Arya at Hogwarts

K and I went shopping for a Black witch hat and then I stitched sleeves on a little black cocktail dress which once belonged to Aditi. We tied a Black satin ribbon all along the length of our old broom handle and voila - we had a student ready for Hogwarts!
We couldn't really get onto Platform 9 3/4 but we managed to get Arya into Jyothi's car to get her to the Witches and Wizards party at Mehek's place. She was looking really cute. Atul and gang saw her on video conference. She didn't look evil (with that face, who would?) or spooky. She really just looked like your regular Hogwarts first year student, would have given Hermoine Granger a run for her money.
K and I went to see Don Saturday night with Jo and Shantanu. Kids were happy to have a sleepover at Diya's place. I really liked the movie - but I am biased. Don was my favourite movie when it released.

Old Habits die hard

I almost let K go to a drinks and dinner with his work friends - Alone! I thought I could do it. And then at the very last minute, I said, oh, I think I will join you.
Can't I ever ever ever give up an opportunity to go out? I wasn't feeling too well. This freaky cold which started like a haze allergy just keeps coming back to me. I think I must have sneezed a hundred times - enough for K to carry 4 panadols (in case I needed them) and to enquire about the state of my health twice.
It was a fun evening. But then I had a coffee before we started out and I couldn't sleep, so when we got back, I watched a movie - it had J.Aniston in it so K wouldn't watch it for the world, and what did I do cos I was watching the movie alone? Made myself 3 more cups of coffee, that's what I did. It's Stupid with the Capital S.
And now I am up all night while the rest of the house is in deep slumber. Still miserable with my cold, part of me hating the fact that I can't get sleep, part of me enjoying this alone time where I can do what I do best - write!
Pages and pages of inspiration.
Seriously, I better get started on that book I have left half done. Since my job change, I haven't had a moment to think abt the book.
Anyway - just for the record. The hot coffee didn't offer me any relief from my runny nose. I think I should just have some cognac!

Parents are cast in the Same Mould

Arya's Annual Day Function Today. Their bus came to pick them up early. The parents are supposed to go later in the evening for the show.

I was preparing Diwali faral. Proud to say that I completed narlipak and shankarpali, and also made gajar halwa (not really for Diwali but for today). What I am trying to say is that I was very dishevelled, my hair was a complete mess and I don't think I even got a chance to wash my face, as I hurriedly changed and went down to look at the kids. I wanted to see all of them in their costumes.

First I met Rosa Ana with a videocamera and then Shantanu and Jyothi with their camera and then Nandu and Tulika. It seems as if all the parents wanted to see all the kids. It's heartening to know that parents are cast in the same mould all over the world. J commented that after this grand send-off today, we might hear them expecting the same treatment everyday :-)

They were all looking so adorable!

Kahaan gaye woh din…sigh!

Lately, Arya has been different.

She’s no longer shy or reticent. She seems very poised and confident. She makes humorous dinner-time conversation. Like yesterday at the dinner table, Baby aji pointed out that she’s become naughtier than before. She said she hadn’t and went on to say that earlier when Baby Aji asked her to do something she’d refuse by saying “No” and nowadays she doesn’t say “No”. So I asked her, slyly, “So when Baby aji asks you to do something, do you do it?” She said, “YES!” and then sheepishly said, “Sometimes” and we all laughed and laughed till our sides ached.

But going back to all the things she used to do that she doesn’t.

She no longer wants to come and sleep in our room, even when we call her. There was a time when not only did she insist in sleeping in our room, but she also wanted to sleep in the middle. She pronounced it MEEDEEL. It was so sweet. At night, when she was fast asleep, we would smile at each other, and slowly move her to one side. She had this uncanny radar sense as well. She’d realize if there’s no one on the bed and she’d wake up and go look for us immediately. All of this wanting to sleep with us waned to “Sleep with me until I fall asleep” and then “tell me a story to help me sleep by myself” to “Sleep with me for 5 minutes and then you can go to your own room” But now the biggul (big girl) no longer wants to sleep in our room, even if we invite her to. So much so that even when Kushal is on a business trip, and I tell her to come to my bed, she says, you can sleep in my room if you want!

She used to call everyone and everything “naughty” when things didn’t go her way. So when she fell down, the ground was naughty, if her pencil point broke when she was writing, then the pencil was proclaimed naughty, if the alarm clock woke her up from slumber land, it was sleepily pronounced naughty, and if I yelled at her and made her cry, I was (you guessed it) naughty. So that’s gone, infact, quite a few years ago.

She had these nasty allergies, which made her breathless and she had to be rushed to the hospital a few times. Thank God that’s gone!

Due to the allergies, we didn’t let her play with soft toys. There were a lot of tears that day, when we threw out each and every one of her cuddly soft toys. But when we realized years later that the allergies were gone, we consented guiltily into buying her one and then another and then another. The first one which we bought, a humungous dog, which Kushal christened Mangala, was a constant companion. Arya carried Mangala every where she went, including her trips to Mumbai. Everywhere that Arya went, Mangala was sure to go, like the proverbial Mary’s little lamb. However, all of a sudden, we find Mangala cast away in a stock pile of other cuddlies. Her sad, sad, hush puppy eyes look even sadder these days. Arya has moved on meanwhile to Lord of the Ring swords and rubber dart machine guns.

Yesterday, I played a game of snakes and ladders with her and to my delight I discovered, that she doesn’t cry anymore when she gets eaten up by a “snake” and has to go back to somewhere at the bottom of the board. She also cheers for the winner even if it’s not her.

She has done some funny things in her life. Like the day we discovered her jumping up and down on her bed, actually our bed, screaming “Naynaynay Gravity” over and over again like some sort of chant. Wonder if Sir Isaac Newton demonstrated in a similar fashion, his immense pleasure when the apple fell on his head! But yesterday when I told her a fairy story about a rainbow called Happy, she cut me short saying – “Well, then Happy is really a sunbeam that’s all.”

More and more it seems like her childhood is the sand slipping through my fingers and tightening my fist doesn’t seem to help at all. Sigh! Maybe I am ready for another baby now.

Everything that Men know about Women

One of my colleagues is very excited. His wife has lived away from him for 3 years due to her job and she's now joining our company. She's going to be in the same team, so while we were talking about when exactly she's going to join and he was telling me of how thrilled he is, he also mentioned that he hopes that the two of us (me and his wife) hit it off well. I said there wasn't any doubt of that happening as two married women usually do, since they have a lot in common. You know, the usual conversations about how inept men are and what would they ever do without their oh-so competent wives. I got a laugh out of him, so I said I'd done my Good Deed for the Day.
This brings to mind a book that Vani showed me. She said it was given to her by someone from the H Company's Boeblingen office. The title was "Everything that Men know about Women" and inside it was just that - totally blank!

Dandiya Dhamaka

This weekend was really something else!!

On Saturday we had the Lantern festival in our condo. There was a Lion Dance and the kids had put up a song and a dance. I had choreographed the dance, and believe it or not, I had the same butterflies in my stomach as I have before every one of my own performances. At 33, I think I should have got over such things. Of course, whatever could go wrong did. At first the speakers weren't working and then the CD player wasn't. So we had to stall the proceedings until we could arrange replacements. Jyothi went to get her system, she was wearing a sari, she tripped and fell and had to wear a different sari. Diya fell during the dance. Shiva hurt his shoulder. Oh the list goes on!

But all in all, the kids were really good and made me proud. Arya won a consolation prize for the lantern making competition (although she had a lot of people's popular vote - mine, too;-) Now I sound like a neurotic mom who's deepest darkest secret is that HER BABY IS SECRETLY THE BEST AT EVERYTHING.

On Sunday, we had a dandiya party organized by Tulika and Nandu. They are really very good at this. Tulika had planned everything to the last detail. There was awesome Gujarati food (I had made Aloo Baingan) home-cooked. The theplas, Shrikhand and Kalakhand deserve special mention. I don't remember the last time I ate so much when all the food on offer was vegetarian :-)

It was fun all the way, helping with the decorations, which were these colorful saris and dupattas on the walls, taking photos of those moments which no one should miss and even helping out with the Operation Cleanup at the end. Fun, Fun, Fun! What I should not fail to mention here is that I danced for 5 hours straight, and that was the most I have danced in a long, long time. The Kajra Re solo came up by popular demand (and of course no one enjoys it more than me) and Rajani and I did some real fast dandiya moves. Prakash and Anjali were easily the best sports around, starting from dressing for the part to picking up the steps and actually dancing. They got quite good at it by the end. I was also teaching Jyothi, Nita and Ivy and everyone had a great time.

A bigger treat was to see Arya dancing. She was looking like a doll in her White lehenga choli. It's amazing that this shy little girl has blossomed into quite the social butterfly. So much so that yesterday I had this conversation with her where everyone seemed to be constantly directing all their queries to her at school. Asking her for GK answers, spellings and even her opinion on what they should be wearing at random parties. She confessed that she was quite irritated with all the attention. Her friend Anana was there as well and she told me that she would be really happy if SHE had been the object of all that attention. I so agree! Hoo boy, I'll have to drill some sense into my little girl's head now.

Birthdays and Celebrations

Just started thinking about birthdays all of a sudden today. I don't know why! My birthday this year was quite splendid. Kushal actually bought me a cake, the first time ever without an ounce of hinting, prodding and sheepish reminding. I didn't quite plan a party, but then Adu and Vinod came over and so did Tulika, Nandu and the kids and Jyothi came with her kids and Rajani, Mitesh came with Rani as well. So it turned into quite a party. We took pictures, we had dinner, I opened presents everything was so perfect.
Plus I was still getting some hangover effect from our lovely Europe vacation, so for once, I couldn't complain about a thing. And then the Dell written offer came in that day too. Arya forgot to wish me in the morning, but she made up for it by making me a card and several other things.
I actually went to work this year, just....! Older and wiser I guess. I don't ever remember working on my birthday prior to this.
And now, we are in the midst of festive season. We went to see the Durga Puja on Ashtami day. Got to see the Aarti. Kushal didn't come because he was suffering with his back ache. But Baby aji and Lorena came with me and Arya. We had a good time, I wore a sari - Adu's Kancheevaram (finally ghadi-modli). It was fun to see familiar faces and even more awesome to note that the hoi-polloi was actually performing the Dhunuchi naach.
We are having Dandiya-raas at our condo this Sunday. On Saturday we are celebrating the Lantern festival. I have choreographed a dance with the kids. Arya is taking part, I am so excited that she is. She is also taking part in a dance at school. Maybe, maybe, maybe she will actually start liking dancing. She was the only person who didn't dance at my birthday party (and at several other parties) and that made me sad!
Plus Diwali is just round the corner - and this time under Baby Aji's expert supervision, I am planning to cook a whole host of goodies. I guess we will need to go shopping at some point, because I am sure i don't even own most of the tools and ingredients. It's all very exciting. I can hardly wait for Oct 21.

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!