Of “silly mistakes” and “carelessness“

On many nights, my roommate and I would be lying on our backs staring up at the ceiling fan, and chatting well into the night about what life would have in store for us. On one of those occasions, a shuddering thought occurred to us. “Nammaku porakardhukku padippae eralaenna…???”, and we instantly recognized it as a problem that would baffle us. For the tamil challenged that would read as – what if our kid is academically challenged? I remembered this all of a sudden after so many years, because the other day, I oversaw my friend’s daughter’s kumon homework and found myself saying two words that I never understood as a kid – “silly mistakes” and “carelessness”.

As in many tambram households, the first 21 years of my life was expected to be solely dedicated to the most important job of studying. “Padi.. padi.. padi”, my mother would constant harp, as I sat with my book in hand but watched the India Pakistan one-day match out of the corner of my eye. “How can you concentrate?”she would say as Nadeem Shravan’s music blared in the background. My father would come to my support and say that he studied quite successfully with AIR crackling in the background.  “How long is your break going to be?” my mother would demand, as a 5 minute break from my exam preparation stretched to a half hour distraction. “What vambu?” my mother would frown as I smoothly became a participant in the backyard gossip exchange conversation. “Have you finished revising everything?” she would repeatedly ask on the day before the exam. If I confidently replied ‘yes amma’, she would say “Bring me your book, and let me see how well you have revised”. Sure enough, I would fumble and frown at every question she asked. “Poi padi” she would shout and off I went, stomping away with book in hand.

If all this was for the preparation, one can well imagine the scene when my brother or I came home with marks. Being a teacher’s child has it’s big minuses. My brother’s marks and mistakes would reach my mother’s ears and eyes even before it reached his. Any attempt on his part, to cushion the effect of poor marks by waiting to present it to appa and amma with some better marks would never work, because amma would be demanding on their ride home “So, heard you got your maths paper today??”. My school was more forgiving, and therefore my teachers never ran to my mother to squeal on me. My maths answer papers would scream silly mistakes and carelessness, because the teacher would have written it red and bold and screaming on the side of the top sheet. My mother would clench her teeth and ask “Won’t you check you check your paper before you hand it back?”, and I would look at the floor. How dare I tell her I was so bored at the end of the 3 hour exam, that all I wanted to do was hand the answer sheet to the teacher and walk out.  Amma would play the “I am too mad at you to sign the report card” game every time. To this day, I don’t know if it was her way of letting me know I should have done better, or her way of passing on at least some responsibility to my father (like let him at least sign the report card, when I waste all my “thondai thanni” getting these kids to study). My father would sometimes play along and pretend that he was never going to sign on a report card that had such lousy marks (they weren’t all that lousy really..). Eventually, the next morning after making some false promises, and “I will next time”s I would walk out triumphantly, signed report card in hand. Appadi.. if studying was hard, writing exams was harder, getting that signature on the report card was truly the toughest ordeal of all.

Then there was the PTA meetings, where parents and teachers could jointly criticize the poor student for behaviour at school and home. My father only came to two parent teacher meetings. My mother stayed out of that - she didn’t want someone telling her “vaadhiyar pillai makku”, you see. The first time my father came along, I was in class 4, and the teacher politely said, she is so talkative in class, she will even make a stone talk if it sits next to her. That was some lesson, because the next time my father was informed of a PTA meeting was 6 years later, when I was in class 10, and I knew that pretty soon, there would be no more PTA meetings in my life. 

So indeed, now that I am parent and I have so much trouble getting my daughter to eat even Rava Kesari, I wonder what I would do, if she did not sit in one place and study like the good girl her mother was.

P.S: Amma and Appa, don’t air my dirty laundry in public pleeezz!

A fortnight of aches

The past fortnight has been an emotional rollercoaster. Many people gave me headaches, some others gave me heartaches. I learnt many important lessons, though I wish it didn’t have to be learnt this way. I learnt there should have been a thick line between friends and colleagues. I learnt that people have different meanings and levels of friendship. I learnt that long-term relationships take a minute to break, and they probably never become normal again. I also learnt to lower my expectations from people. May be next time round I will then have to deal only with headaches.

Less tourists more fun!

Since, it has been decided that of late I’ve been capable of writing only about going to India, going to other places or about movies that attract painfully long comments, it’s now time to write about the latest vacation I had. Yeah, yeah… all you folks in India are saying not again! But you see, we hard working desis in the land of america, are not lucky enough to get unexpected bandh holidays, or unknown and uncelebrated festival holidays. We get one long weekend per season, and since we do not have to catch a kovai express or a dadar express back home, we usually fill up our gas tanks with a sigh and go in search of some waterbody that has a semblance of a beach.

This time, we went to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. It is a quiet place in the upper peninsula (UP) of Michigan on the border with Canada. Even though upper michigan, more specifically Mackinac Island is a place well frequented by desis, this part of UP is probably not as well known or well visited by tourists. Saulte Ste. Marie’s claim to fame is the Soo Locks. Ships of all sizes that travelled from Lake Superior to the lower great lakes had to unload all their goods at Sault Ste. Marie. They were then transported around and loaded into other ships on the other side, until they decided to build the Soo Locks. The Soo Locks then helped ships move across from one side to the other in spite of the 21 ft drop. After a 2 hours boat trip on the Soo Locks, we caught up some sleep and then headed to the local beach at Sherman Park. Sherman park is the town’s only public beach and even though it is not any where in the league of ‘namma Marina beach’, it was a fun place, mainly because it was clean and not crowded. The water here was really shallow, about knee length for about a quarter mile in. So, needless to say we enjoyed ourselves a lot just pushing around each other in the water and wading all the way to a tiny strip of sand some distance in. We also witnessed a beautiful sunset from Sherman park.

Sunset at Sault Ste. Marie

On our way back from Sault Ste. Marie to Chicago, we decided to take part of the scenic Lake Michigan Circle tour through Wisconsin. We drove along Lake Michigan and had a view of the lake for most of the journey. On the way, we stopped at the sight of a beautiful beach and lighthouse at Manistique, MI. If at Sault Ste. Marie, we had not bothered to take pictures, because we were too busy getting wet in the beach, this place was waiting to be photographed. It was such a peaceful and calm feeling, just looking at the vast expanse of water, the lone red lighthouse and the waves crashing on the rocks.

Manistique Lighthouse

In all it was an ideal vacation. We had a good drive, enjoyed the journey, just did what we felt like without having to stand for hours in queues, enjoyed good old nature and came back happy to be home. Definitely makes me believe, that we should look for places like this rather than rushing to the usual NYC or Niagara falls.