A few days ago, I was ‘helping’ my son have his dinner. (My husband had given both of us not-so favourable feedback on me spoon-feeding him even after the kid turned 5) With no tv to distract him from what’s going into his mouth, he begged me for at least a story. So I picked up a book and read him a mealtime story. But the story finished before the food.

My son  insisted he cannot finish his meal. In a desperate attempt to placate him, I told him a very, very short story on how I got duped when I was his age. A story about a beautiful pencil. My mother had bought me this beautiful pencil and all my friends at school thought it was so cool.

During the lunch break, a boy came across and showed me a bunch of about 30 pencils. “Wow!” I’d  gushed.

“All these are yours!” he’d said. “You give me your beautiful pencil in return.”

I was torn between losing my beautiful pencil and owning 30 pencils. Finally my greed won. I handed him my pencil. He grabbed it and added it to his collection and ran away shouting “Hey guys! Look at this new addition to my collection!”

I thought my son would find it really funny.

But he was furious.

“Did you get back your pencil, Amma?”

“No, baby! I told you, he ran away with it! Haha..”

“Did you beat him up?”

“No!”

“What was his name?”

I told you, it happened soooo many years ago. I don’t remember!”

With that I wiped his mouth, gave him a glass of water and went back to my comp to complete some work.

A little later, he clambered on to my lap.

“Amma, I’m so upset…” He said.

“Why, kanna?”

“With that boy..”

I had totally forgotten the story by now.

“Huh?”

“The boy who stole your new pencil”

“Oh that! Don’t worry about it now. It was only a story to get you to finish your dinner!”

“You mean you lied?!”

“No! It did happen. But it was soo long ago. So don’t worry about it now.”

“I’m going to ask Hanuman to kill that boy!” he announced with his chin quivering.

The more I tried to brush it off the more agitated and angry he became.

Finally I distracted him with some tv and went for my shower.

Soon enough there was an angry knock.

“AMMA!”

“Yes!”

“Did you tell your teacher about it?”

By now I was so fed up with the whole thing and was beginning to wish I’d never opened my stupid mouth about the beautiful pencil.

” Yes, I did!” I lied.

“Did she shout at him?”

“Yes!”

“Did he cry?”

“Yes!”

“Yippeeeee!!!! You made him cry!!! Nannannaananaana!!!!”

Now I know where our movie makers get the inspiration for their “Maa Sentiment”!

What started off as an idle dream a few months ago has finally taken shape!

I was just dreaming aloud when I told a friend that I want to start an online gift shop.

Two days later she called to say she’d given serious  thought to what I’d said and wanted to join me.  As usual,I had totally forgotten what I had said!

She reminded me and thanks to the brainstorming sessions I’d had with her, (now my partner in crime!) and all the inputs and reviews from friends and family,  months of chasing carpenters and fabricators, The Indian Twist, an online gift shop is finally a reality.

Designing is the easiest part! Getting them into workable products was the challenge, to put it mildly!

Do check out #mce_temp_url# to view the crazy Indian gifts designed by yours truly and her partner!

And do let me know what you think of the products, where they need to improve, etc.

Feedback is the only way I’ll know if this is indeed a dream worth pursuing!!

rujutadiwekar.blogspot.com

I was listening to a friend drone on about her dietician… Another friend had just asked her how she managed to lose so much weight from the last time she’d seen her…

I politely interrupted to ask her if she’d read this book by Rujuta Diwekar.

“Pooh!” spat my friend. “My dietician told me that book is nothing but trash!”

Having read that book and totally taken in by it, I was a bit mortified by her strong reaction.

But in retrospect I always wondered how the regular dieticians would react to this book which attacks dieticians who use startvation to reduce weight so vehemently.

There, I got my answer!

Infact, I’m surprised why they all didn’t gang up together and sue her or something!

I,  for starters, have totally changed my perceptions on eating, after reading this book.

Its fantabulous!

The author, whose claim to fame is that she got Kareena Kapoor to achieve size ‘0′ tells all in this book. She even got Ms. Kapoor to write the foreward.

If a friend hadn’t recommended it so highly, I’d have just dismissed it as another filmy, hyped-up book…

Thank god I didn’t!

Because there’s nothing filmy about this book. Its more like the collective wisdom of all I used to hear from my grandmother, aunts and not to mention my own mother! With simple educational information on how to treat your body right and feel good about yourself.

She breaks down the most complexly percieved notions on the most simple process in our lives – feeding ourselves.

She educates us in a very simple language the processes involved in building a healthy body and how we punish ourselves by denying our bodies in the name of fad diets – nutrients.

I learnt that there are types of weights we carry. Lean body weight; which are the bones and muscles. And fat: which is just fat.

How those diets which tells us to avoid carbs or sugar or whatever reduces our lean body weight which is so essential to being healthy and not our fat…

She gives lots of examples from real life too, to make her point. For instance,  how a man went to weighing 68 kilos from 116 kilos after he joined a centre which promised rapid weight loss. But never felt energetic. His hair was falling at a rapid rate. His skin sagged around him. He tripped over a speed breaker while walking and ended up with multiple fractures in his arm. Why? Because his bones had lost their density due to starvation.

‘Don’t ever hold your body ransom to the weighing machine’ she cautions. ‘Weight is just a number. Once you start eating healthy and cultivate good fitness routines, you’ll automatically lose your fat’.

Along with all that we’ve heard and never paid much attention to.

Like chew your food, swallow and then take the next spoon (I was amazed that I was eating only 60% of what I normally eat to feel full!), think positive thoughts while eating, no TV or phone calls while eating, (this is the hardest! Istill haven’t mastered this!) eat something every 2 hours, eat your dinner maximum 2 hours after sunset, sleep early, never have alcohol on empty stomach, exercise regularly… all this and more.

She has a chapter dedicated to the four basic principles of eating right, which blows up a lot of myths on eating.

I was so floored by this book I was a zealous follower for about 2 weeks.

I could actually see my cheek bones at the end of 10 days and even my tummy had visibly reduced. Excited I got  a lot of copies and distributed it to all my friends.

But once the enthusiasm waned I’m back to my usual sins! And gained my weight back.

But since I have seen the results of  this book first hand, I’m making this my bible. I read a few pages everyday to drill it into my head.

I push myself to practice Yoga even when I can think of a million excuses….

Maybe  now I need a book for self discipline!

For about a year now, I’ve stopped shielding my son from news of death…

Now that he’s so familiar with all the killings he so happily watches on Ben10, Krishna, Pawanputra Hanuman and the likes, I tell him the truth if someone we know passes on.

Recently a friend lost her mother and I had to tell him where I was going.

He later asked me, “how did she die?”

“She was old, baby..” I replied. “And she was not feeling very well…”

He pondered for a moment and left it at that.

Yesterday, I had a headache and was trying to sleep it off. He came charging into the room and wanted me to play a game with him. That instant.

“Not now baby! I pleaded. “Leave me alone for sometime.”

Concerned, he knelt beside my bed.

“Why, Amma?” he asked.

“I’m not feeling too well. Let me rest. I’ll feel better”

“Are you going to die, Amma?” He asked,  sounding very worried.

“No kanna..”  I replied, feeling very touched.

“Amma, please don’t die!” begged my little drama prince.

“I will not die now baby..” I assured him, stroking his head. “First I’ll have to grow into an old woman, I’ll die only after you get married and have babies…” I promised him.

He thought for a while.

“You’ll become an old woman, Amma?”

“Yes, Kanna..”

“And then you’ll die?”

“Yes, Kanna…”

After a pause, he asked me,

“Then who’ll be my new mother?”

That, my darlings, is the male species for you, in a nutshell…

Whenever I fell ill as a child, (which was quite often!) the whole household revolved around me. Ditto for my brother too. Whenever one of us, or both of us (most of the time) fell ill, my mom stayed home and had a perpetually worried face. Dad called every hour to check on us. Everyone joined forces to make sure I swallowed my medicines.

This pattern continued well in to my late teens.

Once I came down down with a viral when I’d just started working.

“You go to work” I told my worried mother. “I’m old enough to take care of myself”

Reluctantly, she left me with instructions on what I should eat and what medicines I should take, still with a worried face.

I dozed off into a fitful sleep.

I woke up at lunch time. Tried to get up and walk to the dining room a few feet away. But my feet just didn’t co-operate…

Wobbly, I held on to the wall and staggered to the table. I fed myself and staggered back to bed.

Now I had a horrible headache plus a raging fever. The tablets lessened the fever, but the headache refused to go away.

After much tossing and turning, I drifted off to another bout of fitful sleep.

I woke up to my mother opening the front door.

She came straight to my room to check on me.

“Don’t ever leave me when I have fever again!” I croaked.

********

Years later I fell ill when I myself had became a mother. My husband just couldn’t take off from work, but he did his bit by dropping off my 2 year old at his parents’ during the day and picking him up after work.  My dad brought me my lunch. (perks of living within an 8km radius of one’s parents and in-laws!)

Again my raging fever and headache stopped me from reading or doing anything remotely enjoyable. But surprisingly, I didn’t falter when I had to walk around the house.

My rest lasted only 2 days, since my son spent his second day whimpering & crying for me alternatively and refused any nourishment.

So the third day  I had no choice but get up and take care of him!

A few months ago, I was sick again, but never had the luxury of a  lie in. Armed with paracetamols, I drove my son to school, did all my usual chores for the day. Only difference was I napped for an hour in the morning and again in the afternoon.  And went to bed early.

But what surprised me was, I somehow had the strength to do all my chores.

So it brings me to an essential question… Is illness merely a state of mind? If I have responsibilities, my body gets the energy to perform the chores and when I don’t, it runs totally out of it?

Or is it just one of the curses of motherhood?!!

The doorbell rang as I was racing against time to finish an assignment. My son was napping and I prayed he wouldn’t wake up and ruin my efforts to catch a deadline.  For once.

H, a friend stood outside my door.

Her forehead was smeared with so much kumkum that it looked like she’d emptied a dubba on herself.

I invited her in and ran back to the comp.

She dragged a chair and sat next to me.

“I walked out of home,” she informed me.

“Why?”

“I fought with my husband”

“So what’s new?! ” I asked. ” you keep talking… just don’t expect me to say anything till I send this mail… “

She rattled on about the arguement she’d had with her husband (which was so petty, I can’t even tell you…)

I half-listened and made all the appropriate noises.

I finished my work and we lounged in the sofa with a cup of tea each.

She’d just told me how she had walked all morning from one temple to another to get some peace of mind… She was sure her husband must have been having hell trying to handle both their boisterous kids when the doorbell rang again.

This time it was her driver.

She looked at me flummoxed.

I just shrugged.

The driver informed her that his master was downstairs waiting for her in the car.

“Tell him I’m not coming..” She said haughtily.

“Ma’m… I’ll lose my job.. you please tell him whatever you want to yourself…”

She looked at me…

“Your man is smart..” I told her. ” He knows exactly where you’ll be when you run away from home!”

After dragging her feet for another ten minutes, she sheepishly said her goodbyes and went back to her waiting husband…

*******

Fights in a marriage is as common as cold, I think… I have my share of them too… But over the years they’ve tapered down to a curt word here, a killer looks there and we just get on with our lives.

I remember the first time we had a fight as newly-weds. After a bitter argument and a healthy blame-game session, my husband stormed out after yelling he didn’t want dinner.

I threw myself on the bed, cried into my pillow and ignored my own grumbling tummy for the better part of the night.

The next time, we had just sat down to dinner and I was ravenous.

But my husband who was suffering from a bad cold was mad at me for the chilled curds at the table.  How could I be so inconsiderate?

I told him he’d been avoiding curds for the past few days and the chilled curds were for me.

He walked off in a huff.

I looked at the food in my plate.

Then I looked at his sulking silhouette in the balcony.

My hunger won. I ate my dinner and retreated to the bedroom and watched some TV.

But the dishes on the table bothered me.

So I went up to him and asked him ” Aren’t you going to finish your dinner?”

“NO!”  he barked. “I told you I will not eat!”

“OK” I said. I cleared the table, cleaned the kitchen and went back to bed. After a bit of channel surfing, I drifted off to a peaceful slumber for the next eight hours.

And the next day my husband was back to normal, talking about the weather!

Having stumbled upon this brilliant way of handling a fight by sheer accident, I’ve stuck to it all these years …

But of course there was this odd incident when I was overcome with so much anger that I tried a filmy style walkout late in the night. (We were staying in a very quiet and lonely neighborhood then)

I was sure my husband would follow me with a thousand apologies, but when it didn’t happen, I quickly backtracked to find him glowering at the door.

I got an earful for being so foolish and how I could have got mugged or raped or walked into so many such nasty situations.

Anyway, now both of us don’t waste our energies  yelling or screaming. And now we cannot afford to raise our voices in front of the kid. (Thanks to all those advice you get on child rearing, free or otherwise!)

So its clipped comments, curt nods and murderous looks for us. And after a bit we just carry on with our normal lives.

I think such small fights add spice to any marriage. Imagine if  we all had predictable, happy and peaceful conversations with our spouses all the time… It’d be like having plate after plate of syrupy jaangiri! Absolutely no spice!!!

And one of my favourite stories is about a good friend when she was a newly-wed.

She stormed out after a fight, stopped at a wine shop, got herself a bottle of vodka, went over to a friend’s place, stayed up cursing all men the whole night. This was before the mobile phone days. The next morning she returned home to find an anxious husband, who’d been worried sick all night and had been just about to call the cops. He was so relieved to see her safe & sound that they had a tearful reunion on the spot!

Anand stands before me. His palms joined together in reverence. His eyes closed. Lips moving in prayer.

“Please, please, please…” he murmurs. “Please God, let me do well in my Chemistry exam tomorrow,” he prays ardently.

 “Don’t you think it’ll help things if you go home now and spend sometime with your books? “ I ask him.

He does not hear me. His mind is full of voices.

 His father’s. His mother’s. His teachers’. His friends’. His own.

Admonitions. Fears. Warnings. Dreams. Aspirations.

The din drowns my voice completely.

After one last look at me he leaves hurriedly.

He has tickets for the latest movie in his pocket.

I should know. I am after all, omniscient.

Assured that I’ll cook up some miracle tomorrow to save his day, he leaves while his mind is already with his friends waiting for him at the cinema.

******** 

A coconut smashes on the street.

It’s Kamala.

Soon she is  standing in front of me.

Her lips are moving in fervent prayer. But her mind asks me, “God! Why isn’t he speaking to me? What have I done wrong this time? Why don’t you do something?”

After each fight with her husband, she comes here with many questions, to implore me to help her.

“Why don’t you ask your husband?” I ask gently. “Talking it over with him will give you more answers than all your prayers here.”

As before, my voice goes unheard in the clamour of the thoughts in her head.

But relieved that I’ll solve her problems, she leaves, more light hearted.

*******

Sometimes I wonder if that’s what I am here for.

To solve problems.

Agreed, I am the remover of obstacles and all that. But most of the time, all people have to do is to bend down, pick up the obstacle and throw it away.

But instead, they just stand there, mortified, close their eyes and try to wish their problems away.

*******

Here comes Preethi.

She’s a delight to me. She lives next door. Comes to see me everyday.

I wait eagerly for her visits.

She comes in. After exchanging pleasantries, starts telling me the highlights of her day.

Her childish logic never ceases to amaze me. She makes so much more sense than the adults.

Today, she’s upset with her mother.

“All I did was ask her if my snack was ready,” she says mournfully.

“For that, she yelled and said, I bother her all the time!”

“Don’t worry about that, sweet heart,” I assure her.

“Your mother was not really mad at you.”

“Really?” she asks.

“Yes.” I smile.

“Go home now, your mother’s waiting for you with cheese crackers!”

“Wow!” she says and skips out.

************

She almost knocks over an annoyed Kannan, who’s coming towards me.

Of late, he’s here everyday, praying for his son, who’s appearing for his school finals this year.

“Please God,” he prays, “Make Arun get high marks and manage an engineering seat.”

“You fool!” I admonish him. “Your son has no interest in engineering. You forced him to take math, a subject he hates. Have you seen his paintings? They’re brilliant. Why don’t you encourage him to take up a career in art?”

Stubbornly refusing to listen, he drones on his prayers to shut out my voice.

Fine. I’ll do my best.

These are problems of another kind. The ones some create for themselves. Oh, how they love to do that! Arun is a brilliant painter who happens to hate math. Then why force him to learn it and then come to me and ask for a miracle?

Anyway, like I said, I’ll do my best.

*********

A few days later, Preethi walks in. Do I see tears in her eyes?

“Child! What happened?” I ask.

“God! I have to leave you,” she wails. “My father’s transferred to Madurai.”

“Oh! Is that so?” I feign bewilderment. “Don’t worry, girl. You’ll find a new friend” I try to console her.

“But I’ll miss you,” she says.

She stays for a long time. I cheer her up with things she can look forward to.

New house. New school. New friends.

It works. Still sad, but visibly cheered, she says her goodbyes.

I promise never to forget her and help her in all her future troubles.

She leaves.

I chuckle to myself.

She doesn’t know.

In Madurai, I sit in a small shrine, right opposite her house. She can see me from her bedroom window.

I am omnipresent, remember?

indialog.co.in

This book was published in January 2008. I got my hands on a copy only last week. After I finished the book, I was so impressed.

I’m surprised that I’ve never heard of it till now. Was this raved about at the time of release and I missed it totally? Or the publishers chose to maintain a low profile?

Whatever it was, this by no means is an average book. It overtakes any other book in this genre (IIT/IIM guys writing their college/career stories) by its sheer content.

Though it’s a ‘dear diary’ type of novel, all the characters breathe life to the story, however small their role is.

It starts off with two management trainees finding their way to Rangpurgaon, a small village where they’ll spend the next 2 months as part of their training program.

How they adapt themselves to village life, live without a bathroom or internet connection, succeed in generating income to the women’s self help group with their products and finally get a taste of the brutal laws of village, is the story.

The narration is simple. Like I said earlier, it’s more like reading someone’s diary. But that itself makes it a very interesting read. The purpose of the book is not to showcase (or show off!) the author’s command over the English language. But to recreate (it’s semi-autobiographical) life in a remote village in all its glory.

It has humor too.  Simple incidents like the villagers wanting to buy the laptop from the trainees so they can attach it to their tractors to watch movies and songs as they work, the way almost the entire village escorting the two to buy a bicycle in the nearest town are two good examples.

The characters portrayed are so likeable. From the village supremo Martand Tiwari who terrorises everyone but clucks around the two city dwellers like a mother hen, his younger brother Anuj who is tongue-tied in his brother’s presence, but shares his dream of a ‘love marriage’ with the young city men… the star-crossed lovers Lalu and Manju whose idea of a date is to walk a few paces away from each other in the pretext of some chores… the old men who form the panchayat with Martand Tiwari, who grill the two men on their first day and after being shocked they’re still unmarried, offer to find them good matches… and not to mention Shyam who shares this adventure with the author..

All of them are so true to life and you genuinely start liking them after a few pages.

I don’t know if the dramatic end is fictional or not, but I closed the book with tears in my eyes.

I was driving back home on a Saturday from a bit of shopping. Impromptu, I decided to stop by at a friend’s shop on my way to pick up something. I called her to check if the shop was open. Knowing its illegal to use a mobile phone while driving, I put her on speaker and gripped the phone and the wheel while speaking to her for a few seconds.

 A little later, a bike rode right next to me and the riders signalled me to pull over. As they parked in front of me, I realised they were cops.

“Oh, joy!”  I thought as I pulled over.

One of them walked up to me.

I rolled down my window.

“Madam, You cannot talk on your mobile while driving…”

” I was not,” I protested. “I was just holding my phone.”

“Even that is not allowed, Madam. You can come with us to the sergent and pay Rs. 1100 as fine.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s standing under the bridge you just came by…” It was almost a kilometre behind me. (It occured to me only later that the sergent must be a seasoned scuba diver to stand under that bridge, which was constructed over the murky waters of Adyar river! Unless he had meant to say ‘the other side of the bridge’!)

I hesitated. “Its almost lunch time and I have a small child waiting at home…” I said pleadingly. 

He seemed good natured enough to smile and suggested, “Then you can give us whatever amount you want happily, madam. We cannot give you a receipt, though…”

“Oh, that’s ok,” I said happily, intending to give him a hundred ruppee note.

But as luck would have it, my wallet had only 3 crisp 500 Rupee notes.

Reluctantly, I peeled off one and handed it over. Do I ask for change, I wondered.

He beamed at me as he asked his fellow cop to come over and take it from me. (Why couldn’t he take it, I wonder…)

“I’m saying this for your own good madam. Please don’t use the phone while driving, its very dangerous”.

He went back to his bike and made a show of directing the vehicles so I could join the meagre traffic… 

In the days of yore, this was called ‘vazhippari kollai‘…

And people doing it were respected dacoits…

Poppadam & Vathal kozhambu…