Trials of Motherhood

As more and more friends, acquaintances and family find out about our plans to return to India, they reach out to me and ask me questions. Among other questions of why we are moving, when we are moving, and where we are moving to, the one question that everyone unfailing asks is “What does S think? Is she excited?”.

When my husband and I made up our mind back in October, we decided to break the news to our 10 year old daughter. She thought we were joking at first, but then quickly realized we were serious. It took her less than a moment to start wailing in protest. She did not want to go. She would miss her friends. India was soooo hot! She hated the mosquitoes, the traffic. She called out every negative thing a 10 year old could come up with about India. After much cajoling, and explaining, a few hours later she had calmed down some. We distracted her that day by taking her on a long road trip to to my uncle’s place.

Soon after, we started our preparations, and she went about her life without much change. She told her friends, and as we told ours, they asked her what she thought – and she either said she didn’t want to go or shrugged her shoulders.

As we get closer to our move date, she is realizing that there is not much time left, that she will have to leave the only home she remembers, and leave all her friends behind. She realizes now she will have to get used to living in a much hotter place, go to a new school which insists on teaching French, and make new friends that she may or may not like. As I stood in her room, waiting to take pictures of her bedroom set, so I could put it up for sale, she spread herself across the entire width of her bed and started sobbing. This was “her bed”, in “her house”. “I don’t want to go!”, she wailed. Few days later, the same was repeated as we put garage sale stickers on some of her toys.

All of this was not unexpected, but every time it happens, it tugs hard at my heart, and wears me down. It makes me second guess our decision, and at the same time pray that it all works out in the long run. The parent in me wants my daughter to grow up and be an adaptable person, capable of making herself at home in any new place and culture. I hope she can pick up the best traits of the east and west and become an individual with a global outlook. As an adult, I hope she realizes the importance of her grandparents in her life, and loves being in touch with her large extended family. Over time I hope she can build an appreciation for the complex societal structure in India that is so often at odds, and yet somehow works.

At the end of it all, I hope she understands why we did what we did, and does not resent us for it. Until then, I will hold on to my heart and remember what a wise colleague once said to me about bringing up kids – “No matter what you do, or how hard you try, you can never quite shake off that feeling that you screwed them up!”

The scars remain..

My husband had found out the truth about the guy in the first floor portion of the two-storeyed house. He was a terrorist ready to make his  move tonight. All the plans had been laid out and everything was ready for the finale, but things were going to be stopped or so we thought. My husband and his colleagues had formed a boundary around the house.. they were ready to storm. Stealthily, they broke in, he jumped out and ran, they chased him and they had him pinned down. The house-owner was bewildered, he couldn’t believe he had rented his home to a terrorist.

zoooommmm.. fast forward.. my cousins and I are all in a small house. We have mehendi on our hands and are showing if off to the uncles and aunts. It seems like we are getting ready for a wedding. Suddenly someone bangs on the door and we see men in black vests, shooting at us..

zooooommm… fast forward.. my husband drops me off by the side of the road and continues along on the same road. A black car with dark windows slows down by me right after he leaves. They bring down the windows – I see scary men inside, but they take off again. A red weird shaped car stops by me a few seconds later, they brind down the windows and I see more scary men, but dismiss the idea because I expect them to take off like the previous car did, but instead one of them pulls out a gun and shoots me down.

I wake up.. palms sweaty and my heart racing to find I am still alive and in bed, my daughter separating me far enough from my husband to not be able to grasp his hand.

And that my friends has been a recurring theme.. I’ve been plagued by frequent such nightmares since Nov 26 of last year. All the live telecasts from outside the Taj hotel have now made bullet sounds un-alien and nightmares feel so real.

It will soon be a year, but for someone who was not even there, the scars remain…

Missing in Action?

Hello everyone. I would have loved to make a grand announcement saying that I am back but then I don’t quite want to jinx myself by doing that. So, let’s just say I am making a serious attempt to get back into the habit of blogging.

A lot of things have happened since my last post almost two months ago.

• No – my hair did not all turn black, it’s continues down the expected dreaded path of fading and falling.
• The seasons have changed (for the better I must add). The grass is green, the sun is brighter than a tube-light and birds are constantly chirping (and building nests in my grill).
• I am a year older (boo hoo) and so is my daughter (boo hoo again for she has moved on from terrible twos to more terrible threes)
• I was almost relieved to not get a surprise birthday party this year, but guess what? I now own a Wii, Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Guitar Hero World Tour and the Wii Dance Party 2.
• However, it’s very unfortunate that Wii Fit describes me as being obese and wonders how I don’t trip over myself when I walk!
• And I am not loving my Wii male gym instructor – he has no name but has a perfect body and balance and can do push-ups as easily as one could swallow ghee dripping badam halwa .
• I am no longer a desi-consultant and relax folks, I am not out of a job (yet?) (P.S: Prem, please no potentially negative comments on this line and the one below with your “thiruvaay”)
• I have a job that I am really liking (at this point in time)
• I most certainly do not enjoy the annoying production support pager which knows no night or day.
• I managed to celebrate the Saradu pandigai (a.k.a Karadayan Nombu) minus the Adai and falling at my husband’s feet (which I offered just in case he was so inclined but thankfully he was not)
• We also celebrated Sree Ramanavami. I made everything + Neer mor + Paanakam + Vada Paruppu. As always, I pitied poor Lord Rama for having such modest demands in comparison to Lord Krishna who makes everyone slog all day for a more delicious meal.
• We then welcomed the Tamil New Year (even though some atheists seem to think that it is not the new year) as well as we possibly could considering it was a Tuesday morning and I had to leave home at 8:00 for a 9:00 meeting.
• We have decided to do as many 1 day road trips during the weekends as possible. We’ve already done the local zoo, Starved rock state park and Brookfield zoo. Next plan is St.Louis.
• We managed to get some family portraits in which we look like ourselves.
• And finally thanks to the wonderful search engines and your blog rolls, my daily hits have stayed respectable.

So, that’s the roundup of events in the past two months. I  hope to be back as often as possible, until then “Iniya Puthaandu Nal Vaazhthukkal”!

To dye or not to dye..

I have always been a true believer of aging gracefully. Of course I am not talking about being mature and pardoning and all that. I am talking about letting your hair fall or gray at it’s own will with no interference from you. My parents did that for most part – my father quite helplessly got to his present semi-bald state, and my mother interfered minimally with her graying thinning hair with irregular mehendi treatments.

Being so miserable at any means of self-maintenance myself, I’ve always wondered in awe at women who always dress impeccably and have manicured nails and perfect makeup. I also wonder at people who keep their hair colored perfectly, but I am mostly shocked by those who make very shoddy attempts at trying to keep their hair black. I have an uncle, who tried very hard with regular die, kali mehendi, herbal treatments, ayurvedic treatments and homeopathic treatments. His hair colored varied so wildly that every time I saw him, he looked very different from the last time I had seen him.

Some of my friends, have been coloring their hair for the past few years in shades of brown and burgundy. They’ve always envied me for having perfectly black hair, and attributed it to me being younger, which brings me to the story of my hair.

My hair had low self-esteem for a very long time. As long as my mother was responsible for my hair, I think I did fine. She did regular oil baths with shikha podi and oiled my hair all through the week. Once I became an obnoxious teenager, most of that stopped. I stopped oiling my hair, because I thought bouncing hair that didn’t stick to my head looked much cooler, I started using shampoo because that smelled better and was easier to wash off. Over a period of time, I realized my hair was growing where I didn’t want it to, and falling where I didn’t want it to fall from. My mother of course, told me in as many words as possible that it was because I did not listen to her. Once I landed in the US, and went for my first hair-cut, the hair dresser “wow”ed and “aaaw”ed so much at my hair, that I realized it was probably a lot better than I had imagined all these years. Hence my only regret since then has remained that my husband was not so awed by my beautiful locks and in general didn’t care if I had any or not.  

All was fine in hair territory until last week, within a period of two days I spotted three strands of white hair, and I am not even 30 yet! I am torn between not interfering in my natural aging process and having my hair colored. Clearly I am not old enough to age! Now I might end up having to be one of those women, who make hair coloring appointments, show up on time and have someone spread gooey stuff all over the head. I would have to sit there and pretend to be relaxing, while my mind would take off contemplating all the impossible things that could happen to my life, have a competition between my brain and the clock to see how accurately I can count time, read boring gossip magazines and learn useless pieces of information about people I don’t know or care about.

To dye or not to dye – that is the question, and the answer is as tangled as my hair can ever get!

Vratham Varuthams!

Vratham Varuthams (Worries) plague me from time to time. My mother does this Tuesday Vratham – no particular God she says, just good for the system and pray to all Gods. Few years ago, my husband had applied for a US H1B visa, and control freak that I am, and chronic worrier that I am, my imagination conjured up a bunch of likely depressing scenarios if his visa was rejected. So, I decided since I could not personally interfere in matter of USCIS, the only option I had to feel in control was to start my own Tuesday vratham.

So, my mother’s version is that she eats oats or fruits for breakfast and eats tiffin at night. I decided to mimic the same version – well almost. My mother-in-law who was quite perturbed by the fact that a 23 year old newly married girl should put her health through such religious tests, suggested that it was ok to have “paitham kanji” (which is a porridge made of moong dal and jaggery) for breakfast, and fruits and other liquids for lunch and any kind of tiffin (including pongal) for dinner. So, I kept going and my husband got his US visa (much to my amazement). I instantly attributed that to my vratham. My next issue was that I had to join him soon – what if my H4 got rejected. So, I continued on until I reached the US and having happily settled with my husband in a new country of promise, it took me a few weeks of Taco Bell temptation to give up my Tuesday vratham.

Every time I gave up and happily ate guilt-free on Tuesdays, a few months down that path, something I didn’t want happening or something I wasn’t in control of happend. Immediately I would attribute it to my giving up the Tuesday vratham and would promptly restart it.

After many such iterations, my version of Tuesday vratham as it last existed came down to oats for breakfast, any number of bananas during the day, soup for lunch (provided it was onion-garlic free) on tiresome days and any amount of tiffin at night. Yes yes.. don’t laugh.. I know it’s hardly a vratham. But, coming to think of it for someone who is so in love with food as me, having to be on such a schedule even once a week can be very trying. Besides that, it is the thought that counts isn’t it?

Until yesterday, there were a bunch of uncertainties lurking around that were driving me crazy. This morning as I showered, I thought to myself, I should start my Tuesday vratham again, that’s probably why my life is so confused right now. Guess what, things miraculously got sorted out today.

I really have to start my Tuesday vratham again, before too many good things come my way and I lose focus again. What a  maami I am!

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.