Matches made in heaven - and set us ablaze!

 A great grand aunt twice removed once called out of the blue to invite us to her granddaughter's wedding. "What, you don't remember me?" She shrieked in abject horror into the phone and proceeded to explain the exact and excruciatingly complex web of relationships that connected us. "Why, I was right there at your parents' wedding!" I apologized that I had missed that event, probably because I hadn't been born yet. She snorted at the namby pamby excuse. As far as she was concerned, in terms of namby-pamby excuses, it was right up there alongside "I was out fighting a war!" or "I was in the hospital having a baby!"

You see, the Great Indian Wedding is the ultimate 'do' where you are expected to turn up, turned out in all manner of finery, so that you can chalk out all manner of circles of reference between everybody present. A wedding is not declared complete until all those in the hall have been linked to everyone else, and everyone has been introduced to everyone that can be introduced. That's why a good wedding takes anywhere between 2 days to 4 days. The good old six degrees of separation simply doesn't work with everyone and the old family tree has to be literally uprooted and examined to find invisible tendrils of connections that links the brat who has set up base at the ice cream counter to the matriarch to whom all lesser mortals are kowtowing.

Match-making seems to be a part of our genes. We seem to have this primeval need to desperately form patterns all the time between everyone we know, a need to prove again and again the cosmic interconnectedness of the universe. Facebook and LinkedIn help by showing us exactly how many people we have in common with every person we know on the planet.

"Oh you're in XYZ company?" People ask me ever so often. "Do you know so-and-so? I have no idea what department he's in or which branch. In fact, I barely know his full name. What, you don't know him?" The company has about thirty thousand employees across about eight offices in the city. But that makes no difference. I still have to endure the accusing and disappointed glares of people whose so-and-so I have just refused to recognize. And what if, by some miracle of probability I do actually know the person? How does it help anyone really?

My husband is routinely asked whenever a conversation with a new acquaintance veers to matters relating to alma maters. "Oh you studied in IIT/IIM? My so-and-so was a professor/student there..." Well, so what if it was about ten years before my husband was born or twenty years after he graduated from said institution. Or if the said institution he was in is about a thousand kilometers away from so-and-so's?? IIT is IIT and IIM is IIM right? Whenever, wherever.

No wonder then that a wedding is a rite of passage of sublime importance, higher on the scale than even births and deaths. Never mind if the bride and groom have already been living together for a few decades. Never mind that both have been married several times earlier. Great grandmothers are still in attendance with their wheelchairs, oxygen masks and other apparatuses in place. Hugely pregnant sisters-in-law are expected to keep their contractions down to a decent frequency.

Of course, at the critical moment in the wedding, when the nadhaswaram has reached its crescendo and drowns out all the chatter around anyway, all conversation comes to a standstill and the whole family along with its extended branches and circles holds its collective breath as the wedding garlands are exchanged and the mangal sutra is tied tightly in place. A sigh of relief wafts through the hall like a hot summer breeze. The attendees can now go about the business of living. Grandfathers can now have their insulin injections, hungry babies can now be fed, the sisters-in-law may now deliver their offspring in peace.

And of course more matches can be made. "You know, I have this lovely divorcee grand niece of mine, you wouldn't happen to know a handsome widower or divorcee, would you? Wait, you do? He's in IBM? Wait, you know, my husband's mother's sister-in-law's nephew's colleague's father-in-law is in IBM. Let me ask him if he knows him."

Left and right brain

'Be rational," says my left brain,
"No be creative," says the right.
I think they should talk it out,
So I send out an invite.

But my left brain says it's busy,
So I propose another time,
Then my right brain has a conflict,
And (regretfully) has to decline.

Finally, we agree on a day and time,
A room is booked, the agenda drawn -
We're ready to find out how
The two sides of my brain can get along.

But despite my best laid plans,
I'm still plunged in gloom,
For the conference team in my head has
Rejected my request for a room!

And so I walk around the place,
Perplexed, confounded, and bereft,
Always wondering if I'm in my right mind
Or if even I have one left!

Day 30 - My 30-day Challenge - The good, the stats, and the (relatively) ugly!

So, my 30 days are up! Here are a few interesting things I found during this experiment...

The Good
1. I completed the challenge that I set out for myself - no one was monitoring me but me, no one cared if I made it or not but me - and I did it anyway! If I can do this, I can do anything. Bring it on - life!

2. I have tried to look at life from 30 different points of view - a triacontagon prism of life if you will (that is apparently what a 30-sided polygon is called). See, that's another thing I just learnt.

3. I have managed to write 30 original articles/poems every single day, no forwards, no stuff done by the older me (or is that the younger me), all the posts were done by the me of the day!

4. I looked at everything closer, better, clearer- I smelt the roses, well enough to describe the fragrance. To write a coherent post about it, you need to be clear about what you are writing.

5. Because I tried to write mostly humor, I got to laugh at some things I might otherwise have been angry about - I like to think that I saved myself a couple of arguments while putting a grin on someone's face.

The Stats
1. I started off looking at stats, how many people were commenting, how many people were responding. In the beginning, it spurred me on.

2. I realized fairly soon that stats only measure the breadth of the post, not the depth. There are a few posts that were not exactly prvate in nature, but would have more meaning for a few selected individuals. Their responses were breath-taking.

3. I realized that all posts were not the same for everybody - even within my circle of friends and  acquaintances, there were a wide variety of people who seemed to resonate with different things, some that I did not really expect. Different posts struck different notes with different people. It was like a jala tarang of sorts and I enjoyed the music.

4. My three top posts (most viewed posts) are in order - Why Women Put on Weight, Postcards of Varanasi, and The Art of Shopping. Perhaps because these keep showing up on popularity feeds, they keep getting more and more popular - which kind of ets you thinking about life in general, doesn't it! Not too different with 'lucky' people in life who just seem to keep getting luckier.

5. So does that mean the most popular post would be of a fat woman who shopped to go to varanasi? Just thinking aloud, I know it's a flawed premise.

The (Relatively) Ugly
1. The days I put stuff up on Facebook, I was sorely tempted to keep checking for updates and on occasion was a little disappointed when they didn't make the waves I hoped. I stopped doing that eventually and started sharing posts independently with the people I thought might enjoy them.

2. I was so engrossed with writing the next post, that I realized I wasn't internalizing what I was reading or listening as well as I should.

3. Spinning a new story every single day was not easy - some days were uninspired and I tried to squeeze stories where none existed - those who have been following my blogs faithfully will know which ones those are. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing!

Day 29 - Journal of a teddy bear with an identiy crisis

I am a dark chocolate brown teddy bear, tall, soft, and handsome, with a large soft grey bow. I was given to Dhwani on her first birthday.The family called me Charmain after an ad for a brand of toilet paper in which a teddy bear happily wiggles its presumably clean bottom after having used Charmain. Apparently I resembled that teddy bear.

In Toy School, we are prepared for our lives after we are adopted by a family. I am twelve years old, and in teddy bear years, that is very very old! I have heard of friends who have been disembowelled by love within a year of adoption, whose arms and legs hang by threads. That is the destiny of a teddy bear, we are told in Toy School, a destiny we should embrace.

But Dhwani did not seem to need me very much in those early years. I stayed sadly intact for years, perched up on the shelf and saw many toys come and go, either get broken by use, or misplaced before they could be used. I saw dolls desperately in need of baths and a few that actually got one but still remained damp and smelly. I saw toys with dribble and drool and chocolate stains and several other unmentionables on them. Well, if you name me after a brand of toilet paper, you have to be prepared for some toilet humour!

Anyway, after a few years, along came Dhruv who inherited all those stuffed toys, the clean and dry ones, as well as the wet and smelly ones - and me! He did not bother to rechristen too many of the other toys, but decided to rename me Teddington, a dignified name if ever there was one, after a character in a children's show. But suddenly, Dhwani (who was now eight years old) decided that I was far too precious to part with. So they fought over me. They grabbed me each by an arm, and just as I thought I would finally achieve my destiny and get an arm torn off, their mother always intervened.

The matter was often settled depending on who needed me more at the time. Sometimes, Dhruv would settle for the monkey, the lion, the kangaroo, or one of the many dogs. Those nights, I was Charmain, guardian of pre-teen nightmares, warder off of dreams of teasing love-struck pimply pre-pubescent boys, or thoughts of stern teachers peering from over horn-rimmed glasses. I did not have much to offer - after all I had spent my teen years in various toy cupboards - but all she seemed to need sometimes was someone soft, non-judgemental, quiet, and supportive. I seemed to fit that bill very well indeed.

But when the matter could not be so amicably settled, I became Teddington, defender against dreams of big grabby sisters (the very one who came to me for support the previous night), guardian against bullies on the playground, whispering tips on how to colour within the lines and write cursive 'f's'.

Sometimes, it would start with me going to one bed and then being snuck off with the one who slept last. I would start my night as Charmain and then somewhere in the night turn into Teddington, or the other way round. This is rather a strain on my old body and older mind. In Toy School, we are taught to expect and welcome grievous bodily harm inflicted upon us, but we are not prepared to have our minds cleaved in two, step out from one character into the shoes of another. But maybe, I should have read the fine print better - Expect the unexpected.

Day 28 - Life on a Monopoly board

Day 27 - Diary to my unborn son

Dhruv, you are a lucky little guy, maybe even more so than your sister because you had one more person to pray and wait for your arrival than she did.  I’ll tell you a secret, no matter how cool she acts towards you, no matter what she says and does, she loves you to death, adores you. Don’t for a minute believe otherwise, even when it doesn’t feel like it. She sobbed and wept when she saw or heard of stories of something sad happening to babies. She kissed my tummy everyday at the door when she left for school even when I wasn’t showing yet, and even after you were born but when you were in your crib sleeping – how odd it must have looked to anyone passing by!

We were trying for a year to have you. We waited and prayed and planned for you.

November 27, 2007:

My birthday. I find out that I am pregnant! And when we tellyour sister the news, she is exultant. She credits your arrival to her heartfelt prayers. And she is right! We go out to celebrate at South Indies that had just opened. And they give me a teeny tiny little chutney jar – a baby jar. So appropriate. This is the most beautiful birthday that I have ever had. Ever.

November 28, 2007:

A doctor formally confirms that I am indeed pregnant. I can’t believe my eyes. Or ears! I have my first scan at Manipal Hospital and check it out for myself.

We are now getting used to the idea that pretty soon; we will no longer be just the three of us, but four! We decide to celebrate properly and plan a quick trip to Bangkok to visit your athai and cousin Trayi. We will celebrate Mom and Dad’s tenth anniversary there. We shop for tickets and deals and everything.

Jan 9, 2008:

I have my next scan and the doctor hits us with some bad news – we can’t go to Bangkok after all. I have something called a low-lying placenta – in other words I can’t travel. So there go all our plans. But it’s okay, we all love you anyway!

Jan 18, 2008:

Mommy and Daddy’s 10^th anniversary which we were supposed to celebrate in Thailand – instead we end up spending the day in a place called Angsana – a lovely place. But I can’t do half the stuff there – guess why? Because I am pregnant! Now, if it was anyone else who was playing spoilsport, I would have been upset – but it is you! I can't get upset with you!

March 19, 2008:  

I go for another scan, to make doubly sure that everything is okay with you. Thank goodness, you turn out to be fine.  

April, 2008:

Again, we make plans to go to Bangkok. Again, they don’t materialize. But this time it isn’t your fault. But Dhwani goes with Ammamma and Thatha - she goes to spend a month with Cousin Trayi and has a whale of a time. She returns by the end of the month.

May 8, 2008:

We realize that you are in my tummy in the breech position. That means you are upside down - not the way you are supposed to be. The doctor says it could still happen. So we have not yet given up hope.

May 9, 2008:

We fly out to Chennai a little earlier than we had originally planned. You, me and Dhwani, with Usha Ammummai.

June 1, 2008:

It is time for Dhwani’s school to re-open. We all go to Bangalore to attend a function and leave Dhwani behind to stay with Ammamma and Thatha for a few months and go to school while I stay back in Chennai to have you. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything more difficult than that. But she goes through with it. For you.  Dad and Dhwani come every second weekend to spend some time with us.  They must have made at least a dozen train rides during those months!

We get settled in Chennai – it is hot and sweaty, but we are happy. You are tumbling inside (even upside down!) and we notice that you seem to love music (I think you still do). There is one song in particular that you seem to love – the title track of a Malayalam serial - Guruvayurappan. I must try to find that song and play it to see if you still like it!

May 31, 2008:

 We go in for what should be the final scan at the same hospital that your sister was born, which had worked out fine back then. It confirms what we already knew – that you are upside down. But to be told that, we wait for over four hours! We decide to go to Thatha’s hospital for a second opinion. And boy, am I glad we did!

You see, we find out there that not only are you upside down, which is bad enough, but you have the umbilical cord around your neck! This is not a very good thing and we have to keep a close watch on you! Naughty little fellow! The radiographer describes the position you are in, upside down, cord around your neck, hand holding on to the cord, and leg stretched out. Now, babies are supposed to be all curled up in their moms’ tummies – that’s called the fetal position. You, on the other hand, are resting like an Emperor after a large meal!

So, I have to have surgery to get you out – there is no other option. But will you be able to make it to nine months – It has been only seven and a half months!

So we have to go in once week for scans to make sure you were growing well. And you were – for the first few weeks.

Jun 27, 2008:

We go in for one of these routine scans in the morning and the docs are not very happy with you! They want to get you out immediately. But we haven’t planned or prepared –we tell the docs that we’ll be back the next day which gives us a little time to pack our stuff and set the house in order. For your sister we had days and weeks to get the house painted and cleaned and everything. But you hurried us all up!

June 28, 2008 – 8:34 AM:

I am wheeled into surgery – I am awake throughout the procedure. I can see lights on the ceiling and stainless instruments gleaming. Some time later I hear the doctor announce, “It’s a boy!” I am elated and ecstatic. But a little worried from all the movies I’d watched. Imagine, all the books that I’d read, all the studying I’d done – and when the time came, what comes into my mind are silly Hindi movies!

“Why isn’t he crying?” I ask. Babies must cry when they’re born. I know that much. Turns out that since you were upside down with the cord around your neck, not once but twice, your bottom came out a few minutes before your face.

But out you come and cry you do. Lustily, with your tiny little face all scrunched up and your little fists all balled up. But you are so little (about 2.5 kg) and so new to the world that you are placed in an incubator for a couple of days in the Neonatal ICU (NICU). But pretty soon you move in with me and your grandmom takes care of us both till we are strong enough to go home, first to our home in Chennai, and then back to Bangalore.

Day 26 - A day with our grandmother

Each morning, we awoke,
To a gentle noise
That became more and more insistent,
Until we reached out to turn it off,
And discovered we couldn't
Because it was our grandmother's voice
Raised to a pitch that got us
Somersaulting out of bed.

Rumbling tummies were fed,
With soft white steaming idlis,
Dusty shoes polished to a shine,
Dowdy uniforms still warm from the iron,
Unruly hair magically oiled
And combed and straightened,
And neatly coiled,
Into two neat plump plaits,
Finished with ribbons
Tied up in pretty blue bows,
Like presents packaged for a party,
That wasn't quite a party.

At the door, she checked us for essentials,
And we turned back for the
Most essential thing of all.
She inhaled our cheeks,
(Because we hated slobbery kisses),
And breathed us in,
Sucking in our fears and tears,
Our gloom and doom,
And releasing them
Into her seventh cup of
Coffee of the day,
Strong enough to take them,
Hot enough to burn them to dust.

When we skipped out, we were
fresh-smelling happy little girls,
Neat and clean and well-fed,
Ready for a punishing day at school,
Which we got through
Knowing that at the end of it,
There would be hot food,
A listening ear, a bedtime story or two,
And another cheek inhalation at night,
To release our fears and drift us off,
Into the sweet world of childish dreams.

Day 25 – Diary to my unborn daughter

This is a series of diary entries that I had maintained for you, Dhwani, written during my pregnancy. I am astonished that through all the things we have misplaced since then, this set of tattered pages has survived! That, in and of itself, should tell you how much you were and are loved!

September 8, 1999

Today I discovered I was pregnant! I feel a rush of emotions overcome me – joy, pride, doubt (Would I be a good mother?) and above all, an urge to share this lovely moment with your Dad who came home that evening with bouquets in both arms – fresh roses for his radiant and happy wife in one hand and longer lasting paper ones to mark that special day for years to come. I hope they will remain as sweet and beautiful when you are old enough to understand what it means to us, what it stands for, and how special you are to us. (Update - Unfortunately, we don’t have those roses any more – we have moved around so much in the last thirteen years though we did keep them for quite a long time. But the memories of that day are still as sweet as ever!)

October 10, 1999:

I go in for my first scan and see you for the very first time on the monitor – a squiggly little pulsating thing. I can’t begin to describe how I felt - a blue line on a pregnancy stick had been somehow transformed into a living, breathing (?) human being – ours – you! Once again, I wish that your father was there with me (What, he wasn’t there on our first scan, I am so going to kill him for this and you are welcome to help!) and vow that he would come along with me for anything that remotely concerned you. He is more than ready! (You bet, don’t ever argue with a pregnant woman!)

The next few weeks are ones of excitement and planning, telling thrilled grandparents about your existence, buying and reading books to find out more about this little miracle that is happening inside me, praying and enjoying even the tiredness and nausea that come with carrying you!

November 6, 1999:

We move into a bigger 2-bedroom apartment in Lonavala, Mumbai with bunk beds in the children’s bedroom though it would be years before you would be big enough to use it! (12 years to be exact!)

November 13, 1999:

Your Dad carefully picks out and cuts and pastes (the scissor and glue kind) photographs of the family in a montage photo frame that someone had given us, mentally reserving the space in the centre for you. (I have no idea where that photo frame is now! See what I mean about all the stuff that was misplaced?)

December 7, 1999:

Today, I felt you move and kick for the first time and I feel closer to you than ever! Late mornings and early evenings, I’d be rushing around busily, catching trains, attending to domestic chores and Bam! You’d kick me as if to say, “Hey, don’t forget me!” No matter how busy or overwhelmed I was, it never failed to make me smile!

Daddy is excited too, but I can tell by the look on his face that he is feeling just a little bit left out. You see, he couldn’t feel you, only I could! Perhaps in later years you’d team up against your mother and have secrets among yourselves and giggle together (or not!), but for now, we share something very unique, very special, just you and I.

December 16, 1999:

Today we got the second ultrasound done. (And Dad was there with me!) We saw for the first your little face (yes, you were facing us, posing for the shoot, camera-happy even back then!) I wonder if you were as curious to know what your parents looked like, those two people whose voices you heard all the time. The technician counted all your little fingers and toes and showed us your heart thudding rapidly away. We still don’t know what you look like, whether you’re a little boy or girl, but it gives us immense relief to know that you have ten fingers and ten toes, that your heartbeat is comfortingly fast and normal.

January 1, 2000:

By now I can feel you leaping around within me. We move on into the New Year and the new millennium together, all of us. I look at the pictures of all those babies born on New Year day, the first babies of the new millennium and wonder if, a few years from now, you would be upset that you weren’t one of them. (I’m glad that you have the sense to not care about all that – always knew you were a smart one, even back then!)

Maybe, in years to come, you will understand why I did not want you to be born in an over-crowded hospital competing with other super-babies, jostling for the attention of doctors and nurses who would rather have been out partying and praying and hoping that the computers would not crash, the whole Y2K hooha that never actually happened. No, you were far more important to us than that and far more precious even without being the millennium’s first baby. Because you were our first.

January 6, 2000:

Today I was grinding something in the blender. I must have disturbed you, because you protested vehemently with a few hard, purposeful kicks. I try to explain to you why I was doing what I was doing but you are furious at being woken up! (Yeah, I know, some things haven’t changed all that much!) Sorry sweetheart!

I’ve been hogging these last few weeks and raiding all the neighborhood bakeries. Your athai predicts you’ll turn out to be a real heavyweight. Sure enough the doc takes a look at the scales and freaks out! Well, of course I blame you for it (and still do, you and your brother, I hadn’t been fat a day in my life before the two of you came along, can’t be coincidence!)

February 14, 2000:

Valentine’s Day. This year, there is no time for a relaxed candle-lit dinner. Hectic preparations are on to travel to Bangalore tonight. And yet, it is a strangely appropriate way to celebrate Valentine’s Day for it is our first step in getting ready to receive you, the best gift of love that either of us can have ever receive.

February 15, 2000:

Midnight. After a 24-hour long journey by train, I am exhausted and visit to the bathroom and discover a single spot of blood. Apparently, that is a spot too many. For the first time I fear for your safety and realize how much a part of me you have become.

February 16, 2000:

The alarm is sounded. Phone conversations both local and long-distance run furiously back and forth. Prayers are said, medicines are taken and I am all but strapped to my bed.

February 17, 2000:

With no recurrences of the event, everybody is breathing easier. We celebrate the “Seemantham” function where you are the guest of honour though you don’t know it!

February 28, 2000:

After an uneventful journey to Chennai, I await your arrival.

By now, you have become so much a part of me that I have long since started referring to us as, well, “us”. I have been taking your kicks for granted but I rapidly realize that it is not so for everyone else who go into hysterics every time they touch my tummy and feel you moving.

I have noticed certain traits about you: that you are at your most active early in the morning (believe it or not, very unlike you now) and late in the evening. I have noticed too that classical music lulls you to sleep (as it still does!), but film songs and rock music get you prancing away energetically. I interpret it to mean that you don’t like the fast music but everyone else insists that you do and that you are trying to dance with the music! (I guess I was wrong there!)

March 02, 2000:

We visit Dr. Shantha, the gynaecologist who is in charge of my last trimester and would be responsible for getting you out safely. She declares that you are too small (believe it or not!) and order that I gobble up as much food as I can. Which I do. Faithfully.

April 6, 2000:

I have my third ultrasound. And see your little heart and bladder working away busily inside you inside me. The sonologist assures me that you are quite big enough. I am excited though you still look like ET. I am a little upset that no one can share this moment with me since the doctors in their infinite wisdom have ordained that no one be allowed with me.

April 7, 2000:

The doctor agrees that your size is not an issue and that you may actually be a rather big baby (make up your minds people!)She says I should prepare myself with physical activity and every once in a while I go down on all fours, sweeping, swabbing, mopping. Of course with doors closed – what on earth would the neighbours say?)

April 8, 2000:

Your Periamma arrives with your cousin Aditya (age 4 at the time). He sees me eating curd rice that he loathes and is absolutely disgusted and pities you as he imagines all the curd dribbling all over you in my tummy! He is very excited and makes plans to play with you as soon as you are born! Your Periamma has brought you a large blue comforter that she has made herself as well as a pink cloth mat with a cheery sun and rainbow stitched on. (You might remember those!) She has also brought a water melon pillow and carrot bolsters, all of which she has made herself. I am touched at her thoughtfulness and happy that we have introduced you to health food so early (unfortunately that didn’t quite stick!)

April 13, 2000:

Periamma and Aditya have to fly to Mumbai in a hurry as Aditya’s grandfather is taken very ill. We are all quite upset and worried.

By now we know it is only a matter of days before you make your grand entry into the world (or so we thought!) The house is gearing up. Walls have been scraped and painted, the fridge replaced as well as the water purifier. The lights in our room are made brighter and better, supposed to help allay any possible post-partum bluesJ.  A cook is appointed.

We pack a hospital bag, we go through baby names, we go shopping. Dad books his tickets. We do whatever we can to prepare for your arrival. And we wait. And wait. And wait. Finally on the tenth day (after all of Dad’s paternity has been exhausted without a baby yet) I storm into the hospital purposefully (a little hard to do when you look like a beached whale), and demand that you be removed from my womb. Pronto. Finally you are coaxed and induced to come out, and finally almost pushed out – so cozy were you in that little world that the two of us inhabited.

April 28, 2000, 9:14 PM:

You are out and about time! You gaze curiously at me and through the glass door of the nursery at your Dad and your grandparents. All 3.5 kgs of you, fair and pink and squashed and soft, you are gorgeous – a little loud but gorgeous!

So Dhwani, you were waited for, wished for, hoped for, prayed for, and loved. And still are. And will always be. Whatever you do. How could you not be, after all that we went through together?

Day 24 - How to interrogate a lying child

Kids lie. Period. Any parent who tells you that their angel never did is a bigger liar.

I don't have any homework. I've finished all my homework! He started it first. I never said that! I didn't eat the last cookie! These are some of the most common lies that kids tell.

There are some tried and tested ways to get the truth out of your kids especially when they're little.
So, if you've run out of veritaserum (trust me, you can never have enough) and if you don't want to resort to torture (though you may be sorely tempted to), there is one surefire technique you can use, the art of deflection. Asking Junior with a stern face, "Did you hit your sister?" is going to elicit only a stubborn No. No matter how many times you ask it. Try this instead, "Honey, did you hit your sister with your right hand or your left? This (Demonstration) is your right hand and this is your left. Now tell Mommy which hand you used to hit your sister." Chances are the response will be the right or the left. See, Artful deflection.

My mother was an expert at this. There is an old story that is now the stuff of family folklore about a cousin of mine when she was about 3. Now, when we were young we were forbidden to eat in anyone's houses without explicit permission because a lot of our neighbours ate a lot of stuff that we didn't. And besides, someone had to control what we ate, else we would eat till we got a bellyache. 

Now, there came a day when this 3-year-old cousin was very hungry and from the neighbour's house drfited aromas strange and delicious. Well, the kid succumbed. But she couldn't tell the adults. So she lied. That she hadn't eaten anything. No, she didn't want a snack or a glass of milk. No, she was absolutely sure she hadn't eaten anything.

That's when my mother stepped in with the subtle art of deflection. "So did you eat idli or dosa at Sabina's house darling? That's all they make, isn't it?" She asked the stubborn little child with the suspiciously round tummy.

"I didn't eat either!" She should have stopped right there. "I ate Puttu. They don't make only idlis and dosas!" she said defending their culinary honour. Then, realizing that she had just incriminated herself, she tried denying everything, "I didn't eat anything."

The story should have ended there, but it was so much fun that a little later, my mother let it slip quite casually, "So, did Sabina's grandma serve you or was it her mother?" Pat came the response, "Her grandma of course, her mother is at office!" And a little later, the realization and then again the denial. 

"So did you eat the Puttu with bananas or gravy?" "Gravy, of course. They always make gravy with Puttu!"

Needless to say, the rule banning outside food was soon relaxed in our house. People were getting a bellyache anyway. From laughing.

Now, there's an old saying that the hardest kids to wake up are those that are pretending to sleep. There's a tried and tested technique for that too. Just look down at the supposedly sleeping tot and say, "You know, I think he really is sleeping. I know he's sleeping, because kids who are really truly deeply sleeping will raise their legs way up high and then put it down again." Now watch the leg rise and catch them out.

Of course, kids are smart and if you try the same tactic one too many times, they will start to faintly smell a large furry rodent, but you can come up with any number of these tactics. Because as devious as kids are, their parents have twice as much deviousness naturally built in. Comes with the package. So go ahead and trick those shysters. They deserve it!

Day 23 - Postcards of Varanasi

Varanasi or Benares,

The city of contrasts,

The paradise of paradoxes,

Where life

Slowdances with death,

Grab a bite

Or burn a body

You can do either

Or both.

Crassly commercial,

yet profoundly mystical,

The city through which

Flows the mighty Ganges,

Polluted and putrid,

Yet powerful and pure,

Where you can cleanse your soul

Amidst the all-abounding filth,

And take the direct route to heaven,

Provided you pay your way.

The city that no one can know

In its entirety,

But only in bits and pieces.

Presenting a brief cameo of that city of contradictions - Varanasi - with haikus based on some fabulous pics clicked by my friend and colleague, P. Vijay Kumar, with his kind permission.



Sadhus in saffron

Launder their muddy souls and

Hang them out to dry.

Meandering through the

Pious river, a boat that’s

Made in India*!

* Phrase courtesy Sid Chatterjee

Death waits its turn to

Climb Manikarnika Ghat’s

Stairway to heaven.

Bridal wear or shroud,

Benares silk is the key

To eternal bliss.

The power of prayer,

Races through high voltage wires

In God’s waiting ears!

Day 22 - Communication in the twenty first century

They say that communication is the key to the success of a family. Keep the doors and channels of communication open at all times, say experts who have studied this subject for many years. At least that's what it said on the forward I got recently from an acquaintance.

Now, we are all at different points on the communication app scale - for me the dial veers between "I like the potential" and "Gosh, I am getting too old to keep up!", my husband is at "Don't really care as long as I can call and send messages...and play online bridge". My almost 13-year-old is at "Yup mastered that too, bring the next one on!"

She can hold her own in an electronics store about cookies and cakes and gingerbread and other things that ought to be on a bakery menu, not in a store that sells high-end gadgets, half of which, I am not sure which end of the anatomy to connect to. They all sound as if they would add several pounds of cellulose, and I should have banned them from the house. Instead, turns out they are the brains and muscles of our cell phones. I should have banned them anyway. The only person who knows how to use them all is my daughter. When any of us needs to install, troubleshoot, or learn how to use something on our cell phones or laptops, we call her.

My 4-year-old, thankfully, is still happy merely listening to songs on the phone and hasn't yet discovered any apps that would help him to colur within the lines and write cursive small letters within the boxes.

As you can imagine, there is no dearth of gadgets in our house that enable effective communication. Everyone except the 4-year-old has a laptop each on which we keep in touch with our colleagues and classmates whom we just saw a few hours ago, our next door neighbours whom we hardly ever see, our friends from many years ago, and a few people we don't really know but could - maybe.

Our birthday gifts over the last few years - especially for the kid - has inclined to move from roller skates and bicycles to articles more electronic. We got her an iPod a couple of years ago to encourage her appreciation for music. She has since been using it to belt out the latest and greatest hits from pimply boys and girls who still wear braces and probably need to be driven by their parents to recordings. Fortunately, however, the iPod has no other hidden talents - it plays music and that's all. The Kindle, on the other hand, which we naively got her so that we did not have to stockpile books that seemed to be reproducing at an alarming rate, we discovered to our horror can be used to access Facebook, chat with various friends on Google Plus, all in the middle of the night. This, we realized a little belatedly, is the twenty first century version of the old reading-in-bed-with-a-torchlight thing. I now do an electronics raid in her room at bedtime to make sure she actually sleeps. But for all I know, she's probably rigged the light switch to beam some bits of incoherent teenspeak to the ceiling of her best friend a few miles away.

I can't wait for her to turn thirteen. She would finally be old enough to use Facebook legally and I don't have to feel guilty about it any more. She would be, at least in the world of the Net, a mature and responsible adult! Hah!

So yes, as far as communication goes, I guess our family is doing quite well. Oh wait, you meant communication with each other? Now why didn't you say so before? Well, we do on occasion, chat with each other on Facebook and gmail across the dining table, and we're all each other's friends on Facebook. At least until we're unfriended. Does that count?

　

Day 21 - The school that launched a thousand books

I always thought my old convent school was a sadistic institution devoted to the art of killing all possible fun for people under 15. But now that I have had a couple of decades to think about it, it was probably the inspiration for some of the greatest books ever written, the muse for generations of authors.

The school, which has been standing for what seems like centuries, is a forbidding Dickensioan place with dark niches and gloomy passages. The walls were a dull whitish grey and your footsteps echoed mysteriously when you walked through the corridor. On the walls were mournful paintings of miserable and waif-like children, a few of them with tears rolling down their cheeks. Maybe because they couldn't stand the sight of our drab and ugly blue uniforms with our oiled and tightly braided hair topped off with blue ribbons. Every once in a while we would see a ragtag group of children march through the grounds, with dreadful haircuts, skinny frames and huge hungry eyes and too-long patched  hand-me-down uniforms, orphans whom the convent 'sponsored' in their infinite magnanimity.

The Dickensian ambience of the school was further enhanced by the Fagin-like characters that populated it. Once a fellow student had a fainting fit after she was made to stand out in the heat due to heaven recalls what minor transgression. The teachers splattered a few measured drops of water on her face and watched her until her eyelids finally fluttered open. She was just blinking as various wimples and canes and rulers swam blurrily into focus when the principal admonished her severely, "We spent 10 paise on a call to your parents to come and get you. Please ask your parents to refund that money tomorrow." The poor sick child sank bank onto the cold floor in a coma.

There was also something distinctly Hogwartsish about the school. Nuns in white habits floated by and legends abounded about the wiccan activities that took place in the convent in the dead of night. Stories were told of potions being brewed and cackles heard long after lights out by the resident boarders, those doomed souls left by their parents to survive in the dubious environs of the convent. The sisters held rulers aloft like wands that cracked down on unfortunate palms at regular intervals. They also apparated at the most inopportune moments, especially when school fees were due and disapparated the moment you needed a little extra help.

The bathroom was a separate building altogether, to get to which you had to cross compounds and climb down long flights of stairs. It was a veritable Chamber of Secrets in which all manner of creatures were reported to have been seen, from snakes to rats to a ghost that was believed to float around and moan when too many people visited. We had our own resident basilisks and Moaning Myrtles and never knew it!

The there was a select group of children who went for the same competitive exams, performed the same dances in the same contests and won the same prizes year after year. Any newcomer, however talented, was looked upon in a distinctively Matilda-like fashion. The principal, the one who asked for the ten paise back -come to think of it - bore a striking resemblance to Miss Trunchbull.

My all-abounding nostalgia for the school has never taken me back even once since I left it more than twenty years ago, but I have heard that it is still an institution which one presumes will continue to inspire children's authors to write more grim tales of school for years and years to come.

Day 20 - The Man With The Golden Heart - A Tribute To My Thatha

I shudder to think how close I came to never knowing my grandfather.

The first time I remember seeing him he was flat on his back - I was five years old and had rushed back with my family from the UK where we were living because he had just had a massive heart attack and for a while hadn't been expected to survive. I thank my stars everyday that he did - for twenty five years.

Thatha was a sweet soft-spoken man, whose actions spoke much louder than his words. The kind of man who told you stories and took you along on walks and let you comb and tie up his smartly cowlicked hair (when you were five!). The kind of man who you just knew would quietly but relentlessly move heaven and earth for you.

He was a careful prudent man, having struggled hard his entire life to make a good living for his family. The first windfall he ever saw was his superannuation. It turned out that he was a financial wizard, he just never had the money before to know it. But a lifetime of frugality cannot be undone by a few years of relative prosperity. He still wouldn't dream of taking an auto when he could take a bus and wouldn't take a bus if he could walk. And yet, on his way back from wherever he went, he would buy his granddaughters 'goodies' from the neighbourhood bakery, samosas or puffs in brown paper bags, the sinful goodness leaking out in delightful moist patches, the sight of which still makes us nostalgic.

He repaired everything till there wasn't any more room on it to patch or darn or glue. Nothing could be thrown away, an old envelope became practice sheets to work out sums on and old calendars became book covers. Tiny old pencils would have pen caps stuck on them to make them easier to hold. Pieces of cardboard, the brush from an old pot of glue, bits of brightly coloured rope, everything had the potential to be turned into Something Useful.

He once created a weighing balance with a long pencil for the stick, light plastic plates for the scales and tiny ten paise coins, which according to his research weighed exactly a gram each, for the weights. With this contraption he weighed newly bought gold jewellery, so he could be sure the jeweller hadn't cheated us, and mail to be posted so that he did not have to stick on a single extra stamp.

If you had a refill pen whose spring was broken, Thatha could be counted on to have a tiny spring handy in his trusty box. Was your text book coming apart at the seams? Out came the large needle and the thick twine and Thatha got to work. School bags, shoes, umbrellas, dreams, hopes, there was nothing that Thatha couldn't put right.

Thatha once fixed me up with an ugly old umbrella  (after I had lost many beautiful new ones) that had lines of white stitches crissing and crossing its decrepit grey expanse, keeping it from disintegrating. My initials were darned into it indelibly in bold orange thread. This umbrella quickly became excruciatingly loss- and theft-proof. No matter where I left it or what I did with it, it always found its way back like an ugly puppy. I left it behind on the bus, at school, in people's houses. Not deliberately, at least not consciously so. But the next morning, on the bus or at school, there it would be. It lasted me all the way through school, through thunderstorms and scorching noon walks. How I wish I had that ugly old umbrella now with the lovingly embroidered veins of stitches running through it and the big bold initials!

My grandfather didn't believe in band-aids or band-aid solutions. When we needed some quick help in solving a Math problem that just wouldn't get solved (with the school bus due in half an hour), he insisted on starting from the beginning, from grilling us on our tables, to making us hold our pencils straight, to lecturing us on our handwriting. (His own handwriting was tiny and print-perfect.) We shuffled our feet impatiently, we whined and we protested. Buses have come and gone a thousand times since then, but every once in a while, when we pencil something on a piece a paper, it could be a list to the kirana store, or an address on a card, but inevitably an old memory kicks in and we feel an invisible hand holding our hand reminding us of the importance of holding our pencils upright.

This month Thatha would have entered his ninetieth year. He died eight years ago - his good old heart just literally gave out. This is a poem i had penned for Thatha on behalf of all four of his granddaughters for his 80th birthday a couple of years before he died.

To Our Dear Thatha

THATHA
You didn’t just tell us bedtime         
Stories, true and imagined,
You opened up discussions about      
Life and living.  

You didn’t just take us along
On your long daily walks,
You showed us the world
Beyond our front door.

You didn’t just teach us to
Hold our pencils upright,
You taught us to live
Our lives that way.

You didn’t just fix our broken
Umbrellas and shoes,
You taught us never to give up
On anything—or anyone.

You didn't just teach us algebra
And physics and geography,
You taught us to count
Our every blessing.

If we haven’t told you recently, thatha,
How very much you mean to us,
And thanked you for all you’ve done,
We’d like to tell you now, that we
Count you among our greatest blessings,
And thank God you’re in our lives.
And if you don’t remember so well
Any more, each little instance
Where you made a world of difference,
It’s all right…

Because we do!
Happy 80th Birthday Thatha!


 

Day 19 - Learning WithOUT Stories

Using stories is the most effective form to teach, we've all heard that. A million times. I agree.
But, but, but...

My 12-year-old daughter was studying Civics not too long ago and was grumbling indistinctly under her breath. Now that is not an entirely uncommon occurrence, so I ignored it until the grumbling got quite loud and quite coherent - "Why must they invent these stupid know-it-all characters?" was part of the grumble. I peeked into her textbook and she was perfectly right. The chapter starts with a girl asking her grandfather the question that all children wonder and worry their little hearts out about- "Oh, how, but how, are rural townships and villages governed, Grandpa?" Grandpa dips into his agonizingly boring brain and digs out the facts and figures in the chapter entitled (surprise! surprise!) Government in Rural Townships and Villages.

The chapter contains complex organizational hierarchies to be memorized and remembered. It doesn't really matter if the information is imparted by a supposedly wise grandfather to his cocky and precocious grandchild. What my daughter actually used to learn the tiresome information were mindmaps and charts. The story approach was not just redundant, but actually irritating.

The other day, a few colleagues and I attended a mandatory 'training', yes, you know the kind that need the quotes to qualify them. The trainer peppered the session liberally with a pungent overdose of personal memoirs concerning herself, her husband, her sisters and a fractious but oh-so-good-hearted-when-you-get-to-know-her ex-boss. While I recall with vivid clarity that this trainer almost got divorced, that she hated Bangalore at first but then grew to love it, that she loved to good-naturedly play pranks on her team (hopefully not in her 'worstest' English), I can't for the life of me recall what points those stories were used to make.

What I'm trying to say is, if you have a great story that illustrates the point intelligently and coherently, then by all means bring it on. But if you don't, if your content does not warrant it or you just can't think of one, that's okay, we can take it. We're all big boys and girls and so are our learners. Why, even my 12-year-old daughter would have preferred it that way.

Bottomline, if you don't have a good story to underscore your point, for heaven's sake, please spare us the bad ones.

Day 18 - Of fairy tales and horror stories

If her target audience had been anything like me when I was a child, J.K. Rowling would still be waiting tables.

I still don't know how too many children's stories end, I never could quite get that far. The moment the conflict in the story began, something happened to me - my brain went all foggy, my cheeks got all soggy, my eyes misted over with vicarious tears, and my heart filled with someone else's fears. In short, I crumpled and collapsed in a useless and emotional lump.

When my grandpa regaled us with the story of the Ramayana, I refused to let him continue past Sita's abduction. In my version, Rama and Sita lived happily ever after frolicking with non-marichaesque deer and of course with no troubling feminist issues to contend with. I recall an evening when my grandmother came hurrying into the bedroom hearing heart-wrenching and blood-curdling cries of distress to find a distraught granddaughter and a sheepish grandpa who had picked the supremely violent tale of Kovalan and Kannaki as a bedtime story. Needless to say, he got more than an earful for the thoughtless choice.

My sister recounts a day when she came to my second-grade classroom to pick me up and drag me to the school bus. She found me a blubbering mess.I was gulping and sobbing so hard I couldn't even explain the source of my grief. Panic-stricken and fearing the worst, she interrogated my little classmates. "Chechi, Anandam is crying because Pavizham got hurt," was the matter-of-fact and cryptic response she got. Over a cup of milk and much pampering at home, it transpired that the fresh tears were for the hero of a story in my Malayalam reader, a parrot called Pavizham that ended up with a broken wing and unhealed scars because of the ill-treatment meted out to it by the neighbourhood children. I don't quite know how that story ended and I somehow got through the second grade despite such traumatic setbacks.

So many of these stories were probably written to teach young children some valuable life lessons - for kids that got that far. My motto was, just skip the whole sordid tale and tell me what it is I'm supposed to know. I'm not supposed to throw stones at hapless birds, fine. My family learnt one lesson though - to make sure that my bedtime stories were laundered of all violence and sadness. Oh well, as long as someone learnt something...

Fortunately for Ms Rowling, her audience is much more sophisticated and take injury and death with consummate ease - as long at's happening to someone else of course. Dark wizards, hippogriffs, dementors - bring them on, and the more pieces their souls are in the better. Me, I would never have made it past that cupboard under the stairs.

Day 17 - Do You Speak Hospitalese?

Those relentless hospital forms that ask you to tick off the languages that you speak, read, and write (in triplicate) don't quite ask you the really useful stuff - do you speak/read/write Hospitalese? If you say No they ought to send you for remedial classes before hospitalizing you. Here's why.

After my son was born nearly five years ago, I had legions of hospital staffers who trooped in after my surgery asking me weird questions.

Imagine this scenario, if you will:
"Have you evacuated?" asks a resident gynaecologist.
"Why, is there a fire or an earthquake?" I ask dimly alarmed.
"No, have you evacuated, voided, passed flatus?" she asks impatiently. I sigh. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good word game at three in the morning as much as any woman who has just had a baby ripped from her uterus does, but my inner thesaurus is not particularly at its best.
"What does that mean?" I ask admitting linguistic defeat.
She clicks her tongue at my unbelievable imbecility and gestures meaningfully towards my nether regions and then in the vague direction of the bathroom several times until I finally get what she is asking me.

Soon after, another girl wanders in wanting to know if I am in a consanguineous marriage. I recall vaguely that sanguineous has something to do with blood - I reason that she either wants to know if my husband is related to a con man or if he is my blood relative. I shake my head no to both.

Now if there's one thing you need to know about medical histories, it's that they're top secret and no one ever divulges anything they have heard to anyone else. So you have to repeat the same things to doctors, nurses, ward boys, florists, plumbers and other mysterious people who drop in to ask you about your fascinating evacuation, voiding and flatus habits. I am also woken up and asked if I am still in a non-consanguineous marriage. Well, unless I have accidentally married a long lost cousin while in the throes of a childbirth-induced midnight delirium, I guess I am.

Anyway, in my five days in the hospital, I pick up these words like a pro. So when I hear a knock and a girl enters I launch into the by-now familiar litany. "I have evacuated, voided, and passed flatus multiple times," I tell the startled girl and as an additional bonus offer up some helpful nuggets of history that no one has ever thought to ask me, "Oh and I have been regurgitating regularly throughout my pregnancy, though i had no issues with sanguineous discharges. And talking about all things sanguineous, I am still in a non-consanguineous a marriage," I add for good measure.

The girl stammers, "Umm, I'm from the Nutrition Department and I just wanted to know what you'd like to eat."

Eat! I'm sure she has violated basic hospital protocol. At the very least, she ought to have asked me what I wanted to orally ingest into my abdominal cavity. But maybe she is new here. I look at her, my heart filling with newfound maternal compassion. Why, she's a mere babe in the clinical woods just learning to babble hospitalese! No matter little one, you'll soon learn!

Day 16 - Old School or New School?

Schools have changed dramatically since our time - the way they look, the way they work, and of course the way the kids dress, eat, work, and talk.

But one thing remains just the same - they still send parents to the ends of the earth to get weird stuff that isn't available in any normal store. Just a few weeks ago, my son's school teacher wrote in his trusty almanac that he needed a pair of silver pom poms. 

"So what are pom-poms anyway?" I overheard one baffled father ask another while dropping my son to school the next day.

"Oh, you know, it's those things that cheer leaders hold in their hands, yaar!" replied the more enlightened of the two.

"Cheer leaders, what are cheer leaders?" the first dad was still bemused.

"Arre yaar, those girls in skimpy outfits that dance at the T20s. Don't tell me you've never seen them!" He added as the first dad still looked baffled.

"Yes, yes, of course I've seen the girls. But, who was looking at their hands?"

Fortunately for him, this dad had come minus his better half, and unfortunately for me, I couldn't stick around to find out how that conversation ended because I had my own pom poms to get.

In my own time, I recall my folks chasing after the proverbial 'kalyanasougandhigam' as my grandmother acerbically put it, those endless out-of-print books, the graph papers that had to be just so, a dinner plate of a certain brand to be taken for a trip, the list goes on. But the most creative demand that I recall was for my sister's biology class - bring a dead mouse to class, the expressionless biology teacher had intoned without a trace of humour.

Though we regularly came face-to-face with these creatures, they must have got wind of the scholastic summons - for on that particular day, there wasn't a single mouse in the house. The maid was dispatched to her own rodent-rich neighbourhood to procure one. She returned with a rat instead of a mouse, the zoological nuances being quite lost on her. After a few panicky phone calls (remember, there were no texts, Google Pluses and what have you) it was finally decided that a rat was as good as a mouse and would do just as well. So off went my sister to school the next day, a song in her heart and a dead rat in her bag. Oh, the things you have to do in the name of education!

Yes, some things never change. And in case you were wondering, I did get those pom poms at long last, after encountering many many such blank stares and no, I did not repeat the T20 story. I finally got them from a shop that, according to another dad, sold everything excepts cars and phones. Which is perfectly fine, as schools almost never ask for cars and phones. Not yet, anyway.

Day 15 - How to become someone important

The first important thing you need to understand  on your quest to importance is that doing something important is far less important than being someone important. If that sentence didn't make any sense to you that's because it's all-important, and important things are convoluted.

So, let's get you started. The first thing to understand is that important people always seem to be getting a lot more done than the rest of us. Being important involves a lot of hard work and you have to be prepared to do it.  But the operative word here is 'seem'. Being important is 99% the art of creative and artful misdirection.

So first, always have at least fifty chat windows open on your laptop and have one person on hold on your phone waiting for you to put another person on hold while they wait for you to put yet another person on hold to get to talk to you, because that's how regular people talk to important people, they get in line. And yes, once in a while you should type something like - "Had a great time at the Grammies last night' or some such thing into all the chat windows and quickly follow it up with "Oops sorry, wrong window! Smiley face." Guess how many people will spend the rest of their day wondering who was in the right window.

Second, drop names liberally. In the midst of a conversation, you could say something like - You know, when I was visiting the United States a few years ago, Clinton actually pulled my skirt! Of course, the trick with this is you have to know when to stop - all will be lost if you explain that Clinton was your neighbour's cat who pulled the said garment from your clothesline! Or - you know I was on a call with the President yesterday - well, you were actually whinging to the president of Unimportants Anonymous, whose name you don't know, but let other people think what they will.

Third, know how to act more important than others when you have to wait. For instance, when you're in a traffic jam, never honk and yell - that's for the insignificant hoi polloi. No, wind down your tinted windows and yell into your dongle or your state-of-the-art phone for all to hear, "Can you ask New York to ask London to wait for a bit - I'm stuck in a &%$#& traffic jam!" If that doesn't shriek IMPORTANT, nothing else does. The only thing you could have done better was to call God to hold the earth a bit on the whole rotation thing while you got out of the jam.

Fourth, be fashionably late for everything including your own wedding, no important person worth his or her salt has the time to be on time and everyone knows that.

Fifth, be a sesquipedalian, excogitate and exercise those neurosensors to conjure up important-sounding words like antidisestablishmentarianism and usufruct. Simple, monosyllabic words that convey the meaning is for sissies.

Sixth, always use words like 'and so on', 'etcetera', and 'among other things', so that you convey the impression that what you are deigning to divulge is just a miniscule portion of what you actually know.

Seventh, always try to appear that you don't want to be recognized - wear large dark-tinted glasses and cover your face artfully but not completely with your hand taking care to flash that diamond-enscrusted Rolex and platinum charm bracelet. That's what all important people do - they try hard to become rich and famous, and then spend the rest of their lives trying not to be recognized.

The mathematically alert reader would have noticed that all the points above talk to the 99% of being important - the art of creative misdirection. What about the remaining 1%? Well, I'll assume that I'm already important enough for you to be reading this and will divulge the rest of the Secret.

Dear reader, I'm afraid you may not want to read this - but the remaining 1% of being important entails actually doing something important that really makes a difference to people. But if that's not your cup of tea, no problem - if you get the other 99% right, you should be well on your way.

Day 14 - Proof that aliens once existed - and travelled by Indian trains

If you have ever taken an overnight train in India, you would have asked yourself the unpoken question predominant in most travellers' minds: Was the average Indian train constructed for the average Indian traveller? The answer to this is an emphatic NO. This manifesto moves to prove this point.

Firstly, take the width of the average Indian berth. The proportion of the width of the average berth to the average Indian rear end is about 0.75:1. This means that a quarter of all Indian bottoms are designed to hang out of an Indian berth. Obviously, turning over in one's sleep, which the average human is prone to doing naturally and many times a night, is impossible in this situation.

Next, take the height of an upper berth in an average 3-tier train. The upper berth is designed to be a full head above the head level of the average Indian traveller. Divide this by the average fitness and monkey bar climbing finesse of the average Indian traveller and multiply by the steep difficulty of the rungs, and the probability of the average Indian managing to climb up on that berth without misadventure is a pretty pathetic 0.001%.

Clearly, the berths in which we have to squash ourselves into and perform inhuman acrobatics to climb up on were not designed originally for us, but for a species that is at least a quarter slimmer and much more springy than the average human, and perhaps has a cylindrical torso which makes somnombulent rolling over easy and fun.

Now, take the taps in an Indian train. You have to keep pressing up on the tap to start the flow of water. If you take away your hand to wash your face or anything else that needs washing, you run out of water. Evidently, the taps in a train were designed especially for a species that either had its face in its hands or had a long antenna that could keep the water going while it washed its other essentials.

Has it ever occurred to you that the bathrooms, sorry latrines, in a train look like they were designed as kind of an after thought? I mean, four latrines for roughly seventy humans designed to answer nature's persistent calls roughly every four hours, latrines that are actually large holes that empty out into the tracks? Yes, they were an afterthought, because obviously, the trains were originally built for a species that nature never once called. Think about it, why else would we have latrines that have a total of about two square inches that a human can actually stand on where you can close the door without having a shoe fall through the hole?

Now about the food, or what passes for food, that you get on trains, how often have you complained that it wasn't fit for human consumption? Exactly! The food that you get was originally flavored oil intended for this alien species to lubricate its springy joints.

Next time you get on that train and are tempted to whine and whinge about any of these things - just remember. Indian trains are the way they are for a simple reason. They weren't designed for the average Indian, not even the average human. There, doesn't that explain a whole lot?

Day 13 - Labels

I hate labels - until I employed a cook whose intelligence was not particularly off the charts, (well, maybe it was but in the other direction) tea was often in the Coffee container, sugar in the Tea container, and coffee in the one marked Sugar. I still have pickles in jam bottles, masalas in pickle bottles, and pepper corns in sauce jars.

I am a woman - I can't argue with that having given birth to two human offspring and being forced to shop regularly for feminine products. But that's the only label I allow myself.

I believe a woman can do anything a man can do and in some cases, maybe even do it better. But I am not a 'feminist'.

I used to take care of my home and kids for many years and enjoyed my time with my family, my children, and myself. But I don't like calling myself a 'home-maker'.

I work in a large organization and enjoy working, learning, and mentoring others. But I don't like calling myself a 'career woman'.

I do speak Tamil but I don't like calling myself a 'Tamilian'. I also don't like calling my family 'Tam Brahm', especially as the other three quarters of it speaks abysmal Tamil and we don't do too many things that are considered to be Brahminical.

Why don't I like labels? Because the moment you plonk yourself in a neat container, you become a part of it. You are no longer an individual but simply a part of a whole. You become sensitive to any comments hurled (or you imagine being hurled) at that group. You become a geometric shape with defined vertices, characteristics, and rules, and are no longer a delightful abstraction.

When someone cracks a joke at Mallus I laugh heartily though I speak Malayalam fluently and am a Mallu on occasion (usually Vishu or Onam). When someone makes a good-natured joke about Tam Brahms I laugh at that too. I laugh at - and make -jokes about women drivers and working moms and home makers. Because there is a little of all of these in me. And because I am a little of everything, I don't laugh at anyone, I laugh with them, and I laugh mostly at myself.

My marriage was arranged, but we found love along the way, and I'll be damned if I get into a debate about which is better.

My daughter gets good grades, but she is not a 'nerd', she learns classical dance, but she is anything but traditional'. She is weird, wacky, emotional, funny, and smart, and though I am often tempted to call her a 'typical teenager' I refrain from doing so.

Because she is so much more than a label, or even a collection of labels - she is herself, that is all. And that is everything. And I stick to my guns even if I end up eating rice with jam or idlis with coffe powder.

Day 12 - Why women put on weight - A scientific analysis

You may remember a scene from Desperate Housewives - I know what you're thinking, those 'housewives' (not my word, that's the name of the show) may have been desperate, but they sure weren't overweight - but bear with me for a minute. In this scene, another woman, a desperately dumpy one for a change, appears after a hiatus apparently having put on mounds of weight.

"Oh my God, whatever happened to you," shriek her desperately skinny friends.

"Oh, you know, I had two children," she responds. I nod finding that a perfectly acceptable response.

"For what? Breakfast?" retort her skinny friends.

But it's a scientifically proven fact - women put on weight after marriage and kids - I know enough women to form a statistically significant group - and both of them agree with me! Okay, just kidding. But jokes apart, there are scientifically proven reasons why women put on weight after marriage and kids.

For starters, as years go by, there creep into this woman a daughter-in-law, a mother, a sister-in-law, several kinds of aunts, friends-in-law, and so on. Where do you think all these people will fit? Volume and surface area and all of that. Basic mensuration. And no, that's not a typo.

Then, as her family grows and the woman becomes wiser and more experienced, everyone needs a piece of her, to show the kids the food on the first shelf in the fridge in that box marked "Food for Kids", to tell the plumber exactly which flush doesn't work in case he didn't quite get the hint from the flotsam and jetsam, to help the kids with their homework which she pretends to understand, to get the kids out of bed so that they can sleep through history class properly, to remind her husband of the names of his friend's wife and kids (Okay so she doesn't remember either, but who's going to know, certainly not the friend!). And if a whole needs to be cut up into so many pieces, the mass of the whole has to be sizable. See, once again scientifically proven. Basic physics.

A woman with young children is a portable dustbin and a model of economics. That food could feed so many hungry kids! But if none of those hungry kids are around, well she has to do the heroic thing. And
when you eat for two and three, then, well, your body weighs more - basic physics.

A woman has to be like a bank locker - people tend to tell her juicy, meaty things that she isn't supposed to let out. So many secrets about so many people, all in one body. And no one wants a tiny locker to stuff all those secrets in. So her frame expands to accommodate them all. Scientific fact. Basic economics.

A woman needs to be decently large to be taken seriously. No one's going to pay you any attention if you look like an anorexic school girl. You can look much more threatening and menacing when you're larger. It's a basic evolutionary need. Basic biology.

Besides, a womam needs to have a cushioned lap for her toddlers to jump up on if there's no room for a trampoline, her shoulders need to be padded to cushion the many broken hearts she will need to heal, and she will need to have a padded bottom so she can bounce back up every time someone knocks her over. Because she's fat. And well, you can't have a skinny woman with a fleshy lap, shoulders, and bottom. That would just look daft. Basic biology.

So, all you portly women out there. Head for the gym if you must, but do it knowing that you are going against how science intended you to be.

Day 11 - Just Because

Why must I eat my breakfast? Why can't I have chocolates for dinner? Why must I get up early? Why can't I beat my sister up? Why must I brush my teeth? Why can't I wear my new pants to bed? Why do clothes need to get washed? Why can't we have all the clothes in the store? Why do other kids have so many birthdays and I only get one? Why should I say Thank You when I get a present I don't really want? Why can't I marry mommy? Why can Daddy sleep with mommy but I can't? Why can't I eat potatoes everyday?

Why can't I have half my class over for a sleepover? Why can't I get a cell phone for my birthday? Why do I need to learn History of all things? Why do I have to be good at everything?

When the questions far outnumber the answers, when their energy far outlasts my patience, I do what parents the world over do. I say "Just because!"

Why do so many children go hungry everyday? Why do fathers rape their own children? Why are women looked upon as fair game? Why do politicians seem to get away with so much? Why is everything always so expensive? Why must we go to work everyday? Why do we work so hard to earn so little honestly when so many others make so much by dishonest means? Why do women have to work so hard to stay pretty? Why are teachers paid so little? Why is everything that is delicious so bad for you? Why are there so many diseases in the world?

So many questions, so few answers. I can't help thinking that maybe, just maybe, somewhere in his heaven, an irate God is crossing his arms, wagging a finger, looking down sternly, and saying, "Just because!"