Nay..not dead

Alive kicking and married. Thats the current status, and will be, If i dont choke on OR get poisoned by my very own self-cooked curries. But you see, thats not likely to happen. I now have my very own personal lab mouse at home for such experiments. Yes, yes, he is insured. No, his mom does not read my blogs. Soo... 'alive' it is for now

Logistically speaking, yours truly has been moved from Chennai to singapoor. Hold the joy, let it not overwhelm you. I am only 4 hours away by tiger airways! If you are at all interested, what has actually happened to me is, they wiped away all the lively things and then put signboards in all 18 directions and lo its the same city! same weather. not enough dust though.

Anyway, as I was saying, now I eat with chopsticks and believe I had a chinese forefather somewhere in the family tree back in one of the early centuries. He must have had terrible sense of direction (which i inherited) to have landed up in Kerala which of course faces away from China!

And as long as I am in the orient part of the world, no strings of jasmine flowers in my hair (in the miraculous event of atleast 3 strands of my hair growing to a length of more than 5 centimeters), over to orchid strings.

Like the true deserter, I will soon be over-writing all the chennai blogs with wannabe firangi BS. And like the true new bride, i will soon have blogs on my version of pudina chutney and how it saved mankind from world war 3.

Other than that, its business as usual folks! And for dinner we have sambar noodles. and jal jeera. Anyone?

I will change the world

Sleeping unusually on time, getting up pretty early in the morning, going for a walk whose status has been promoted from 'routine' to 'special' (reserved for unusual days like the one in discussion), having a big power breakfast, singing along with the radio on the way to office, reaching on time without jumping a single red light, the spirits are so high, I would change the world today ;)

Take this serious or take it as a pun. Please yourself.

But this much is true - it mostly takes unbelivably simple things to lead a good life (on the condition that you are not responsible for anyone else or no one else is acutely responsible for your daily routine). In such cases, it would take a litle more complicated but still highly do-able things. Once you start well, the ball pretty much takes care of the rolling by itself.

Btw, its only 10 in the morning, i got plenty of time before sun down. You dont know...

Conversations with mom

It was difficult looking at her face like this..especially because my cheeks were hot, it felt different. and i felt shy, i had never spoken anything like this to her before, nor had i felt anything like this before.. quietly confused, but not very troubled, I turned away from her face, but curled up in her loving arms.

Its hard to see my mother like this, relaxed. I hardly ever saw her relaxing. This was an exceptional sunday afternoon and we were just lying down for an afternoon nap.

She nudged me on.."Go on, tell me..". I was smiling away from her, she couldn't see my face, but felt my smile anyway. "She hugged me warmly and said "its ok molu, tell me"

"Mom...mummy, there is this guy in school.."

"hmm...?"

"he is very nice. he talks to me sometimes.. he is very funny and he looks..you know"

"hmm.."

Now I felt my mother smile. "I just like looking at him. I mean.. when we stand at the main grounds during the assembly sessions, he is very tall. I keep looking at him"

"He is the leader of his class so he stands first in his class line, you know all classes form lines, separate girls' line and boys' line.."

My mother was stroking my hair gently, probably musing over the fact that her little girl had suddenly grown up and now she as a mother was facing the difficult task of guiding her through the years of distractions that lay ahead of her young life.

She cleared her throat, still hugging me and stroking my hair, she said "When you grow up, its natural that you feel like this.. It is a feeling that comes and goes. It need not mean anything, sometimes if you see something that you like in a person, you get attracted to it.. It can be anything, for example - you like tall people, so when you see tall guys, you will naturally have a liking to that person. And when you see more things that are good in that person, you develop more liking towards him"

Though I was listening to my mother, in my head, I was playing again and again the last conversation that he had with me. He had liked my drawings and he told me that I should enter in the drawing competition that was coming up.

"Its not wrong to feel this, but you have to remember, you have to study first, get good marks. Get a nice job."

"If you get distracted now, how will you do your homework and get good marks"

That hit home, I was suddenly all attention. tall boy's face popped away like a bubble. I wasn't sure about the job part, but I definitely wanted the marks. If I dont get really good marks, Madhu would get the general proficiency prize this year. I couldn't possibly let that happen.

"There is time for that also, you know, to get interested in boys. Its all a matter of.."

"Ok mummy, what time is it?? I will go study now, tomorrow we have the science test" Suddenly Madhu's face started floating around in my little head. I jumped out of the bed and started walking away. The moment had passed and all of a sudden, I got troubled.. What would my mom think of me now that my little dirty secret is out? Maybe I shouldnt have spoken about it.. She must be really disappointed in me..

Before I left the room, I turned and looked at my mother. there was a smile on her face - that was the one reason that holds this memory in my not so little head, even now..

Sneha

Expert opinions. On resolutions and the city weather conditions

This morning when I went for a walk, I started sweating within about few paces. I loved that fact! My heavy duty (walking!) exercise was making me sweat!

But as I was listening to the news on my headset radio, I slowly I realized that the humidity today is 88% and that’s why I was sweating, not because of my "work out".

'Oh yeah', I thought, 'I live in Chennai'. And my beloved city is just turning to be its tropical worst; we are at the end of January and that’s just the end of the hot weather and the beginning of the hotter one. Come March and…no, I don’t want to talk about it, not yet atleast.

With a sudden rush of urgency, I realised that I had been planning a day trip to Pondy, then a trip to Thalavoi and more places that aren’t really at their best during the summer. Oh! I thought, I have to rush, those place will be unbearable by next month. I had started planning these trips ages ago.

I remember postponing these trips last year because of the summer and now here I am, again doing the same thing.

I should have taken a resolution this new year. Something like ‘I will do what I plan to do and will never postpone it’. But now January has almost ended and which idiot takes resolutions well into the year anyway??

Just 11 more months for the next new year, I will take my resolutions then. Hey, I am not postponing, its just that, this is just the logical thing to do, don’t you think? Resolutions aren’t exactly effective if they aren’t taken at ‘new year’. this aint an excuse, this is.. "Logic"! you get my point, right?? ;)

Simply Single

All weekdays, I have to get up early in the morning for my morning walk and then to freshen up and proceed to work. Saturday is one day that I get up as late as possible. The later I get up, the better equipped I am to face the upcoming fresh week ;)

Ideal Saturday: Meeting my friends (who are nice to me), and spending the evening reading the newspaper and sipping tea. Sunday starts with church and ends with me finishing the laundry and cleaning my bike.

If I didn’t live with aunty, I would probably fry an egg and make some toast for breakfast. Then throw in some half cooked veggies into a dabba for lunch to take to office. Day is good when there is quality work to be done. Day gets better (sometimes worse, he he) after a call from home; far away home.

Some evenings after work, I just like to take a detour on the way back home and meet a friend over coffee. Get back home, freshen up, finish dinner and hit the sack with a book! Do some easy reading or some useful studying before drifting into sleep.

Can life be any better?
I simply don’t understand why people decide to stop being good to themselves and get married!!! Well, for my mom’s sake at least, I do hope to understand one of these days!

Why do we forget birthdays?

I forgot my best friends birthday again! and of course, she is mad at me. She sent me a long e mail which said I dont care for her. But hey, thats not true! not true at all. You can never say that the person doesn't love you or care for you just because he/she forgets your birthday

I was just wondering.. Why is it that we rarely remember birthdays?
After deep thinking and rare insights, I have put together some possible explanations:

We forget birthdays because
reason 1) they come only once in a year - now, its only natural to forget things that happen only once a year. My mom has to do blood tests every year, and every year, she forgets! she thinks abt it only weeks later (dont ask me if she remembered my birthday, we will get to that after more thinking and more insights)

reason 2) its not a public holiday! - there are days that come only once in a year, but are still remembered - Independance day, Republic day, Gandhi Jayanthi. I never forget them, not because of the eternal love I have for my country, but because these days are public holidays! they are especially fondly remembered and looked forward to if they prefix or suffix a weekend ;)

but my sister is always mad at me for forgetting, she says that if you really care for a person, you have to take some effort to remember atleast their birthdays. So I did take effort and did remember quite a few birthdays including mine this year. My phone does my remembering. I fed them all in my phone reminder list, with 2 alarm reminders - a day ahead to buy a gift/card and then again on the day so that I dont forget why i bought the gift ;) aint i smart? :)