My husband has some serious concerns…

Abhishek (asking me for the 5th time): Are you TOTALLY sure you want only Idli and nothing else for breakfast?!

Me (trying to understand his concern): Err umm… yeees… I am sure!

Abhishek (after a careful thought): Sooo… if I order a special masala dosa for myself, you won’t steal from my plate, RIGHT?!

In the ‘furniture’ state of mind…

Monday: Epiphany

I am sprawled out on our sole divan one fine evening, resting my head on Gucci’s soft belly when I have  a glorious thought. The house resembles a cattle shed and it must be revamped.

I get into ‘what has to be done, should be done soon’ mode and ignore my husband’s statements like ”So what if our sofa is chewed, its cushions are ripped, or the study table looks like it has been through the second World War? Our friends come to meet us, not to see our furniture!”.

I roll my eyes. Can’t believe he thinks this way!

Note to our friends/family: You guys will definitely love us more when you will have a decent place to sit on the next time you visit us!

Tuesday: Leading from the front

I take up this project like the Terminator, determined to vanish every redundant piece of furniture from the house. I bring out all my stalker-like qualities and proceed to comb through every furniture website. I also register myself on OLX and Quikr, since we are open to buying used furniture (If it’s as good as new and half the price, why not!). While I do this, my husband has only four words of encouragement; ”Go for it, Tiger!”.

Wednesday: ‘Don’t call me again! Don’t you dare!’

To make space for the new furniture, we decide to sell the old furniture first. Enthused, I whip out my phone, go around the house taking pictures of our old furniture and put it up online for sale.

Either our furniture was really good or we were stupidly selling it for rock bottom prices, but we had a lot of people calling us (mostly me, because my dear husband’s contribution came to a grinding halt after the ‘Tiger’ line) for it.

I was happy to take these calls initially but it started taking a strange turn when my TrueCaller app started flashing names like ‘Dhirukaka’, ‘DJ Babi’ (No Kidding!). Then there were other kinds of people who would actually say things like, ‘Hello my dear friend Archita Nadgouda. Myself (first name) (last name). I’m new in Bangalore. I want your study table. Please give your address. I will pay you extra and take it today itself.’

Our table was sold to the same person.

Turns out that’s just the way he speaks (which is creepy), he was otherwise Okay.

Thursday: ‘Let her sleep for when she wakes up she will move mountains’

Napoleon was obviously talking about me. The only difference was that when I ‘woke’ up I moved all our furniture. Out of the house. In 2 days flat.

I was successful! It was a great start to project ‘Let’s-Make-Our-Home-Livable!’

However, there was just one tiny problem. We still hadn’t bought any new furniture yet and almost all of our existing furniture had all been sold. This meant lots of walking around the house looking for a place to sit, realizing that there are no seating arrangements anymore, finally ending up sitting on the floor and getting dirty looks from our pups Gucci and Skye for invading their territory.

Friday: Shattering my illusion

It had to happen one day. After all, it did look like it was on its last leg after our maid cracked it a few weeks ago.

It happened on the day I was jumping around excitedly like a kid, happily recounting funny stories of wierd people I was coming across when we heard a loud CRACK. It was the glass-top dining table. There was one neat cut from one edge to the other. The culprit was our cook this time, who, despite numerous warnings, had kept the piping hot Dal on the glass surface.

I dialed her number and within 5 minutes she was home, inspecting the table from all sides like ACP Pradyuman from CID, sadly shaking her head saying ‘tch tch’ in regular intervals and pretending to look sorry.

Sigh.

Now, to find someone to fix our dining table became one of the major sub-features of the big plan.

Something told me things were not going to be as easy as they seemed to be.

Saturday: Accepting my suggestions without a murmur

Seen those TV advertisements where the wife points at a furniture/a house/ or a wall paint color and the man, who obviously trusts and appreciates his wife’s better taste, nods happily at her in agreement?

Well, that sort of thing doesn’t happen in reality.

In real life, the husbands are not that simpleminded. I got my cold splash of reality when I realized my husband had very smartly let me do all the irritating and annoying part of negotiating and selling our old furniture and when the time came to do the more interesting work of selecting new furniture, he dove right in and started giving his opinion in everything.

When I protested that it’s only fair that he listens to all my suggestions without a murmur because of all the hard work I had done of dealing with random people and blamed him for not contributing even one percent, he looked at me calmly and exactly this transpired:

Abhishek: “Tumne wo kahawat nahi suni?”

Me (seething): ”Kaunsi kahawat?’

Abhishek (sounding sagely): ”Aaj kal bhalai ka zamana hi nahi raha!”

*Breaks into laughter at his own joke while I sit wondering what to say to such a man*

Sunday: Customer Service

After a lot of arguing, we were finally getting home some furniture, but they were transported to us from the shop in cartons. We called up customer care to send the technicians to assemble it for us, but it seemed like their customer service person had been trained to just say 3 lines. This was the exchange:

Me: Hi there, could you send somebody to install the furniture that we just bought?

(This person, answers to every question only after asking your name, number, address, bill number, products bought from the store, date and time, Aadhaar Card Number, Passport Number, Criminal background verification check certificate number etc.)

Customer care (after 10 mins of asking the above questions): We will send within 3 days.

Me: But we are not available on weekdays. Can you send somebody today, please?

Customer care: Ess… I will check and tell (hangs up abruptly)

Me (annoyed, calling up again): So did you check if you can send somebody today?

Customer care (asks all the above mentioned redundant questions again in spite of recognizing my voice): Ess… will send within 3 days.

Me:  But I told you, we are not at home on weekdays!

Customer care: Ess… we are calling one hour before we come.

Me (almost plucking my hair out): But that’s not going to help. Weekdays start from tomorrow. Both of us go to work. Send somebody today.

Customer care: Ess… we send within 3 days.

Me (really angry now!): Madam, do you understand my problem?

Customer care: Ess…

Me (feeling hopeful): So can you send somebody today…

Customer care: Ess… we sending within 3 days.

Me (wanting to beat this person into fine pulp): WE ARE NOT GOING TO BE AT HOME WHEN YOUR GUY LANDS UP AT OUR PLACE! DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I’M SAYING?

Me: Ess… we calling one hour before we come.

Sigh. And it goes on….

And this is just one story. I haven’t even told you about our glass dealer who insists on taking orders only via email but has no idea how to use it, and the shady guy who tried to sell us possibly stolen or smuggled furniture (yes, such people exist!).

To sum it up, the last week has been quite ‘eventful’ and we would like to make it less ‘eventful’, so if you’ve been in similar situation and know a better way of dealing with it. Help us, maybe?

I can’t believe I made cake!

So I had stayed away from baking ever since my last baking fiasco. In fact I would shudder every time a conversation came up about baking after that tryst with misfortune.

But not-so-recently, a friend and a colleague of mine, let’s call her Veena, told me about how she made this ‘simplest’ cake ever.

Always quick to get caught up in someone else’s enthusiasm, I asked her for the recipe. ‘It is so simple that you don’t even need a recipe.’, she said, matter-of-factly. I scoffed at that statement, after all it was the same person who had recommended that I try baking the Lemon Blondie and had said something along the lines of it being the simplest recipe ever. I still remember how taking her words at face value had resulted in a cake that, quite literally, did not ‘rise’ to the occasion.

‘But you must try this, It really is very simple!’, she said and gave me this so-called recipe:

Take a large-ish coffee mug, add in it (a) 2 tablespoons of cooking oil, (b) 2 tablespoons of Maida(all purpose flour), (c) 2 tablespoons of milk, (d) 2 tablespoons of cooking sugar, (e) 2 tablespoons of cocoa, (f) a pinch of baking powder and (g) a giant scoop of Nutella (Ingredients every person will have at home). Mix it all together and microwave it for a minute (not more, not even a second more!) and you will get an instant warm, gooey brownie-like cake!

It all sounded so simple and easy that I suspected there would be a catch somewhere, but Veena assured me there was none and that was the best part about it.

Despite my skepticism, I decided to try this today after I got back from work…

…and I’m happy to report that it indeed is the best thing I’ve ever made till date and it took me only 3 minutes to make it.

It really lifted up my spirits and if you want your spirits lifted up even higher, try this with vanilla ice-cream, sprinkled with roasted pistachios! 🙂

This is how the brownie looked like after it was over (in other words I forgot to take a picture of it right after it was baked!)

This definitely is the dessert our friends and family will be treated to… quite often from now on.  At least until I get tired of it, or they do.

But, definitely until I get another simple dessert recipe like this!

A Spontaneous Trip To Amritsar

‘If you don’t want to come with me, it’s ok, I shall go alone’, I said determinedly to the husband, resorting to blatant blackmail when all my other PR skills and marketing tactics to influence him to come along with me for a weekend trip to Amritsar had failed. His reason for not coming was that he had been travelling a lot for work and had been wanting to just chill at home before his yet another long business trip and also the fact that he had already visited the place several times in his childhood. This sadly was true and I realized I couldn’t push my influencing skills any further on him. Although in hindsight it did click to me that I should have tried selling him Amritsari Kulcha and Punjabi Lassi. That would have won, hands down. (Must make a mental note to try this next time.)

‘Why Amritsar?’, you may ask. It’s because I  had set my heart on seeing the Golden Temple and the Wagah border ever since a colleague of mine had described it to me, and also because Goibibo.com was giving away flight tickets at throwaway prices . Actually, I have always wanted to go to places I’ve read about in my history books. So, without getting discouraged by the response of my first target, I decided to try my luck with my next- my Mom.

Before approaching Mom I carefully fine-tuned my master plan,  because she isn’t a 20 year old who would just jump on to the next flight and go on a spontaneous trip without a second thought, so  I did the most sophisticated and time-tested tactic every marketer uses- pestering, begging, groveling and saying ‘pleeeaaasssee’ umpteen number of times until Mom relented.

Tip #1: Emotional blackmail may not work with your spouse but will always work with your parents!

<Cut to Amritsar>

Day 1: Upon reaching Hotel Hong Kong (don’t worry about the name, it  is one of the best hotels out there), Mom said we should dress up in such a way that we don’t look like outsiders so that we don’t get swindled by locals there. But when we freshened up and changed, our clothes and mannerisms were screaming ‘Tourist’ in every way possible. Sample this:

• Sun glasses : check
• Scarves and stoles draped over head for protection from the scorching heat : check
• Camera : check
• Chilled water bottle : check
• Flagging down an auto rickshaw and then wondering where to head first : check
• Talking to the auto rickshaw guy in Hindi (but making it somehow sound more like Marathi) : check

Anyhow, once we got into the auto, which was quite a struggle(as the autos in Amritsar are giant sized and look like they belong to pre-independence era) we started arguing about where we should go first, I said Rambagh, Mom said Jalianwalla bagh. As we argued, the auto driver, a friendly looking sardarji, whose name was Sukhveer Singh, watched bemusedly and then proposed a plan that we both could not refuse, he said ‘O ji hum aapko pehle Kapra market mein shopping(yay!) kara denge, phir aapko Jalianwala, Rambagh, Golden Temple sab jagah ghuma denge’.

That’s me at The Golden Temple (don’t laugh!)

True to his word, our good man Sukhveer Singh, took us to all the aforementioned places. We loved shopping at Kapra market, and as we skipped through many stores, swinging our bags with gay abandon, Sukhveer would keep reminding us to hold our bags and purses tight lest we get robbed. The strange thing we noticed in the market was that every shop we went, had at least 50 shop keepers, while only 2 or 3 of them would attend to us, the raison d’être of the remaining was quite a mystery for us. Then out of the blue, I heard some one stand behind us and whisper in Marathi ‘Tumcha kaka ani mama saathi pan kahi tari ghya‘ (buy something for your uncles also). When I turned, it was one those of 50 shop keepers. It was quite creepy to hear a Sardarji in Amritsar speak fluent Marathi (He explained that he travels often to Mumbai and hence knows the language). Err…so maybe they were there to keep a close watch on the customers to make sure they shopped for their extended family as well.

Mom, inside the Golden Temple

Coming back to Sukhveer Singh, we were quite lucky to have found him because he did more than just ferrying us around the city, for most parts he was also our tourist guide and regaled us with stories about Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Jallianwala Bagh etc. He helped us bargain at shops, carried our bags and also took us to the ‘in’ places in Amritsar like the Kulcha Land Dhaba where we had the Amritsari Kulcha (with my limited knowledge of cooking I can tell you that this Kulcha tasted like it was stuffed with butter and paneer and then dipped in a pot of ghee) and Gyan Chand Lassi Wale, where the size of the Lassi glass is as big as the Wimbledon cup. It is perhaps only in Punjab that you will be given a spoon along with Lassi, so that after you finish drinking it you can eat the thick butter settled at the bottom of the glass with the spoon.

Tip #2: Visit Golden Temple at night (even if you’ve seen it during the day). It was a beautiful balmy evening when we went to the temple and I still get goosebumps when I think of how beautiful it felt to be there. Also, don’t forget to look into the water, you will spot some amazingly beautiful fish.

Tip #3: You can avoid going to Rambagh museum if you are running short on time. I wasn’t every impressed with this place. p.s. it was slightly creepy.

Tip #4: City slickers – Don’t have high expectations from Amritsar in terms of infrastructure; some parts of it still look straight out of 1947 (no offence intended). If you ignore this, you will enjoy the city’s many dhabas, kapra shops, jooti shops  that dot every lane. p.s. the locals are friendly beyond compare.

Tip #5: If you have a sensitive stomach like mine, you would do well to resist eating the rich Punjabi food (which is very tough on one’s constitution, believe me). All that butter, ghee and lassi at the dhabas made me terribly sick the first day itself.

Day 2: I woke up with a throbbing  headache, perhaps from throwing up all night due to the stomach bug. Along with the food and fluids it had also drained out my energy and enthusiasm. Luckily I was with Mom, and she took great care of me (just like how a mother would!) and nurtured me back to perfect health with her magical healing powers (Read: Perinorm for nausea, Crocin for headache and fever and lots of curd for the sick tummy).

Because we had to take a selfie (seconds before bout of nausea)

Soon the two of us hit the road for another day of adventure in Amritsar, but this time in a taxi with the driver (whose name I can’t recall). We covered Durgiani temple, Jallianwala Bagh, WagahBborder and did some more shopping because the sisters demanded that they wanted Jootis as well (?!).

Our visit to Jallianwala Bagh was an emotional one, as I could visualize how the massacre would have unfolded in 1919 when the British mercilessly shot silent protesters by cornering them in an area from where escape was impossible – the garden still has bullet marks on the tall walls from where the victims were shot as they hopelessly tried to climb it to escape the firing. The most disturbing part was the deep, dark well (now called as ‘Martyr’s Well’) in which hundreds (including children) desperately leapt into, to avoid the bullets.

Martyr’s Well at Jallianwalla Bagh in the background

I must say we are a very lucky generation to be enjoying the freedom for which our previous generations struggled for.

Tip #6: Buy the CD about the ‘History of Amritsar’ that is sold outside the Jallianwala bagh gate. It was one of those things myMom bought from a poor looking street-seller who kept pestering her to buy it (perhaps he reminded her of me and my relentless pestering). We thought the CD would never work (as is the case most of the times) but turns out it actually is of a pretty good quality and is quite informative as well.

In the evening we went to the Wagah border and witnessed the famous ritual of beating the retreat being performed by the Indian and Pakistani soldiers. The highly vigorous marching, clanging of gates, the soldiers raising their legs to impossible heights and bringing them down with awesome force to the ground  as a show of strength and the other aggressive gestures was all very theatrical. I know how I am going to be stomping out of our house after my next fight with Abhishek (*wink*).  The air at the venue was rent with patriotic songs blaring through loudspeakers, similar songs were played on the other side of the steel gates in Pakistan but somehow ours seemed louder and better. Mom and I felt really bad that our country was so tragically partitioned, for the folks on the other side of the border looked just like us and they seemed as curious as us to see what we (Indians) looked like. After the performance we even smiled, waved and took pictures of each other from the barbed fences that divide our nations.

Guards from BSF (In crisp brown uniform) and Pakistan Rangers (In black uniform)

Visiting Wagah border or Attari (as the Indian side is known as) was like an icing on the cake, it was the last place we visited in Amritsar and it was made extremely special by Abhishek, who managed to get us special VIP passes with the help of his friend who is a Major in the Indian Army. Because of the passes, we were able to get seats in the front row of the VIP section that is near the gate, otherwise given the huge volume of the people (at least ten thousand, if not more) we would have had to stand somewhere in the back without a getting the proper view of the parade.

Mom taking a selfie with the Indian soldier 🙂

Tip #7: If you don’t have passes, make sure you reach the Wagah border at least 2 hours in advance for the tickets. If you have the VIP passes make sure you register your taxi number at the designated gate prior to reaching the venue.

The Pakistan gate, it says ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ (sorry for the bad picture)

Pretty soon, we were back home from our incredibly spontaneous vacation (if you can call that). And although it was a quick and short weekend trip, it gave us memories to cherish for a lifetime. Jai Hind!

Us with the BSF guards before the parade

Last tip #8: Don’t forget to buy sweets from the Bansal sweet shop. Folks back home loved gorging on Pinni, Pattissa and Chhaina. 🙂

Comic Strip: The Blonde Mistake

Dear friend and a super-talented artist Neha Rawat made a comic strip out of my blog on my cake-baking disaster. I love what she’s done and can’t stop chuckling looking at it!

Neha Rawat Art

To check out more of her funny, cute and endearing pictures, visit: https://www.facebook.com/xandoxs.attic

🙂

The day I learnt a little bit more about myself and a little bit more about life

This happened many years ago – when I had visited Miraj (a small town in south Maharashtra) with my aunt to see my maternal grandfather, who we used to call Bhau Ajoba. I was never close to my granddad much, he was too upright and religious for me to feel that emotional connect with him. It was the same with my paternal grandmother too, who lived in Belgaum all alone until she passed away at the age of 87. Although they doted on me as their granddaughter, I never quite remember having a warm relationship with either of them. I remember them as people who were religious but not conservative; the years of hard work had made them strong-willed and compassionate towards the needy. They led a simple, fulfilling life, perpetually in prayer.

In fact my grandfather had turned his little apartment into an Ashram where people would gather every day for Kirtans and Bhajans. So, when I reached Miraj, I was not surprised to find a big group of people (almost 20 of them) sitting on the floor and sing Bhajans. Coming from the scorching heat outside, my eyes were still getting adjusted to the dimly lit room. I saw my granddad sitting on the right corner of the room looking completely immersed in the Bhajans. But, he had noticed me and was gesturing me to sit wherever I had been standing (at the entrance of the door!). I was quite tired from the journey – and this particular journey from Kolhapur (where my aunt and cousins stay) to Miraj was quite rough – it was a hot summer morning, the temperature was 40 Celsius plus when we had boarded a packed bus to go to Miraj. The roads were bad and the bus was full of sweaty, noisy people. All of which had made me nauseous by the time we reached my granddad’s house. I was terribly tired and just wanted to drift off to sleep. I was quite irritated with mom to have emotionally blackmailed me to go to Miraj. ‘’You will be starting college soon. Go, meet your granddad and obtain his blessings’’ she’d said.

The Bhajans were on at full-swing and continued for what seemed like an hour. I was getting bored, impatient and uncomfortable sitting in the same position for long. My thoughts kept oscillating between- why exactly had I come here to how soon will I get to go from here. I kept playing with my phone when my grandfather said- “Now Archita share some of your experiences.”. I paused for a moment to give it a thoughtful response and then said ‘’eh?’’

People who had not noticed me earlier had now started looking at me and seemed quite scandalized at what I was wearing- Jeans and a t-shirt. They seemed more shocked when they learnt I was my granddad’s granddaughter  ‘So Archita, you heard some of us talk about God, now tell us about your experience’, my grandfather continued. I immediately burst into laughter; I thought my grandfather was joking. But I soon noticed I was the only one laughing in that room. I stopped laughing and gave out a sheepish smile. I swallowed the lump in my throat and wondered if Bhau had said ‘some of us talked about God? ‘- Because I didn’t remember hearing any of them speak. I felt like a school kid being pulled for not paying attention in the class.

I saw that the occupants of the room were now facing me and were waiting for me to say something. I tried laughing it off again and said- ‘’No, I can’t do it, I’m not good at public speaking!’ ‘. As I said it, a gentleman present there immediately said I can talk in English if I wanted. Thank you, but how does speaking in English change the fact that I’m not good at speaking in front of lot of people, I wanted to ask him. People by then had figured out from my granddad that I was from Bangalore, Oh, South Indian? Talk in Kannada then or Tamil I heard someone say in a faint voice. .‘It’s not the language, it’s the topic!’ I wanted to cry but instead I said, ‘’But none of you here understand the language’’, trying to laugh, when a lady, who had an aura about her said “It’s not about us understanding what you say, It’s about you discovering yourself’ and people around her nodded in agreement. I kept mum, my grandfather again prodded me, now in a voice of authority ‘Don’t be scared, tell us any incident where you felt the presence of God”. I wanted to remind him I was 16 and not 70, in case he had forgotten!

I realized none of them were going to budge until I blurted out something and even I wanted to quickly get done with this. It was getting awkward now. I started searching in the data bank of my brain about the one incident where I felt God had heard my prayers, but all my brilliant brain could manage was, ‘Tu cheez badi hai mast mast!‘, the same song I had heard in the bus, doing circles in my head. The harder I asked my brain to stop repeating that song, the louder it played it in my head. I was too nervous and distracted and couldn’t really think of anything to say. One of the women lost her patience and asked me to hurry up as she was expecting some guests at home and had to leave soon. ‘’Alright,‘ I said, ‘I will start!’, and I began telling them an incident that had happened a few years ago (50% in Marathi and 50% in English, I thanked the man for giving me the option of speaking in English in my mind.)

I said , ‘’It was a usual everyday morning, all of us were in a hurry to get to school, college and office” mom had taken dad to a doctor as he was complaining of acidity the previous night. I was a little tense as it was my final exams before my 7th board exams (back when I was in school, we used to have board exams even in 7th std which were considered very important), my school bus had come and I could see my friends climb one by one into the bus- I quickly grabbed my lunch box and was rushing to leave home when the phone rang- my sister answered the phone, it was my mom at the other end – after speaking for a few seconds, my sister looked at us (me and my other sister) and said Dad had had a heart attack and was admitted in the Intensive Care Unit(ICU). I went numb. I knew that a heart attack and the ICU were very serious things; I had lost my uncle to a heart attack. My sisters knew I was going to burst into tears and sent me off to school telling me that Dad would be fine and my exams were more important. The time – that I had heard the news till the time I finally saw my dad in the evening – were the longest and the most anxiety-ridden 8 hours of my life. All sorts of thoughts flashed through my mind and I had no clear answer to any of my worried questions. I was praying fervently and trying to tap into my deepest being to gain some strength during those 8 hours. I did not speak a word to anyone. My teachers and classmates who knew about it kept trying to pacify me by telling everything will be alright, but the only thing that seemed to give me strength were the prayers.”

“When I finally reached the hospital, I didn’t know what to expect. I saw my cousin waiting outside the ICU, he said ‘’Go in, he’s in there’’. I went in alone, it was the first time I had seen an ICU, ‘It’s a lot scarier than they show in movies’ I noted. After walking in a few steps, I spotted dad on one of the beds – I was scared to go near him, there were all types of tubes jutting out of him and that scared me even more. When I went near dad, he looked at me, smiled and took my hand in his and asked ”How were your exams?”.

‘’That was the moment’’, I told the septuagenarians who were listening intently, ‘’that was when I realized that God had heard my prayers. The fact that my dad looked better or seemed like he would get better soon. That was the moment I truly believed that God existed.’’ I told them.

I heard a few sniffles from the women sitting on my right and the men looked motionless. My own voice had started trembling and tears had gathered in the corner of my eyes. Before I ended..uh…my first ever spiritual speech… I recommended, like a Maha Gyaani- who had a tried and tested method to finding God, that they all read Ramdas Swami’s (the Guru of Chhatrapati Shivaji, and my grandfather’s as well) couplets.

I heard some more sniffles and the lady who was earlier cribbing about going home said she had goosebumps on her hands after listening to me. Just then my granddad said ‘’Shri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram’’ a gentle cue to let people know that it was time to end the gathering so that they all would go back to their respective homes. They all left quietly leaving me puzzled. They had almost harassed me for 15 minutes to give an impromptu talk about a topic like ‘God’ and had made me open up on something that was deeply personal to me and not a single one of them spoke a word for a long time after I had finished.

I spent a couple more hours at granddad’s before I left for bus stand for yet another strenuous journey in a crowded, noisy and smelly bus back to Kolhapur. As I boarded the bus, my mom called me on the cell phone, I answered the call and started telling her that I had a good time and was leaving for Kolhapur. She said ‘’Yes, I know that and everything that happened at Bhau’s place’. I was surprised. ‘’Bhau had called me up to tell what had happened there’’. ’’Was he angry that I brought up a family issue in front of so many people?’’ I asked, because the reaction had genuinely confused me. ‘‘No’’, she said, ‘’he was quite proud of you’’. she said. I smiled and hung up.

The conductor of that bus had managed to make sure that he had stuffed as many people inside the bus as to make us passengers feel like sardines in a can. The bus was smellier than the one I had taken in the morning, the weather was still hot. I heard babies wail and people swear. But, somehow none of it seemed to bother me. I felt a lot lighter. I felt I had learnt so much in just a day’s journey. The conductor signaled the bus driver to start the bus. I was more prepared and keen to start the journey that promised to be as topsy-turvy as the one in the morning. I looked outside the window and the woman’s voice echoed in my mind. It’s all about discovering yourself.

The marriage mantra that helped me survive the first year of my marriage!

At 23, when I was all set to marry Abhishek, everyone told me that marriage brings in a whole lot of responsibilities, they asked me if I would be able to handle the ‘pressures’ of marriage or if will be able to balance work and home. While many pitied me, some thought I was an utter fool to have willingly agreed to get myself trapped and that too so early in life! A lot of my friends asked ‘You are just 23! Don’t you want to enjoy your freedom some more?’

I was, of course, too occupied planning my dinner dates and weekend shopping with Abhishek to pay heed to any of it; Abhishek had successfully cast a spell on me by writing poems and telling me interesting things he would read and I had completely succumbed to it! We would spend hours talking about the most random corners of subjects covered by human history, starting from music to food to mythology to travel, and he would always end up telling me something that I didn’t know. I always had a thing for intelligent men and a man who had a common hobby of reading and had a good sense of humor was too hard to resist!

But, just a few weeks before our wedding I developed cold feet; the realization hit me that my life as I knew it was going to change. I wanted to let Abhishek know about my apprehensions, but I didn’t know how to bring it up. How do I tell the man I was going to marry that I didn’t feel ready for marriage yet? How do I tell him that the ‘huge marriage responsibilities’ and ‘work and home balancing act’ that people talk about are the things I will never be able to manage!

I wanted to be honest, so I decided to tell him about it, but not knowing how to start the conversation I started a bit oddly by saying how I loved working and I had big dreams. Abhishek quite didn’t understand why I was all of a sudden talking about work but said that he appreciates the fact that i’m dedicated to work and will support me in every possible way in the future. Irritated for not being able to tell him clearly that i’m not good at the household chores and quite hated cooking, I tried again by saying, ‘I’m quite independent and ambitious type’, he simply nodded his head and I continued ‘…and I want to be famous, that is the goal of my life – TO BE FAMOUS’ I stressed on the latter part of the sentence to tell him how serious I was about my ‘big plans’. I saw Abhishek smile and there was a spark in his eyes, as if he had understood what I was trying to say and he asked ‘Oh you mean the socialite type of famous? Like page 3 types?’ I gave up trying to explain.

But, I could not stop panicking and wondering if I had taken a huge decision of my life on impulse. Terrified, I wondered if Abhishek would change after marriage into a monstrously orthodox Indian husband expecting me to cook and clean. This thought kept frying my brain and I kept feeling miserable for the next few days until a colleague, who had come to say goodbye on her last day at work, said something I can never forget, she said, ‘They say all sorts of things and scare you before marriage, but, it all turns out to be fine eventually and marriage just gets better with time.’ It almost felt like she had read my mind and knew exactly what was bothering me. Thanks to her, those words comforted and assured me that I was right and I never looked back again.

But, little did I know that with Abhishek’s nature of being systematic and disciplined (which almost borderlines OCD) coupled with his perpetual-foot-in-mouth syndrome would make me want to internalize my colleague’s words like a mantra and chant it several times a day!

For instance, a few weeks before the engagement, when we were shopping for saris for the ceremony – I draped a sari around me (the one that I had already liked and bought) to show him and he very bluntly told me that I looked like a Christmas tree and later added that he meant it in a good way when he saw me look flustered!

And oh, how can I forget what he said on our very first meeting? Abhishek had taken me to a restaurant called Bay Leaf for dinner cum date and as we sat at our table awaiting our order, we saw the entire restaurant join in chorus and sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to a woman whose husband had arranged a surprise birthday party. Abhishek seemed quite amused by what was happening, while I was quite tensed – it was the first time I was meeting a ‘potential groom’ for marriage and in my mind I was thinking of all the questions my mom had asked me to ask him and just then Abhishek looked at me and casually said ‘Listen don’t expect me to do all this for you after marriage, I find it quite silly’ and before I could react he said ‘though we can throw such parties for our children later, it will be nice. What do you think?’ I was stunned; I didn’t know what he wanted me to say! Did he want me to say ‘Sure, I can do without surprise parties’, or, ‘Great idea! I think our kids will love their birthday parties’ either of which would indicate I was interested in marrying him and the thing to note is that we had only just met each other!

But, that’s Abhishek for you, he still manages to tick me off or tickle me with his straightforwardness. A quality which I appreciate and detest at the same time. Well, it’s the same with him too; he does not always appreciate my polite manners and my diplomatic (at least in my opinion!) ways of handling things either. ‘Just say what you’ve got on your mind, don’t sugarcoat it!’, he tells me, ‘Sabse bada rog, kya kahenge log!’ (He likes reiterating everything in Hindi, for stronger effect!)

But luckily, whatever my colleague had said that fateful day did come true! Things have started to fall in place, and we are trying and appreciating each other’s unique qualities instead of simply arguing, and pray that our marriage, like good wine, just gets better with time! Here’s to many more anniversaries with my ever-loving, ever-supportive and insanely funny chubby hubby! Amen.

Below is a doodle I did of both of us! 🙂

Parents

Relationship with your parents is not the same once you’ve grown up.

Painful and wonderful at the same time.

From childish dependence to sharing an honest, open relationship. From watching them grow old and frail right in front of your eyes, to the constant struggles of trying to understand each another.

At times, it’s hard to take just the good memories and leave the bad ones behind… they are so tightly intertwined together. I guess this is where little children work their magic – giving everyone heartiest laughter and the most soul touching moments – doing their best to mend the old, stubborn hearts.

Lucky are the grandchildren who get to experience only the happier, cheerful and wiser side of their grandparents.

Once again making you feel grateful for putting your loved ones before everything else.

Once again making your life incredibly beautiful.

The only thing that matters

Three, two, one…shoot!
It’s the starting pistol…

Well, not really, it’s the alarm clock.

This is a different kind of a race
It’s the race against time…
It’s that time of the day where,
in a matter of seconds, everything changes.
And nothing is same as before.
Nursing gown into a pinstripe shirt
Soft cuddles into impersonal handshakes
A mother into a badass employee, well, at least on the good days…

Not an easy transition for sure.

Brushing aside emotions, ignoring fears…
I plod on, hoping it’s the right way

Sometimes validation comes in the form of slobbbery kisses.
I feel stronger and braver.
Sometimes criticism comes in the form of angry cries.
I pretend to be stronger and braver.

Whatever the performance review, it’s the only kind of feedback that really matters.

I shall do better tomorrow. I shall be stronger and braver tomorrow.

To moo or not to moo!

Guess who’s back…!

…and with the news of her darling baby boy. Hey! he’s a darling on most of the days, alright. So what if you saw him howling, kicking and screaming everytime you visited us. You came in at the wrong time. Drop in at 2 am in the night, just 2 seconds before he takes a major dump and see how angelic he looks when he smiles.

What did you say? You’re asleep at 2 am? Ok, ok, trying to rub it in, are we? If you have to know, my peadiatrician has informed us that the baby will sleep through the night once he’s grown up a bit, and no, that’s not after 18 years!

Now what do I write in this blog? See, I could write about experiencing motherhood and how special it feels, but 12 weeks after having my baby I have come to the realization that, I am not a mother. I am, in fact, a cow. Close to 80% of my day is spent feeding my little ‘dudu monster’ and the rest in chasing down that elusive burp. Any other activity other than these get handed over to the other members of the family!

I’m not complaining much now, though there are days when I feel a cow could very well be my spirit animal. How else can I explain the sheer joy I feel when I see my baby kicking up his legs and waving his hands in excitement when I pull up my t-shirt. It’s almost like he’s doing a little dance to encourage mumma to offer him some more chow. But I’m afraid my boo boos don’t share the same sentiment, for they’re going through 3rd degree torture every day, thanks to the little man’s growth spurts that’s making him chug like a beast…albeit a cute one! 😋

So yes, while nostalgia of the carefree days and exhaustion from sleepless nights take their turn, there’s undoubtedly more excitement about bringing up my own little junior than anything else.

God do I miss going out without carrying a huge bag of baby essentials for a trip that’s going to take less than 30 mins… but boy do I love watching him chortle with delight at the sight of fans, tubelights or his daddy’s funny face! 😋😂

Ending this post with an image that made me laugh out loud as it aptly captures my situation right now. Enjoy!

Football, shootball haay rabba!

These days, life has been quite hectic. And the last couple of the days could have been better. I realized that people can sometimes be amazingly obtuse, but let’s leave it at that.

Anyway, during such stressful times, I usually drown myself in the very reliable and entertaining Facebook that always manages to offer solutions to problems that I din’t know could exist in anyone’s life like ’20 signs to tell you’re feeling bleh’, or ‘9 ways a tomato could change your life’ or ‘How putting in extra hours might be hampering your career’. Usually by the time I’ve read these posts I would’ve forgotten about all my problems and would’ve gone off to sleep feeling er… it makes me forget my problems momentarily, that’s all.

But this hasn’t been working too well of late because everyone has stopped sharing these ‘informative’ posts and have suddenly decided to be passionate about the ‘Amazingly Beautiful’ sport called Football. So, whether you’re interested in the sport or not,  there is no escaping the information overload on social media about it.

So what if India is not a part of it? For a change, we Indians are being true global-citizens and cheering the spirit of the game, celebrating the ‘beauty’ of it, incessantly updating scores, the controversies and the gossips so that uninterested people like me are also informed about the ‘important’ goings-on in the football world.

Thanks to this deluge of information though, I am now able to have a heated discussion over lunch on football with my colleagues without anyone suspecting that I haven’t even watched a single match so far. In fact I may have been coming across as some sort of a die-hard football fan to them. Why, I know that someone called Neymar looks like the Bollywood actor Kunal Khemu, that somebody called Suarez bit somebody and has been banned from 4 matches, that Brazil has lost the match to Germany and that tomorrow there’s a match between Argentina and Netherlands. And I also know that my best friend DD is really excited about her new office and can’t stop gushing about it to anyone who cares to listen to it. Aahh…finally some non-football news on my wall!

Conversely though, these constant updates on football and the whole spirit and energy associated with it has inspired me to do something that I had never imagined. It has gotten me to get off my seat and try playing a sport myself, a different sport though, a more civil one – Badminton. Although you might slightly disagree to it being called a ‘gentleman’s game’ when you watch me and my husband play badminton. Because the ‘gentleman’ part diminishes as we take the badminton terms used to name the type of shot like ‘smashing shot’, ‘attacking shot’ quite literally and hit the shuttlecock at each other’s faces as hard as we can and fight about the rules pretty much every 30 seconds. Both of us claim to know the rules better but neither of us has a clue. It is only when we realize that people playing in the other courts are giving us stricken looks that we cool off and take it easy.

Effect of football you think? Not really, it is just that I have decided the next time my over-smart husband sends a ‘smashing shot’ towards my face, I’m going to run up to the other side of the court and do a Suarez on his shoulder. Hail Football! I mean … Badminton!

 

The Blonde Mistake!

Yesterday was one of those days when I woke up and realized that I had an entire weekend stretched in front of me. Determined to make it productive, I decided to bake Lemon Blondies. Everyone who knows me well is very well aware of my culinary skills or the lack of it. In the last 20 months of marriage, I have fed Abhishek some very disastrous food, initially he would gulp down everything saying ‘You made it with so much love. I can’t let your efforts go waste’. Sometimes he would blatantly lie and say ‘this is the yummiest Khichdi ever! How did you ever manage to mash those vegetables and make it so soft?’ And I would, with a sullen pout tell him that it’s not khichdi, it’s Vegetable Pulao.

Over time, however,  he’s stopped encouraging me to cook and has started coming up with the most random lines like, ‘Arre. Look at you, you look soo tired and unwell. Why don’t you just relax’. This, after I’d have woken up fresh after a good 8 hours of sleep all night. The good thing (or bad, especially for others) is that I don’t stop trying. I have not given up on myself yet and I keep attempting to make something close to edible every now and then.

So, yesterday was the day I told myself, ‘Ok. I might be bad at cooking but I could try to bake! Because, baking is not the same as cooking. Baking is a lot easier, right?’

So I quickly booted up my laptop and opened the food blog that one of my friends had suggested. ‘You can’t go wrong with it. It’s very easy!’, she’d said.

The recipe did look quite simple. Just throw in some eggs, flour, sugar, lime juice, LOTS of BUTTER together and put it in the oven and voila!, within minutes you would get spongy, yummy and moist Lemon Blondies. Yes! That easy!

Abhishek kept offering to help me with the cake and I had to keep pushing him out. ‘I will beat the eggs, I will mix the flour’, he kept insisting in spite of my strong protests. After a couple of minutes, he reappeared in the kitchen and announced that he would let me make the batter if I would let him bake the cake in our microwave oven. That’s when I realised what this was all about. Abhishek is crazy about gadgets and loves experimenting with them all the time. He had been wanting to check if the oven in our microwave actually worked for a long time but had never gotten around to do it. And here was his golden opportunity. But I wasn’t going to let him experiment with my cake. I had already borrowed the gas oven from my mom and was just going to follow her instructions to avoid taking any risk.

After a squabble, we decided to bake 50% of the cake on the gas and 50% of the cake in the microwave. But I cheated and gave him only two spoons of batter to bake in the convection microwave. I knew it was going to be a major fail.

We waited for 20 mins for our respective cakes to bake. Gucci sat close to me, while Skye stood near Abhishek. It seemed like they were taking sides. The devoted Gucci was on my side and the traitor Skye was on Abhishek’s.

The sweet, bakery-like aroma wafted from the kitchen. The smell that indicated that everything was alright with our cakes. However, after a while we got a burnt smell. We quickly jumped and ran towards the kitchen. We first opened the gas oven. My cake was overcooked (fine, it was burnt) from the outside and under-cooked(okay, it was pure batter, happy?) from the inside.

A Big BLOND-er!

We had a horror-stricken expression on our faces as we looked at it. We then opened the microwave oven to check how Abhishek’s cake had turned out and to my utter surprise, his cake had a beautiful golden brown color on the top and the rest of the cake had a nice lemony, yellow color.

Exactly the way it was supposed to look.

There was a moment’s silence and then Abhishek, in his trademark style, held his belly with one hand and burst out laughing pointing at me with the other.

If you are wondering why there is no picture of Abhishek’s tiny, little, shockingly-well-turned-out cake, it’s because it was smacked clean by our pug, Gucci before we could even take a picture of it. We got to eat only the crumbs and I could tell that it tasted quite good. Although Abhishek thought otherwise. “It’s too tangy for my taste”, he said. Of course, it will be tangy, Captain Obvious; it is a Lemon Blondie after all!

So here was how my Saturday morning was. To get over it, we had a good fish-lunch at Carnival De Goa, and my darling fake-vegetarian husband ate more fish there than he had had in his entire lifetime. And he loved it. Amen.

P.S. If you want to try baking Lemon Blondies or any other Desserts, do check this blog out: http://www.thedessertedgirl.com/ and share your experience.