Padmajav’s Weblog

Yesterday, my son went on a field trip from school. He was taken to a nearby higher secondary school, specifically to the science lab, so that these four-year-olds can get familiarised with the subject.

When I went to pick him up later, I was told most of the children enjoyed the visit and asked a lot of questions.

After coming back, all the children were asked to draw pictures of what they had learnt or their take on science or something along those lines.

The pictures were then put up outside class to the eager parents.

Most of the children had tried to draw a butterfly or a potted plant or earth and sun or an egg morphing into a butterfly.

The teacher had written down what each child had told her about his/her drawing.

The last drawing is what my son has done. Its nothing but vengeful scribblings with all the colours he could find.

The footnote says, “Monster & a boy. (Skeleton)” I have absolutely no clue what that means.

I know I’m supposed to view with an open mind and all that.

But I’m seriously worried for him…

I felt like Bridgette Jones amidst supermodels.

Standing on the treadmill for the first time ever in my life, I was listening to the instructor droning on about the virtues of the machine and how to use it effectively.

There was a row of treadmills, against a wall covered with a mirror along its entire length and height.

There I was, dressed in a hand-me-down sweatshirt and tracks from my husband, and a pair of shoes so old, I can’t even remember when I’d bought it.

To my right was a pencil thin twenty-something, wearing a bright pink tracks which stopped just below her knees, revealing legs with the shapeliest of calf muscles. A short, clinging T-shirt suggested a flat stomach and a curvaceous waist. Ears plugged to a portable MP3, she was swaying to her own rhythm while plodding on gracefully.

The woman on my left was no less perfect. Dressed in a smoky grey gym outfit which boasted a sporty label, she was jogging with intense concentration.

“Now I’m going to turn it on, okay?” the instructor’s voice broke into my surreptious sizing up.

And before I could react, the earth below my feet moved! Struggling for balance, I tried to grab something to regain my balance, if not my dignity! Thankfully my flailing arms were caught deftly by the instructor, before I fell. He also miraculously paused the machine at the same time.

“M’am, concentrate” he said with a tone reserved for an errant school kid. “Look straight ahead and keep walking”.

I did just that, but strangely I seemed to be moving backwards, inching towards the edge of the treadmill. Again he paused the machine. “Ma’m, please come forward and try to stay in the same place”, he said, a little too pleasantly.

Finally after a few minutes, I got the hang of it. But I had to look at my fuddy-duddy shoes all the time, because the minute I looked up, I found myself inching backwards again!

It seemed like I was at it for hours, but it was hardly five minutes. I had another fifteen minutes to kill. After a while my mind got restless. Risking a fall, I sneaked a peek at the mirror. The smoky grey had vanished. In her place was a brooding bearded man, lost in the problems of his life.

The pink was still jogging. She looked like a college kid, but had a practiced air of elegance around her. To relive my boredom, I started making up her story. She was in college. Majoring in literature, I decided. And modeled in her free time. Coming to think of it, she did seem familiar. Maybe she was the one who featured in that shampoo ad. Or was it soap?

That was my last thought on my head when my backside hit the floor with a thud.

You see, I was so lost in making up the story, I hadn’t realized I was doing a moonwalk till I fell off the damned treadmill!

Anyway, that was over a month ago. Today, I sauntered in with my new gym gear, stepped on a treadmill, worked on the controls and was swaying to my own rhythm from my very own MP3. (‘Borrowed’ from husband while he was not looking & only I knew the song was perhaps the oldest in time, made when the instructor was in his nappies)

As I plodded on, I felt a strange contentment. Maybe I am not a pencil thin supermodel. But at least I’m not that overweight woman to my right who’s sweating so profusely after only 5 minutes on the treadmill, that my heart went out to her.

Maybe I haven’t mastered all the machines here and I don’t sprout the greatness of gymming to everyone, but I do feel more energetic these days, ready to face the day’s challenges.

Man, I’ve arrived.

___________________________________

PS: This was written three years ago, when the iPod shuffle was not so popular! I still gym once in a while…

A few months ago, I received a forwarded message from a friend which contained the first chapter of this book.

And when I finished it, I wanted to read more. And by typing in email IDs 3 of my friends, I got to read the next chapter.

A very good marketing strategy, I must say. Because, when I saw the book on the shelf, I just grabbed a copy.

And I was not disappointed. The book is racy and totally un-put-downable. I finished it in 2 days, which is a record for me! (Of course, it’d have been faster if my son hadn’t been constantly trying to grab it from me!)

The language is simple. The narration is crisp and to the point. It’s like hearing a brother/cousin/male friend tell a story from his life. What I mean is there’s a quality of hearing a story from a very familiar person.

The story is poignant.

Chetan Baghat has dealt with sensitive issues like religion & politics, mixed a bit of a romance and cricket. And set it against the backdrop of the violent earth-quake and riots that shook up Gujarat a few years ago.

Given this mixture, the book does not disappoint one of promised drama and action.

In his blog, Chetan Baghat has said

“I do hear the term “Bollywoodish” associated with some of my stories. As long as that is an observation, it is fine. (Good) Bollywood is about drama, plot, message, fun, emotions, action and happy, hopeful endings. I like that about Bollywood.”

In a nutshell this is what the book is all about.

But strangely, the story did not linger in my mind after I closed it…

Really don’t know why. I’m still trying to figure it out…

But  it was definitely an enjoyable read.

After that horrendous experience in my son’s school last March, I had frantically tried most of the good schools I could think of inside city limits. (I was tired of driving 10 kms one way!)

Walking into a school in my own neighborhood, I’d fallen in love with what I saw. It had such a friendly ambience, lots of space in front for the kids to run around and fantastically informal & colorful classrooms… Was sure my son would love it too. But as luck would have it, all admissions were closed. I left an application, nevertheless.

When school began in mid-June, I’ had no choice but to send him back to that same distant school. Now I had to make the trip twice. Once to drop him and once to pick him up.

Just when I’d braced myself for that routine, I get a call out of the blue from the school I loved. Am I still interested in a seat for my son?

Of course I am.

I was asked to meet them today.

I’ve just met them and he’s got himself a seat!!

Its just two minutes walk from home and he just loves it!!

Heaven!!

I also heard that some moms out there in the old school were smirking that I came back this year after fighting so much with the management..

So my pride is back too!

I was actually excited about watching Dasavataram on the first day of its release. Especially when NDTV, Times Now & Headlines Today carried non-stop hype about the film yesterday. Someone told me NDTV had given it a 4 out of 5.

I used to be an ardent fan of Kamal Hasan till I saw Hey Ram!

My faith in him fell rapidly after watching the movie. There’s a noble thought somewhere in the movie, but was lost completely in the portrayal of Kamal as a gift to Indian cinema…

“He should stop with just acting”, I thought. And with Panchatantram, Tenali, etc he did seem to make a come-back with just acting.

But Dasavataram? A total three-hour torture! Why can’t someone tell Kamal to retire from the movies? He’s totally lost it! Maybe, just maybe the movie’d been watchable if the 10 avatars had been played by 10 different people. There’d been a cohesive story, at least.

But this looks like its just a movie to showcase the various make-up tricks Kamal is capable of. And believe me, it varies from comical (Kamal as George Bush?! What’s he trying to say? I’m still on the floor laughing!) to  downright scary. The Iyengar old lady is made to like one of the scary witches we see in horror flicks… (incidentally a classmate of mine used to scare us with a rubber witch-mask which was very similar to Kamal’s old-lady get-up)

And someone tell me why, but why Kamal’s head looks so disproportionately big to his body in most of his Avatars?

And so many characters are forced, just so the avatars add up to 10. Justification of the title!

But if at all I have one good thing I have to say about the movie, its his avatar as Balram Naidu. We can see a bit of the old Kamal in that character. His Telugu accented Tamil is just too funny!

But Kamal as Dhaler Mehndi who’s cured of cancer by a stray bullet?!!!

Kamal as the white guy -( ex CIA who’s now on the other side of the law) with a huge head?

The 8 feet Kamal who just cannot get a decent word out of his mouth because the mask is obviously limiting his lip movements?

Again, Kamal as George Bush?

And George Bush who’s clue-less about NA CL, which is actually common salt?

The lovely Asin who does nothing but screech her dialogues and get on your nerves?

The never-ending car chases? (Make that train chases, bus chases & helicopter chases)

The Tsunami which makes its appearnace so timely to save the world? (yes, you heard me, save the world. Although a few thousands get wiped out in the process, it saves millions)

Give me a break!!

This movie has been shot with the sole purpose of feeding Kamal’s ego and nothing else.

You can sit through the whole movie and still like it, only if you love him unconditionally…

I liked Shivaji anyday better, simply beacuse it delivered what you expected. It did not have pretenses or claim to be anything cerebral. Just a simple commercial flick, where Rajnikanth did what was expected of him with style…

I sat staring at the Rose bush. It was beautiful. Every summer, the first thing I did on visiting my ancestral home was to run to the back verandah to look at the rose bush.

It was enormous. At least 15 feet tall, it towered over us, over the tiled sloping roof of the house. And pale pink roses bloomed all over the bush. Been in the house for generations, nobody really knew who planted it. My grandmother claimed that it’s been the same height from when she’d been a young bride of eleven, 60 years ago.

Whenever I squabbled with someone, I sat on the floor of the back verandah to look at the rose bush.

And always, after the first ten minutes of staring at it with teary eyes, the blurred pink & green mass focused slowly to form a sharp image of the many petalled pale pink roses.

And my heart soared.

Hearing a noise behind me, I turned. My uncle stood there, with his newborn daughter in his hands. Thrilled, I ran to them. He was always my favourite. Youngest of the lot, he’d stuck to the place with his now-single mother, after all his older siblings had flown off to greener pastures. Not that he minded. He was content living in this small village, with all the familiar people, traveling 5 kms to teach in a school in another village.

In my younger days I used to wonder how he did it. Isn’t he missing out on all the fun of a city life? I used to ask him. The comfort of an attached-bathroom, for instance. He used to smile and say, he could build one here anytime he wanted to. But will he get to walk by the serene lake every evening? He’d ask. Or will he find the joy of walking in the fields and visually marking the line that ends his territory?

I saw his point much later. Sometimes, when I used to travel in an over-crowded bus from or to my college, or crammed for my exams in my balcony where one can hear the non-stop traffic through the night, I closed my eyes for a moment and wished I was either sitting under the tamarind tree overlooking the placid lake or in front of the rose bush.

Funnily I had my first big fight with my grandmother about the rose bush.

While playing in my neighbour’s house, Idiscovered that it was not there just to cheer me up. My friend’s mother asked me, ‘So, How is the famous rose bush?’ She went on to tell me as a child, she used to beg off cuttings of it from my grandmother to be planted at her own backyard and how none of them ever grew. ‘There’s something special about the soil in your backyard’, she said.

The Rose bush was famous, I realized. It was the pride of my family. People in the village talked about it.

I was elated with this discovery. From then on, I started bragging about it to everyone. But that also landed me in trouble. My friends wanted me to take them to see it. I did. Once.

Kalyani, the grocer’s daughter, was about my age, lived in the far end of my street. She was desparate for a glimpse of the rosebush. Excited, I literally pushed my grandmother out of our way, charged through the kitchen with my friend in tow. We burst into the back yard; I turned around to catch her expression. Was suitably rewarded with her awestruck stare. She’s going to talk about it for years, I thought gleefully.

The rest of the day flew by. My mother and her visiting sister were away shopping in a town few miles away. Left to my own devices, I explored every nook and cranny of the house for hidden treasures, climbed a few trees, plucked all the guavas I wanted and ate them raw, without my grandmother’s knowledge. I was so busy having fun I barely noticed her sulking all day.

In the evening when my mother had returned, after I’d claimed all my loot, I sat in the backyard looking at the bush in the fading light. I could hear the women in the kitchen talking in a low voice. My grandmother did most of the talking. After a few minutes my mother came to sit beside me. One look at her face and I knew I was in trouble. Maybe grandmother knew about the guavas. Maybe she’d counted them. I was panic-stricken.

“What did you do today?” She asked me. Should I confess? Or wait for the axe to fall? I stared at my toe. ‘Your grandmother is very upset with you today’ she paused and looked at me. “I plucked only 4 guavas!” I said tearfully.

“It’s not about the guavas, ma”, she said gently. “It’s my fault that I haven’t familiarized you with all the rules of this house” she continued.

“You see, she’s a very old fashioned person. And life here is not like Madras. It’s very different”

When she broke the news very gently to me I was horrified. In all my 8 years of existence, I’d never heard of anything so cruel. My grandmother it seems was upset because, I’d invited the grocer’s daughter home. Apparently, people of her caste were not allowed to enter our home beyond a point. Not only did I break that rule, but I led her through the kitchen to the backyard, thus polluting the sanctity of all that’s sacred in the house.

“I wanted to show her the rose bush!” I cried defensively. “And she’s just like me. If I can live here, why can’t she come for a few minutes? Patti is a mean old lady!”

After half an hour of pacifying me, she went back to the kitchen to help her mother prepare dinner.

And I sat staring at the rose bush. Strangely, it didn’t cheer me up this time.

I made peace with my grandmother long before the holidays ended. All it took was a new Kanjeevaram skirt she’d bought me for my up coming birthday. I was in love with the peacock blue silk & my grandmother became my hero once again.

That was decades ago.

Now I sit in my own kitchen sipping tea, waiting for my mother. She called this morning to tell me she’d just got back from her last trip to the village. My grandmother gone for years, it took all the brothers and sisters so long to decide what to do with the huge house and the land in the village. Finally they closed up the house, spent the last week staying there for one last time savouring the house and the village, before strangers took over next month.

An emotional time for all of them. It gives me a lump in my throat, thinking about it.

The bell rings. My mother enters, looking a little worn out. Must have been all the traveling and the emotional strain of goodbyes.

“Why didn’t you rest for a day or two” I ask her. “You really look beat”. Wasn’t sure if I should open up the topic of her trip. Isn’t it better to avoid it now?

She gives me a tired smile. “I had to come to see you today”. She says. Reaches into her bag and produces a newspaper wrapped bundle. “I had to give you this.”

Inside, wrapped in a cellophane sheet, bottom part snugly encased in soil, is a cutting of my rose bush.

Suddenly my vision blurs into a mass of green and pink.

When I was five or so, I was spending my summer holidays in Coimbatore. One fine day, my aunt decided to take us to Ooty. So she somehow got hold of an address from my mother’s family, (I still don’t know how she did this. Nobody had phones and snail-mail would have taken days) bundled us all in a bus to Ooty. The journey is too hazy for me now, but I remember knocking at a door of a distant uncle who was stationed in Ooty then.

Not only they were not expecting us, but they had no clue who we were! He was(is?) my mom’s brother’s wife’s brother(phew!). He’d have probably met my mom during his sister’s wedding years ago. But he was nice enough to take us in for the night, arranged for a sight-seeing trip the next day and sent us back on our way in the evening. His wife cooked us tasty meals and his kids played with us and even came sight-seeing. And after that, I never saw them again.

Now I try to imagine opening my door to complete strangers who want to shack up with me for a couple of days to see the city. My first reaction would be to shut the door on their faces…

Maybe for people living in holiday spots like Ooty, its an everyday experience. But I still squirm to think how we actually barged in on that poor family!

 Or is it just that we’ve been fed too many western notions about having our own space and privacy?

In the past the doors of the houses were always open. People dropped in for meals without any prior intimation. And the kitchen was always equipped to feed a few extra mouths. So much so that there’s a saying that an uninvited guest is God in disguise…

People had all the time in the world to chat up with distant cousins or aunts or uncles. Normally a visit to a relative’s place meant a few weeks or sometimes even months if its a parent or a sibling.

Now we hardly have the time to talk to our own parents. Sometimes living under the same roof! The pace of our lives is scaring me at times. I  look back at those far away days spent in either my grandad’s farm or in  my mom’s village, where summer holidays meant endless days stretched with so much to do. There were no summer camps, no movies, no television.

I spent morningspicking flowers in the garden or in the communal lake, and aftenoons learning to stitch or draw kolams with my grandmother. Late afternoons were for exploring the place with a handful of kids when the elders were dozing. Evenings were fun when the entire household got together for coffee in the open courtyard (or some such spaces) as the sun went down.

During those idyllic  days, anybody dropping unannounced were welcomed warmly, given something to eat or drink and exchanged family news with genuine interest.

Now my 4 year old shuts himself in his room when someone drops in for a visit. Whatever I do to make him share a few moments with the guest is thwarted with ‘I don’t want to!’

I suppose he’s so used to being in a nuclear family that he does not need the warmth of  bonding with people outside his immediate circle.

Whatever it is, these days, an uninvited guest is never a God in disguise!

This book is another classic Jhumpa Lahiri.

Simple stories that touch your heart. You get involved with the characters from page one.

A thoroughly enjoyable read. The stories capture the dilemmas and problems faced by people living in a foreign country, but who still long for their roots.

A poignant look at the clash of gen-next ABCDs and their nostalgic parents…

In one such story a daughter feels that her parents’ yearning for India is like a disease, which she has to ease! (I don’t remember the exact words, but this is the gist)

I can only add more accolades to this book. But whatever I say will only be variations of all that has already been said.

But why does Lahiri’s stories ooze sorrow? There’s no such thing as ‘feel-good’ read here.

Though I loved reading the book and flew from one story to another in record time, I closed the book with a heavy heart. The characters stayed with me for a very long time…

Hats off..

I’m generally a sitting duck for con-men. I’ve fallen for so many stories all my life, but I still never ever learn.

Here are a few samples…

When I’d just moved in to a new house, I was home alone, trying to organise all the stuff from various cartons to the respective cupboards. The doorbell rang. A young man wanted to know if I had a milk card. If I didn’t have one, he could organise one for me. I was so thrilled because, I had been worrying about whom to contact to get one and how tedious it’d be to stand in a queue for that, etc.

So I jumped at the chance to get someone else to do my dirty work. He wanted 400 rupees. He said that the office was closing in half an hour and he had to leave immediately. I quickly rummaged my purse and could come up only with 350. He said he’ll manage and take the rest from me later and charged off.

I never saw that boy again.

Another time I was traveling to Mumbai alone for the first time. The last few times a senior colleague who’d lived in the city for years had accompanied me & she took care of everything. I had strict instructions from my boss to join the queue for taxis just outside the airport. The taxi number is duly noted down by the airport authorities and you can never go wrong. ‘Just wait for your turn, tell the driver the address and you’ll reach there safely’, was the advice my boss had given me.

However, when I walked out of the airport, there was no queue for taxis. A huge man dressed in white came towards me and asked “Taxi?” and grabbed my suitcase without waiting for my reply. Flabberghasted, I broke into a run to keep up with him. “How much?” I asked him in my broken Hindi. “500 rupees, ” he replied.

“No”, I told him. “I was told it was well below 200 rupees”

“No Ma’m, those are the taxis outside the airport. You’ll have to walk another kilometer for them.”

He put me in a taxi and sat in the front seat with the driver. He asked for the money and I gave him.

We rounded a corner after driving away from the airport and the taxi stopped. Both of them got out and fiddled with the bonnet as I watched nervously from inside.

The guy in white appeared near my window. ‘Taxi repair, Madam. I’ll get you another one”, he announced. Stopped another taxi, transferred my suitcase and waited for me to get in. “Don’t pay him Madam”, he told me. “Everything has been taken care of.”

I sat at the backseat feeling rather stupid as we sped towards the city.

After a while I asked the driver how much he had been paid. “Nothing”, was the reply. “You pay me according to the meter once we reach your hotel”, he said.

“And how much will that take?”

“Around 150 rupees, Madam”.

I never lived it down in office for years to come…

You think Imust have learnt my lesson by now.

No.

Recently two men rang my doorbell. They were selling some homogeneous detergent made by their starving family in Punjab. He offered me a bottle. My first reaction was to shut the door on his face. But he bent forward suddeny and cleaned the floor at my feet. (He had a cloth soaked in his detergent ready with him)

The floor where he wiped was really sparkling. The rest of the surface was so off-colour. I was shocked. He demonstrated an entire tile. It really stood out bright and clean and the rest of the floor looked so murky. I wavered.

He suddenly put some of it in his finger and licked it.

“Totally made of herbs, madam”, he said. Very safe to have around children.

“How much?”

“150. But please buy a pack of six. My family in Punjab will be eternally grateful to you”.

“No way”, I was firm.

After a lot of pleading I took 3 bottles.

Excitedly I called my maid. I gave her the bottles and asked her to clean the kitchen floor. That was the dirtiest.

She called me after scrubbing. There was a marginal difference, but the floor did not sparkle like that guy had demonstrated.

Puzzled, I tried with the cloth. Same result. I tried with my normal detergent. It was better.

Still not giving up, I went to my front door. Squatting I tried it on the tile near the one he’d scrubbed. Nothing happened.

I was sure my maid was silently hiding a smirk.

“Never mind”, I told her airily. “We can try this again tomorrow. I have lots of work to finish”.

I strode to my desk purposefully and typed somethimg randomly.

God! Do I ever ever learn from my mistakes?

Now that my son is going to be four and is proving to be too much of a brat, I’ve started bed-time stories with morals.

After a nerve-racking and nerve-wrecking tantrum session, I stumbled upon a story. Never planned anything, but made up the story as we went along.

It started with a naughty boy who was rude to his mom, mean to his dad and troubled his parents whenever he had to eat a meal or drink his milk.

A monkey watched him for a long time and when he’d had enough, he carried the boy to his tree, locked him up in a cage at the top.

The boy was frightened and started crying for his mom.

“Ha!”, jeered the monkey. “You never respected your mom. Why do you need her now?” asked the monkey.

“I want my Dad!” cried the boy. “Ha!” jeered the monkey again. “You’re mean to your dad. I shall not take you to him”, said the monkey.

“I want food! I’m hungry.” cried the boy.

The monkey burst out laughing. “You never let your mom feed you all these days. Now you want food! Out here we animals eat only leaves. I’ll get you some”, said the monkey.

The boy was so sad, he started praying to God. God came to his aid, argued with the monkey to return the boy to his parents.

After making the boy promise that he’ll behave better at home, the monkey let him go.

God asks him to close his eyes, and says the magic words, “Abracadarbra!”

When he opens his eyes, the boy finds himself back home. He’s so happy to see his parents again, eats his dinner with them and all three of them go to sleep.

At the end of the story, I was very proud of myself. It just kind of evolved into a story which corrected all his vices at one go. Or so I thought.

My son loved it too. He kept asking for it everyday.

After a while, he started adding to it.

Yesterday, I narrated it again. When I came to the part where the monkey says that animals eat leaves, he piped in, “Amma, Giraffe eats leaves.”

“Yes, baby,” I said and continued with the story.

When I reached the part where the boy prays to God, he quickly interjected.

“Not God ma, the boy prayed to the giraffe!” he said.

“No,” I said. No one prays to Giraffes. We only pray to God,” I explained.

“NO! I DON’T LIKE GOD! I WANT ONLY GIRAFFE!” He screamed.

When I started to laugh, he was so mad that he threatened me with dire consequences. (I’ll become a lion and eat you! Don’t laugh!”

Just to make peace, I had to change the story a bit and make the boy pray to the Giraffe and the Giraffe saves him and takes him back to his parents.

And after umpteen sessions, he’s still rude to me, drives me up the wall during nap times and mealtimes and throws tantrums at the drop of a hat.

I guess the moral is for me and not him…

Scriptures say we should see God in all creatures.

Maybe my son sees him in a Giraffe!