madre

The most complex relationship for me has been that of a Mother. For me that name feels like a big, gaping hole in my heart. Sometimes I can see that hole and it appears like an endless abyss, dark and unknown. Like the black hole in the galaxy, no matter how much I force myself to see it, it just gets more and more infinite. Sometimes in my sleep I can see that hole and that part of me aches badly now. I had my mom for the nine months she kept me and for the day I was born. I was brought up by my family very lovingly. I never really missed or craved for my mother until, well almost until I got married. When I missed her, it would be the same as someone who didn’t have a brother or sister would miss having one. I never cried for her. I do not know how this came about, but my family never talked about her. We never had any of her pictures hung around the house. I do not know my parents anniversary till date and I didn’t know how she looked almost until I was 16 or something. I heard many stories about the kind of child I was, I could dress up on my own for school and just wait for someone to button up my shirt and tie my laces. How no one ever bothered to see if my homework was done, since I always on top of it. How I could cook a decent meal while I was just about 12 years old. Basically just how good I was . And I have fond memories of my childhood. I have memories of lots of uninterrupted play, of my birthday celebrations, of being loved, pampered, going for holidays, meeting cousins, like just any other child. A normal childhood. I never remember my family pity me or say to me or to anyone – oh poor child! She doesn’t have a mother. Or hear them say, she missed this and she isn’t this since she never had her mum. I often had my mum’s cousins tell me, how I looked like her and how I had her taste in music and hair like her. And I also heard from others how my father refused several second marriage proposals because he thought he couldn’t trust anyone to bring me up. I never felt that someone was missing from my family or there was something I missed in my relationship with them. I do not know whether it was a good thing they did when they never talked about her. When I was small I think it worked, at that time it was good, since it never made me miss her. But now I feel, had they brought up the topic and made me realize what I was missing, I would have been less sensitive to such talk. Now when I miss her, I cry endlessly, as if I just lost her yesterday!

I do not have a mother. I never had one. This is a fact of my life. And it has never come to haunt me as much as it does now. Does it make me over sensitive? I do not know. Does it make me unaware of a mother’s feelings? I do not know. I have known aunts and my friend’s mothers, my sister is a mother too. My thinking is different since thoughts like ‘what would my mom have done in this situation’ do not cross my mind. I am my own kind of mom and I am growing and evolving. I am learning as I go along. And I want to be ‘my’ kind of mum.

This post didn’t make much sense. ok.

Son you are One!

Son, you turn a year old today. From what the baby centre website described you as a poppy seed you are now, as your daddy calls you, with much pride, our baby elephant. For months I carried you in my womb and careful of what was going on in me, and I remember your tiny fingers and toes I counted in the ultrasound room and your body parts I scrolled over on the screen and how your dad sat through for hours glaring at your ultrasound photos, wondering who it was and what our baby looked like. Your each kick, each twirl on the ultrasound made my heart skip a beat and made me marvel at what I was creating. On your birth son, a mother was born in me. I never knew what motherhood was, until I had you. I never knew the kind of joy, that special feeling that you have now brought to my life, to each of my days. The feeling of having given birth, of creating life, realization of the fact that you came from me. I never knew so much happiness could emanate from someone so small :) . In this first year my life revolved around you. We became parents and we reveled in all the responsibility and the joy it brought us. Every new thing you did thrilled us. When you smiled, we felt so touched with its purity. When you recognized us, we felt rewarded. When you rolled over we celebrated. When you ate solids we gasped and felt overjoyed. When you crawled we marveled.

In our lives we do so many things unconscious of the fact that all along we are making memories, for ourselves or for someone else. Like they say, every day looks the same and yet after some days everything is different. With you every day is a new day and so much is different and every moment is a memory we create. Son, as I see you grow and do new things, I can see how I am creating memories for life for myself. Of this new person I created and of this new person you made me into. I never felt about time being so effervescent. Of how fast this baby is growing up. Sometimes I feel like pausing the moments and replaying and reliving them!

That little person you are son, you are just so perfect. That innocence in your eyes. Your affectionate ways. Your faith in us. Your lavish smiles. Your coolness factor! It makes us wonder about your genetic influence! You are the best of both of us and even more. Our world seems to wrap around you and we are so excited to see you grow up and do new things every day. You do not stop to amaze us.

Son, we love you. May you always find happiness and success in all that you do. And may God always bless you!

We have planned a birthday party for you and we hope to give you a rocking time!

Love and blessings, Mum

In 4 years of pre marriage

and a little less than 4 years of post marriage, I still haven’t found a way to get past his macbook, his i phone and the occasional tv. They stand and stay between us. phew!

Dad’s baby

 Little V is on a Daddy craze these days. It all started with my husband leaving the city for work one morning before Little V could wake up and see him. Little V spent that morning generally feeling sad. He didn’ t even enjoy his bath that day. Carried a very sullen face to his day time care. And it kept me wondering what was wrong with him.  I never thought it was daddy that he was missing. When his dad came back in the night, Little V was absolutely thrilled to see daddy. And he wouldn’t let him go out of sight. He wanted to be carried by daddy all the time. And he just totally refused to come to me! It was overwhelming to see that love between them. Hubbie was overjoyed, with all the lavish love Little V was throwing at him. He was crawling and following him where ever he went and the moment he could manage to reach daddy, he wanted dad to pick him up. I could see my husband’s eyes go wet with all that affection. Its so lovely to see a baby shower such unconditional love on us. Little V is a very affectionate child. I have seen kids, but I know there’s something very special about Little V in the way he shows his love to us. Little V greets every visitor in our house, whether a relative or a friend with lavish smiles and never cries out when they hold him. Of course, he’s not friendly in an instant and not so good if he’s sleepy. But if he can see that the visitors are known to his parents and if the guest has a gentle voice and maintains a fair distance from him initially, this boy will simply be all smiles, ready to show off his skills and share his toys. I totally admire this aspect of Little V’s personality, sometimes I find it very inspiring too!

***

I can’t appreciate enough the day time set up that Little V goes to. It’s a system which works very well and by far is my best option. For those who do not know, Little V is dropped off by me at a home of an old couple, (in their 60’s, old but still very active), and his maid goes along with him. I pack all the food for him for the day. And there’s another baby who comes also with her maid. So the 2 babies, 2 maids and these 2 gentle souls, they spend the day together(they do not keep more than 2 or max 3 kids). The place is a ‘home’ just like our own homes are. Its nice and warm and just very very homely! They play with him, talk to him, watch over him and keep an eye on the maids. They are also very open to follow my details regarding his food, food timings, sleep timings, play areas and generally my idea of checking on him. They ensure he sleeps some pre defined hours. He’ usually crawling over the house and they happily move furniture to create more space for him to explore. And I can attribute some of his out going nature to his stay at their place. They usually have relatives visiting them. The place is also very very clean. The lady is a very typical god fearing, vegetarian, cleanliness freak, your next door sweet aunty types. When I go pick him up in late afternoons, the curtains are drawn and the place smells like wet earth and it makes me so drowsy too. It gives me loads of peace of mind, to know he’s safe, happy, cared for and ‘at home’. And there’s someone to watch over the maid too. Besides, they are willing to follow all that I say. They say they do not do it for the money, their kids are settled out of India and its the company they enjoy! They do not charge me much and also never complain if he happens to spend an hour or half an hour extra. When I grow old, I want to do this too, its a great way to keep oneself occupied!

ok, so much, now *anti jinx* to the post.

in a few days..

in the middle of June my baby will be a year old. Gasp! and I will be a mother of a one year old. I don’t seem to swallow that yet.  Time flies by so quickly. And now I really want to hold on to this baby of mine.

About 15 days ago, Little V started to crawl. We were thrilled to see him crawl on his four. Shaking that little bum of his and going over all the place. Opening drawers, exploring door stoppers and enjoying being on the hard surface. I guess my baby is a little late to crawl. But I decided never to push him to crawl or worry about it. Every child has his own development scale and they all do things at their own pace. We must never push them. But of course they must have enough opportunity and exposure to take that initiative themselves and we must try not to sweat over it.  He’s all over the place these days. At first, no matter where we left him in the room he would crawl upto me like a  battery operated toy that always returns to the same destination, no matter where you left it. To say the least, it was flattering. He kept coming back to mamma for no particular reason

Little V also recently started to sway to some of our own favorite music. When one of our most heard music is on tv, he pauses for a minute from his play to look up to the tv screen and starts to sway to that music. Have you ever seen a 10.5month old sway to bollywood music like ‘massakali’ or ‘kabhi kabhi aditi’, its particularly delightful! Otherwise, he is not particularly fond of the tv and doesn’t watch continously for more than 5 minutes at a go, hence we have the liberty to watch sometimes at a stretch. Usually we hardly switch on tv when we are at home. Sometimes, the entire working week goes by without us even switching it on. Weekends too we settle for some pre decided tv watching which comprises of mostly news and current affairs or music related shows that we are already aware of.  These days Little V’s items of greatest interest are steel utensils of all shapes and sorts, his books and opening and closing cupboards. Steel utensils I think because of the different kind of sounds they can make when banged on different surfaces. With steel utensils he is also practising to use them the way we use them.

These days when I go to pick him up from his daycare, he leaves everything and crawls upto to me in no time and then explains his day’s happenings in his baby language – aaaee, ooo, taaa, itaaaa, ayyyy, aaata, naaah. He also points his fingers at random objects while saying all this. It almost feels like a conversation I am having with him and I am mostly nodding and making sentences about the things he points to. On our way back to home, I think he misses dad badly and keeps saying papapapapa all the time.

He’s also making effort to speak. He says the following words clearly and also knows what they mean – mamma, papa, dede, naeee(for no) and flabur(for flower) and tedi (for teddy) and says bye(instead of waving) to visitors when they leave. He also says kyahe (as in ‘kya hai’ meaning ‘what is it’), but he doesn’t know what kya hai means. And by the way he knows and remembers exactly where the plants and flowers are in the house and points to them from anywhere with ease. Oh little baby, we love you so much

my watches…

have all stopped together at 4:10. Three of them. Pretty uncanny for me. I am not much of a watch fan (yeah! ask my husband), however over the years I have sort of amassed a collection. At the last count, I have about 9 of them. My first watch was a titan, and I was a school going kiddo at that time, the steel strap and the fancy dial was all too fascinating for me. And I wore that watch for quite a long time, well into my college years. As I started to work, I bought myself another fancy watch which became my favorite for about 2 years. I would wear it all of my waking hours and sleeping hours too. During my first job, the employer gifted all its employees a watch on diwali and that one became my hot favorite then. It was silly of me to have worn it even when not at work and to have felt proud to be associated with the big name that they were. As we dated and my then boyfriend(and now hubby) gifted me some watches and my collection just grew like that. So some were bought and others were gifted. In the past 2 weeks, I have had an unusual experience with my watches. I have lost one of these 9. And today morning I noticed, three of them had stopped with the time 4:10 on them. Is there some supernatural message or sign in all this that I cannot gather! like my time of death or something! quite creepy no!

Also, a few days ago, I almost lost another one of my watches. I wore it to a market, did my shopping and on the way back realised that the watch was missing from my wrist. Me and Little V then went back all the way to search for it, but it wasn’t there in any of the shops. Somehow, that day I found it lying right next to where the car was parked. No one picked it up from there. I was happy to have found it. Andd, now that I am doing this post, I recollect there is an old watch lying somewhere at home, which I haven’t worn in a year and I am wondering if its stopped at 4:10 too.  Its the first thing I’ll check when I get back home today.

may be apun ka time kuch kharab chal raha hai !

being the (woe)man of the house

Hubbie isn’t home these days and little V and me are missing him like crazy. I always pestered him to do more stuff around the house, and now I cant’ bear his absence. All I am begging for now, is to sip tea with him in the morning, a drive to my office, a call in the day, a drive to the market, a glass of water when I don’t feel like budging from where I am and of course a peck on the cheek and a surprise hug. oooh! we miss him. (Did I make all that sound like a list of tasks, well lets call it that, its pretty much what he does around here   Rest of his life is devoted to his first wife ie his work. I also have plenty to crib about managing the bills, running around to fix gas supply and such mundane tasks, but I’ll spare you the rust. On another note, I kept up on my fights with him, some happened over phone and some over chats. Lets leave those too.

Little V and me decided to therefore not miss him so much and we are flying to him in a week’s time! hurray!  We are all too excited and busy packing now. We’ve had two very bad weeks of not having him here and we can’t wait to be with him. Little V had his fabulous first flight when he was 5 months, and this will be his second.  So, I am not going to say anything for fear of any sort of jinx *ward off evil eye* and will post in detail about our trip later.

While daddy has been away, Little V has been upto stuff. He now has a clear preference for his books vs his toys and can spend hours looking at them, upside down, pointing at every little detail. Watching him so engrossed in all this, is an all time high for me(yet). He is also particularly fascinated by a certain fisher price toy of balls of several colors and sizes (I cant find the link for it), its the longest he’s been attracted to one toy.  And it is by far the simplest of toys in its make but a lot can be done with those half and full balls. He also now does a little jiggle when any of his musical toy plays. He points to the fan and says fa fa fa. I think from mamamamama he is sort of saying mimimimimi for me which is very cute. He isn’t crawling yet, and trust me I am not at all sweating over it! He has all of his life to crawl to walk and it doesn’t bother me one bit. Very soon time will be gone and I will miss carrying him around everywhere.  He can now position himself to crawl though and can be seen on all four limbs. He’s only moving backwards in this posture right now. Little V likes the fearsome huge dog our neighbors have and he’s always very delighted to see the pet. The moment I say ‘doggie’ Little V wants to rush to the window to catch a glimpse.  Little V can also now get up and sit from a lie down position, which really shocks me, when did this guy learn to do that.  I had been stacking away some of Little V’s clothes that he outgrew which I absolutely adored and hope to someday if and when I have another baby, see these clothes on it. I now have a humungous number of baby clothes, and I do not plan to store anything from now on.  Some of them have memories attached and some are just so cute, I think I will never ever feel like letting go of them. 

The past two weeks felt like ages and I am totally sleep deprived and love deprived right now and pray for me that the next week goes off soon. We will be in obamaland then!

I began my day today..

..with lots of baby poop. If poopy tales make you uneasy, quit reading right now.

I was going about my usual umpteen morning tasks of getting ready, sterilizing baby bottles, preparing baby food, and getting baby clothes organised, besides getting the breakfast and lunch packed and ready for me and hubbie. ( I am trying not to start off on my rant with all this..). There was a time when Little V would wake up with the two of us and mornings meant doing all of the above and also keeping him occupied. Then there was a phase when Little V slept through most of our morning rush and we would wake him up just 15 minutes before we had to leave, get him ready and then finally leave for work. Since the past few days, little V has backtracked, he chooses to wake up the moment I am out of the bed and won’t go back to sleep. He would then need one of us by his side, to keep him entertained, so the two of us take turns in getting ready. This morning, I was just out of shower and wore one of my favorite clothes for work. Andd…while I was getting ready, I saw bits of poop sprouting out from the back of little V’s diaper. Greeny, squishy poop. I was combing my hair and thinking of what perfume to wear. And then I saw, little V fall backwards and splish splash a bit of poop on the bed, I couldn’t have stopped him with that bottle of perfume in my hand. And suddenly, Little V does his twist and turn on the bed and gets the poop lying on the bed on his tshirt near his right shoulder.  Meanwhile hubbie walked out of the bathroom, smelling all fresh and clean and hair all fresh and spiky.  I donned a nightie over my officewear (thats my tip for messy poop situations which have a knack of arriving the moment I am dressed in something nice) and you could mistake me for a doc at an operation. And an operation it was, poop cleaning operation! Hubbie and I got down to the task. The poop on Little V’s shirt fell to hubbie’s clothes and since hubbie was the one who carried Little V to the basin, his fingers looked like he had dipped them in mustard sauce.  I got down to the task of cleaning the baby, and there was bits of poop all over the white basin and just everywhere. I decided to give Little V a bath which he really enjoys now. At the end of it, I had a fresh bedcover, neatly laid out and a  baby smelling so yummy, wearing a white tshirt and white pyjamas, giving him the perfect baby look and while I was combing his hair, I had forgotten all about office. And right now I can smell something…mustardy…about…my perfume..sssssshhhhhhhhh!

( I knew you wont resist reading the entire post, now don’t blame me for it, I warned you!)

No to Nano

The wonder small car was launched yesterday. The Nano that unleashes a small car revolution of the Maruti 800 variety. It will now become every family’s first car. Indian dreams of owning a car of the two most sought after luxuries of ‘ghar aur gaadi’ will be realised.  While I am all for power to the Indian and the revolutionary $2000 car, that the US media calls it, I shudder to think what will become of the already over strained road network of our country.  Traffic will worsen as all the bikers will switch to Nano and the already swelling upper class will not think twice before owning another car. Our government is doing very little to ensure that this car doesn’t end up making driving on roads a nightmare. The government should  (a) Restrict Nano’s use to only city driving (ie local driving) (b) Ban the Nano from all metros (c) Begin to tax heavily the luxury segment cars (some very rich class, won’t mind paying another lakh or 2 to get the car of their desire) (d) Use this money to improve the transport system. 

As of now, I am saying No to the Nano. What about you?

She..

She never held me in her arms, She never fed me.

She never thought of doing up my hair,  And she had no desires for me.

She never answered when I called out for her. For school she never dressed me.

Nor did she pack my favorite lunch boxes. Never did she wait for me late evenings. 

I had no sarees I could think of borrowing one day.

We had no girlfriend talks to share. I always wept when I was sad and wondered if she would care.

I had her eyes and her stare. But I thought how would it be if she was here. 

She never guessed college romances that I wish I could share.

Career choices were never debated, I wonder how she rated the men I dated.

What would she pick for me for my wedding? Would she give me the kundan I eyed?

What would she say when she saw me as a bride?

Would she know of my pain, when I became her? Would she take pride in how I braved it?

He says, I do not know how women are, since I never had her.

Will she ever answer that?

I speculate whether she will relate,  how I never knew(and never will) of what it is to have her.

Will she see the way I wept…

and that there are days I miss her bad.

To my Mum, whom I never had. Miss you.