like Bangalore auto-wallahs who don't want to go anywhere and Delhi auto-wallahs who think the meter is strictly for decorative purposes only.

The hotel was really nice and despite some angry reviews on TripAdvisor, it turned out to be quite eager to please. It did have a revolving door at the reception though. Yes, another one of my many fears. It was decided that exploration would begin in right earnest on the morrow. I always wanted to use that phrase.

Ooh, lookie, malls! Day one.
The locals were touched base with just when they were giving up on us. Mona drew up an itinerary for us, pointing out the malls and the souks and the Burjs and the food. The food, the food! Allow me to go into raptures and a cliche for a few moments. I had no idea that Dubai had such superlative food. You bite into a manakeesh (that Nat had kindly suggested I try) and cheese and newfound love zatar explode in your mouth. Walk into any random cafe, order a salad and the lettuce will have the kind of crunch that will have you begging the waiter to direct you to all-organic kitchen garden that must be growing in the backyard. The olives were better than the ones in Italy (haw, did I just say that?), warm and oily and speaking of sand-dunes and vineyards. Food does bring out the poet in Ms Sharma, eh?

The Mall of The Emirates. What a grand sounding name when it's just a mall, like any other in the world. Shiny floors, lots of shops, deceptive SALE-UPTO-75%-OFF signs (if you want odd sizes or the ghastly remains of a perfectly good collection, you gullible cretin). We roamed the corridors with the children in the strollers, feeling oddly at home in a foreign city and dissatisfied about that. I dashed into this shop and that, hoping to find something unique and brilliant to take back home with me and failing. We made a stop a Carrafour and bought some groceries to feed the kids at odd hours of the day and night. Orange juice and bread and cheese singles, things that room service would not provide to needy parents.

Adi insisted on watching cartoons and we gave in, inviting Disney and his posse into the room. Here watch, we told the boy. He complied and looked up with his large, wise eyes a little later. Why can't I understand anything, he queried. Try harder, I told him helpfully. Except that the cartoons were in Arabic. By the end of the trip, he had learned to say miska, muska, mickkkkey mouse in Arabic. Something to be said for well-travelled kids.

The room had two twin beds and we collapsed into one each, taking a child each in our arms as sleep came, fast and unfailing.

My mall is bigger than yours. Day Two

Bastakiya is the old part of Dubai. It has wind-towers and one can see absolutely gorgeous traditional Arabic architecture. Mona rightly suggested that we troop to see this famous Dubai site if we wanted a taste of how things had been.

We took a cab from the hotel and things did not seem to going too well when the cabbie looked really puzzled at the mention of the word Bastakiya.

Bass-takhiya? Bastaakheeya? Buzz-takiya? He rolled it around his mouth a few times like mouthwash. Hang on, we will get you directions, we said and furiously texted and called Monsie who rose to the occasion admirably and sent a detailed roadmap. Well, long story short, we found ourselves outside a faux traditional souk, a collection of old-style shops by the waterfront with tables where one could eat al fresco. Really pretty.

Except that it is completely deserted.

In the desert.

It is terribly hot.

We have two kids in strollers.

There are not a soul to be seen anywhere.

Err.

We finally located two desi guys and asked them how we could get to the other side of, well, the ocean. We were directed to an amazing subway that goes right under the water and emerges outside a gold souk, the old one. We walked the distance. Four ramps down. Unfortunately also four ramps up.

Have you seen The Twelve Commandments?
Uhuh.
There's a scene there where Moses is banished to the desert.
Uhuh.
I feel like that.
Hehehe, how do we end up in places like these?
Adventure, baby, file the notes for your book.

We emerged on the other side. There were gold shops everywhere. Gold chains, shiny necklaces, rings, pendants.

What do you want?
A chilled Coke.

If I had dismissed the malls in Dubai as just like the ones in India, I was in for a shocker in Dubai Mall. It's a mirage in the desert. You think you see an oasis at the end of the corridor....you reach there and tadah, more shops! I don't think I saw even a speck of the whole thing. Wherever I looked, delicious looking shopping beckoned. Pottery Barn! Pottery Barn Kids! I got fatigued just checking out the temptation. There was an entire section which was modelled on the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan. I have been there and it was recreated down to the last detail. Etro and Ralph Lauren and Burberry and such like stood forlorn with their beautiful shop windows, not a customer in sight.

The best of Dubai was yet to come. Because next to the giant aquarium stood Mona and MayG with their children! Excitement ran high as we finally met the supermums that we had known only through their blogs. I don't use the word supermums lightly. We were loaded with gifts. MayG gave us things from her super-fun, uber-cool Teezers collection. Mona had baked us a dishalicious (copyright with the young lady Ms Hana S.) lemon cake. Adi insisted on wearing his Big Bro tee right there and then. We exhorted him not to go topless in the middle of a crowded mall and he finally settled for wearing it on top of the one he had on.

After much confusion in the lifts where a certain Mr Ramanathan and his daughter may or may not have been directed to the parking lot instead of the food court, we made our way to the top floors. MayG's princess and our boy decided to do some paisa vasool in the play area while the mums jabbered about everything under the sun. It's become quite the cliche of such meetings but once again, it felt like we had known each other forever. Noobie and Soonie and Mehroo kept us company while M watched over the two monkeys out to terrorize the good folk. I had a theory that the Dubai kids were tipping the good looks balance heavily in their favour and boy, was I right. They are all rosy cheeks and twinkly eyes. Dishalicious!

That night, Ragini developed a fever. Much beating of the heart and perspiring of the brow later, her pediatrician was called. Oho, some Ibugesic and make sure she has a good time, said the good doctor. We complied. She looked a little better but all plans for a wild, partying lifestyle in Dubai had to be shelved.

Ai ai aa, karoon main kya, souk-oo, souk-oo
Souk Jumeirah Madinat is what an old Arabic market must have looked like, minus all that white skin floating around. I dismissed all the Kashmiri carpets and phirans and kaftans and made my way to an oudh-seller. Fifty percent discount later, I was the proud owner of some lovely fragrance. Arabian nights in this household will never be the same again. There was also an art gallery and I have picked up an interesting looking print that I should frame soon. I am aiming for a complete mishmash of style, what with the Italian masks alongside the Kathakali ones and the Thai panels jostling with Arabian art. Crooked cottage.

Things that we did not see in Dubai
This list can be considerably longer than the one that details that sights that we have left our indelible imprints on. No, Burj al Arab has to wait till the next trip. As does the beach. And the numerous other malls. And Bastakiya too, obviously. The good part is that because I have missed so much, I get to go back.

And now we are back. The maid quit yesterday. Yes, again. It's one of the mysteries of the world and I have stopped trying to figure it out. The cook has expanded her portfolio and is helping out with the other work. However, I am left holding both the kids yet again, which means that writing and blogging and wasting time on the internet will all have to take a break.

I'd like to write a funny travel book. Soon, soon.

Good with the bad, c'est la vie

2011-01-25T20:53:00.000+05:30

Haan ji, so where were we? As I write this, the Dubai trip stands jeopardized. Let's not get into details. Perhaps Dubai and me, we just don't gel that well. In 2008, I had planned a trip to Dubai to attend an Iron Maiden concert and ended up buying and then wasting two tickets. Heartbreaking. Of course, I later saw Iron Maiden at Bangalore. *Cheers up*. Ageing rockers for ageing rock fans, that sort of thing.

Work on the next work of fiction is progressing at a really slow pace. I waste too much time on the internet, don't you know?

However, you can read a story by me over the next three issues of Femina. Let me know what you think of it. Am I wasting my time in short stories? Next Somerset Maugham? Clearly somewhere in between is not an acceptable answer.

I think sometime back, a commenter (hiya, just another mom) had asked if we were in the Kindle circuit yet, as in 'are your books available in a Kindle edition?' Not entirely surprisingly, the answer was in the negative. Well, as happens with these things, I got a mail today from the chief editor of Westland....and tadah....By The Water Cooler is now available on Kindle and The Nook. I was my usual nonchalant, woman-of-the-world self which is to say that I jumped off to check the same on my own Kindle (battery empty...shit...where is the damn charger...ah, right then...ooh, yes, it's there, see? Even a free sample. Naaaice!) and might have done a few pelvic thrusts and air punches in a graceful display of sheer delight. So yes, buy it on Kindle, kind Kindle-bearing folk.

In other news, we met Chandni of Bohemian Rhapsody fame recently.

Adi sauntered in from school and spotted a never-before-seen girl perched on the sofa in our living room. I offered to introduce them.

Me: Chandni, this is Adi and Adi, this is....
Chandni: Chandu.
Me: Uh, yes, Chandu.

There is some furious calculation on the part of the boy. Hmmm, anyone who is called Chandu cannot be this boring old fogie's friend. That means, yes, this person has come to meet me!

From that point onwards, Chandu was pulled to the playroom and spent all her time chasing after the boy, feeding him lunch (which is a life-skill, you know, if you can feed a child, you are a rather special person. End of Mata Parul Devi's updesh) and generally having a good time chatting him up. Adi took to her to the point that he did not want to take a nap in case she went away while he slept (which she did) and asked for her the first thing after he woke up.

Chandni does not put her pictures on her blog but I do have some photographic evidence if ever it is needed that she is damn good with kids.

Ragini of course wailed and bawled being in the absolute throes of a delightful (not) stranger anxiety phase these days. But I remember Adi doing that to Sue and Kiran when they first met him so it's alright. She will grow out of it at some point too. I refuse to stress about it.

Several deep, meditative breaths.

Since this blog also serves as the dossier for the reams and reams worth of newsprint that the Indian media devotes to us everyday (a tad bitter after being ignored for the Jaipur Lit Fest again, eh?), here is a list of my top five books that appeared in HT Cafe a while back.

Why, hello there, Dubai

2011-01-22T08:53:00.000+05:30

Some of us just never learn. One would think that I would put The Knowledge That I Gained In Thailand to good use and put myself and my children under house arrest and throw our passports into the dirty river Mithi (bet the paani is anything but meetha therein) never to be retrieved but that is not to be. At the end of this month, the good man and I are off to Dubai, our offspring in tow. Some people are bound to wrinkle their noses at the mention of a Dubai Shopping Festival holiday. Fools. Fools are also the folks who look for deep meaning and self-enlightenment in holidays such as these, meant clearly to swipe the credit card over and over again, n'est ce pas? It's like going to Italy and avoiding carbs. It can be done but you would have missed the point.

The thing is I am not scared of travelling with my kids anymore. I have attained paras-dom after Bangkok, if you know what I mean. They can shriek down the spotless, shiny aisles of malls, they can pick up the cutlery in restaurants and threaten passersby with the same, they can behave in lifts as if they have never seen one before in their life, they can refuse to sleep through nights, they can make meals out of potato chips. I. Don't. Care. Some nitpickers may point out that Ragini is only a wee baby but personally I feel that eight months is a very good age to take one for the sibling and kids the world over.

Perhaps I sound a tad bitter. Well, nothing like some nice Bateel dates to sweeten me up, I say. Also, shiny gold biscuits and Turkish rugs and attar while I am at it.

My only fear is that Thailand may have sent a report to UAE and they may be prepared for us. In which case I plan to enter immigration with a white flag in each hand (Mahesh would too, except that he may be holding the aforementioned brats). Also, I have my apologies ready. These days, I am always apologizing for the havoc we wreak. In Bkk, I made a record of sorts by apologizing to a British lady, some Japanese tourists, a few fellow Indians, a young American and countless Thais, all in the course of two days. Yes, I have had practice. Perhaps I should just send apology letters in advance to the G7, NATO and SAARC. Make sure that we have covered all bases and so on.

Yes, so Dubai, eh? I am going purely to have a good time and to look for bargains and a change of scenery but I am always game for discovering something fresh and unique if you have been scowling at this shameless display of debauchery and have something more spiritual in mind. Bangkok was bursting at the seams with outstanding shopping but I held myself back, being the absolute goddess of thrift. Now is the time to burn all that pent up retail energy.

Anybody reading me in Dubai at all? Out with you with the must-do's and the must-see's! Not just you, Mona and MayG....the others, the others!

On sorting papers

2011-01-18T16:41:00.000+05:30

Home organization is my pet monster. I am very, very absent-minded and I forget things all the time. It's a creative thing, I often console myself. Unless things are where I think they should be and have always been, I have no hope in hell of finding them. Add to the equation the kids and their ever-growing possessions and I need to be filing and sorting stuff fairly regularly. This last weekend, M and I decided to tackle our papers. New things have been added to the household this last year - appliances, gadgets, furniture and children. Yes, alright, one child. But do you know how many papers she has already? Just getting basic things like passports and birth certificates means that reams and reams of paper makes its way into the house and never leaves.

And so, Sunday morning found us surrounded by mounds and piles of warranties and instruction manuals (none for the kids, sorry to say), invoices and contracts, bills and credit card statements. Bank account statements and income tax statements. PF receipts and LIC receipts. If I were the sort of person who flowers up this kind of thing, I would poetically proclaim that it was our life lying there. The things we have bought and sold, the money we have earned and invested, the mistakes we have made in judging people and their promises (Kent RO, yes, I am talking about you.)

As always, M and I talked at length how it is such a shame that we have not moved a finger about getting our PF out of our ex-employers. It just speaks of my absolute loathing for paper-work that it's been years since I last worked in a company and I am yet to do anything about collecting my PF. Every now and then I half-heartedly start the process, quickly lose interest as soon as the detestable words Form so-and-so is mentioned and go right back to sticking my head under sand, hoping that the money will magically transfer itself to my account. Well, I have never claimed to be a whiz with finances and such-like but what about Mahesh, huh? What is his excuse?

As we digged deeper and deeper into the papers, we found half-forgotten things. A stray greeting card wishing well for board exams. Identity cards for clubs. Stray boarding passes from trips that have mysteriously made their way into these files. Degrees and diplomas. Certificates won. Hazy memories of victories and losses come back. How important it seemed back then, to win those silly little competitions. If I had known then what I know now, I would ask myself to take it easy and not be such a bloody maggu. But people don't change, I saw that when I took Spanish classes a couple of years ago. Miss, miss, I know, ask me!

Old salary slips tumble out and I see M staring at them for a long time, probably remembering what it felt like to get those amounts at the beginning of his career. It's been ten years! Ten years since we started working. I of course only get royalty cheques in the name of money earned these days and unless you are Dan Brown, those really don't count for much, at least not in the financial sense. But I guess for him, the curve is an important one. I know I looked at my own office-related papers with a mix of wistfulness and gratitude. What once was will never be again (not if I can help it!)

Medical records come out, ours, the kids', parents'. We remember the scares we have had and how much we need to be thankful for. The worry, the anxiety with each of the kids' sicknesses that caused our hair to grey and our faces to crease.

It's all filed away now till the next overhaul now and I am thinking, paper work is not too much of a drag after all. If nothing, it is a free trip down memory lane. Now about that pending PF.....just go away, I beg.

As if I didn't love flipkart enough already

2011-01-13T10:45:00.000+05:30

You can read my interview on the flipkart blog here. Enjoy!

P.S.The picture was taken was M a few months back and is one of my favourites.

Letters to a little girl - eight

2011-01-13T10:36:00.000+05:30

Dearest Raagu,

I am late for your letter again. You will understand why if you ever have more than one child. It's endless running on an invisible parenting treadmill. The work just never ends but then this is rapidly going into the self-pity spiral so quickly then, let's focus on the happy stuff.

Travel. You, child have been abroad twice in the first eight months of your life and I am thoroughly encouraged. I think one of the best gifts your father and I will give you when you turn eighteen and move out will be your much-thumbed passport. Please know that it's a matter of privilege to be able to travel and we hope that you will do us proud of our decision to take you places by being open-hearted and open-minded about the differences in the way people live and the way they are. Yes, yes, we are not about burdening you with expectations at all.

As happens with all second kids, you are going forth and conquering milestones before we have had a chance to catch our breath. The solids, the crawling all over, the hauling up of self, the Mumm-uhh (yes, not Upp-uh this time, yes, yes, YES! Edited to update: Just before I posted this, you said Papa. And I responded with Waah. Then to run salt into the wounded mother's pride, you gave your first kiss away to him. What is it with you children and your father? Well, I am not done trying yet.), they are all happening and we hardly get a chance to register them before you move on to something else.

Although I quite dislike the whole ghastly All Pink Movement that has taken over the little girls' clothing market, I do love dressing you up in cute little dresses and probably spend much more than I should on your clothes because hey, you are my only and much-wanted daughter and I better do all that my heart desires before you grow up and start making fun of my style, much like your brother does now (his sartorial sense merits another post on its own). But I have to admit, I am secretly proud of the fact that you are already showing signs of becoming a little duplicate of Adi. The toy cars and trucks and the aeroplanes and the gadgets and the remotes - it's all good. Overly feminine is not my thing. Like I said, not about imposing my expectations at all. Feel free to do your thing. Just. Not. Yet.

Right then, time for this and that and everything in between. A lot of it focuses on just what it takes to be happy in life because the lord knows that we want that for you.

If you are not the kind of person who is easily happy, marry someone who is and you would have scored big. I am not just saying it. Scientists say so.
The only way to make a marriage last is by staying in it.
You may abhor Economics or Science or Math as subjects in school but know that they explain a lot of this world. What remains thereafter can be attributed to God. God in a lot of ways is like parents. Part of His job description is to take the blame for anything and everything.
One way to be a genius is by practicing really, really hard. Like Malcolm Gladwell says, a cumulative 10,000 hours spent at anything gives you a fighting chance to be outstanding in your chosen field. And the musician Pablo de Sarasate probably agreed with him ("For thirty-seven years I've practiced fourteen hours a day, and now they call me a genius!")
Understand the system even if you don't plan to game it. It comes in handy.
My own experience in life is that people don't change. Ever. They modify a bit perhaps and that too only sometimes but by and large, the core remains the same. Seeing the light and turning over a new leaf happens not a lot in real life. Sad, but true.
People will always judge you by the drink you order.
A great way to shame people who litter is by picking up after them while they are watching. Try it, it works.
It's not how you look or what you have but how you feel that will determine your confidence and ultimately happiness.

Happiness. If only I could bottle it and give it to you. I'd be happy then.

Love,

Mum

What's been happening with BTWC?

2011-01-12T11:34:00.000+05:30

The Statesman. I love the name.

People Magazine. The book is bigger than the author.

Femina. Oho, we are keeping good company. Ageing rockstars are also people, ok?

New Woman. All good.


MidDay. A review uses words like witty, hilarious, funny and I am home dry.

And here's a link to IBN Live. Basically, I think we can safely say that folks have not hated the book.

Link of the month - January

2011-01-10T08:43:00.001+05:30

This month we are pimping this website. If you like to dress well and motherhood has increased difficulty levels in the same, delve in here and you might find some interesting solutions. At one point after Ragini was born, I was thinking of moving to the salwar-kameez way of life. Now I am thinking perhaps another shot is in order.

Do you have post-pregnancy style secrets of your own? Be generous and leave them in comments, sister. Many thanks.

Calling all new mums and mums-to-be

2011-01-03T13:52:00.001+05:30

Mums Network

Invites you to dinner and networking

WITH YOUNG NEW MUMS AND SOON TO BE MUMS, LIKE YOU

To be part of an engaging discussion on

"The Tried and Tested Guide to Motherhood"

DATE: FRIDAY, JANUARY 7, 2011

VENUE: THE BALLROOM, GRAND HYATT, KALINA, SANTACRUZ

TIME: 7 pm to 10 pm

SPEAKERS:

SUCCESSFUL MOVIE STAR and MUM, RAVEENA TANDON

RENOWNED GYNECOLOGIST, DR SUMAN BIJLANI

REPUTED LAMAZE CONSULTANT AND YOGA EXPERT, JAGRUTI THAKER

ACCLAIMED AUTHOR (BRINGING UP VASU- THAT FIRST YEAR) AND MUM, PARUL SHARMA

ACCLAIMED AUTHOR (SPIRITUAL PARENTING) AND MUM, GOPIKA KAPOOR

Listen to Mums with experience recount their journey. Nothing prepares you for motherhood, except experience and nothing helps more than a support group of likeminded mums.

About Mum's NetWork:

The Mum's NetWork is a pan Indian support and networking group for working mothers, mothers-to-be and young parents. We meet online and offline at key cities across the country.

The network was set up in September 2010, with the support of Philips Avent, to provide a forum for working mothers to meet, share experiences, network and get together to put things right!

Membership to the Mum's NetWork is free and members get access to expert advice, an opportunity to meet other mothers/parent at organized events and share experiences, learning's and for mutual support. So far, we have held two events – in Gurgaon and Mumbai – and plan many more. Our networking events are arranged at mother-friendly times and at venues that are easy to get to with childcare facilities and we bring in experts on a range of topics from breastfeeding to nutrition to post partum health and wellness.

The Mum's NetWork isn't just for women – men are also welcome and we hope that the meetings and forums will help prepare them for the adventure of being a parent or handle the early years of being dads better.

LIMITED SEATS: REGISTER NOW!

To confirm your participation and additional details call:

Sibil Jhaveri - Mobile: 91-9004018771; Email: sibil.jhaveri@fleishman.com

PHILIPS AVENT

The Bangkok Diaries

2011-01-03T13:43:00.001+05:30

The end of the year signalled a complete communication breakdown for me. My iPhone has not really recovered from the trauma of taking a dive into the commode and the Macbook has decided to stay true to the code of Apple brotherhood, claiming tum nahin toh hum nahin and is pretty much on its last legs now. So yes, 2011 will be the year of new devices for me.

Bangkok, you ask, how was it? Ah, well, let's start at the beginning, shall we? The upgrade to business class did not come through and we travelled economy with a Gujarati gentleman who spoke not a word of Hindi or English for company. Once Adi realized that he had a screen to himself, he was a tireless TV-watching happy camper and Ragini napped quite a bit. I congratulated myself as I ate some horrid airline food and saw myself jetsetting across the globe a la Angelina Jolie in the future.

Once we landed, I was being very supermom-ish, opening the stroller with one hand, shouting at the boy over my shoulder at the same time and generally being very competent. That was before I saw the immigration counters that were swarming with hundreds and hundreds of people. I looked all over for a special counter for strange, masochistic women who insist on travelling with kids but not finding it anywhere, resigned myself to a long wait. At this point, Adi insisted that I put him in the stroller because he was really tired. I could have said 'I told you so' but to what end, ho? And so there I was, calling Aneela on my phone with one hand, holding Ragini in another and pushing the stroller with Adi ensconsed in it with my belly. Ha, I knew that mummy tummy would serve a purpose one day.

But wait, where was Aneela at this time? Aneela, ladies and gentlemen at this point was having a nervous breakdown and generally driving GMan bananas. They were stuck in a jam and Aneela was living a nightmare that she would not get to the airport before I cleared immigration. Gman tried telling her that her friend was not exactly coming from a gaon and could manage for a while longer but gave up when she burst into copious tears. Anyway, so an hour later we finally got past immigration (the lady ahead of us who Adi had been kicking with great zeal was probably more grateful than we were) and a tearful reunion took place outside the Boots outlet. Adi immediately started Arhaan on a bad habit of Lay's chips and we started on our adventure in right earnest.

The apartment that we stayed at belongs to a bachelor but it is easily the most baby-friendly house that I have seen in my life. There were no sharp corners anywhere in the house. Yes, you heard that right, not a single sharp corner. Wooden floors all over. Ragini immediately commenced crawling practice at top speed and it was such a relief to be able to put her just anywhere that I am seriously contemplating trading the builder-gifted Italian marble in our own apartment for wooden floors.

I was travelling really light and lived up to my threat on imposing on Aneela for a lot of our needs. But I really realized that all the accouterments of baby-rearing are actually unnecessary. I mean, it is possible to live without the special blankets and teethers and the favourite toys and the special food and the sterlizers and super soft detergents and cleaning gels and all the other nonsense and the kids were just fine with it. We were buying whatever we could find in the malls and washing it and feeding it to the kids and they did not complain.

Lest you think that the kids were complete angels, let me tell you they were not. There was much existential angst and tantrums and bad behaviour and I must shamefacedly admit that most of it was my kids' doing but it was alright, really. For one thing, Gman is The Baby Whisperer. The kids loved him and while Aneela Aunty was alright to have around, G Uncle was the true star of the show with all the kids vying for his attention all the time. He fed them and entertained them and kept them out of harm's way.Incredible man. Aneela has married well, yo.

I got a haircut! Amazing, yes? I agree. With Ragini on my lap (she refuses to go to anyone and starts bawling if anyone as much as smiles at her), I got my hair washed and then I fed her and she napped while the stylist let herself loose at my mop. I look alright I guess but by jove, nobody can beat me when it comes to the sense of achievement. I mean, a haircut with a baby? I don't do cool things like that. I am the scaredy cat that sits at home waiting for her kids to grow up.

And that was not it. Aneela and I, our three kids in tow, even got foot massages! They woke up of course and were quite psyched to find themselves in a strange massage place but can you imagine just how incredible we must have felt? Very, very. Actually part of all this was also due to the Thai people's affection for the kids. Everywhere we went, people had a smile or a word for the children and that was really bolstering.

We went to a lot of malls but I assure you I was a very wise shopper and although mannequins were all calling out to me like in the Shopaholic movie, I stayed far, far away from temptations, buying only a few select items. Of course I am getting nightmares these days thinking of all the lovely bargains I have missed out on but hey, I can always make another trip, eh?

Adi developed his dreadful allergic cough yet again and G and I found myself looking for honey at the nearby 7-11. He had a pretty bad couple of nights but is better now, thank God. Also, thanks to his unwell appearance, the crew on our flight back felt really bad for him and took him to see the cockpit! I think he is thinking 'fair trade' to himself.

Although it was supposed to be a holiday that Aneela and I were taking together, ultimately it was she taking care of me, my incredibly badly-behaved kids, food, groceries, sight-seeing and pretty much everything else. I am so glad I went and I am so glad I went to see her. In fact, I cannot wait to see her again in Dhaka soon if she will have us after she has seen the true picture. We may have talked nonstop for four days but we are nowhere near done, I suspect.

Also, I think it was a huge confidence building measure. It's given me a huge ego-boost and I puff up in pride everytime someone tells me that it was quite brave (stupid) of me to do this on my own. I came back home to find that the maid hasn't returned in time and the cook has taken the day off but the sense of well-being and happiness that I was carrying after the holiday was enough to keep me going as I cooked khichdi and fed the kids and put them to bed. Then I collapsed into bed, exhausted but glad of heart.

Momentary lapse of reason perhaps

2010-12-23T21:07:00.001+05:30

The end of December is when the family, complete with the strollers and diapers and baby food jars goes gallivanting all over ye olde countryside. Let it not be called a vacation because vacations are periods when one sips alcoholic drinks with little umbrellas in them for breakfast, lunch and dinner and naps in between the three occasions mentioned. These trips on the other hand are times when the world at large is shown the produce from the Sharma-Ramanathan farm in all its glory with the principle 'Why should we suffer alone?' being firmly in place.

This year however the lord and master is trying to squeeze in about ten years' worth of hard work in one month viz. December. We knew of this well in advance and therefore after cursing him soundly for such impeccable timing, no travel plans were made, no tickets were bought, no excitement was built up.

Except you know how people think that a December greeting without a quizzical 'So, what are you doing for new year' thrown your way is incomplete? Well, save for the travel I never have any plans for ringing in the new year. Never. Everyone seems to be all abuzz with excitement, getting invited for parties and events and so on. There was a time of course when I was part of the happy mess, these days though the party circuits look a little lost when the Sharma name is mentioned in passing....hmmm, rings a bell but cannot quite place her. The absence from Page 3 has been prolonged to put it mildly. Don't get me wrong, I have friends who'd like to see my mug at their parties. They really would. But they are not scattered all over the world, always and forever a flight away. I am a grade one people-driver-away. You want to move cities? Countries? Continents? Fancy moving away from Milky bleddy Way? You just need to start rubbing those shoulders with me. Anyway, so what I am getting at it is that without the travel, new year is bound to be tres dull.

But well, two babies and all that, I should just put a lid on it and plan to rent a good DVD and make some diet-busting food to go with it. And frankly that is what the plan broadly was. Then along came Aneela and her jet-setting life. We have an apartment in Bangkok and you can come over, she offered kindly. Cut a long story short (though I am looking up at all those words up there and it may already be too late for that), I am off to Bangkok with my two kids in tow to spend the last week of the year with Aneela and Arhaan and G-Man. Yes sir, no M and the two brats and me and my backpack (gotta keep those hands free, gotta keep those hands free). Aneela tells me that I am a Fun Fearless Female to attempt it. I have other words that describe such impetuous decisions.

I don't know if I am going to have a holiday. My money is on adventure.

Please keep me in your prayers (I have the eyes of the offspring glint these last few days....I think they know) and I will see you next year.

Merry Christmas and a very happy new year, gorgeouses! What plans for new year, eh?

All hail the party pooper

2010-12-17T22:24:00.001+05:30

Every now and then, the boy comes back home armed with a birthday party invite. One of his classmates is turning a year older and everyone's invited, yay! Except, not so much.

Soon after this invite makes an appearance, the mother of the birthday babe makes her follow-up calls. The phone rings. Aye, this be Parul, I announce grandly. Yeah, whatever, are you Aditya's mother is the important question. Well, yes, I have that honour too. So fine, turn up at such and such time at so and so place, she replies, the be there or be square hanging ominously in the air. There are no names given. There is no polite how do you do in the offing. She does not offer a stray comment on the weather. Her task is to extend a party invite and by jove, that is all she is going to do. Yes, so be there, lady, she says and slams the phone down. I nod my head meekly into the deafening ringtone.
.
As the designated time draws closer, I am torn between going and not going. The cells in my body are equally divided into the pro-party and anti-party factions. You must go, says the pro, it is good for the child to socialise, to have fun. Yes, but what about you, you will hate it, counters the anti-party.

Finally though I end up going. Blame it on the river of mamta that runs through my heart, will you?

These parties are the kiddy version of page three do's. They are elaborate. Let me too (ha, so clever, just so clever). There is a theme, normally inspired by the trends that are doing the rounds in the pre-schooler circles. beyblades, ben10 and other such freakish things. Now, themes are clearly taken seriously. From the invite to the games to the cakes, everything centers around the sacred theme. There are party planners in charge of the whole shebang and a crew, yes, you heard it right, a crew in their party uniform is present in full force to make sure the revellers have a grand time. It's like going to a carnival except that someone else is paying.

The hostess deigns to grace us with her presence only half to one hour after the event is kicked off. Sure, we look like idiots, armed with children and gifts and looking around for someone, anyone to welcome us but um, what is your point again? She looks great though when she finally arrives and perhaps we should forgive her for the minor impunctuality. I mean, do you have any idea how long it takes to put together that ensemble, to go to the salon to get one's hair and makeup done? She looks here and there, meets and greets some friends and proceeds to ignore you for the rest of the party. There are some ex-Bollywood starlets-turned-mothers floating around ("ayah, dekho babe ne French Fries khaya ya nahin"). They all compliment each other on their weight-loss and lament the complete inability to follow suit. Then they look hungrily at the French Fries that baba has not eaten.

By now it is very clear to you that you have been invited solely to boost the numbers and you think ruefully of the good book that you could have been reading or the cake you could have been baking or the bullet you could have been putting through your head instead of being here, in this gathering of evil forces.

The kids are having a great time though, shrieking and running wild. A professional games host is playing games, distributing prizes hand over fist, a tattoo artist is busy drawing cars and cartoons on their hands, here a balloon shaper is making flowers and guns (yea, I know, symbolic) out of balloons and the bachha log are lapping it up. Most of them are thrice a week party goers and know the drill by heart. You think of the books you carefully selected for the birthday baby and get a familiar sinking feeling in your gut that they are probably never going to be opened.

As usual you decide to seek comfort in food and wander over to the buffet where you are sternly told that dinner will not be served till the (themed) cake is cut. But it's well past the kids' dinner time, you query querulously. Eat the French Fries, you are told in a tone that brooks no argument. At this point you want to sit in a corner and weep for the parties of yore where, WHOA, the hostess knew each kid's name.

Khoi bag is burst, much grappling happens and now hellelujah, it is time to go home. Not before we collect our themed return present though. Never again, you vow to yourself and wearily trudge home. The kid looks happy. Did you have a good time, you ask in a tone of indulgence. Yes, he says. Is xyz your friend? Who, he asks. Err, the child whose birthday party we just went to? He gives you a blank look and starts fiddling with his new toys.

Oh dear.

A quick post to feel sane again

2010-12-15T17:36:00.001+05:30

I smell of vomit.

Yeah, I do. It's faint but it's there. I guess I should take a bath. It's the boy. It's his fever. It's been raging like a bull these last three days. He came sobbing into my room at five in the morning, talking about monsters. How did he even discover what monsters are? Like my father, I refuse to entertain any talk of bhoots and prets and churails and dayans and yes, even monsters in my house and out of the mouths of my babes. Bhoot-voot kuchh nahin hota is the standard answer. But how did the question arise in the first place? I guess the telly is ahead of me and sneaked in a monster or two when I wasn't looking. And they came to haunt him when he was in the clutches of the fever.

I have to stop writing in Gmail drafts. It's not real writing if it's written in drafts. You need MS Word to write. Or real paper, except that I suspect type faster than I can write these days. Or maybe one never forgets. Who is to say?

I feel trapped these days. Or rather, the story feels trapped in me. How am I to make the time? How am I put aside these fledglings, one of them in the clutches of the fever and write instead? So I figured that I'd read instead. Reading is an important to good writing as the writing itself, so says Stephen King, author of thirty or three million worldwide bestsellers, enjoyer of the kind of success I cannot even dream of. Plus reading can be done even while there's a baby sleeping on one arm. Every now and then a list of the top ten or twenty or hundred novels comes along and I feel ashamed at just how few I have read. I guess I wasted three years in college struggling with Micro and Macro Economics when I did not give a shit about either. Yes, reading about demand and supply curves when I could have been so much happier reading Lord Jim or whatever. Well, no one is stopping me from reading Lord Jim (or whatever) now, are they? So I have decided. I am going to read each and every Great Novel to ever emerge in any list. Yes, that's what I am going to do. I read Grapes Of Wrath these few days. It's....very good. Not light-hearted reading, you see, not the kind of book you'd like to read over a meal at the dining-table, no, but still...very good. I need to read well to write well. Oh and I read Grapes on my Iphone. It has a Kindle application. I feel bad. Not using the real Kindle and using the (free, for God's sake) iPhone app instead. I need to use the Kindle. But it doesn't come with a backlight and I seem to be doing all my reading in the dark while Ragini sleeps and slobbers on one arm. She slobbered over my new red, vegetable dyed kurta recently and in one nap managed to spoil her lime-green cotton dress, white onesie and gave me a nice red patch on my arm. I walked around an entire day with that patch before I had the time to wash it off. Yes, that's how occupied I am. Not busy, no, just occupied. There's a difference but I am too tired to explain it now.

I guess I am about to sound like a bad advertisement for my phone but recently I dropped it into the pot and almost started crying. I fished it out without even the shade of a grimace and it flickered a few times, as if to say goodbye and then died on me. With it, mail and games and Grapes of Wrath (yeah, well, sometimes I also talk on it)...all down the drain, literally, figuratively, meta-fricking-phorically. I sent Pramod to the official repair shop, authorised to repair the darn thing except that they called me on the landline and cheerfully informed that they were willing to replace the phone at stock price. But what about fixing it, I bleated. Oh haha, but you dropped it in the john, didn't you, so cough up the dough for a new one. We be Apple, we don't repair no iPhones. I have never made any secret about loving Apple. I am an enthusiast even. So I decided that the Lord (not Jim) had spoken, it was perhaps time to get a new iPhone. A 4G, yo! Toodled over to the Apple store and the boy there looked at me pityingly. It's going to be out in another month. At this point in my life, a month is a very.long.time. I can't wait that long. He shrugged. I walked out. Then I sent out word into the nameless but very helpful world of the wise internetz. They told me names of nameless men who sit in hole-in-the-wall shops and repair phones. INR 1200 later, my phone had come back to life. It was a miracle! The only thing is, said the repair-man, don't update this phone. Ever. So this phone will not be seeing any software updates again but mail and games and Grapes of Wrath are all back. 4G can wait. And boo sucks to you, authorized Apple repair people.

My strange maid left, only to be replaced by another stranger maid. Yes, yawn, what's next. Nothing. Go to sleep.

I should write like this more often. For me, when I don't give a hoot about the Reader. Except that I always give a hoot about the Reader. Yes, even now. I guess the ability to write a personal journal is now lost to me.

By The Water Cooler Review: Vini

2010-12-07T07:08:00.001+05:30

Vini was another one of our winners with her superbly funny post. She received the book and has reviewed it on her blog. She starts by saying -

This review is coming later than it should have considering I received a copy from Parul early last week and that I finished it two days back. But Friday night is as good a time as any so here it is. First off I want to say that I have never written a formal review so I don't quite know how to go about writing this and I am going to try to not digress too much.

To read the rest, this a-way you go, toodle.

Clearly, practice what you preach is completely lost on some of us around here

2010-12-06T15:06:00.001+05:30

This appeared in this morning's Mint. Since M is travelling, I sent him a link. This is the mail exchange that followed.

M: Grumble, grumble, I think she has missed the point completely. It is a great book.
Me: Yes, dear, it is a good book.
M: How can they say these things?
Me: Well, the amazing thing is, I don't care.
M: I know! It's great! That's the way to be. You should not care. You should be stoic. You should take it in your stride. You should just move on.
Me: Yes, dear.
M: I, on the other hand, want to kill them.

Letters to a little girl - seven

2010-12-06T14:55:00.002+05:30

Dear Ragini,

I was way behind schedule on the last one and because December is a month where everyone seems to collectively gasp at it's arrival, where did the year go! and how time flies, by jove!, it is actually a surprise that I am almost on time on this one. Your father's been more absent than present in recent times and has not making himself useful around the house, tucking you kids in and feeding you both dinner and doing the thousand other things that go into the black hole of rearing children. Some could debate the fairness of this statement and claim that it is this work of his that is keeping all of us in warm clothes and me at my writing desk but these discussions are quite futile.

Somewhere about the third chapter of my novel, I started suffering from serious pangs of self-doubt and have since decided to give myself something of a break and write in a few days' time. In the meanwhile, I am re-reading On Writing and falling more in love with Stephen King than I ever was.

You have been hauling yourself up and crawling away to distant corners of the house as and when the fancy strikes you, which is all the time if you want to know the truth. I tried baby-proofing part of my bedroom, draping thick blankets over the sharp corners of the furniture and so on (given that the older bro don't do no corner-protectors, no sistah) but you scoffed at me saying, what, me, confined to one part of the house, surely you jest, mater and crawled away to where the real action was as soon as your hands and knees would take you. All is well in the infant universe.

You are now at the stage where only your brother's things and toys and room are deemed interesting and play-worthy. Take this silly rattle and this awful teething ring away and bring forth that nice remote-controlled Ferrari (Scaled 1:20) car. That is when we will consider play-time worthwhile. He doesn't really complain and is quite content with letting you get away with all this, perhaps largely due to the fact that he has no choice.

And now we come to the interesting part. The advice! Is that you shaking your head in exasperation now? Well, what can I say? When it comes to you, I am not letting any wisdom go unimparted. This one is a bit long, be warned.

In the last three and a half years that I have been a mother, I have seen all kinds of mothers. Mothers who stayed at home because that is what they had been doing all along, mothers who had great jobs and quit it all to stay at home and be full-time moms, mothers who had fantastic/awful jobs and carried on doing them while leaving their kids behind. Some of them (like me) worked from home.

Many of these mothers switched track midway, hopping over to the other side that appeared greener, happier, more peaceful.

Not one of them was completely happy with the choice she made.

The ones who stayed at home felt responsible to her parents and all their efforts to give her a chance to do something with her life, something other than just tending to home and hearth and when she found herself doing exactly that. she felt disappointed not only in herself but at some level felt that she had let down the whole women's lib movement. She justified this to herself saying that this, the rearing of the children was perhaps the most important contribution that she could make but come on, all her degrees and she was playing with blocks? Implicit in justification is the need to prove that the opposing party is inferior in some way. And so she did, pointing fingers even as she stewed in her own misery.

The woman who went to work suffered tremendous guilt too, albeit of a different kind, feeling that she was not being fair to the kids. That perhaps she was letting her ambition get in the way of her more primal duties. She worked so hard, juggling work and colleagues and work-trips and kids and family, expressing in bathrooms so that the babies would not have to consume formula, crying to herself because she had missed yet another milestone, setting up a furious pace and feeling herself burning out at both ends. Even whilst she did all of this, she questioned it all. And with a prickly conscience baiting her on, she resorted to pointing fingers too. How could you stand staying at home all day, she questioned her sister, what about your degrees and all that?

Some women like your own mother had the brilliant idea that they would have it all. We would have careers, not just jobs. We did something that was beyond just corporate achievements of promotions and pay-hikes. We would follow the heart. Well, the flip side of win-win is always lose-lose. The first hint that one gets about it is when people refuse to take you and your work seriously. Writing is not a real job, people seem to say when you tell them you are a writer though they keep quiet. Mostly.

The woman who used to come to mop and clean asked me what is it that I did with my computer all day long. I write, I said, here, see these are the books that I have written. Ah, she was umimpressed. That's good, she said, that's like all those women who sell kanda-poha at the railway station, it's good to do something with your time and not just sit idle. I fumbled for words and she had already moved out of my room by the time I realized that I was in some way trying to prove that I was better than the woman who sells kanda-poha at the station when I probably had bigger demons to fight.

Some women have baled out completely of this whole conundrum, quitting while they are ahead, they believe and while I would be the last person to advocate having kids because they are adorable, milk-and-honey balls of fluff, I now know from experience that parenting is like bungee-jumping. You will never know the rush it gives you until you have tried it. The problem is, you have to try it to try it. And once you have tried it, there is no way back.

I had more or less given up trying to rationalize this choice. Analysis, analysis till paralysis and all that, I used to say to myself and bury myself in my stories. Except that now I have you and tomorrow, you could (don't have to be, but could) be in the same situation and I figure that since this is the world we will be handing to you, we owe you some answers and explanations about this whole mothering versus working dilemma.

The first thing that we all need to remember is that our children understand much more than we give them credit for. They know, in the core that makes us human that their mothers love them. They know that the choices that the mothers make are in no way a reflection of the quantum of love that they send their way. It's infinite, in each and every case.

We owe our kids the same. The choices we make need to be made in light of the above knowledge. Which means, tough as it sounds, that we cannot turn on our babies and burden them with accusations. Here, I did all this because of you, gave up so much because of you, made so many sacrifices to give you a good, better, best life. Nobody asked you to. So just shut up already, yes?

Kindness is underrated. This whole 'you suck because you don't do as I do' is just another form of mommy world bullying and in my opinion is as degrading as the bunch of kids teasing a little girl because she likes Star Wars (yes, I know, it's been on my mind quite a bit....the future of geeky girls looks bleak). You have to respect other people's choices, their lives and their uniqueness and their own drivers of happiness. If you are feeling very smug and superior, please remember that what you are really hiding is serious inferiority and dissonance with your own choices and you probably need to sort that out first. Come to me and I promise to pay for the therapy.

Sometimes of course you will not have the luxury of this choice. Sheer economics will determine the course of your decisions. Money sometimes does simplify matters, eh? When there is no option, there is no problem, like your father (and some of his friends) are fond of saying.

We, your father and I, want to give you the freedom of choice. We will educate you to the best of our ability, we will give you the best exposure that we can afford, we will make sure you see the world and all that it holds, the good and the bad and we promise to let you be when it is time for you to make your decision. Whatever you decide to do, you have our unwavering pride and love behind you. It's not just the parenting or careering choice, it's pretty much all else. Except tattoos, which are not cool. Hah, I jest.

Your father wants to let you know that they, the fathers suffer equally. It's only societal conditioning that gives them less of a choice. I think we have written enough for one letter. More advice next time.

Go forth and conquer.

Love,

Ma

test post

2010-12-06T14:40:00.001+05:30

A real post coming right up, if this works.

By The Water Cooler Review: momofrs

2010-12-01T15:53:00.000+05:30

momofrs was one of our winners at the wonderful (blush) By The Water Cooler contest. She has reviewed the book here and starts off by saying:

Do you ever have that uncanny feeling that you’re being watched? You swiftly turn to look, but everyone seems to be about their work innocently. Yet, yet you can’t help but feel that there’s someone around you. Or that there’s someone watching you! You try to shake away the feeling and carry on…..only to encounter it some days later!

Please head this way to read the rest and be convinced to buy the book, all.

Of punctual yoga teachers and so on

2010-11-27T16:08:00.000+05:30

Just coming around here to take a break and ramble about this and that. Structure freaks, please excuse.

The mater left for Delhi after five blissful months and although Mahesh and I wanted to fall at her feet and beg her to not go, in reality we were quite gracious and may even have thrown a 'have yourself a safe flight, ma' in her general direction. Things became chaotic as soon as the Person Who Knows What She Is Talking About left. Suddenly the help knows that The Person Who Only Pretends To Know What She Is Talking About is in charge (figuratively speaking) and they are making a merry hash of it. About the help, we have two new girls living in with us. I may have observed in the past that I have given up my study and that it now serves as sleeping quarters for the duo. At least it did on the first day the two of them took residence but the next morning we woke up to one of them accusing the other of making overtures at her in the course of the night. The accused flatly denied all knowledge. I have since then asked them to take turns to sleep in the kitchen. A good side-effect of these proceedings is that my midnights raids on the frig have come to a timely end. All that yoga would have gone to waste.

The yoga teacher lands up at my place, uncomfortably punctual at all times. I don't think he has any bones, only cartilage that he twists and turns into the most amazing shapes, much like those balloon shape makers (is that what they are called?) at children's parties. The problem is he expects me to follow suit. He also insists that I breathe like he tells me to. I have been most obedient though of course I may have lied to him about the cookies that I have been consuming regularly but hey I am feeding Ragini/I am bored/insert choice of excuse here. It's been showing results though, this whole yoga routine. I say this not because I weigh lesser or because I have lost a dress-size but because M asked me to get him a yoga teacher too. I asked mine to kindly oblige and find someone and the girl who turned up is a female clone of my own teacher, down to the no bones, only cartilage problem. Mahesh tells me that he loves yoga, as long as it consists of only shavasan. Shavasan reminds me, I have fallen asleep at least twice doing the same, much to the bewilderment and amusement of the teacher. In my defence, I wake up multiple times during the night and may be sleep-deprived. Ragini, are you listening, sweetheart? Oh, and did you see Ragini in this newspaper? I think she looks most adorable, which of course she is. Except for the waking up part in which respect she really is Adi's twin. It was quite a task to keep the two of them to pose for the photographer from MM.

I will soon be speaking at an event on the problems faced by young, working mothers. Speaking on the topic is not a problem. It's the shutting up that will require some effort.

I may soon have a hangout in Hong Kong, courtesy one of the sisters. Most thrilled. Also, with said sister safely ensconced in HK, easier to keep the mater kidnapped and with me, heehaw.

I have started work on my third novel. If not 'super-talented', 'the voice of our times', or even 'just what the starving world of Indian literature needs', I can still aim for prolific, eh?

I just love this website and cannot, cannot, cannot have enough of it. The first word I adopted was mingent. As in: Train journeys to the cow-belt are full of unwelcome and unavoidable early-morning sightings of rows and rows of mingent men. Understood?
And today, my firstborn sprinted his way to a silver medal at his sports meet. My heart swelled with joy and I may have squeezed the life out of the mother standing next to me in my excitement and unabated delight.

And what have you been up to, my dears?

By The Water Cooler Review: Aneela

2010-11-26T09:49:00.000+05:30

Aneela reviews BTWC in her own inimitable style. She starts by saying:

...chalo Ghaghar nahee Water Cooler, but there is some aank matka happening in Sharma's latest, woo hoo. OK now no more spoilers.

To read the rest (and believe me, you want to), please go here. Thanks, A.

By The Water Cooler Review: Zainab

2010-11-25T09:10:00.000+05:30

Zainab starts by saying:

I love Parul Sharma’s blog – Radio Parul – she’s sharp, funny and makes you laugh. So I ran out and bought her book, ‘By the Water Cooler’ soon after it was launched, and I haven’t regretted reading it.

To read the rest, please go here. Thanks, Zainab.

Letters to a little girl - six

2010-11-21T20:50:00.000+05:30

Dear Ragini,

These last several days have been all about books and celebrities and events and what-to-wear woes and the mayhem that results from all of the above. But for now, for this moment, I am back to being only your mum and we will let the world wait while we talk about things, just you and me.

Six months, little lady and all the milestones that go with that age. The sitting up, the solids, the mmm-aah and upp-aah sounds, the outgrowing of clothes, the rejection of your own toys to go diving face-first into your brother's, the looking up with keen interest when the Vodafone friends ad plays on the telly, the sticking out of the lower lip when things don't go exactly as they should - you know that you have us wrapped around that little pinkie and you have no qualms in milking it dry. You are a kid in one hell of a hurry to catch up with the older sibling. I guess going out for school, playdates, cycling, park runs, yoga, drama, endless cricket and screen-time beats hollow the crawling on the carpet and the holding of rattles. And so I don't blame you, you beautiful thing.

So life-lesson time once again. Up for it? Here goes.

It's alright to take your mum for granted till the day you don't know that you are doing it. It's ok for her even after that. But it should not be for you.
I recently read about a little girl who is being bullied for liking Star Wars. Yes, seriously. Well, you could be in the same position one day, you know when people tell you that only pink and nice is the way to go. You have to fight it. With your light saber.
Don't knock it till you try it. Life has a way of surprising you in the most unexpected ways and you never know what talent you have for things or what capacity for joy lies in you unless you have tried it.
You will think you have met the pettiest person in the world and then someone with an even smaller outlook will come along. Fortunately the reverse is also equally true. You cannot have a rich life without meeting people on either extreme.
Your handshake should be like you - true and strong and not to be messed with.
It was always bad form to ask people how much they earn. It still is and it always will be because it shows that you are willing to consider the possibility of judging them basis their wealth.
The law does not distinguish between what is right and wrong. It only distinguishes between what is legal and what is not.
Sometimes the way to be kind to animals is by not owning them, however heartbreaking that is.
Your father loves Head of a Dog by Renoir. Do you know why? You should find out.
It's alright to forget birthdays and anniversaries. It is not ok to not call when someone loses a loved one. When you don't know what to say, a simple 'I'm sorry for your loss' will suffice. But call.

That's all for this time. Impossible as that may sounds, we all love you more with each passing day.

Love,

Ma

A very important announcement

2010-11-21T20:19:00.000+05:30

I need to announce that I reverse my decision to reverse my decision. What does that mean, you wonder. Well, since I received this very important looking letter from SG's lawyer a few days ago, I have been given to cold sweats and shivers and am generally hanging about the corners of my house in abject fear and misery. My family tells me they can't bear to see me like this.

SG, you are hereby reinstated as the winner of my contest. Please let me have your address in the next two days so that the book can be sent to you failing which I will send it to your lawyer. Shiver.

Of course I am not doing this to circumvent any hassle. I am doing this because I truly, madly, deeply believe that you deserve to win.

Letter from lawyer? Seriously? I have arrived.

Naturally, all this does not prejudice any of my rights – which I reserve in full.

Being launched

2010-11-21T16:49:00.000+05:30

I had to wait for my second book to come out before I could experience what young ladies in the 1800s must have felt when they came out. Debutantes they were called. Well, my debut was no big deal really. It was a small event. A book launch event at a bookstore. You probably see events like those everyday in bookstores. It still meant a lot to me though and I spent a reasonable amount of time getting into outfits, getting jittery and getting with it.

Now one of my fundamental rules in life is that one should not attempt to do something that another is better at doing and is willing to do. And so, I asked for help all around this time. All my blogger friends - you know who you are - helped spread the word about the contest on their blogs as well as on Facebook. Many of you asked me if I knew what I was going to wear. Well, all outfit-related problems were swiftly delegated to the sister who sourced options and then couriered them to yours truly. Friends, some of whom I have never even seen went out of their way to get in touch with celebrities for the event and to spread the word on Twitter. A very special lady even wanted to come from Pune to lend me her support but had to back out at the last minute due to a family emergency. Complete strangers lent their support when I needed it, online and otherwise. All in all I felt cushioned by their goodwill.

The launch was to begin at six thirty. I was there with my babies and the help and my mum at six. Rows and rows of empty chairs stared at me and I wondered if anyone was going to turn up. What would I tell my chief guests, Sathya Saran and Tanvi Azmi? What would I tell Rajev Paul who had agreed to come and read for me? I wasn't really expecting any press because frankly why would they cover something like this? Regret messages poured from all over at the last minute - Would love to come but...death in the family/meeting at the other side of town/unwell children/other engagements/out of town....I started to panic a little bit at this sudden lack of popularity.

Slowly though the seats started filling up. Mahesh came from work. Isha came from work. Familiar faces of friends and family showed up, folks from the media came, not to cover the event but just to attend it as readers and book lovers and friends. I breathed a sigh of relief. I have to say this - my celebrity guests were incredibly sweet and gracious about the whole thing. I was wondering if holding the event on a weekday was a mistake and she told me that she (really senior journalist and author to boot) had held a reading on a Sunday afternoon and had had a grand total of eight people attending. Perhaps as writers we are doomed to a bleak future, I said. No, there is a small but steady readership, she said with a smile. Much heartened.

Rajev read some passages from the book which seemed to go down well with the audience. It was music to my ears to hear the beautiful and elegant and unbelievably graceful Tanvi laugh out loud as she sat next to me. If I can make you laugh, dear reader, you ain't goin' nowhere, no sir!

Oh and I found out at the last minute that there was no emcee and the person who offered to host did not have public speaking as one of his talents. So I took over that part as well. It was fun. I don't mind speaking into the mike. All I need to do is to focus far, far away such that I don't get exactly cross-eyed but almost there anyway.

My phone died on me at the last minute. Down with Murphy and his stupid law.

And my children. Adi had been quite excited about the impending event and had told all and sundry that his mother is an otter. I am sure people look curiously at this boy who claims that he has been birthed and brought up by a fish-eating mammal but I know that his pride in me is complete. My mom had the unenviable task of keeping Adi and Raagu in check which of course she performed brilliantly even as she possibly accosted browsers in the store and led them to where her mega-superstar daughter was launching her book. Nothing like a dose of maternal pride to assist that chin-up.

I missed my dad more than ever.

I must say I was very impressed by Sathya Saran's homework. She got the book just one day before the launch and she not only read it through, she had prepared questions! This has got to be a dream, no?

One of my blog readers came for the event and wanted to get her copy signed but did not come up to me. I can't stop feeling awful about that.

In all the last minute getting ready, getting kids ready, getting diaper bag ready, getting their snack-boxes ready, giving instructions to the help and so on and so forth, I did not have the time to empty out the SD card and charge the camera. There's only so much I can do, right? Right! I leave you with pictures taken with sundry phones. It is now time for me to revel in the flowers that have been delivered, to leave all of this behind, to look inward once again and to start thinking of the third. Book, book.

By The Water Cooler Review: Monika Manchanda

2010-11-19T23:29:00.000+05:30

Monika of Monika's World has reviewed By The Water Cooler. She starts by saying,

I was mighty excited when the book arrived and I laid my hand on it 4 days ago… for one Parul is a dear friend and two I had enjoyed her previous book Bringing up Vasu throughly.

The rest of the review can be read here. Thank you, Monika.

This review has been cross-posted here as well.

By The Water Cooler Review: dipali

2010-11-17T13:06:00.000+05:30

dipali of the blog of this and that was one of the first to procure a copy of By The Water Cooler. She begins by saying,

Parul's second book is out! By The Water Cooler is the quintessential fairy tale, transposed to modern corporate Mumbai.

To read the rest, please go here.

Thank you, dipali. Much appreciated.

P.S. I will be linking to all the reviews in the sidebar to the right. Please do leave me a link if you review or find a review to BTWC.

No strangers, only friends we haven't met yet

2010-11-13T22:54:00.001+05:30

M is the kind of person who commits every single face and its corresponding name to memory and never ever forgets it. Never. At our wedding reception, as hundreds of people made their way to meet us, he regularly psyched folks by remembering exactly how he knew them, the last time they had met, the history of illnesses/jobs/embarrassments in the immediate and extended family and went into deeper and deeper details of the same till people begged for mercy.

Random Man: Congratulations, beta, you wouldn't remember me. I have been abroad for the last two decades. I am actually....

M: Ho, ho, Menon Uncle (or some such). Of course I remember you. We met in 1986 in Shimla. How are Chhoti and Montu? They must be, let's see, 25 and 28 respectively. Does Aunty still bake that lovely carrot cake of hers?

Random Man (now not so random anymore): Stunned silence

Given that I have memory like a sieve and regularly forget my own kids' names - arrey, what's your name IshaAdityaRagini being the regular handle for the offspring, this attribute in M is most upsetting. And therefore what happened this afternoon was very cool. We walked into a coffee shop, M spotted someone and his eyes glinted with recognition. Must say hello, he muttered and marched upto a good man, working quietly by himself on his laptop. Placing a friendly arm around the man's shoulders, M offered a 'hello, sir, working hard on weekend'. Such was his confidence that the man also grinned broadly and got up, shaking hands vigorously. However as he was getting up, M's eyes fixed at a point about ten inches above his head and not finding anything except thin air realized that the man had finished standing. How come you are so short, people gain and lose weight, not height, he seemed to say to himself before the shocking truth dawned on him. This was not who he thought he was. You look just like my friend xyz, he gasped. But I am abc, said abc. Yes, yes, I am so sorry, I thought you were someone else, said M as abc started edging away. I watched this whole scene unfold with much mirth and took due pleasure in M making a mistake which in the regular course of life falls strictly in my domain.

No one is infallible, eh? Poor M.

***

Winners of the (somewhat controversial by now) By The Water Cooler Contest, pay heed. I am sending out your books on Monday. Enjoy, people!

***

You are cordially invited, she wrote primly....

2010-11-12T17:38:00.002+05:30

Do I have any readers in Mumbai? Any at all? I don't hear from you too often, you know? Well, this may be as good a time as any to say hello in person. Would love to meet you. Do come and mail me at parulsharma1503(at)gmail(dot)com if you need any clarifications. In other news, some folks have already ordered BTWC (yay, flipkart) and read it. Keep tuned in for reviews. Now I go off to decide ultra-important things like what to wear for the launch such that I look twenty kilos thinner. See you there!

The fifth winner....

2010-11-11T09:03:00.000+05:30

....is Gymnast! Well done and congratulations. Please mail your postal address.

Patient readers, regular programming will resume very soon.

An important announcement

2010-11-05T23:52:00.000+05:30

I read this post at Boo's Baby Talk. It gives many links to different posts on various blogs but here is the gist - SG took a picture off YaadaYaada's blog and took credit for it. He apologized later saying that he was not aware that the image did not belong to him and removed the post (though some of the links on Boo's post were still going through, perhaps due to a web cache and I was able to read the post by SG in question and see for myself what had transpired.)

Ordinarily I would have left this to YaadaYaada to sort out and lent support only as a matter of principal but since SG is one of the participants and winners of the By The Water Cooler contest, I am taking a stand. I firmly believe that once you have a blog or a website, you are responsible for all the content that goes in it. At no point can you absolve yourself of that responsibility. Since this particular incident has brought to light the possibility that SG may or may not know where all the content on his blog is coming from, I am going to reverse the decision of declaring him a winner in the contest.

The winner in his place will be declared shortly. The esteemed M has been asked to go back to the drawing-board.

As people struggle with....

2010-11-05T08:13:00.000+05:30

ever-new ways to use crackers, lights, diyas and sweets in text messages to wish people on this gorgeous day, we will resort to a simple Happy Diwali to you and your loved ones (frenemies included). Have a great day, all ye readers of Radio Parul and do indulge in loads of sweets. Now when did hazaar ki ladi stop being cool and become a source of eternal pain? Just about the time I stopped being a small kid and had small kids of my own, I guess. I leave you with pictures of the house and jump out to meet and greet some laddoos. Yes, early in the morning. What? It's Diwali!

And we have the winners

2010-11-02T22:50:00.000+05:30

I compiled all the entries into a neat MS Word document and presented them to M last night and watched him turn into a complete wreck over the next twenty-four hours.

How do I select five, he groaned, there are at least fifteen that I love.

I have a shortlist, he said the next morning, except that it is not short.

Life is so unfair, he philosophized in the afternoon.

Maybe we can have more than five winners, he suggested hopefully as he reached his decision.

I stayed far, far away from it all.

Finally he presented me with his five favourite entries. Wow, I said as I took a look, I may or may not have selected differently. He aimed a swift kick at my rear.

But ladies and gentlemen, here we have them, the five winners. Congratulations, you guys, take it away! And everyone, thank you so so much, for making this contest a resounding success. Much fun was had. Winners, please mail me your address at parulsharma1503(at)gmail(dot)com so that the book can be duly signed and sent to you as soon as it arrives at my doorstep.

Vini of And Then

Hum Punjabi log bahut cool rehte hain, indeed!

Aarti of Aarti Writes

Nearly got hired again. At the wrong job.

SG of Shoot The Breeze

That CEO was a sweetie, yo. (Quite unlike the one in my book.)

Mom of RS from Mothering Multiples

As if one foot in one mouth is not enough, we have four. Feet, that is.

SP Menon of The fragments of my thoughts

So what really stands by the water cooler? Read this to find out.

Must do for today: drop by at these blogs and leave them a congratulatory word or two. Now I need to go and put that sobbing heap of humanity aka M to bed. Will see you around later.

Shoe on the other foot

2010-11-01T18:31:00.001+05:30

Good ol' Chandu of Bohemian Rhapsody fame tells me about this super-fun contest that she herself has participated in. Since I was feeling quite out of it while you guys were telling your stories for my Contest! (note excitement), I decided to take the plunge for this one. Ok, so maybe Chandu twisted my arm a little bit and perhaps the prospect of shopping for free also had something to do with it but who is complaining? You? Off to the corner.

Right so, wedding tales. My own wedding is now only a blur of a certain Ritu Kumar lehenga (I know! Fancy, right? I will probably have to run three back to back marathons to be able to fit into it again) and orchids all over and hundreds of strange people that I had never seen before and will never see again but still, some memories really stand out.

For one thing, I wanted to look my best but at the same time, like myself. I mean, I have personally been to plenty of weddings where the bride has been introduced to make-up for the first time in her life on her wedding day and it's difficult to catch your cousin or friend or neighbour under the layers of all that war-paint. So I did not want friends and family to look at me and proceed to look for Parul elsewhere. Famous Stylist Person, baby, I was told, go to her. I don't know how things stand now but back then, you had to book Famous Stylist Person pretty much when you went for your first date. And so she was booked.

On the auspicious day itself, I found myself standing in a salon to which I was completely new, clutching my lehenga and jewellery close to my heart and sort of nervous. Famous Stylist Person comes in only at the end of the process, I was told, the staff will take care of everything else. From then on things were pretty much assembly line. Wear lehenga, go to hair-dresser, get hair done, wear jewellery, go there, do that. All the conversations that I had had in my head about the exact look I wanted seemed to vanish into thin hair in the face of this level of expertise and experience. That may have been my big day but to them it was just another busy day at work. As for giving them any ideas, well, I don't think that would have gone down too well and to tell you the truth, I was rather priding myself on not being temperamental thus far and did not really want to spoil that by bursting into a tantrum of mammoth proportions in a strange salon. So I sat there quietly and had my hair tugged this way and that and someone put my jewellery on me and I was finally sent to Famous Stylist Person. I was rather prepared for more high-handedness. I was to be surprised. She took a look at me, talked of this and that and made me feel quite special. Then she took a dab of this and that and started putting things on my face even as she kept up the gentle chatter. Within a few minutes, I was transformed into a creature of beauty and grace. Wowzers, lady, you know your stuff was the ruling sentiment. She was probably used to compliments given in slightly more graceful a manner. And so, that is how, I looked my best-ever on my wedding day. You should see the pictures sometime. In fact, I should see the pictures sometime. It's been ages.

Moral of the story? None. Point of the story? Famous Stylist Person is Famous Stylist Person for a reason.

***

I hope I win! Have stories of your own? Here are the rules.

All you have to do is blog about one or more of the following topics:

My big fat Indian wedding
What “not to do” while planning a wedding!
My dream wedding – Simple or lavish?
Traditions I love/hate in Indian weddings
My wedding shopping spree!

There are no fixed rules for content of posts. Anything goes as long as it is fun and original. Just use your imagination!

What’s in it for you?

- The best blog entry wins Rs 3000 worth of free credit on 99labels.

- Second prize: Rs 1000 worth of free credit on 99labels.

- Two 3^rd prizes: Rs. 500 worth of free credit on 99labels.

And furthermore, you get Rs 100 worth of credit when you sign-up and an additional Rs 500 if any of your referrals buy from our site!

Here’s how to participate:

1. Become a member of 99labels (If you are not a member already) by clicking on the referral link at the bottom of this post. (You get Rs 100 worth of credit free to shop!) .

a. Create a log-in preferably using the email id attached with your blog. This is to protect the anonymity of some bloggers as the referral link (read rule 2) displays your email-id.

2. Post your referral link on the post (This means that whoever becomes a member clicking on the link gets Rs 100, and whenever you referral buys an item you get Rs 500). To find your referral link

a. Log in on www.99labels.com

b. Click on “Invite friends” on the top menu.

c. Go to bottom of page and look for “Copy and paste your personal invitation link” and paste the link at the bottom of your post

E.g . My Referral invite – http://www.99labels.com/v1/Become-Member.aspx?re=xyz@gmail.com

3. Copy and paste all the rules in your post.

4. Leave a link to your post in the comments section of the contest page of 99labels http://blog.99labels.com/2010/10/25/wedding-week-blogging-contest/

5. Copy and paste this image at the end of the post and the category under which you have posted.

Last date : 8^th November, 2010

Other Rules

- Multiple entries are welcome.

- You can repost old blog entries as well, as long as they are original.

- If you don’t have a blog, you can write as note on facebook instead! Just make sure to leave us a link in the comments section!

Shoot your queries at marketing@99labels.com

My referral invite: http://www.99labels.com/v1/Become-Member.aspx?re=parulsharma1503@gmail.com

And I think my story fits into the My Big Fat Indian Wedding category, no?

Contest! (note excitement) closes tomorrow

2010-10-30T16:30:00.000+05:30

Gentle reminder that if you plan to enter, this may be the right time.

Last date: October 31st, 2010. We will close at midnight, India time.

What cool entries we have been getting. As I type this out, M is busy developing a complicated mathematical, physical, statistical, geographical, post-modern, existential (insert choice of difficult subject here) model on which to judge entries. In other words, whatever made him laugh (or smile, or cry, or think, he's not really telling.)

Yes, so results soon. Fun times!

A house-tour!

2010-10-29T10:09:00.000+05:30

GB of the lovely design blog Of peacocks and paisleys is featuring our home on her space. Please head this way to check it out and do let her know what you think of it. Needless to say, I will be lurking by at GB's comments corner all day today.

House tours are fun. We did our first one here.

Updates for the Adi Fan Club

2010-10-28T12:30:00.002+05:30

(In other words, Tatha-Paati)

He is flaunting the small mark on his nail (given with the aid of a permanent marker by the Polio Drops Aunty) as a badge of honour because he was So! Brave! and he set such an astounding example for his sister who had no choice but to drink her own drops without a whimper in the face of such valour. This morning he told me to be careful while cutting his nails. The mark, the mark, he moaned. I quite expected Teja main hoon, mark idhar hai to come up any second.

***

Why are you chewing on my kurta, Ragini, I asked of the baby as she made a meal of that particular piece of clothing. Because she is only a baby and she doesn't know any better, answered the defiant older brother. I quietly retreated to my favourite corner to lick my wounds post this chastisement.

***

You should listen to me, Adi.
Why?
What do you mean, why...who is older?
Me.
Who is bigger?
Me.
Who knows better?
Me.

It was said with such conviction that I did not have the heart (or ability, or will) to prove it otherwise. Or to correct his grammar, ahem.

***

Adi, eat your egg.
I am not hungry. I have just oaten my oats.

I refuse to correct him. Whoever thinks eaten is cuter than oaten needs to...well, have babies, I guess?

***

He absolutely abhors having his hair being combed neatly back. This is a recent development. Perhaps, Cosmopolitan's Preschooler Edition insisted that the bedhead look is it for Fall Winter 2010 but one day he just looked at himself in the mirror after I had vigorously been at his hair with a brush and told me with a completely dismayed look on his face, But Mama, I look like a cartoon. Oh hush, was the candid response, you look great. No, I want my hair to look like this, he replied getting the familiar mutinous expression on his face, proceeded to pick up his bath towel off the floor where it had been flung with great vim a few minutes back and tousled his hair to its former glory. Since then, every time I try to comb his hair back to give him the babu ji look as it's known in this household, he starts wailing and sobbing as if some great injustice has been done unto him. People who claim to not understand women should have a go at kids sometime.

***

The round-up of entries so far

2010-10-23T13:30:00.013+05:30

And here we have a list of all the entries, some of them belly-achingly funny, other really sweet, all of them much-appreciated. Do let me know if I have inadvertently left out any and I will hasten to correct this grave, grave error. The procrastinators amongst us are reminded once again that the last date for submissions is Oct. 31st and if your entries don't reach us by then, we will extend the deadline, I guess.

Read on.

http://mammamiameamamma.blogspot.com/2010/10/by-water-cooler.html
Annapoorna's entry (can be read in the comments section)
http://golkamra.blogspot.com/2010/10/by-water-cooler.html
http://justanothermommydiary.wordpress.com/2010/10/12/by-the-water-cooler/
Vijaya's entry (in comments)
Kunzang's entry (in comments)
http://lukka-chuppi.blogspot.com/2009/01/as-assorisms.html
Smita's entry (in comments)
http://silentlyexpress.wordpress.com/2010/10/13/55-words-or-less-remember
http://abhaencounter.blogspot.com/2010/10/by-water-cooler.html
http://kennybunkportmaine.blogspot.com/2010/10/by-water-cooler.html
http://yonearthnot.blogspot.com/2010/10/by-water-cooler.html
http://talkingpost.blogspot.com/2010/10/by-water-cooler.html
http://readingthroughrsmind.blogspot.com/2010/10/by-water-cooler-contest.html
http://rashworld.wordpress.com/2010/10/15/by-the-water-cooler/
http://afzalraza.wordpress.com/2010/10/15/by-the-water-cooler/
http://memoriesofchocolate.wordpress.com/2010/10/17/participating-in-a-contest-and-all-that-jazz/
http://violet-gauri.blogspot.com/2010/10/by-water-cooler.html
http://wheresugarwrites.blogspot.com/2010/10/by-water-cooler-contest-entry.html
http://viewsandsuchlike.blogspot.com/2010/10/by-water-cooler.html
RJ's entry (in comments)
http://sreeszone.blogspot.com/2010/10/by-water-cooler.html
http://words-flow.blogspot.com/2010/10/by-water-cooler-sly-me.html (Ok, this blog is directing me to a new website and that doesn't seem to have an entry.)
http://harshabharath.blogspot.com/2010/10/water-cooler.html
http://tropicalbeachbums.blogspot.com/2010/10/by-water-cooler.html
http://sandsrandomramblings.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/by-the-water-cooler/
Richa's entry (private blog)
subbulakshmistoned's entry (in comments)
http://i--luv--me.blogspot.com/2010/10/by-water-cooler-contest.html
http://roopscoop.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/nuggets-from-a-short-life/
http://bedazzledeternally.blogspot.com/2010/10/by-water-cooler.html
http://sg-shootthebreeze.blogspot.com/2010/10/by-water-cooler.html
http://asaaan.com/2010/10/24/work-conversations/
stuti's entry (in comments)
http://obsessivemom.blogspot.com/2010/10/by-water-cooler-contest.html
http://alphabetbyalphabet.blogspot.com/2010/10/by-water-cooler.html
Sandhya's entry (in comments)
http://abhisheksemwal.blogspot.com/2010/10/by-water-cooler.html
http://momofrs.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/by-the-water-cooler/
http://dewdropdream.blogspot.com/2010/10/by-water-cooler.html
http://takshaka.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/an-acrostic-al-anecdote/
http://sunayanaroy.blogspot.com/2010/10/by-water-cooler.html
http://spmenon.wordpress.com/2010/10/28/by-the-water-cooler/
Subashree's entry (in comments)
Rads' entry (in mail)
http://gargimehra.wordpress.com/2010/10/30/the-inscrutable-boss-by-the-water-cooler/
NokiaCaseContest (in comments)
http://wwwthegroundlevel.blogspot.com/2010/08/first-job.html
http://twolittlenaughtyfeet.wordpress.com/2010/10/31/by-the-water-cooler-contest/
Lavanya's entry (in comments)

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If only I had got the crafty gene too

2010-10-22T08:42:00.000+05:30

So in my pre-Diwali mode, I recently felt the need for something quirky in my bedroom's entryway, something Indian kitschy, something handmade and pretty and special. At the same time, it needed to light up the narrow space and make it appear, well, spacious.

And the mater decided to take matters in her own hands.

Motis were bought and she got to work.

And would you believe it, with some glass beads and a wooden frame, she made this thing of beauty.

Lit up the whole place with a special glow

Transformed a nook and gave it character

P.S.Picture quality not too fabulous because it's been taken with my phone. There is only so much that an iPhone can do. In fact, contrary to what some people will have us believe, it does not shoot out a broom and duster and jump to dust and clean either.

P.P.S. We have been getting some really interesting entries for the CONTEST! (note excitement). I will put up a comprehensive list of links to the stories soon so do tune back later to read.

Lest I gave an impression to the contrary...

2010-10-18T17:07:00.000+05:30

.....the CONTEST! (note excitement) is all about everyday fun (or sad or whatever you have got) stories from offices. We are not expecting literary masterpieces because if we did get any, we wouldn't know what to do with them. So don't worry too much about it and just enter already.

Now to the truly important things. Who is addicted to this?