Oh No He Didn’t – Again.

But of course he did – again.

Arvind: “Mamma, now that Pappa is back, are you going to make out? Like boyfriend girlfriend with tongue?”

WHAAAAA????

“Because if you’re really crazy about each other you have stick your tongues in each others mouths.”

*Parents paling*

What the hell are they teaching them in public school anyway??? And are we talking a touchy feely prevention talk at the age of 10 here?

Can I abdicate my role as guide, I’m wondering?

I’m going to spare you all the follow up questions, go to bed and let my friendly little ulcer fester now.

 

Civil Disobedience @ Home

One of the my key reasons for wanting to be a parent was the most obvious one really – the utterly sadistic pleasure of completely breaking a small person’s will.

Today Armaan staged his first civil disobedience movement. How? By sitting bolt upright in bed and refusing to sleep. And by staring me down. This was particularly rich given that his face was full of zinc cream dots (recovering from chicken pox) and he could easily have given Bozo the clown a run for his money.

I stood at the other end of the room, folding laundry. Uttering in the practiced smooth and placatory tone preferred by true sadists, “Sleep, sweetheart” and such niceties. My true inner voice was throwing the kind of profanities at the boy that would have kept him in therapy for life – as opposed to the mandatory 5 years he will need after living with me.

After a heroic hour of Gandhian salt-march-like gritty resolve with the occasional rubbing of eyes and smothered yawns, he ..well..toppled.

Toppled like a bowling pin, no less. Eyes shut, mouth wide open and will power worn to a nub.

A disappointing end to a great stand off.

Ma – 1 Toddler  - 0 should have been a whole lot sweeter!

 

Knowing

Arvind loves this bedtime story. The one where I tell him about how privileged I was to cradle him in my stomach for 9 months. How I loved every minute of feeling him grow and move and stretch within me. How his father would lie with his head on my stomach touching him and talking to him every night  as we delighted in perceived elbows, feet, hands and head. All the kisses that rained on the stomach that bore him. The songs I used to sing to him, particularly Come Away With Me and Beautiful Boy.

It is his favourite love story.

Tonight, post narration, his thoughtful head on my shoulder, he says this:

“So you loved me more when I was in your tummy than you love me now?”

My boy. Not just cutting close to the bone, but straight to the heart.

Of course I say, “Of course not.” And then I stare in the darkness at that naked half-truth.

The romantic notion of a child was easy. Loving the idea of my son was simple. That blank canvas was my great comfort. The intimate physical and spiritual relationship in utero that you couldn’t screw up with words, wounding looks and irreverant thoughts. The idea, the potential, the possibility of the perfect connection. See why romantics are doomed?

And now. Separate physical entities with strong personalities. Both headstrong and stubborn. Both moody. Both sensitive and tough. Sometimes hard. Always articulate. Hurlings words that splinter. Whispering words that warm.

I never bargained for finding my twin soul in my son – a son who outwardly could not be more different.

Yet we are the same. When we collide, its the armageddon. When we are one, the joy lifts us to another plane altogether. The blessing and the curse of that rarest of connections – the mirror to yourself.

It is harder to love someone who is so much you. Especially when you have not arrived full circle with the concept of loving yourself – warts and all. Sometimes it is easier to lash out at you, my love, than to haul myself up for a good look in the mirror. Sometimes the anger directed at you is no more than my incomprehension of myself. My frustration with those pieces of me that I would have loved to spare you, only genetics obviously had a different plan.

All those years ago, nursing those lofty notions of motherly love, I never realised that loving you – really loving you in flesh and spirit – would require such a rearrangement of my inner self. I never realised then that knowing you and loving you would be the single most important pathway to learning to love myself.

Epilogue: I forgot everything today. I forgot gym shoes, I forgot new toothbrushes, I forgot snacks. I sat defeated on the sofa and apologized to my son for being a terrible mother who forgets things. Without looking up, without taking his eyes of his toy, he replies in an even voice, “No you’re not. You are a wonderful mother. The perfect mother.”

*gulp* Yes, I know an undeserving compliment when I hear it, but it sweetens life nonetheless.

 

Still Here..

.. but life is spinning at some crazy velocity. Busy weeks, busier weekends. Its getting tiring planning posts in my head and never getting to write them down. Today is unfortunately no different. My body and mind are begging for bed, but I had to let you lovely people know that I am well – we are well and thriving – and (BAWWWWL) I just want to be writing again. And I will. Soon.

Working less was supposed to lead to more writing time. But a number of projects @ home have ensured that everything  - LIFE – is not only busier than ever, but also dustier and building-site like and in dire need of planning, logistics and management. These are strange words for us in the most organized of times, so we are little short of breath now:-)

While I get my act together, I want to share with you one of my favourite poems.

AMONG THE MULTITUDES

I am who I am.
A coincidence no less unthinkable
than any other.

I could have different
ancestors, after all.
I could have fluttered
from another nest
or crawled bescaled
from another tree.

Nature’s wardrobe
holds a fair
supply of costumes:
Spider, seagull, fieldmouse.
each fits perfectly right off
and is dutifully worn
into shreds.

I didn’t get a choice either,
but I can’t complain.
I could have been someone
much less separate.
someone from an anthill, shoal, or buzzing swarm,
an inch of landscape ruffled by the wind.

Someone much less fortunate,
bred for my fur
or Christmas dinner,
something swimming under a square of glass.

A tree rooted to the ground
as the fire draws near.

A grass blade trampled by a stampede
of incomprehensible events.

A shady type whose darkness
dazzled some.

What if I’d prompted only fear,
Loathing,
or pity?

If I’d been born
in the wrong tribe
with all roads closed before me?

Fate has been kind
to me thus far.

I might never have been given
the memory of happy moments

My yen for comparison
might have been taken away.

I might have been myself minus amazement,
that is,
someone completely different.

Wislawa Szymborska

 

Turning Two

While the world was busy spinning on its old axis and everything flew madly about us – resisting gravity and sense, Armaan turned two on October 1st.

My most precious little baby decided that we were no longer worthy of the courtesy of utter babyness and metamorphosised into a full blown little boy. A little boy with curls, but still…

When I was pregnant with Armaan, I was not the happiest person. I balanced a teaching job with my regular job, worked incredibly long hours, travelled on all my regular assignments and  was so driven to be supermom. Hitting the ground running and all that. I was also a single mother (without help) for long periods of time with the Viking being gone oil platform-hopping.

When I look back on that time, I remember my stress levels, I remember desperately trying to make all the pieces fit and I remember my rage. My impotent, spluttering rage when everything wasn’t just so.

Like there are Bridezillas out there, I was Hormonella. And a nasty case of one too. It was such a 360 degree contrast to my sunny, worry-free first pregnancy where I was blissed out from the get go. Where the Viking almost looked at me as if I might have had a lobotomy – so carefree, so even-tempered was I.

When I look back on the Armaan pregnancy, he seems unbelievable.

I needed to learn a lesson and there it was in the form of this ever-smiling, delicious baby, who just needed the tiniest excuse to burst into peal after peal of laughter.

Little Boy, everytime you curled your finger around mine, everytime I breathed in your curls and soaked in the intense wattage of your smile, everytime I walked with your warm little palm in mine, I felt just that wee bit more released. I felt I could let go of all that I had held on to so fiercely, because you and your brother – this little unified assault of love – made it easier to do so.

I always thought that the second child sort of slipped in almost unnoticed, without really shifting the balance much. Maybe that happens with some. But you are the baby that changed everything. You shifted the core and completely altered the focus, the ambition, my sense of what I am striving for.

I did not know two years ago that I would happily decide to work part-time, working five hour days, so that I could hang out scrambling eggs and making banana pancakes on unhurried, delicious mornings with you and your brother.

I did not foresee how I would rush to your daycare every day, wanting to cover you in crazy kisses and needing to hear your incessant babble.

I could not have known that I would be so happy on my kitchen floor playing mechanic and HAVING NOTHING TO DO BUT HANG THE HELL OUT WITH YOU on a late afternoon.

I did not realise then that this time spent on the kitchen floor would result in a total re-evaluation of my life, my dreams and goals.

Through your eyes, it has become a clearer and simpler world. As the Indigo Girls song goes, “The hardest to learn was the least complicated.”

And now you’re two. And you talk like a waterfall tripping on acid – mixing languages effortlessly one minute, mixing up like crazy the next. Everything you say should be in FRIKKIN´ CAPITAL LETTERS WITH !!!!! EXCLAMATION MARKS because thats how excited you are about uttering your words and your sentences.

Like A Dog is not just A Dog. Its A DOGDOGDOGGIEEE – OMIGODOMIGODOMIGOD DIDYOUSEETHATGODDAMNDOG?

And the Dog is a technicolour dreamcoat of a bloody dog, no less.

You get the drift.

Its indomitable, inexhaustible cheer, curiousity and enthusiasm for life. Its entirely exhausting and occasionally it makes me grumpy and I curse you, but of course you are having none of that. You will chuckle, hug me hard and kiss me on the lips soundly and cock your head to one side and say, “MA-MMMMAAAAA”. You will wrap your arms and legs about me like a koala with a crush on a eucalyptus tree. And BOOM! The GrumpyMummy is a-deaded.

It had to be you, baby.

Cupping my almost-sleeping face in your gentle baby palms when you wake up in the dead of the night. Chuckling with delight and kissing me with abandon when you realise that I am not quite asleep. Stroking my cheeks and murmuring, “Armaan and Mamma chaachi (sleep) now, mmm?” and floating into sleep with your sweet, hot palm still on my cheek.

It had to be you, damn awesomest baby of them all.

Now, go storm the bastille of Two-dom.

The Boy In The Silver Shoes With the Moto-bite. He's all that.

Happy Birthday To You. Coolest song EVER hethinks.

Entertain me, serfs. Dolled up at daycare.

All about the bikes and rock n roll! Good thing I plan to practice abstinence till I'm 30! By that I mean, 40.

Ready to Partay. But not without Lala. Aka. Psychotic Being Known To Trigger Homicidal Tendencies

With Tante Christina

With Cousin Anna. She who taught him to sing, "Bad Boy Bad Boy Whachyu gonna do?"!!:-)

Edited to add: Sorry to have AWOL-ed for as long as I did, but mostly, very sorry if I worried anyone. Nothing more dramatic than the drama I can create in my own head plus an insane breakneck speed in the past month. Will blog about it (I think) and will at any rate blog more frequently. Thanks so much for your kind wishes and enquiries – and BINDU! – an award! Aww.

More than anything, I missed the connection with you all. It was tough to stay away!

 

Fiction, Anyone?

Because right now, my own life is off blogging limits. Soon, hopefully not. So here’s a little something from an ole diary of yore. Inspired by one of my favourite albums, A Few Small Repairs by Shawn Colvin – particularly a song called If I Were Brave. (Incidentally, the ONLY song probably NOT to make it to YouTube. They were probably busy being overwhelmed by Rick Astley.)

Broken

Do it, says the shimmering man.

Your shining, evanescent body flies into the air, wings stretched and cuts through the water.

The angles and planes of you penetrate with scalpel precision.

Such perfect violation and I crush the wet sand in my palm, wanting abrasion, wanting pain.

Wanting You.

Lets assume for a minute that I was brave. That I came into this world with the Aura of the Blessed and Shimmering. Humour me a minute. Imagine fiery eyes, ambitions and a mind and body that were fearless. Imagine that.

If I were brave I would dive. My body shining in the moonlight, I would fly; I would glide; I would close my eyes briefly struck by the ecstasy of weightlessness. I would be one with the water. Feel it pounding against my eardrums, rushing into my nostrils, weighing on my lungs. Water, blood and Holy Spirit.

You come bursting through the water, dying to breathe, skin glistening and eyes dazed with daring. A magnificent snapshot for a mind constantly hungering for images of you. Puzzlement is writ large on your face – the puzzlement that is a prelude to the inevitable disappointment. I know the drill. There is my close personal history with disappointment but what’s more distasteful than a living martyr?

I want to be enough. Everything you ever wanted. For once I want to cut the mustard.

Lets go that party. The one where you can regale your friends with the never-boring Anecdote of Us. Love for you is about intangibles you will say. It was the not being able to put your finger on it breathlessness of being with someone. The miracle the miracle. I laugh gaily, shyly. I’m just learning to bask. You gesticulate. You illustrate. You effortlessly captivate your audience. I, your love object, want nothing more than to gladly and repeatedly electrocute myself on your high-voltage Aura of the Blessed and Shimmering till I bleed.

Till I feel blessed and enough.

A great party. Maybe for once I won’t be drinking too much and throwing up in the bushes wishing someone was holding back my hair. Or sitting in an overstuffed chair, thrusting my hands between my already clenched and pale knees talking about Plans. At this party I can pretend I never wanted to die.

Do it, you intone gently. Not wanting to tilt the balance.

Your torso gleams in the eerie night light as if bedecked in shining, salty pearls. A familiar ache swells in me and I feel plump with greed, wanting to taste the salt of you, the damp. I unclench the crushed sand in my palm and focus obsessively on my dirty, bitten nails. Your eyes don’t leave me for a nanosecond as I rise slowly with an exaggerated attempt at elegance.

I want to be that girl.

I want to be that bright arc cutting through the glassy surface into unknown depths. Braving all panic to swim into your arms. Your eyes are warm brown and sparkling in the chilly deep and limbs and lips mingle effortlessly, playfully. Light-bodied and light-headed we giggle bubbles and forget to breathe. Touch is velvet, fluid, more. Suddenly suddenly we are catapulted violently to a fixed bright spot in the watery firmament.

And Breathe.

I want to Do It. If I knew how, I would.

Its my fabric, blame it on the fabric. An old friend once talked about the fabric we were made of – strong, stern stuff and all that.

This fabric is flawed; it’s defective. A cosmic weaving error. The universe distractedly patched together some will and spirit but lets face it they did a shoddy job and dropped too many stitches.

Look at me.

I’m not durable polyester. Not Easy Wear or Easy Care.

I am the gauze that gives. Prod holes, leave gaps, cut, tear, rip to shreds. The fabric doesn’t know how to resist. The Easily Crushable variety.

I want to Do It. But I can’t escape the price I pay for a lifetime of Not.

But maybe – just maybe – in the deep, deep in you, I will be absolved, redeemed, baptised and reborn yours.

 

Two Poems

…but not mine. It was written by my cousin (I use the term loosely and Indian ishtyle). She has just turned 13.

I would recommend some sort of seatbelt before you read these, because she really, truly, totally blew me away. You can’t make out from anything she writes that a freshly baked teenager put her pen to it. She has depths I think I only had a hazy imagination of at 13.

I won’t reveal her name or anything right now, but with her permission, I will be blogrolling her poetry site. So please go over and encourage her brilliance. Because really – the worst thing at the age and this phase in writing is how vehemently one can convince oneself one sucks. Its such a fragile age and you are already feeling too fat, too ugly, too much of a nothing even if – like this girl – you are pretty much the furthest from all that. And losing this sort of talent to lack of faith would just be unpardonable. I think I just found the most serious literary talent in our family and I can really see her out with an anthology by the time she is 18. My dear sister out-law, who works in publishing – can you back me up here?:-)

Without further ado:

Can you paint with the colors of your eyes?
The periwinkle exhaustion
the beckoning lure of the deep azule
the unfathomable crimson
abiding roses, fading, fading, constant
the violent purple
your tantalizing amaranthine
promising cerulean azure, emphasizing the cobalt intoxification
the heart-throbbing amethyst
threatening cerise
iredescent emerald, igniting
igniting the frantic orange
scintillating coral
irresistible saffron, belayed
full of the abominable black
lucious streaks of striking sunshine tweety-bird yellow
myrtle secrets upon fragile bronze
and the lightening gold and amber.
Can you?
Can you paint with all the colors of your eyes?

And then this:

Because Of You

because a blue poison tree frog can’t change its spots.
because some days, the stars don’t shine as bright
as they do on some days
as reflected in your eyes.
because we fall like raindrops, sooner or later
hitting the ground, becoming just another droplet of water
in a sea of anguish and love and hardships and tears.
because dreams aren’t good enough;
they’re for sleeping
and day dreams are just to get by.
because I’m not who you think I am,
and you’re not who everyone else thinks
you are.
because God doesn’t seem to give out his telephone number, or his street address,
on that garden-of-eden serenity up in the heavens.
because that hourglass is superglued to the table.
because roses have to die, and birds have to fly
away and leave the nest.
because humans can’t fly.
because you make me feel like i can fly
because you make me feel like i’m falling, drowning.
because you smile at me by accident
and i smile back
and you raise your eyebrows in a wiggle.
because i drop my pencils ‘accidentally on purpose’
and you see, but you walk away.
because Rapunzel’s hair was thin and fine,
and broke as the prince climbed up.
because you, all because of you
because of you, I’m terrified, I’m jubilant, I’m relentless, I’m ecstatic, I’m erratic, obliterated, helpless, senseless, drowning in desire.
because i love you,
but you don’t like me back.

Seriously, I can’t breathe.

 

The One Who Got Away – Justin Currie

…and here’s why.

Justin Currie is the lead singer of Del Amitri – one of my favourite bands of all time till they began to conform to crap – and also precisely the kind of straggly, strungout Gaelic guy I would find irresistible because he is ALL about the lyrics and NOT about the baths and that sort of thing.

You never really lost me, Justin – you just won me all over again with your priceless MySpace site. And bring DA back!

Justin Currie was born in a van near Paisley in 1964 in a hailstorm so vicious that it took a team of panel beaters a month to separate his forehead from the roof. Later on, perhaps in the nineteen eighties he started to sing in a strange breathless way, cramming too many words into odd amounts of bars and found himself, with his group of twee schoolboy punks, Del Amitri, getting firmly up the collective nose of the Glasgow white-soul cognoscenti. Much more loathed than loved, and revelling in their outsider status, Del Amitri attracted a dense little coterie of followers in the United States of America who duly set up a nationwide tour funded by busking, badge selling and the refrigerators of those fans’ generous parents.

Driven half-mental by their experiences the group came home, ditched their indie twiddling and embarked upon a course of songwriting so sickeningly mainstream and Americanised that it led to a long career being spoilt stupid by the radio and recording industries of the English speaking world. Limos to the pub, ponds full of chips, week-long parties in Bognor, that sort of thing. By 2002 the thing had run it’s cliched course; the group’s fortunes were dwindling and, dropped by a record firm grown weary of their whining, the two chief writers put the band into cryogenic suspension and set about writing two LPs; a Justin Currie Alone affair and an entirely co-written electronic pop masterpiece.

Justin’s solo record is called “What Is Love For?” and features eleven thunderously dreary dirges many of which he is currently airing live to pained looking crowds of people in dingy Glasgow basements. When forced by penury, politeness or acute fear he can sometimes also be heard to trawl out tired versions of his withered hits.

Justin is unmarried and lives a quiet life of standing up and sitting down in Scotland with his two pet television sets.

Imcomplete post without my favourite Del Amitri songs, no?

 

Oasis@Home The Arvind Way

Yesterday, in his tearing hurry to climb on the mantelpiece to – I don’t know – save the world? Arvind toppled a vase with my much-coveted, beautiful sunflowers. Yes, the ones in the header. Maybe I sensed their premature demise. Either way I’m glad I took my happy-making picture.

The vase toppled, I screamed, Arvind grovelled and begged for his life and after seeing the amazingly intact vase, I let it go. As I sadly bio-bagged the remains, Arvind came up behind me, hugged me and whispered, “Sorry” again.

Today, I came home to a clean house (thankyouthankyou lovely Thai cleaning lady who ALWAYS goes above and beyond and makes my day. Today she lit some agarbatti (incense sticks) on her way out so that the house smelt delicious when I walked through the door. I. Must. Never. Let. Her. Go.)

I also came home to this on our coffee table.

Autumn Delight

Arvind went on a nature walk today with his class and in a great a-ha! moment figured out that he could find the raw material to compensate for yesterday’s loss.

Dear son, you leave your mother hopelessly bleary-eyed when I see the thought, the delicate execution that has gone into your “autumn project” as you call it.

Oasis@Home title today goes to the thoughtful child who made his Ma’s day.

 

You’re My Peace Of Mind

..in this crazy world, sang Joshua Kadison soulfully. Though he was obviously talking about a hot broad and I have something else in mind.

I believe that every home should have its oasis. A spot that is so lovely that you sometimes rush home just to take it in and glow a little. In the case of mi casa, my oases (?) wanders. I can pick a random corner/hallway/ windowsill to do up and like Flylady says, a little can go a long way.

Here is my latest oasis, created especially for Onam.

This is the landing by the stairs and the sight that greets me as soon as I come in to the hallway. I love fresh flowers in the home. I especially adore gladioli of the kind you see in the big vase. The table is an antique piece bought from Vadakara, Kerala (Nat, be payin’ attention now) and I was going to be an idiot and NOT buy the matching mirror, but my Amma, who was born knowing better, gave us the mirror as a present. Now its all hand in glove, si?

As you will rightly surmise, I don’t do the Scandanavian minimalistic style. Why? Because it bores the crap out of me to see so many almost-identical white walled homes, furnished like the Stepford Wives took over on a day when they were really uninspired at IKEA. I like simple, clean cut styles, but I love soul – in pieces of furniture, in homes.

So here is the plan. I will take the little nooks and crannies of my home, bit by bit and do it up – and post ” Oasis@Home” pictures. It doesn’t have to be more advanced than a plant on a table. It doesn’t have to be a pretty thingummy at all.

It could be a toy on the floor or  laundry hung up to dry.

Your bliss, your call. All I’m looking for is a feelgood corner/ area of your home. It would be great if some of you guys took this, ran with it and started your own Oasis@Home series. Who’s in?

Those of you who don’t have a blog can mail me your pics at momgonemad9 at gmail dot com if you don’t mind sharing the loveliness around you.