KOLKATA LINGERS...

The annual visit to Kolkata ended a week back.

Work/school has begun and we are back in the swing of things.

The lazy mornings watching the world go by from our balcony, and the hectic evenings of catching up with friends and family have already retreated to the silent shots in the camera.

But Kolkata lingers...

In the 'panchphoron' and 'radhuni' - spices peculiar to the Bengali cuisine - that my in-laws have packed for me.

In the Cookme 'mustard paste' that is adding tartness and the sharp tang of memory to fish curries cooked in Borivili.

In the Bori (dried balls of ground lentils) that is adding crunch and the bite of nostalgia to Maharashtra-bred vegetables.

In the Jaljeera (a sweet-salty-tangy powder) from Tasty, which is being dissolved in water (and a bit of tears) to make glass after glass of cooling drink in manic Mumbai.

In the sarees from Dakshinapan and the books from College Street. When we open and use, we breathe in deeply and remember.

BEHIND EVERY MULTI-TASKING WOMAN...

...is a man (the AGE-OLD saying is reversed, obviously...we are the NEW AGE women, are we not?)

I have a husband who (till now), loves me a lot. I also have a husband who criticises me a lot. Oh, they are one and the same person (till now, at least).

And although I appreciate the love and crib at the criticism most of the time, on retrospecting (on the belated and auspicious - to shopkeepers - occasion of Women's Day) I realised I should value the criticism as much as the adoration.

Why?

Because the spouse's criticism...
...keeps me grounded. (Too much flattery swells the head.)
...gives me a challenge. (I thrive on 'TO-DO-BETTER' lists.)
...gives me a chance to fight back. (Shouting is a good stress-buster.)
...has become such an inextricable part of my daily routine that I would probably die of shock and deprivation if he changed suddenly and became all 'red roses and diamond rings'!
...lets us enjoy the process of making up after a bout of accusation-flinging and screaming match.

Now, I am not going to tell you how!!!

HAPPY WOMEN'S LIFE!!!!

SHOW ME THE WINTER

So, it's already mid-December here in Mumbai, and the shops are selling green tinsel Christmas trees and red Santa caps and rich dark plum cakes.

The colourful woollies newly-knitted by my mother are waiting eagerly in the cupboard. Where they are in the competitive company of a stack of other colourful woollies, all knitted by my mother down the years. Enough to warm the cockles of an army, if they felt any cold.

My elder daughter, Lil Cat, has taken out her monogrammed navy-blue school cardigan and has worn it to school for a couple of days, just because it is DECEMBER. Defeated by the clamminess and the sweatiness, she's keeping it off for now.

Her sister, the Copy Kitten, threw a tantrum and managed to get me to buy her a similar-but-smaller monogrammed school cardigan. Which is lying pristine, waiting to be inaugurated.

Our maid has gifted them two lovely bright batik scarves, and even these are hanging forlorn in the cupboard.

And the superpowers and the wannabe-superpowers and the movers and shakers have all hot-footed over to Copenhagen, interfacing and OD-ing on Global Warming and Carbon Footprints, and the Kyoto Protocol, some trying to slip in sly measures, some trying to pull a fast one, some trying to bully the weaker ones, all for their own short-term advantage. I mean, in the long term, it is like cutting off the branch on which we all are sitting, is it not?

And here in muggy Mumbai, we - all the small fry - are still waiting for winter to turn up.

COPYRIGHT @ COPYKITTEN

The Copy Kitten (my younger daughter) desperately wishes to grow up double-quick to catch up with Lil Cat (her elder sister). To hasten this disappointingly slow process (frequent comparisons of height in the mirror reveal very minuscule changes), she tries to use big big words in a grown-up manner. The only snag is that she has not learnt the meanings of all the little little words yet, so the results of her efforts are often quite surprising.

One day, demanding some medicine for a stomach ache (she frequently claims to have this, with accompanying expressive groans and grimaces), she said, “Give me some Harry Potter”. It was only after investigating the medicine box that we realized that she meant “Gripe Water” (which, incidentally, I also loved so much that I would feign stomachaches quite often).

Another day, wanting to try on her Dida’s (grandmother’s) deodorant, she kept on asking for ‘aloevera’. To complicate our confusion, she insisted on pronouncing it as ‘aloe-beral’. Since ‘beral’ means CAT in Bengali, we were all very much amused. But the gutsy little kitten stuck to her guns, saying, “Na, aloe-beral boley aekta jinis hoy” (No, there is something called aloeberal).

Last year, an over-excited Copy-kitten, dressed in her chaniya-choli finery, had announced to the family that she was going to dance the ‘gabra’. Since then, our Navratri celebrations have centred round the ‘gabra’ rather than the ‘garba’.

Sometimes, she mispronounces P as K. So the song about the POSTMAN becomes:

“COASTMAN aaya, COASTMAN aaya/ Kitney letters laya, kitney letters laya?”
(The Coastman has come, how many letters has be brought?)

In her defence, it may be said that since Mumbai is a coastal city, the mailman may be regarded as arriving from the coast.

And, of course, the Pussy Cat who went to visit the queen often becomes the KHUSI CAT (‘Khusi’ means ‘joy’ in Bengali). But that is OK with us, because she is after all a Khusi Kitten. And her big sister, the Lil Cat may laugh at her attempts, but it is all in good sport and fun, like the real kittens under the stairs play.

‘AM I LIKE THIS ONLY?’

The other day my daughters were playing together at home (harmoniously – which is a pretty rare occasion). Apart from ‘teacher-teacher’, one of their favourite role-plays is ‘mother-offspring’, with the elder Lil Cat enacting the ‘mother’ and the younger Copy Kitten being the impossibly obedient ‘daughter’.

Busy as I was in doing housework (you know, the usual stuff like folding washed clothes, dusting bookshelves, straightening the bedcover for the umpteenth time, etc,etc), one snatch of their dialogue was repeated so often that it caught my attention.

“Taratari, taratari, deri hoye jabey” (Hurry, hurry, you’ll be late). The Lil Cat would pretend to hold a glass of milk in front of the Copy Kitten and say this. When the Copy Kitten finished gulping down this imaginary glass of milk, the Lil Cat would pretend to button-up an imaginary school uniform, all the while repeating this sentence. Then she would give a hurried kiss to her pretend-daughter and, giving her a small push at her back, say again the same thing, while waving good-bye as the Copy-Kitten rushed to pick up her pretend-schoolbag and ran to catch her pretend-bus.

Then, within a few seconds, she would be back again from her pretend-school. And her pretend-mom, the Lil Cat, would start rushing and fussing all over again, undressing her sister, hurriedly feeding her some pretend-lunch and then urging her to go to sleep. All the while repeating like a mantra, “Taratari, taratari, deri hoye jabey” (Hurry, hurry, you’ll be late).

Feeling rather indignant, I asked them why they were hurrying through their game. In an exasperated way, they said, “But Ma, this is what you keep saying to us.”

“What? And what about the time when I read all those endless books with you and make you sit on the kitchen counter when we all bake cakes and cook noodles and stuff?” I accused, feeling hurt and absolutely horrified at this image of myself as a hurrying harridan, forever pushing my children from one task to another - wake up, get ready, have breakfast, go to school, have lunch, have nap, do homework/study, gulp down milk, go to play, have dinner, go to sleep.

“Oh, but that is only on Sundays and holidays. And we are playing Monday to Friday mummy-mummy now,” and they shooed me away.

So, am I like this only? Caught in a fast forward loop throughout the week, giving no time to stand and stare to either myself or my family. And then, pushing the pause button only on ‘Sundays and holidays’, to rest, relax and revel in the joys of family-life? Time to chill?

LOVE ACTUALLY…

…WAS (once upon a time, circa 1990s) asking the (yet-to-be-) spouse, “Have you taken the class-notes properly?”
(Both of us studied English Honours, so being together in Honours classes was not the problem, but I had Philosophy as a ‘Pass’ subject, while he had ‘History’, and he would shrug his shoulders at my anxious query after the very few History classes he actually attended without me, and state philosophically that ‘History’ was past, so it was better to forget about it.)

…IS (now, circa 2009) asking the spouse (-since-decades), “Have you taken your cholesterol medicines properly?" (I have a job where I leave the home early, and he has a job where he comes back very late, so marital communication, and romantic conversation, is chiefly via a series of questions over the phone - asked anxiously, answered with philosophical calmness and assurance).

As the great philosophers said, "The more things change, the more they remain the same". Class-notes, or cholesterol, I seem to have been in worrying-Mother-mode for the past (nearly) two decades. Pscho-analyse that, if you will.

Love, actually = worry! (Thank God, I don't chew my nails when I am worried, or I would not have been able to write this post.)

OUCH!

MOTHERHOOD MEANS…

1. …getting to smell that ineffably sweet mixture of Johnson’s baby powder-cum-curdled-milk emanating from my little baby’s downy softer-than-a-petal neck, which is my favourite snuggling spot. I am doubly lucky to have a double treasure of snuggly-soft back-of-the-neck spots.
   
2. …having two extra pairs of helping hands in the kitchen in the holidays. Although I am not too sure about the helping part. But the best thing about these two pairs of small (and smaller) hands is that I just love how they hold tightly on to my hands sometimes, when we cross a busy road or when we walk into a dark room. Whenever.
   
3. …giving a contented sigh when I see the two little fast-asleep faces. I find it so amazing how they manage to fall asleep in a jiffy. One moment, they are wide awake - demanding a glass of water/ a new story/ an answer to some unfathomable question, then their eyelids droop, the stare becomes fixed-yet-unfocused, and the next moment they are fast asleep. Blessed and Glorious Peace reigns. And I rub sleep away from my own tired eyes and get up for some me-time: reading books, blogging, what-have-you. I am really happiest when they are sleeping!!!
   
4. …sitting two seats away from the spouse with the kids hogging the seats in-between. We are just back from a week-long trip to my brother’s place in Bangalore, and at the airport, a newly-married couple was sitting all lovey-dovey, hands-entwined (to put it mildly), side-by-side. And all the oldly-married couples saddled-with-children (like us) were looking at them enviously as if at a distant memory. That life when we could gaze into each other’s eyes uninterruptedly for hours on end seems to belong to a past life. Now the daily clock has been hijacked by two little terrors. And romance is a few stolen moments spent remembering the old together-days or discussing – guess what? – children!
   
5. …a job with a 1001 responsibilities, round-the-clock duties and NO OVERTIME PAY. The boss (or bosses, two in my case) are perfect little tyrants – very demanding, moody, ungrateful, tantrum-throwing divas. It’s funny - in this job, I have LOST a lot of things: my sleep, my hair, my happy-go-lucky care-freedom. And all the nice things that happen usually happen to my two BOSSES – the first smile, the first rolling over, the first crawl, the first faltering walk, the first lisping talk, the first day at school. I (and the spouse) are just the foolishly-happy witnesses/caretakers/cleaners. But though motherhood is such a tough job, I wouldn’t have it any other way, actually.
   
   Thank you, SDG at Whims-and-Wishes for this wonderful tag about the 5 THINGS I LOVE ABOUT BEING A MOM. I thought hard and deep, but could come up with only two (the neck-snuggle and the hand-clutching). The other three points are THINGS THAT ARE BOUND TO HAPPEN IF YOU ARE A MOM - WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT!
   
   Instead of passing the tag on to specific victims, er…parents, I leave it open for all mothers and fathers to comment or write a post about their own 5 favourite parenthood moments. Enjoy!

LIFE BEGINS AT SIXTY?

My Maa (mother), all of sixty-three, and her merry gang of gal-pals (two sisters and a cousin, with some friends thrown in) never cease to amaze me. She ushered in the new year at my place, staying till February (She usually visits me twice a year). Then she was off to my Maasi’s (aunt) home in Bhopal.

There, the two sisters are living it up (she called me up to say she’s just watched the newly released Delhi-6). They cook for each other, play games on the computer, and, of course, watch endless hours of television.

They also enjoy shopping together, anything from vegetables to tablecloths to clothes for their combined brood of grandchildren. The only sign betraying their age is the fact that they often forget to take their cellphones along; the other day my brother called me saying that he had been calling Maa for over three hours and nobody picked up the phone. She had been engrossed in Delhi-6; he was about to call in the cops.

Soon, the giggly gang will be joined by an octogenarian grandfather (my mother’s unmarried and still-adventurous uncle). Then, they plan to go by train to Allahabad, Simla and Gaya (religious and tourist hot-spots where the said grandfather is a trustee with various institutions which will provide free and safe accommodation).

Next on the agenda is, of course, Kolkata, where the heart is, if not the body. Kolkata does not just mean HOME. It means a whirlwind tour of different homes of cousins and friends and relations. Maa and the aforesaid gang are maximizing returns by packing in a week-long trip to the crowded coasts of Puri.

And that’s not all. From the sea-side, it will be straight to the hospital bed-site for Maa, as she intends to fit in a cataract operation (her own) in her busy schedule. My uncle in Kolkata, who is an ophthalmologist, will do the honours. And then, within a fortnight, Maa will be back in Bangalore, which is her ostensible residence (but she is a Non-Resident Bangalorean, my brother complains).

But this footloose and fancy-free lifestyle is only part of the story. All the members of the gang have sons and daughters, whose homes they dutifully stay in and look after the grandchildren as and when the need arises (they cook, feed, tell stories, knit fluffy cardigans and give great advice). Most of the members of the gang fight various chronic and recurrent illnesses (they carry medicines instead of make-up in their handbags). All of them have to plan carefully to arrange for their finances for the tour-India trips (they are willing to forego planes for trains, AC-rooms for non-AC dormitories).

But all of them have one more thing in common – despite the diseases, despite the familial obligations, despite the financial restraints, they want to enjoy life. To the fullest, to the farthest. Kudos to that.

MISSING YOU, MA

My mother, who was staying with me for the past month, has gone back to her Bangalore home today. I always feel very mopey and maudlin whenever my ma goes away. It feels as if there’s a little girl trapped inside my undeniably grown-up self, howling and crying copiously, making my eyes prickle with tears at the slightest reason.

I feel so BEREFT, like a boat whose moorings have been washed away. Now no more will I come back from work to see ma sitting hunched up at the table in one of her faded gowns, frowning over her daily quota of sudoku. No more can I just demand that she makes my favourite tangra-machher jhol (tangra fish-curry) or other ma-special dishes that I look forward to for the entire year. No more will I feel that urge to gossip desultorily while working in the kitchen together, lapsing into silence now and then, and picking up any skein of gossip from a familiar pattern. No more of that ma-only feeling of tripti (satisfaction) and shanti (peace). TILL HER NEXT VISIT.

As I folded and kept her sarees and towel (she always has a stock of clothes at my place) back in the cupboard, my eyes welled up and I felt so lost.

And then, later on, when I was taking something out of the fridge, I found a china jar full of a tomato-date-tamarind chutney she had made just the way I like to have. Crying and smiling at the same time, licking the chutney from my fingers, I re-discovered what comfort-food is all about.

TERM’S UP!

A week or so to go, and the end of this term is in sight. Being a person of minuscule-Marathi and with my Hindi-full-of-holes, every year I face a new batch with some amount of trepidation. Yes, I know I teach Business Communication, which is supposed to be taught in English, but by public demand I have to teach bilingually, once in English which the students write down laboriously but incomprehensibly, and once again in Hindi with a lot of examples culled from movies and television which they enjoy and understand (hopefully). Wading through the syllabus with my feet in bi-lingual boats, I sometimes flounder if the batch of fish/students is too unruly/noisy/unresponsive.

This year, I am pleasantly surprised as I seem to have bonded really well with all four divisions of my students (usually I have a jinx with students of ‘B division’, as they call themselves). Of course, there are the rowdy back-benchers who sometimes hoot and hiss when my back is turned. But I’ve managed not to get ruffled even once this year.

This year, I’ve enjoyed teaching (like I enjoyed teaching Literature back in Kolkata) to a section of students who are interested (they even wait till the final lecture for my classes) and responsive (they answer, and correctly, when I quiz them). Even a handful of such students make a world of difference to a teacher, and this year has been wonderfully different so far.

It’s nearing term-end now and it’s been a term well-spent. Thank you, students. I'll cross my fingers and hope for a repeat next term.

A FRIEND IN NEED…

How times have changed. Now we have Friendship Day thrust upon us, whether we need it or not. On 4th August (3rd being a Sunday), when I go to college, I will be overrun by hordes of students tying ‘friendship ribbons’ on both my arms (thankfully, one arm at a time). The same fate will befall every single denizen of the campus. Masses of yellow roses will be exchanged, admired and agonized over (by those who wanted to be ‘more than friends’). And the next day, we will return to gossiping with our ‘real’ friends and bitching about the ones who are not.

But anyway, over and above the media-and-market created Friendship Day frenzy, here’s wishing my friends (here and out there) a happy day and year – thanks for being a cushion, a sounding-board, an alarm-clock and a screw-driver, as and when I needed them.

MAID IN INDIA

I know this may sound preposterous and pre-historic to anybody who does not live in our part of the world. But for those who do, especially those with kids or jobs or both, will understand how our entire life is maid-dependent. That’s to say, the peace and pattern of our existence (and many times, the progress of our careers) depend upon the ifs and buts, express-arrivals and explanation-less-absences of our maids.

As of this present moment, my sister-in-law is in a soup because one of her maids (they have a complicated system of checks and balances comprising ‘many maids, all-in-a-row’, devised in part by my mother) has upped and left, without any notice and with many lies and excuses. She has recently joined a new job (six-day week) and has two small kids (three and one year old), so obviously the domestic disarray has demolished the carefully built maths of her existence.

My neighbour, who has to leave for her teaching job at 6 in the morning (and whose live-in maid has also left without a bye-your-leave), is having sleepless nights and pre-dawn hysterics, waiting for the stand-in help to arrive before sunrise so that she can run to catch the train to reach her school by the morning bell.

Maids rule, period. Eavesdrop on any conversation involving working moms, and you are sure to listen to complaints about their maids (when they are there) or condolences (when they have left). Maids do not come on time, maids do not come at all, maids go AWOL interminably, yet mysteriously and quarrelsomely turn up when you optimistically try to replace them. They are often tardy, oftener temperamental and, a few times (very few, to be honest) thieving. And if they do deign to come somewhat regularly, you’d better count your lucky stars and stop counting flaws and faults in their housework.

Some women are maid-lucky, they have trusted maids who are paragons of perfection and punctuality. Some are plain maid-unlucky, and spend a major portion of lives searching for, or training, or waiting for, or agonizing over, or searching again for…you get the drift? But maid-luck is as fickle as maid-mood (i.e. whether your maid is chirpy or grumpy) and all we can do is hope and pray that we are maid-for-each-other…and do the housework when they are AWOL. There is no maid-to-order solution, is there?

COPY-KITTEN

My younger daughter lives in hand-me-downs and hope. Hoping that she will soon be as big as her elder sibling. The word ‘small’ is absent from her vocabulary (she pronounces it as ‘malls’ – a fallout of living in mall-infested Mumbai).

She is always frantically imitating her sister (when she is not fighting with her):
sitting like her(often with a book which she flips through importantly),
studying like her (she’s put all her elder sister’s old school-books in an old school bag, which she takes to ‘school’ daily and does her scribbly-homework in),
talking like her (like an echoing-miniature, sometimes with hilarious results),
dressing like her (or insisting to – to keep peace I try to buy co-ordinated clothing),
playing like her (this begins well but ends badly, usually in a fight, because toys not shared are snatched),

having her hair cut like her (they recently had matching mushroom-haircuts, though they look as different as ebony and ivory),
…even sometimes sleeping like her.

We call her copy-kitten, a sobriquet which suits her purr-fectly.

MOTHER’S DAY…AND MONTH…AND YEAR EVER AFTER

My maa is the unsentimental type,
She's not moved by any Mother’s Day hype.

(She’s not a person who cuddled and snuggled or read bedtime stories to us. But she always managed to cook our favourite dishes, and sew new outfits and knit new sweaters into which we could snuggle up, anyway. She’s still busy-fingered, clack-clacketing knitting needles and trailing strands of wool, knitting for her four granddaughters.)

Her knees give her trouble, her back gives her pain,
Yet when I need a helping hand, she’ll visit again.

(When my elder daughter was born, I stayed with her for three months. She would get up at dawn, cook all kinds of food supposedly good for lactating mothers, go to work, come back late after shopping for 1001 baby-stuff, AND, after all this, would stay up half the night singing lullabies to the baby, just so that I could sleep a little.
She stayed with me for five months after my younger daughter was born, and helped me just as much as before, if not more.)

She never uses make-up, her hair’s almost white,
Yet she’s fun and sporting, and a FRIEND all right.

(My brother and I never really had any generation-gap issues with her. She’s such a calm person, that we spontaneously and naturally shared all our adolescent indiscretions with her. She let go so confidently, never panicking, hardly-ever scolding. We came running back to her with our confidences. Now that the decades have ironed out the adult-child barriers, there is an ease, a comfort, a warmth, a PEACE, whenever she visits.)

You may think she’s boring, a plain-dull house-wife,
Yet she travels a lot and experiments with life.

(When we were young, she would read up, write-down and cook-up new recipes from newspapers and magazines. The whole family loved her kitchen-surprises. She would collect knitting-patterns and embroidery-designs and she also learnt dress-making. My childhood wardrobe was full of maa-made garments. All this while looking after a family of six almost single-handedly.
Now that we are all grown-up, she and her girlie-gang of sisters and cousins often take off together, traveling to various parts of India, usually to places with a religious connect. And from all accounts, the entire group of giggly sixty-pluses have a blast together.)


She never reads my blogs, though she’s hooked to Microsoft solitaire,
HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY, Maa, and week and month and year.

(Thanks for being strong as a rock, comforting as a cushion. I wish you were here.)

TAGORE AND THE TALENTED BENGALI

Today is Pochisey Baisakh (the 25th day of Baisakh month in the Bengali calendar), and Bengalis all over the world are probably celebrating Rabindra-Jayanti, the birth-anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore, the unchallenged Colossus of Bengali culture.

Little girls in plaits and pleated saris will sing Rabindrasangeet (Tagore’s songs) and dance with lissome, undulating (if un-athletic) movements (Rabindranitya). Little boys, chafing in uncomfortable kurta-pajamas (or dhotis) will recite lisping poems from SHISHU (The Child). Their suddenly-self-conscious parents will clear their throats and launch into reinditions of songs, poems, or verse-plays from the prolific output of the Gurudev (Spiritual Father), accompanied by the tabla and the harmonium. The chief guest will place the mandatory garland-of-white-blossoms on the framed portrait of the white-bearded, visionary-eyed, loose-robed gentleman. The boredom of listening to his (the chief-guest’s) long bhason (speech) about the ‘importance of Kabiguru (Poet-prophet-teacher) in Bengali life and culture’ will be somewhat mitigated by the tantalizing aroma of frying luchis (a preparation of refined flour) and alurdom (curried potatoes). Finally, having gorged on food and culture, everybody will return home, criticising the performance of the neighbour’s son/daughter (“Ki aar emon gaye” – no great shakes) and praising their own offspring (“Ki darun aabriti korlo, aamar toh chokhey jal eshey giyechhilo” – his recitation brought tears to my eyes) in true Bengali spirit.

But such obvious (and sometimes odious) panegyrics aside, Tagore is present in the Bengali’s life and self-fashioning in subliminal, sub-conscious, all-encompassing ways. All Bengalis will proudly declare to the rest of the world that Rabindranath Tagore was the FIRST Indian to receive the Nobel Prize (For literature, for his book of poems – GITANJALI - Song Offerings). The Bengali holds his head high during the national anthem, Jana gana mana adhinayak jaya hey (Hail the ruler of the hearts and minds of the people), because Tagore penned it. Each Bengali has his own individual relationship with Tagore’s poems and songs (the bearded-bespectacled-Bengali-intellectual has an almost proprietory relationship with Tagore’s novels, plays and paintings as well).

Most Bengalis grow up force-fed on his songs. That is not to say that they do not like it. When I was young, my father would often, in the evenings, open the battered blue-bound family-copy of GITABITAN (a collection of Tagore’s songs) and randomly sing songs in his untrained-but-melodious baritone and we would all join in at will; Didia (my cousin) would hum a few notes and I would amateurishly dance my self-choreographed dances.

Now, with my daughters, I am going through the rich legacy Tagore has left for children, the simple-but-graded stories and the lyrical nuanced poems of SAHAJ PATH (Easy Reader). I share their wonder at:
“Kal chhilo dal khali,
Aaj phuley jaye bhorey;
Bol dekhi tui maali,
Hoy shey kemon korey?”

("Yesterday’s bare branches
Are today in full flower;
Can you tell me, O gardener,
Who wroughts this strange power?") – Imperfect translation by me.

Each Bengali grows up with his own memories of Tagore. His lyrics-of-many-moods comfort us, cheer us, make us weep, sustain us through the seasons of joy and sorrow, hope and despair. All nostalgia-haunted-Bengalis, separated from home and childhood-friends by time or distance, have sung (or lip-synched or listened to) “Purano shei diner katha bhulbi kirey haye (How can we forget those old days…)”. My aunt had once told me (when I was dismissive of Tagore as overly-sentimental and old-fashioned), that as we grew older, the relevance of Tagore would increase. How true she was! Now in my thirties, though I still have a lot of uncharted Tagore-territory to travel, and though I still do not agree with a lot of his opinions and emotions, in my heart the bond has grown stronger.

HAPPINESS IS A ...FULL SHOEBOX

Shoe-shopping makes my entire family happy. I get to spend money guilt-freely (SHOES come under the NECESSARY ITEMS-category), the kids love trying on new stuff and the maid loves the shoeboxes.

I prefer keeping shoes wrapped in clear plastic bags, so that I get to know what is inside. I used to throw away the shoe-boxes, till my maid came to stay with us. She resolutely hoards the boxes in an empty cabinet…and then they keep turning up in the most unexpected places.

There is one once-white shoebox (KITTENS, Size 20, blue booties with red-and-yellow laces for my younger daughter, outgrown and given away long back) crammed full of rubber/plastic rabbits/lions/puppies/cats, neatly arranged on my daughter’s toy-shelf, which is taken down when the animals are ‘bathed’.

One such grey rather-worse-for-wear shoebox (CATWALK, Size 40, black/bronze slip-on sandals for self, also rather worse-for-wear) is hidden in my clothes cupboard, full to the brim with various socks and scarves I hardly wear in sweltering Mumbai (but they walk me back to happy holidays in Darjeeling and Gangtok).

Another REEBOK-trainers-box (white-and-blue with red soles; my ‘comfort-shoes’) is a storehouse for discarded crayons, pencils, erasers and God-knows-what-else, which await a run-through by me before being delegated to the dustbin.

My maid keeps her own stuff (from hankies to hairclips) in a forest-green shoebox (WOODLANDS, Size 42, tan suede semi-formals for weekend-dressing).

Open any cupboard, search any shelf, and, sure enough, there’s a shoebox full of stuff 'packed' by my maid (she must have been a secretary with a filing-cabinet-fetish in a past life).

Yesterday, I took my daughters out to a nearby shop (THE SHOE FACTORY) to buy two pairs of grey- blue floaters. And, because there were discounts (Buy 2, get 20% off, buy 3, get 25% off), I gifted myself a pair of coffee-coloured sandals (I’m DEFINITELY caught in a black/brown/beige rut). The smart new shoes are gracing the shoe rack, and the shiny empty shoeboxes are waiting for my maid to fill them up.

OUT-RAGEOUS!

I live in a large residential complex, full of well-maintained highrises, landscaped gardens, 24-hour security and a clubhouse with gym, pool, playing area, et al. I also live in A.D. 2008, when India has supposedly been independent for over 60 years, with a Constitution claiming equality for all its citizens.
So can anybody explain the atrocious anomaly of the notice in front of the club which says "MAIDSERVANTS NOT ALLOWED". Long, long ago, the colonial rulers declared "Dogs and Indians not Allowed", barring the 'natives' entry to posh clubs meant only for the 'whites'. It was unjust, demeaning and dehumanising. The freedom struggle was meant to change all that.
Sorry, but it did not. We still have discriminations - against the poor, against other religions/castes/classes/genders, even against people not dressed 'appropriately' (who are denied entry to certain restaurants/nightclubs). The OTHER is always hated and barred.
My maid (I dislike the term 'servant') lives with me, cares for and loves my children. She goes to this club when she is accompanying the children, who sometimes like to play there. She is the support-system who allows me to have a career, a life of my own. She is a free citizen who lives in a free country, the 'largest democracy in the world'. She is certified sane, has no criminal record, and is a professional who is earning money legitimately. She is also completely invaluable to me.
Then why is she being denied entryto the club - which, by definition, means a common space to be enjoyed by all members. I am a tenant, so I am a member by default; so are my husband and daughters. WHY is this club out-of-bounds for maid-servants (what about man-servants?)? Because they are poor? Because they are not owners/tenants/heirs of owners? Because they do not have a voice?
It is such a SHAME that such blatant discrimination persists in a free country. I'm really, really disgusted. Wouldn't you be?

SLEEPING BEAUTIES

Sometimes I feel that children are most lovable when they are sleeping. So quiet and cute. I am blogging in peace right now because my two daughters are sleeping like angels in the next room. They sleep all over the bed, sometimes imitating each other's postures - both curved like C-s, or lying like I-s on their tummies, sometimes moving around till they form a T or an L or a V. On more acrobatic nights they might form a P or a D. The only letter I fear is X, which means that one has got up on top of the other, which is usually followed by a muffled cry and one of them waking up (and obviously me, too). It is X-tremely tiresome to be woken up in the middle of the night to untangle them from each other (and from the jumbled-up bedclothes) and restore order in the alphabet-soup.

BEAUTY IS TRUTH, TRUTH BEAUTY?

Keats did not have the whole picture, maybe because he died young, unmarried and childless. Children often have the disconcerting habit of hitting not-so-welcome 'truth-nails' right on our heads, puncturing the notions of 'beauty' buoying our middle-age-ing egos.
Take a case in point. My elder daughter attended her new class today, and returned voluble with stories of her first day, new friends and new class-teacher. Warmly interested, I asked whether she thought her teacher was good. Taking me at face-value, my daughter relplied that she was very good-looking.
Rushing in where angels fear to tread, I teasingly asked whether the teacher was more beautiful than me, and was promptly put in my place when she shot back, "onek beshi (much more) beautiful, ma" (in an emphatic, how-can-you-think-otherwise tone). As they say, from the mouth of babes...and here I was, over-confidently assuming that all little girls look up to their mothers as icons of beauty/accomplishment/whatever. (Just goes to prove that when the physics is solid, the psychology is suspect!)
I admit that when it comes to me, there is quite a LOT to look up to (all of size XL). But I felt very much deflated by my daughter's TRUTH-fulness. You could say it served me right, after all it is April Fool's Day... and no fool like a self-deluding, way-overweight BEAUTY-fool.

GIFT-WRAPPED IN BROWN PAPER

Today I spent three mundane-magical hours covering my elder daughter's newly-acquired schoolbooks and notebooks in brown paper.
Shiny, plastic-coated brown paper, fresh off the roll. My daughters helped and hindered - taking away the scissors, sticking the cellotape all over their fingers, allowing me to stick the labels only after I uttered a frequently-changed "password" (which I kept forgetting).
As I busily cut and folded the paper, trying to shape the edges and corners neatly, the brown paper turned to sepia in my eyes. Sepia-tinted with memories.
When I was young, my brother and I loved this annual rite of passage to a new class. The crisp smell and bright colours of the new books , tantalisingly hidden under the brown covers, invited hours of exploration. Writing our names on the precisely-pasted labels gave an unmatched thrill of possession.
I saw the same thrill on my daughter's face today. Exploring and possessing - the age-old human instincts.
And so a chore became an adventure for both of us.