Watched Celluloid. I don't even know what to say.
Friday, June 28, 2013
Mechanics of a twisted ankle
I fell down on the road and sprained my ankle.
This is not about my swollen feet, I have enough sense not to write an essay on minor ailments, when half the world is struggling to retain existence.
Its about this new thought:
How easily life takes an unplanned detour! How easy it is to fall down!
I was coming out of my neighbour's house, I help her son with his English lessons, I was standing there on the curb, wondering whether I should go and get my rain jacket before taking a bus to Navi's school. Then I slipped and fell down.
One minute, I was subconsciously working out the list of things I have to do in next two days and the next, I was in unbelievable pain.
As I half-embarrassedly picked myself up, I strangely thought of my mother-in-law. She had slipped and fell down on the kitchen steps a few years ago. I had asked her, if she was in pain, over the phone. She had said 'yes' , and then she had laughed.
'' Its always funny when someone falls'' she had said.
So I tried to laugh at my fast-swelling feet, and went to pick up Navi.
I've been lying here all day today, watching the dust accumulate on the floor, thinking about the dirty dishes in the sink and the unmade bed. And my ridiculously disfigured feet laughs at me.
Not that I am a domestic goddess all other days, but just when you cannot do anything, you want to put everything in order. Even the carelessly thrown little pair of shoes irritates you! Then I told myself that I did not have to feel guilty at least for today.
Today is my day to fall asleep thinking of half-forgotten conversations from many years ago. Today is my day to vaguely remember the underlined lines from a book I read long ago. Today is my day to lose myself in dreams and to wake up to promises.
All of you, watch your feet when you are standing on the curb!
This is not about my swollen feet, I have enough sense not to write an essay on minor ailments, when half the world is struggling to retain existence.
Its about this new thought:
How easily life takes an unplanned detour! How easy it is to fall down!
I was coming out of my neighbour's house, I help her son with his English lessons, I was standing there on the curb, wondering whether I should go and get my rain jacket before taking a bus to Navi's school. Then I slipped and fell down.
One minute, I was subconsciously working out the list of things I have to do in next two days and the next, I was in unbelievable pain.
As I half-embarrassedly picked myself up, I strangely thought of my mother-in-law. She had slipped and fell down on the kitchen steps a few years ago. I had asked her, if she was in pain, over the phone. She had said 'yes' , and then she had laughed.
'' Its always funny when someone falls'' she had said.
So I tried to laugh at my fast-swelling feet, and went to pick up Navi.
I've been lying here all day today, watching the dust accumulate on the floor, thinking about the dirty dishes in the sink and the unmade bed. And my ridiculously disfigured feet laughs at me.
Not that I am a domestic goddess all other days, but just when you cannot do anything, you want to put everything in order. Even the carelessly thrown little pair of shoes irritates you! Then I told myself that I did not have to feel guilty at least for today.
Today is my day to fall asleep thinking of half-forgotten conversations from many years ago. Today is my day to vaguely remember the underlined lines from a book I read long ago. Today is my day to lose myself in dreams and to wake up to promises.
All of you, watch your feet when you are standing on the curb!
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Zayan Smiles
Two long emails, a phone call, a new blog,
A few mouse clicks,
And a new friend!
Thank you all!
I want to tell you about Zayan, my new friend. He is a man of few words, our conversations have been short, yet meaningful.He doesn't speak my language, but he listens and looks at me compassionately. Sometimes he nods his bald head. His days are long, almost as long as years, and he shares his wisdom of 45 years.
I have been helping a friend to take care of her baby since her husband had to go to another country. Its been a while since I've held anything as fragile as a 45 day old baby and I clearly seemed to have forgotten that babies do cry a lot! The maddening catena of dirty diapers, feeding bottles, projectile vomits and never ending cries is overwhelming for any new mother, especially when she is recovering from postpartum blues. But sometimes Zayan smiles, and that makes up for everything.
I got a chance to revive my memories, to sing old Malayalam poems that I used sing for my son, to understand how precious, how vulnerable children are, to build trust. I also learned to mix formula milk. :-)
Babies always make you think that life is simple when you look at it that way!
A few mouse clicks,
And a new friend!
Thank you all!
I want to tell you about Zayan, my new friend. He is a man of few words, our conversations have been short, yet meaningful.He doesn't speak my language, but he listens and looks at me compassionately. Sometimes he nods his bald head. His days are long, almost as long as years, and he shares his wisdom of 45 years.
I have been helping a friend to take care of her baby since her husband had to go to another country. Its been a while since I've held anything as fragile as a 45 day old baby and I clearly seemed to have forgotten that babies do cry a lot! The maddening catena of dirty diapers, feeding bottles, projectile vomits and never ending cries is overwhelming for any new mother, especially when she is recovering from postpartum blues. But sometimes Zayan smiles, and that makes up for everything.
I got a chance to revive my memories, to sing old Malayalam poems that I used sing for my son, to understand how precious, how vulnerable children are, to build trust. I also learned to mix formula milk. :-)
Babies always make you think that life is simple when you look at it that way!
Friday, June 14, 2013
By now I should have figured out what to do with my life. It's been almost a year since Navneeth started formal schooling, but I'm still clueless. I had made some perfect plans on what to do when we settle down in India, since that's not going to happen in near future, I need to make new plans.
I've been making excuses, excuses for not trying for a job ( German, I don't speak German), excuses for not joining a German language course ( I'm not good with other languages and its the toughest of all), excuses for not brushing up my long lost technical skills (Everything looks different now, a cloud of ambiguity hangs over the whole cloud computing thing), excuses for not leaving the house enough (its too cold, chilly, windy, cloudy, sunny), excuses, excuses...
All that has to change now, though I still don't have a clue.
I'm just sad and disappointed with myself. :-(
I've been making excuses, excuses for not trying for a job ( German, I don't speak German), excuses for not joining a German language course ( I'm not good with other languages and its the toughest of all), excuses for not brushing up my long lost technical skills (Everything looks different now, a cloud of ambiguity hangs over the whole cloud computing thing), excuses for not leaving the house enough (its too cold, chilly, windy, cloudy, sunny), excuses, excuses...
All that has to change now, though I still don't have a clue.
I'm just sad and disappointed with myself. :-(
Monday, June 3, 2013
About another old house
Do you believe in Karma? I do know that some of you are incurable nonbelievers , who probably smirk at the very thought of such 'metaphysical nonsense'. (Well, I know how nonbelievers think, a lot of my friends are skeptics- how do these people find me God?). My intention is not to convince or make you buy Indian Karmic principles, as always, I am just telling stories.
This is about my father's ancestral home. Though my father worked, went to college, got married and spent his good years in Calicut, he hails from a beautiful village near Trivandrum. His family home was a thing of its own, I am avoiding the pictures as it kind of looks scary now, after the renovations. I have a love-hate relationship with this house. Or let me put it this way, I never felt that I belonged there and I secretly disliked it a little bit, but life did not leave me until I made peace and fell in love with it.
As a child I used to vacation there with my brothers. My first memory is the haystack, I remember hiding behind it as a child. I remember running through the rice paddy fields with cousins, swinging in the creepers of sarppakkavu ( the sacred abode of the serpent God), going fishing - all that should have been great fun, it was, in a way, but there was something that made me uncomfortable, to a point that it burnt my very skin. I was never at ease there. I felt that I did not belong there..
My father's folks are an interesting lot. They are loud and cheerful. They read 'big' books but talk like regular villagers. Most of them are incurably tactless and bluntly original. My cousins were fun too, only they would tease me for my northern accent. I was not used to having so many children around me, back at mother's place I was a spoilt princess. I just couldn't wait to go back to Calicut.
Around the time I was seven or eight, I decided not to go there for summer vacation anymore. I bluntly told my parents that I was not interested and they did not force me. Even after we moved to Trivandrum city, I visited the place only twice or thrice a year. I stayed as alienated from it as before and never made an attempt to feel its pulse or even remotely understand it. Then I grew up, fell in love, got married and moved away.
Then one day my parents announced that they were renovating the place and that they want to live there partly to get away from the city. I was working in New Jersey and I self importantly offered to bear a share of the renovation cost. (who did I think I was, really?)
Due to ' a series of unfortunate ( or fortunate, but definitely unplanned) events' I found my self living in that house after a year. My husband was away in another country pursuing his MBA, and I lived there with my infant son, to be near my my parents. I was absolutely jobless, if you don't count taking care of an infant as a job.
I would sometimes sweep and rake the yard- oh the trees did not show any mercy on my 'homecoming' and roam around the village with my son. I would open my windows and stare into the lazy afternoon stillness for hours. Sometimes I wondered about the way my life had changed, a little over a year ago I was looking at Manhattan skyline across the Hudson, through my office window. A part of me would really cling to my old 'self-important' life. And I was missing my husband too. But as it went on, things, strangely, started to make sense.
When Navneeth started walking I started this habit of taking him to the family temple every evening. The villagers do not know me there, still they would talk affectionately. They would take me for just another village woman whose husband is away working in one of the Gulf countries. And I kind of liked being that.
I would then take him to throw stones in nearby ponds or for a walk through the rice paddy. And yea it was wonderful.
Sometimes we would sit on the veranda after dark and listen to the chirping crickets. Sometimes we would count starts and sing songs about the moon ( ambiliammavan - uncle moon, in Malayalam). Sometimes we would just watch the rain.
I used to meet a very good friend who was visiting her parents in a nearby village. ( Dear, please smile if you are reading this). I had to wait for a long time at the bus-stop. A couple of times I shared auto-rikshaw rides with fisher-women from other villages, and they would chat with me in their unpretentious way. It was totally liberating. I am not making this sound like I am superior to them in anyway, to learn that I was not superior and that I do not have to be superior, was really liberating.
There is nothing like the serenity of a Keralite village, it's poignant summers and sudden downpours. May be we do not have the right to disown anything we are born into. And we do not have the right to deny anything we acquired on the way either. All those, places, people and houses, are so much a part of our very being, whether we like it or not.
Pictures of my son taking his first steady steps.
This is about my father's ancestral home. Though my father worked, went to college, got married and spent his good years in Calicut, he hails from a beautiful village near Trivandrum. His family home was a thing of its own, I am avoiding the pictures as it kind of looks scary now, after the renovations. I have a love-hate relationship with this house. Or let me put it this way, I never felt that I belonged there and I secretly disliked it a little bit, but life did not leave me until I made peace and fell in love with it.
As a child I used to vacation there with my brothers. My first memory is the haystack, I remember hiding behind it as a child. I remember running through the rice paddy fields with cousins, swinging in the creepers of sarppakkavu ( the sacred abode of the serpent God), going fishing - all that should have been great fun, it was, in a way, but there was something that made me uncomfortable, to a point that it burnt my very skin. I was never at ease there. I felt that I did not belong there..
My father's folks are an interesting lot. They are loud and cheerful. They read 'big' books but talk like regular villagers. Most of them are incurably tactless and bluntly original. My cousins were fun too, only they would tease me for my northern accent. I was not used to having so many children around me, back at mother's place I was a spoilt princess. I just couldn't wait to go back to Calicut.
Around the time I was seven or eight, I decided not to go there for summer vacation anymore. I bluntly told my parents that I was not interested and they did not force me. Even after we moved to Trivandrum city, I visited the place only twice or thrice a year. I stayed as alienated from it as before and never made an attempt to feel its pulse or even remotely understand it. Then I grew up, fell in love, got married and moved away.
Then one day my parents announced that they were renovating the place and that they want to live there partly to get away from the city. I was working in New Jersey and I self importantly offered to bear a share of the renovation cost. (who did I think I was, really?)
Due to ' a series of unfortunate ( or fortunate, but definitely unplanned) events' I found my self living in that house after a year. My husband was away in another country pursuing his MBA, and I lived there with my infant son, to be near my my parents. I was absolutely jobless, if you don't count taking care of an infant as a job.
I would sometimes sweep and rake the yard- oh the trees did not show any mercy on my 'homecoming' and roam around the village with my son. I would open my windows and stare into the lazy afternoon stillness for hours. Sometimes I wondered about the way my life had changed, a little over a year ago I was looking at Manhattan skyline across the Hudson, through my office window. A part of me would really cling to my old 'self-important' life. And I was missing my husband too. But as it went on, things, strangely, started to make sense.
When Navneeth started walking I started this habit of taking him to the family temple every evening. The villagers do not know me there, still they would talk affectionately. They would take me for just another village woman whose husband is away working in one of the Gulf countries. And I kind of liked being that.
I would then take him to throw stones in nearby ponds or for a walk through the rice paddy. And yea it was wonderful.
Sometimes we would sit on the veranda after dark and listen to the chirping crickets. Sometimes we would count starts and sing songs about the moon ( ambiliammavan - uncle moon, in Malayalam). Sometimes we would just watch the rain.
I used to meet a very good friend who was visiting her parents in a nearby village. ( Dear, please smile if you are reading this). I had to wait for a long time at the bus-stop. A couple of times I shared auto-rikshaw rides with fisher-women from other villages, and they would chat with me in their unpretentious way. It was totally liberating. I am not making this sound like I am superior to them in anyway, to learn that I was not superior and that I do not have to be superior, was really liberating.
There is nothing like the serenity of a Keralite village, it's poignant summers and sudden downpours. May be we do not have the right to disown anything we are born into. And we do not have the right to deny anything we acquired on the way either. All those, places, people and houses, are so much a part of our very being, whether we like it or not.
Pictures of my son taking his first steady steps.
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