Anjali - my new love

After a longish wait, I am finally an aunt. I can't seem to get enough of my adorable little niece. I wake up most mornings and look at her pictures or get on to video chat to see her funny movements. I keep tormenting Arya about how she looks like her in this photo and that. I also made sure that I book my tickets to San Diego much in advance for the Dec holidays. 4 months is the earliest ever that I have gotten tickets.
I also keep worrying about how the daycare people are going to treat her once my parents return to India. :-)

Recently, she smiled at us on the video chat. It was a moment. We were all under her spell. Now besides having her on my screensaver and hanging up her picture in my office, I have suddenly developed an avid interest in looking at other people's babies and comparing them (unfavourably) to our family ka bachcha.

Y to D

It's been slightly over a month now that I have joined the D company. The Y company seems so far away now. I was quite perplexed there with the maturity levels of people all around me, but I do admit that they do know how to have fun - BIG TIME!
At D, everyone is much more serious and committed to their work. People routinely log in late at night and keep working at unimaginable hours. I have been lucky to meet a lot of people that I have worked with in the past. Everyone has been incredibly helpful and really really sweet.
I still remember my first day at work in the M company.... such a far cry from my first day at D. I remember feeling scared and vulnerable and looking at all the seniors with so much admiration. Makes me laugh now. At D, things went so smoothly, I never had any first day blues. The people I work with are very experienced and I am really happy with that. I got some praise for having gotten up to speed fast (the way that they like it at D) so I am currently basking in that!
My boss is wonderful. She seems to see most things the way I do, and that is very useful. She's very young and very successful, a great role model. Plus she loves wine and birthdays...the similarities never end!

mmmm...dream vacation

Hello - I am back from a dream vacation. Visited 4 countries in Europe and covered 5500 kms. It was a perfect summer break. We ooh-ed and aah-ed over ancient monuments and breathtaking landscapes and art and architecture. Everything was just so picturesque just like the hindi movies. Food was heavenly too.
We got a chance to stay with some local families and it was a huge opportunity for us to observe European culture at close quarters. Imagine we thought that Germans eat sausages and bread at every meal was an exaggeration. We found out it was quite quite true. Thankfully, they have lots of bread and even more sausages to choose from.
In Switzerland we saw that they sell logs of wood at petrol stations ;-) betchya didn't know that!
More to follow...

Mera Life Mahaan

My Book

I am happy to announce that I have started writing my book. I have completed 2 chapters and have a whole long weekend stretched out in front of me to make progress.

Back in Singapore

It's amazing how I do it everytime, but I managed to land myself back in Singapore on my two feet, job intact.
Yes, I have a new job now, and life is busy as hell.
I feel grateful just being back in Singapore, I didn' t like living in Bangalore at all. I am much too spoilt by the ease of living in SG.
Baby Aji - my grandmother has stayed with me since April 2005 and she's moving back to Bombay on Monday. I feel this big loss, I don't know how to quite explain it.

Been lazy

It's just been too much of a bother blogging these days, besides i have found a new love - Linkedin!
And anyways i like one to one conversations much more than one to many.

Nauseating Couples

Have you come across those couples who go too far with their very public display of affection which makes you want to throw up or look away or at the very least pretend that you don't know them any more.
More about them later.

Marriage in the family!

My precious sister Aditi is getting married and guess where - In Singapore. And in Bangalore. Bless her soul, she has chosen the two places in the world where I would like to be and where I am at the moment.

Of course, since it's at very short notice, the last few weeks have been a whirl of phonecalls across the world, chats on the www, hurriedly exchanged emails and complaints about the dates and the two venues, phonemeeting of the parents, sari shopping, fall, beading, venue fixing, what have you!

In the middle of all this, my grandmom Baby Aji, who is staying with me has been constantly at my side and she is as amused by my excitement as I am with hers.

Arya on the other hand, is in steady state. With some amount of disappointment I realized that marriage will never be for Arya an event as important and fun as it is for us. She hardly gets a chance to attend the great Indian weddings. So she doesn't have a clue what the excitement is all about. She has simply decided that she is going to wear her Mujhse shaadi Karogi dress (the one they got for her Shiamak Dawar concert)

She looked at the sarees I bought with some amount of disdain. Then she finally deigned to tell me which one she liked the best. She asked me what's wrong with me and why would I wear a saree when Baba had bought 3 lovely dresses for me to wear.

I told her the next marriage in our family would be hers and she was not coy or shy as I thought she would be. Instead, she was interested and attentive. She asked me whether she could stay with me even after she got married. I said yes of course!

Now she is asking, why can't Aditimaushi still stay with us after she gets married.

BPO Blast - People mgmt

When I wanted to be a people manager, I had no idea that I will be faced with these kind of problems. Sometimes it's so hilarious I want to laugh, sometimes it's so crummy, I want to cry, but I have to sit through that 1:1 or that skip level meeting with a completely straight face.

When I am asked to speak on "HR updates" what they are really asking is "When am I getting promoted" When someone says "I have an issue with the process" it means "my shift timings don't suit my personal life". So on and so forth.

Day after day, some unique problems surface. There's this girl who came to me with recently shorn locks. I was about to comment on how nice she was looking when she stopped me dead in my tracks saying - Please change my shift cab. There's a girl who comes in that cab and she has lice-infested hair. I caught the lice too and I had to cut off all my hair to get rid of them.

If you thought that was funny, there's this girl who lives very near the office and she comes in the morning shift walking. She wants cab service (not available due to proximity to office) her reason being - There are too many street dogs, I feel threatened to walk there. It's early in the morning and they are hungry. They could take a bite out of my leg.

Someone gave me a high!

Out of the blue, totally unexpected, one of my direct reports told me - The way you handled the All team meeting yesterday was simply superb. No one but you could have done it!
And the thing is that this guy is moving on to another team, so he really didn't need to. But I am so glad he did. It made my day.

Mangoes make life worth living

I can't express how delighted I am today. I picked up my first Alphonso mangoes of the season. So far I had to satiate my tastebuds with just Raspuri, Badami and the likes. Mommy did send some Alphonsos with Baby Aji but they were bad or went bad in transit.

Today I had the pleasure of smelling each one before I put it in the basket. I got greedy and took more than I could eat. After all they were only Rs50 a kilo. That's nothing. I remember when mangoes were so prohibitively expensive that we couldn't afford to buy anything more than 1 per person.

Ummm, more when I have savored them all.

India Reloaded - Accidents galore

I was going to write on Wednesday because it was a high point in my life. I actually drove my car myself to my office and back home. Ok I ran out of patience when I was trying to park back again in my puny little parking lot at DD. So I asked somebody's driver to help out, but other than that, the feeling was totally awesome and exhilirating.

I drove.

And I was determined to drive everyday now that I had driven once, I didn't want the confidence to ebb. But then, it rained two nights in a row and I didn't want to take the car out on wet roads. So my car stays perfectly parked (by the driver, of course)

Meanwhile, I had to gloat about my newfound ability to drive without causing major havoc on the road. So when Dicky (my childhood friend called me up, that's the story I told him first) He seemed wan. He told me his car was in the office as he had had an accident a couple of days ago. A motorcyclist rammed into him from the front. But since that guy had a fracture and he was the guy on the smaller vehicle, the law is likely to be on his side.

My world almost came crashing down all around me. Dicky has been driving for eons. And even in Bangalore he drives quite a distance to and from work. There is absolutely no reason that Dicky could make an error. And he probably didn't. Bangalore roads are truly the worst. I keep hearing of accidents day in and day out. A lot of them are fatal. Even pedestrians are not spared. It kind of makes you wonder whether you should go out at all.

The other day one of the guys in my team Ravi, had an accident, where he swerved to avoid a motorcyclist and rammed his car into the kerb. The crowd still broke his windshield. The crowd menace is probably more of an issue than the accident itself. In this case, the motorcyclist was totally unhurt, all that happened was that he fell off the bike.

And then just when we were going to go out on holiday, I heard that a jeep full of people from Fidelity had a head on collision with a truck and all the people including the driver died instantly. This was a Trinity Cab and I have been regularly using their services. It made me shudder and mutter a rushed prayer of thanks that it wasn't me.

Accidents have become very commonplace in Bangalore. People are very used to it. It makes me sick, the low value that life has here.

Life Is Same, Predictable and all things Boring

Sometimes I don't know whether to count my lucky stars that my life is predictable or boring. I always yearn to go back to Singapore where things are always the same. Nothing is a surprise. But is that exactly how I want to live my life forever?

I have tried to insulate myself as much as possible in Bangalore as well. For example, every Saturday and Sunday, Arya and I go skating and then dancing and we share a Chocolate Icecream at Corner House and the rest of the time we are at home. We do this over and over again every weekend. It makes me happy that I know that my baby is with me and she's safe and sound. However it irritates the hell out of me that I have nothing better to do on the weekend than ferry her around to her classes.

And I tell myself that since I am a working mother, this is the quality time that I get to spend with her and I should make the most of it. But I am so irritable these days. Most of the time I leave her bewildered during our quality time sessions wondering what she did wrong. She would rather not have that kind of quality I think.

It's Mother's Day today. I am really upset. There are a thousand things I want from life but most of all I want another baby. I wish it was easy for Kushal to understand. I wish he wanted a baby as much as I did. I wish things didn't have to be so complex.

I really don't want to be superwoman, supermom, etc etc. I just want a normal life with as many kids as possible. I want to look after them and teach them to be good human beings. I find it irritating that people gloat about how they balance a career and a family. I don't want to balance anything. I would throw away all the glamor to just have that second child. I know I really desperately wanted to have Arya as well. I thought I wouldn't be so keen the second time. But seems like it's an obsession with me. In the middle of my highly dramatic life in Bangalore, with so many uncertainities that it makes your head spin, I have insulated myself to the highest extent possible in the hope that Kushal will agree to have another baby, inspite of the turmoil and the uncertainty.

But No!

Saying Bye Bye to Singapore All Over Again

Arya tells me that she has a funny, sad feeling in the pit of her stomach. We are leaving for Bangalore tonight. Our 2 week vacation in Singapore has come to an end. She had nightmares 2 nights in a row and she is feeling down and out and vulnerable.

And me - sigh! I am not even starting to describe how I am feeling. At least in my mind, I can rationalize that it's nicer to spend 2 weeks in Singapore and bear the 2 day ordeal of parting pangs rather than not come at all. But for Arya, she doesn't know how to deal with saying Bye Bye to her precious Singapore all over again. She would much rather not come here at all, because she can't bear the depression of saying Bye.

Kushal went to Mumbai on a business trip on Saturday and that was probably what started her downward spiral. She is now reached a point where she is ready to cry at the slightest provocation. Helpless mother that I am, my heart goes out to her of course. Yet at the same time, I wish she was tougher. What with all the hard knocks life has to offer - I worry, I worry a lot!

Junya Athvani - Pathare Prabhu Swapna Sundari

People form associations. They want their children to grow up in communities. They want others to take pride in their children's achievements. My parents are part of the Pathare Prabhu association. As children, we really enjoyed participating in the numerous debates, elocution, drawing competitions and the like.
I was feared and respected in PP circles for my English prowess. Although the PP community tried hard to instill the Marathi-ness of us all into our impressionable minds, secretly they admired English speaking people much more and each one of them broke into English when suitably drunk (in an effort to sound more learned)

So we were growing up with the sense of being a PP somewhere on the periphery of our vision - I would proudly proclaim that we PPs are the Original Inhabitants of Bombay City - (of course I had no clue of how to say that in Marathi)

Then hey presto - Sushmita Sen won the Miss India and went on to be Miss Universe and Aishwarya Rai won the Miss World title in the very same year and the PPs, forward thinking as they are, decided to have their very own beauty contest. They named it Pathare Prabhu Swapna Sundari which roughly translates to PP Dream Girl. My mother was very insistent that I participate and some of the glamor of Ash and Sush had rubbed off on me too, which is why I was very willing.

We had a quest for finding the perfect saree. And then the perfect accessories and then we had to decide who would do my makeup and what I would say on stage. Of course I had loads of people helping me to rehearse my lines. There was excitement backstage and mostly in the minds of my cousins and little brother and sister, who were awaiting my arrival on stage with a lot of anxiety and trepidation.

The magic moment arrived and I did exactly what a headstrong idiot would do. I spoke in impeccable English about my sense of pride in being a PP and how I would make sure that we preserve the culture and the PP-ness of us all. Duh!

Of course I didn't win. A better looking, Marathi speaking, airhostess did. I was very glad for her, but the disappointment of my mother was too much for me to take.

Did she actually expect me to win?

India Reloaded - Vacationing In Singapore

That title sounded funny. After living in Singapore for 8 years, what is the one spot I choose to come and vacation in - Singapore. Duh!

Well it is not so dumb. I think it helped me to respect the place that I had come to take for granted. The safety, the security, the seafood - just the predictability of things.

Besides we have to celebrate Arya's birthday party here with all of her friends. I met up with a few of my friends and I was reassuring them that they are not missing out on anything by not participating in "India shining" The media is just all hype. India still has a long way to go to measure up to Singapore. And truth always hurts.

What are the things I loved about India - The warmth of the people, the kindness and hospitality, the ease with which conversations took place between perfect strangers, the opportunities that I got in my school and college, the places that I could visit, the food that I could eat, all different, all delicious. Most of all, I enjoyed the sense of association, the sense of belongingness.

Now I am different - I no longer find people warm, kind and hospitable - the national greed overwhelms me, at every point, people want to be overpaid or bribed. Schools and Colleges are part of the racket. They spew out venom and take in only kids who's parents can afford Donations - which are cleverly disguised as Admission or Registration fees. Getting from one point to another in Bangalore is such an ordeal, that one simply does not have the strength to go from one city to another. My food preferences have changed - ever since my palate has widened and I no longer find Indian food the most fabulous (although my preference for Indian sweets will live on forever). But the fact is that there are other cuisines which I find delicious and they are simply not available in India. As for the sense of association or the sense of belongingness - it's just not there. I don't belong. Not anymore.
I am starting to sound like Jhumpa Lahiri, so I better cut it out - NOW!

All about Arya - Teaching a lefthander to play Badminton and go Bowling

It's a tough enough job to teach a left-handed child to write when you are right-handed, but since Arya decided to be ambidextrous, I didn't have to worry too much.

But recently I took it upon myself to teach her Badminton and it was a constantly frustrating exercise for both of us. However, we were determined to keep at it day after day and she bravely tried to mirror all my serves and swings and backhands and then after about 20 days there came a day today that she could actually return my serves and serve by herself too. Badminton champ she is not, but I am proud of the way she just wouldn't accept defeat.

I had taken her bowling too some days ago and conveniently forgot that she was left-handed, so I kept showing her the correct position and the correct grip and where to aim and how. She kept throwing gutterball after gutterball and accused the ball of being too heavy. It was only after my friend Candy who was with us that day, asked me - Isn't she left-handed? that it struck me like lightning that I was expecting too much out of her poor sore right hand.

Since then, whenever i visit a bowling alley, I keep a close watch on left-handers to see their technique.

It kind of makes me realize why people force their left-handed kids to use the right-hand instead. Well someone told me that left-handers have a natural advantage in golf - so the next thing that I have to do is start her on golf and who knows, we may just have a Tigress Wood on the way.

All About Arya - You Notti

This was way back when Arya was just 2 years old. She had learned two things - sometimes she was a good girl and at other times she was naughty, or notti (tti pronounced as the word for "her" in marathi)
To our amusement, she would pick herself up when she would fall and call the ground 'notti', when it rained while she was enjoying herself in the playground, she would look at the sky and say 'notti', the TV would be called 'notti' if her fat little fingers weren't able to press the remote power on button, if a biscuit fell out of her hand, she would just look at it with a great deal of frustration and say - you guessed it - notti!

Kushal found this very amusing and so he started teasing her and calling her notti whenever it caught his fancy. This used to make her really angry and she would fly into a rage and say - YOU Notti - to which he would reply with the same fervour - it's you who's notti, only to enrage her further and further till her anger drove her to tears.

Poor thing, she had only a limited vocabulary back then. So everything around her was just notti. Today things range from the mildly crazy to idiotic to horrible, terrible, miserable and extremely bad. She often rolls up her eyes skywards and tells me that the food can't be called bad, it's just tasteless, or tastes awful. Mumma, don't say it's "not good" to touch stray animals - Say that they aren't clean so wash your hands afterwards. Mumma, why do you say your teeth will become 'kharab' if you don't brush, just say that they will decay. The list goes on.

Of course, I miss the fat little cherubic toddler who simply said - You Notti!

India Reloaded - Citibank India Stinky Poo!

Those of you who read my blog and thought that Citibank sucks - think again! It actually STINKS.

Thanks to the original mess-ups I have had my account open in Dec, operational since Feb. I finally got a hold of my internet password and managed to even log in. But when I eagerly went to check out my account statement, it said - Please register to read your statements online. Are they so dumb at Citibank that they have no idea that people who sign up for an internet password would need to access their statement online.

Needless to say, Citibank neither sends me a statement by post, nor by email, and now it wonders whether I want to register to read my statement online. HelllllOoooooo, this is my money we are talking about. Have I no right to know what Citibank is doing with my money without signing up zillions of times and answering gazillions of questions? Is there something wrong with me? Does the rest of the world believe in trust and faith? Will Citibank lend me money based on the same trust and faith that they keep my money without ever bothering to send me a tiny little inkling on what transactions are happening in MY bank account?

Anybody in their right mind, still signing up for a Citibank account???

India Reloaded - Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous

Bangalore – The population ranges from the mildly rich to the extremely prosperous. Most IT bigwigs get paid obscene salaries and they spread the goodness around resulting in obscene salaries for their drivers and maids as well. I see a cellphone in every hand, unfailingly. Every new condominium which comes up for booking gets lapped up instantaneously. Money is being spent, no burnt.

I went to the I-Bar at The Park Hotel. Many of the city’s movers and shakers were present of course and more poured in as the night progressed. The bar was overflowing with people demanding booze at a faster rate than the bartenders could supply. The dance floor took a while to warm up but once we started, there was no stopping the crowd. Everywhere designer shoes, designer clothes, designer bags – I wondered whether I was the one from Singapore here. I seemed to be too ordinary. Someone stopped me and asked whether my bag was an Aigner original. I earnestly nodded yes to gain that instant look of acceptance into the hoi-polloi. When the lady turned away to talk to someone else, I confessed to my colleague that I had bought my Aigner original for all of S$35 at a Rock Bottom price sale.

The disco crowd of course gets younger every day and it was distressing to see 14 year olds (or perhaps they were 12) smoking a sickly sweet substance. I wonder what it was, but it made my head spin and I had to get off the dance floor.

Outside, I looked at the line of cars. All big. I think I must be the only senior manager in Bangalore who owns a puny Santro. But compared to my life in Singapore where I didn’t even own a car, I am doing good (I think)

Then I was at a birthday party with Arya today evening. Again, the prosperity is so in your face. This was a luxurious 3 bedroom flat with a lovely terrace garden with actual artificial grass laid out all over. I hadn’t stopped reeling from that fact when the women with their sparkling diamonds chirped all around me, only interested in the fact that I was from Singapore. Every man of every age was wearing a pink shirt. I was wondering why that was, when it suddenly occurred to me that it was a fairyland theme. I can’t imagine for the life of me – the Indian men in Singapore complying with the rules if they involve wearing a pink shirt. I am tempted to try it out with Arya’s next birthday party.
Everywhere I look, people are withdrawing thousands of rupees from ATMs, spending thousands on meals (and they are not all expense accounts), squandering away tens of thousands on holidays, clothes, what not!An Indian girl who’s lived in Singapore for a longish time went to Delhi to shop for her wedding trousseau. She came back in a state of shock saying that while she was hesitating about what to pick and checking out the price tags (despite the fact that she was earning in Singapore $), it was shocking to see locals not batting an eyelid while shelling out upwards of INR 50000 (SGD 2000 approx) for their wedding dress (something that you end up wearing only once in your life). I couldn’t relate to it then, but you bet I can now.