WHAT'S IN A NAME..ER..PACKAGING?

A lot, actually.

Especially if first impressions have a way of lingering...as they do with me.

I have this favourite skincare brand, Forest Essentials. They are made with natural ingredients, they are made in India. Open a jar or uncap a bottle and delicious smells of jasmine and rose, sandalwood and orange neroli waft out to seduce your senses. And their creams, gels, oils, pure waters and lotions are light as air and soft as flowers on your skin. And they come in this aesthetically minimalistic natural packaging. Clear bottles and jars with stark black caps, small, neat brown and green lettering, and the whole delicious elixir packed in a classily unobtrusive brown-paper colour packaging. I'm getting carried away. But they are really really good and lust-worthy.

Till they changed their packaging. Today, I stepped into a nearby Forest Essentials outlet, only to have my eyes assaulted by the brightest assortment of "Indian" colours outside a Sabyasaachi show - magenta, purple, and oodles of gold. 

It's true that the earlier packaging was so blend-into-the-background kind that although I have had my Forest Essentials stuff right arranged on my bathroom shelves, my inquisitive mom and mom-in-law never noticed them. Or disapprovingly frowned at their printed prices.


But that discretion in packaging was half the charm of Forest Essentials. Right down to the discreet and intricate Tree of Life logo in an antique gold colour. And now they look like a tacky gold-bedecked cousin of Shahnaz Hussein products.

CONFESSION: I have never been able to buy a Shahnaz Hussein product because I get completely put off by the heavily-red-henna-haired, heavy-duty-diamond-beringed, heavy-kohl-lined visage of Shahnaz herself. If this is the way one looks after using the products, then I'd rather use Biotique, which is also in the same price brackets but which are eye-pleasingly packaged in subdued green and sober white.

So, there I was - ready and eager to pick up a Forest Essentials aloe vera day gel and a Forest Essentials jasmine and patchouli night cream. But so disappointed was I with the too-bright too-new too-glossy packaging that I walked out, saving myself a couple of thousand bucks. I know that it is all the same INSIDE, but it just does not seem the same. The drool quotient has gone, for me at least.

Maybe later, when my eyes have got better adjusted to this gracious-lady-turned-circus-performer change.

Have you hated it when a favourite product suddenly underwent a change of appearance/packaging?

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!!!!

BLOGGING FM - FREQUENCY MODULATED

I am visiting my blog after a long, long time.
The reason for the hiatus is WORK. Here goes the list:

• Two daughters - way too much to handle, at least for me. It is fun and frustrating and fulfilling, but it is very definitely WORK.
• Full-time job as teacher in a college - paper correction, tutorial checking, class lectures, and election-duty-whenever-there-are-elections.
• New part-time job as copywriter - now that I have to go twice a week, it is simply not leaving any free time for me. Although I am lovin' it, the deadlines, the thinking from the other point of view, the variety of products we work on...

Earlier, I used to blog about once a week, sometimes twice. I would feel restless and guilty if I did not post anything in a week. But blogging is my stressbuster, something that I love to do. So, why should I get hassled about not being able to blog?

Now, I have made peace with my inner compulsive blogger. Now, the frequency will lessen. It'll have to, if I have to manage two kids, two jobs, one spouse (as of yet) and one self (which needs some amount of sleep).

Maybe once a fortnight, or once a month. Maybe, whenever I feel like. Maybe, if and when I find time. Maybe...

HOW OFTEN DO YOU BLOG?

THE BALM OF BOOKS

Things have been rather downbeat lately.

The teachers’ strike has been called off, and we have resumed our classes, but bureaucracy has tied a thick red tape around our salaries and is refusing to release it anytime soon.

The forty days’ strike meant an enormous amount of backlog of syllabus-to-be-completed and tutorial-projects-to-be-corrected which now has to be taken up through hectic lung-busting lectures and tedious hours of red-pen-wielding.

And to top it all, all holidays have been cancelled as we have to ‘compensate’ for the strike period absenteeism. That is fair enough, but it does mean getting up early on holidays, which I absolutely abhor.

So, I definitely need a balm for my overworked brain and going-around-in-circles mind.

And for me, the best balm has always been BOOKS.

Books keep my head out of the water.
Books help me float in the mess of this world.
Books are a place I can go when everything else stresses me out.

Fo a change, this time, I put away my Crime Fiction and my Chick Lit (both are my fave escape-routes), and picked up some serious LITERATURE.

William Golding’s THE SPIRE. Toni Morrison’s TAR BABY.

Both Nobel Prize Winners. But so very different from each other. Golding, a white Brit male, very much in the centre of the world. Morrison, a black American woman, very much a marginalized entity. And they write about diverse worlds and different eras in these books.

But in their insight into and compassion about the human condition, in their moulding of language into a thing of beauty and awe, they are somehow similar.

Nothing uplifts me like good literature. Nothing makes me feel so wide-eyed and thankful and amazed. And I keep on adding to my list of great books.

WHICH BOOK/S LIFT YOU OUT OF THE MUDDLE F THIS WORLD?

‘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?

HOLE = HOPE

Having recently purchased a black leather belt, I was very pleasantly surprised to find that it was too loose for my waist. The goody-goody guardian angel in my mind praised, “Maybe the tummy tyres have deflated a bit.” But the nasty devil in my subconscious said with a sneer, “Must have been an oversized man’s belt. Or a belt with manufacturing defects. Which explains why it was on sale. And what with the amount of ice cream you are hogging (during the break from work because of the ongoing teachers’ strike), fat chance you have of reducing all that tummy fat.”

I shooed the horned horror away and went to the friendly neighbourhood mochi (shoe-repairer) to get an extra hole drilled into the belt. The gentleman in question knows me quite well, courtesy my umbrellas with the broken sticks and my shoes with the broken straps. He asked me, “Kitney holes chahiye?” (How many holes do you want in the belt?).

Hesitatingly ambitious, I said, “Do bana dijiye.” (Make two extra holes).

Deftly poking new holes in the black leather, he aked, “Aur ek bana doon?” (Shall I make one more hole?).

Banishing a wildly improbable vision of myself with a clinched hourglass waist, I despairingly said, “Kya fayda? Do se zyada to lagnewala nahi hai kabhi.” (What’s the use? There is hardly any chance of me ever needing more than two extra holes in the belt).

Lifting his head from his work with a huge encouraging smile, the man urged, “Aas rakhney mey kya harj haye?” (What’s the problem in hoping?).

And so I agreed. And purchased MOTIVATION for the minuscule sum of two rupees. And returned home with a belt that has three extra holes to tighten around my waist. Three extra notches of hope that “YES I CAN...trim the tummy" (Sorry, Obama, for frivolously misapplying your slogan).

HEAD OVER HEELS

That, unfortunately, has never been the case with me. My head has, is, and always will be, over feet which are encased in flat footwear. Not heels.

Once upon a time, long ago, I had tried heels. Drastically high platform heels. Wooden ones making a horse-like racket on the hard cement floor. It had not been a successful stride. In fact, it had not been a stride at all. After a failed falter, heels became another one of those allergy-inducing objects which I could see, but could not use.

And, thereafter, I have always been a Cinderella in rubber slippers. No dainty-toed high-heeled glass slippers for me.

So I know all about the platform, the wedge and the vicious/vertiginous stiletto (the lady-boss of all heels). I even know about the non-threatening kitten heels, which are less than 1.5 inches in height. These innocuous-looking low-heels are treacherous creatures, because they can tempt heel-allergic flat-footers like me. But I am, and sadly will always be, a full-grown tabby cat, and no longer anything like a kitten. And so, even kitten heels trip me up.

Any heel, and my ankle rebels. A self-defeating rebellion, as it ends up getting twisted in the bargain. But I end up all in a tumble. Embarrassing!

Any heel-thy person will diagnose my disease as vertigo. For me, heel-thy is definitely not well-thy. I am scared of heights. Not on a rollercoaster (I love them on an empty stomach). But on my heels. I prefer facing life with my feet planted solidly on the ground.

There are distinct disadvantages. Shoe shops are apparently meant for the well-heeled, as most of the shelves are devoted to the sky-high variety of shoes. Whenever I enter a shoe-shop and say, "Flat sandals only, please", I am directed to some obscure corner where a shelf and a half displays the frumpiest of designs in the most boring of colours.

Even when flat shoes are 'in', like they were 'last season' with ballerina-flats, this is usually a passing fad, and women soon abandon their firm-on-the-ground-walk for a balancing-totter. Even the once-flat Kolhapuri chappals have turned traitor and sprouted heels.

I can be the darling of feminists (who rage against the tyranny of heels and the consequent commoditisation of body-image) and the podiarists (who rage against the foot and tendon problems caused by heels). But that is a limited appeal.

Alas, I can never be a Posh Spice, who apparently even goes gymming in stilettoes (I hardly ever go gymming, so I do not wear stilettoes). All heel-addicts will rave about the sex-appeal of heels. How a shoe has to have a 'defined heel' to be in the 'sexy shoe' category. How heels transform us into objects of lust and desirability (check out any heel-vocabulary: 'stripper shoes' have 3" platform heels, 'hooker heels' are at least 3-4",'slut shoes' have 5-5 3/4 " heel...). My head is reeling after all those vertical stats.

To come back to the issue of sex-symbols and heels, I had once read that the legendary Greta Garbo (the reclusive and unattainable silent-era Hollywood beauty) always used to wear a pair of flat and comfy men's bedroom slippers (size 10 or thereabouts) under the long, trailing, lovely ballgowns she wore while filming.

That settled the matter for me. I chose the classic Greta Garbo over the upstart Posh Spice. And I'll stick to my slides and mules and unsexy-but-safe flat Dr Scholl's-type foowear. And my lovely red mojris from Mochi's, which make me feel like royalty. Even when I am not on a pedestal.

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!

TEA, COFFEE, OR...?

I am in the middle of the latest book by Alexander McCall Smith in his No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series, THE MIRACLE AT SPEEDY MOTORS. McCall Smith says in the book, "The telling of a story, like virtually everything in this life, was always made all the easier by a cup of tea."

This delightfully languid series features the 'traditionally-built' (oh, what a lovely excuse for obesity!) detective-of-life's-little-problems and dispenser-of-wise-wand-warm-solutions, Mma Precious Ramotswe, and her assistant,the much-more-rigid Mma Grace Makutsi. Both of them drink plentiful cups of tea throughout the day, with Mma Ramotswe preferring the red bush tea (lovely forest-y name, don't you think?).

When McCall Smith praises the virtues of tea as a nerves-soother,temper-calmer, tongue-loosener, soul-refresher,camaraderie-builder, feel-gooder, most of us in India would echo, "How true".

Tea, perhaps, unites more people than any religion does. But, just as religions divide themselves into factions and sects and whatnots, tea is also divided into a number of different categories - of colour, cut and method-of-preparation.

We grew up knowing that there were two 'best' kinds of tea - the Assam variety and the Darjeeling variety - and, being parochial, fond-of-debates-at-the-drop-of-a-hat Bengalis, we vociferously championed the Darjeeling variety (never mind if Shubhas Ghising and his Gorkhaland cronies were trying to chuck Bengalis out of Darjeeling). A good cup of tea was made by adding the aromatic leaves of Darjeeling tea to just-boiling-water, taking it off the gas/stove, letting it soak for a while, and adding sugar and/or milk only if you liked it that way. True tea connoisseurs preferred not to let anything dilute the taste and fragrance of tea, sniffing in the aroma deeply and pleasurably and closing their eyes in ecstasy before taking the first sip of the elixir.

What a culture shock when I shifted to Mumbai! Here the most-loved cuppa is the one which is boiled with large amounts of milk till possibly nothing remains of the distinctive tea-aroma. To add to the sacrilege (from the Bengali point of view), people often add things like adrak (ginger) and elaichi (cardamom) to the over-bolied concoction! And the resultant muddy, thickish liquid is gulped down with relish, either the whole cup, or half-a-cup (the cutely named 'cutting' chai).

And coffee, the hot 'South-Indian filter coffee', is a SERIOUS CONTENDER to the supremacy of tea! Coffee, for most Bengalis, is a diversion-drink, to be taken in fancy bone-china mugs (coffee MUST be served in mugs, tea in CUPS, or so we were told) when guests drop in, especially in winter. It is emphatically NOT a dozens-of-time-a-day-drink-of-sustenance, for Bengalis at least.

And as for the new-fangled entrants like green tea, and herbal tea, all true-tea-addicted Bengalis will say, "Jatto shob! (Bosh!!). We'd rather believe in ANTI-CAPITALISM than in ANTI-OXIDANTS, you see. Tea is for pure pleasure, health-issues are completely secondary.

Not to take sides on the tea-vs-coffee debate, let me confess that I am a tea-totaller. I DO NOT DRINK TEA and I DO NOT DRINK COFFEE. Not the hot varieties, anyway. I like my tea cold, with lemon, or with ice-cream (they did a great job of that at Dolly's in Dakshinapan, the tea-boutique in Kolkata). And when I go to Barista, or Cafe Coffee Day, I have my frappe or my latte ice-cold (but no chocolate, please). And if there is fresh-lime-soda (or jaljira or nimbu-paani) I'll opt for that!

I guess that makes me a FREAK in the eyes of most tea/coffee/both- addicted Indians.What's your brew?

FEDERER-R-R-ROARS INTO HISTORY

I AM ECSTATIC. Because ROGER FEDERER has won this year's FRENCH OPEN.

• Equalling Sampras (another fave)' s record of 14 Grand Slams.
• Becoming a champ on all four surfaces, a long ten years after Agassi.
• Settling the debate on who is the greatest player of all time (in my mind, though, there was no debate, it was only a matter of numbers).

I know, there are the nitpicking-Nadal-naysayers who will smirk about his huge deficit against his Spanish-nemesis. It WAS a stroke of luck that Nadal got eliminated early on in this year's French Open. But then, champions are made of talent, hard work, determination, and a generous dose of luck-by-chance. And who cares, actually? The records books will write down his name as the winner, and that is enough for me.

Actually, I am not just a Federer-fan, but a Federer-fanatic. You may wonder at a sedate 36-year-old college-teacher behaving in such an uncharacteristically juvenile manner, but even I was surprised, a few years back, when I started following Federer's matches regularly, by my passionate involvement with his game and with his destiny as a tennis player. I had thought that kind of nail-chewing intensity of tension (while he played), that kind of euphoria of elation (when he won) and, yes, that kind of broken-hearted agony of depression (whenever he lost) was a thing of my volatile teenage past.

But then that is what Federer is all about. He has made me revisit my adolescence. He has made me feel again the pure see-saw of emotions that the best of sports can kindle in the spectator. During the French Open final, there was a fan in the stands carrying a banner which said ROGER and MAGIC, with the words written like a + sign, intersecting at the G.

That's Federer for me.

WHAT DOES YOUR SHOPPING TROLLEY SAY ABOUT YOU?

A few days back, my daughters and I had gone to Hypercity in Malad to pick up a few things (one of our last jaunts before summer vacation ends). As always happens when the kids come along, we strolled along the aisles picking up unnecessary things from the shelves. Things like lollipops (the sweet kind), easy-to-make crème brulee and vanilla pudding mixes (the very sweet kind) and chocolate donuts (the very very sweet kind) – you get the drift?

And, with our trolley groaning under all those superbly superfluous calories, we waited in the check-out line, using our time to pick up a few more mama-please-I-want-them-so-much-otherwise-I-will-bawl-my-lungs-out stuff like bubblegum and chocolate-bars.

In front of us in the queue stood a lean and muscled television actor (Gaurav Chopra? I have a BAD TV-celebrity-quotient) accompanied, presumably, by his slim and pretty girlfriend and two overloaded trolleys. I STARED – at them and at the trolleys:

Dozens of Sofit soymilk tetrapacks – check
Tubs of low-cal yogurt – check
Countless tetrapacks of Real Active fruit juice – check
Kilos of cucumbers – check
Quite a few watermelons – check
One tiny bottle of olive oil – check.

I looked from their calorie-low shopping trolleys to the six-pack abs and the sixteen-inch waist. Then, with a sigh, I looked at my calorie-flow trolley and my tummy-tyres (spares).

It figured.

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!

WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM A FRIEND…

...I’ll try to come up with an HONEST POST. A ten-point honest (no fingers crossed, no bite-my-tongue) confession:

1. I love shopping. And even more than that, I love shopping all by myself, without the family tagging along.
   


2. I may moan and groan about being overweight, but I love eating too much to be serious about any weight-loss attempt. Whenever I lose a bit of weight, I put it right back by eating out in celebration.
   


3. I always read the frivolous Mumbai Mirror before the serious Times of India, much to the chagrin of the spouse. I’m a Page-3 junkie, and I get my fix before educating myself with the Page-1 stuff.
   


4. I love frothy, no-brainer chick-lit books, especially the ones written by Sophie Kinsella. And I can keep re-reading my tattered Agatha Christies forever and ever.
   


5. I hate it when something I cook turns out to be not-so-good, and when people (myself included) refuse to eat it.
   


6. I hate being compared unfavourably to anybody, especially the MIL.
   


7. I am really, really scared of lizards.
   


8. I am happiest on Saturday nights, when there’s the w—h-o-l-e of Sunday still remaining before week/work drudgery begins again.
   


9. Deep-down I believe that overpopulation is the root cause of all our problems.
   


10. I cry really really easily, even in front of other people, much to the spouse’s embarrassment. And when I just can’t stop, I have to pretend that something has got into my eyes and is irritating my contact lenses.
    
11. And here's a bonus confession, because honesty is addictive: I have not watched a single IPL match. I OD-ed on cricket long back. Give me a Federer-Nadal tennis match anyday. On second thoughts, any match where Federer wins. Because if he loses (as he so often does nowadays) it just makes me cry all over again.
    

A big thanks to Sayani, who has tagged me to write this post and has given me an award to egg me on...

So, here I am, cheering you on, trying to spread honesty, now do come up with an honest confession about yourself.

LESSONS IN BELLY-GERENCE

• Every summer vacation, I re-distribute my weight. No, I do not lose any weight – far from it. But running after my daughters, doing all the housework in the absence of the maid (who also goes for a forty-day sabbatical), feasting on mangoes and getting up late has a strange effect on my anatomy.
  
  I lose weight around my face and arms. And this reluctant-to-leave-me weight settles around my already rotund stomach. Which gives rise to various heavily-loaded situations and learning experiences:
  
  
• The salesgirl from ‘Dermawear’ sees me shopping at Big Bazaar and pounces. “Why don’t you buy one of our abdominal belts?” Sucker that I am, I end up buying one, lured by promises of ‘reduction of waistline by at least two inches’. (A drop in the ocean, but beggars can’t be choosers. Or losers, in this case.)
  On wearing this new-fangled contraption on another mall-sojourn, my tummy looks a tad tighter to begin with, but I end up all sweaty, hot and bothered because it clings in the heat. And the belt ends up all rolled-up like a sock around my waist. And my jeans keeps slipping down because of the sock-belt. Not an experience I’d care to repeat, initially-tighter-tummy notwithstanding.
  
• The Li’l Cat, my elder daughter, is making sentences from adjectives. I advise her that it is better to write a sentence where the meaning of the adjective becomes clear. For instance, instead of writing “Tom is lazy”, it makes more sense to write, “Tom is lazy and he never helps his mother with the housework” (hint, hint). After following my advice for a few adjectives, she comes across the word “FAT” and writes, “My mother is fat”, claiming that the sentence is self-explanatory.
  
• The Copy-kitten, my younger daughter, is drawing shapes. After a few shaky squares and careful circles, she draws a huge oblong blob, taking up almost the whole of a page, smiles with a sense of achievement, and proudly says, “Eta holo mamma petu” (This is mummy’s tummy).
  
  LESSONS LEARNT:
  Salesgirls encourage self-delusion.
  Family brings about self-awareness.
  
  Now that I’ve learnt my lessons, it would nice if the belly would lessen a little.

THE AUNTY DIARIES

It actually started when I was all of nine. At that tender age, I became a maashi (aunty) to my cousin-sister’s son. His sweetly-lisped “Aunty” was the first trickle of something that has now become a deluge.

In my slim and svelte twenties, when people called me aunty (these cranks were few and far between), I reacted with incredulous raised-eyebrows: “Who are you kidding?”

In my burgeoning early-thirties, I was mortified. “OMG, what’s the matter with me?” Any stray aunty-call would make me start worrying about wrinkles, white hair and waistlines.

[CONFESSION BOX: There are two vegetable vendors near my building. The first one calls me ‘aunty’ and overcharges me. The second one also overcharges me, but calls me ‘bhabi’ (sister-in-law). I scrupulously avoid the former and frequent the latter.]

Aunty-fication, undoubtedly, IS a mortifying process. I used to regard it as the final crossing over into misshapen, melancholic middle-age. There are tons of ads (especially the hair-dye ones) where we see the lady-in-question hyper-ventilate with horror and shudder with shame at being addressed “aunty”. It seems to be the denial of desirability – of youth, beauty and loveliness.

But once I did become an undeniable, full-fledged AUNTY (with a lot of emphasis on the full), once the trickle turned into a deluge, I realized that there are a lot of advantages to aunty-hood as well. This happened a couple of years back, as I entered the mid-thirties (full-blown rather than fulsome).

For starters, I have regained my peace of mind. Resigned to my lifetime membership to the aunty-brigade, the aunty-calls no longer have the power to unnerve, irritate or depress me. If I do raise my eyebrows, it is merely to say, “Oh yeah? So what?”.

I am no longer combative, like a cousin who refuses to respond if people call her “aunty”. Aunty-hood is no more a disaster-zone or an enemy-territory that I am unwilling to enter. I have decided to accept, agree and adapt – the first step being the regaining of my sense of humour about the whole issue.

Aunty-fication has become a liberating experience. No longer do I have to bother about the MALE GAZE (for more on that scintillating subject, see my other blog here). I no longer feel compelled to dress/walk/behave as an object of male scrutiny. Since the males in question hardly notice me (Mumbai has more than its fair share of PYTs and yummy-mummies), I can wear what I want, do what I want, be what I want to be. Without caring two hoots for male approval/approbation. Ah, the freedom of it all!

And I know that when people like me now, it’s for my inner qualities rather than my outer quantities (quantity being the operative word here).

So you see, it is not about sour grapes at all (cross my heart). The aunty diaries are all about the seven steps to attaining nirvana, actually:
DEFIANCE to CONSTERNATION to DISMAY to CONFLICT to ACCEPTANCE to CALMNESS to BLISS.

What’s your take?

HPY BDAY 2 U

I celebrated my birthday sometime in February and I was overwhelmed by the amount of attention I received. My mailbox was flooded and my phone beeped throughout the day as a flood of sms-es poured in.

Crossword, the bookshop where I am a regular browser-buyer and a member, sent me a card, a gift voucher for a spectacles shop (smart connection, that) and a discount coupon (smart business strategy).

My beauty parlour rang me up to wish me many happy returns and to remind me that I would get any service for Rs 100 free, an offer which I promptly accepted (resulting in a few golden streaks of hair upfront, and an additional spending of Rs 260).

Shopper’s Stop mailed me their greetings to ‘celebrate in style’ (presumably clothed in outfits purchased at their premises).

HDFC Credit Cards sms-ed me their good wishes, and the un-smsed hope of greater card usage in the next 365 days.

HSBC Bank did almost exactly the same (the differences were perhaps due to the fact that there I have a debit card).

Various Mutual Fund Managers e-mailed me their wishes, advising me to ‘invest in a happy future’.

Even my LIC agent joined the birthday-bandwagon by sms-ing similar good wishes with ditto advice.

Amazed at suddenly being showered with so much technologically-preset TLC and pre-recorded public attention, I felt like a virtual star. Nobody can feel lonely in today’s technology-enabled corporate world. I was bowled over by PR-pyaar (love). Care and Comfort for the customer is just an sms-away. I purchase, therefore I am. I buy, therefore I get wished on my birthday. WOW, that’s absolutely great for my self-esteem, is it not?.

Oh well, in the corporate PR-whirligig, I almost forgot to mention that my mother, sister-in law, brother, in-laws, cousin and some of my friends also called (I suspect they had all set reminders in their phone calendars, the way I always do). I’m just joking, many of them would have remembered, hopefully. The spouse did, without setting any reminders (not that I know of anyway).

And then, there were my daughters. The Lil Cat folded an A4 sheet of copier-paper and made a card in her crawling-uphill handwriting (complete with a Bible Verse advising me about the value of hard work – which she had apparently learnt in school that day). The Copy-kitten followed suit with a similar sheet of paper filled with scribbles in a yet-undiscovered script. On the great day, Lil Cat serenaded me on waking up (she, not me) with a rather complicated and uncommon birthday song invoking birds and animals, which she forgot midway. The Copy-kitten enthusiastically added to the chorus, with the emphasis on all the wrong places because at that time she was sitting on her potty and had to simultaneously attend to other pressures. And then they demanded, what’s for breakfast?

So that’s the way it is. Birthdays remind you of who you are (along with how old you are, of course, let's not get into that aspect of it at all). A customer. A mother. So if you want to be sms-ed and serenaded all over again next year, better get on with the job.

PAIN –ALYSIS

For the past fornight (and still continuing) the dominant sensation in my life has been TOOTHACHE. Make that TEETHache, gumache, jawache, cheekache, earache…

I have never really realised the ease and ruthlessness with which pain can have us at its mercy – striking anytime, beginning its offensive slowly and then swiftly building-up the intensity till very soon all you are aware of is the sheer THROB of pain.

Pain makes you self-centred, distracting you totally from any other work you may have at hand, making you run away from social encounters where you have to smile and make small talk, even making you treat your loved ones in an impatient, ill-tempered way. All you want to do is curl up and cry – just the two of you, you and the pain, till it loosens its grip and lets you go.

It is all very well for the dentist/doctor to be analytical about your pain. He will tap here and probe there, asking you where the pain is more and where it is less. He will try to track its growth, asking you when it begun , where it originated, and other difficult-to-remember questions, because by the time the pain has spread its tentacles, your suffering mind is too confused to dissect and discuss it impersonally.

The only relief in these dark days have been the tiny pill of hope – the trusty but tardy pain-killers. As the pain-slaught increases, you reach for the oval pill and swallow it, skimming semi-consciously through the next hour or so, till the analgesic does its job and the waves of pain recede for a few hours. Till the next tidal torture wave.

One silver lining, though: My two daughters have got really scared of toothaches and are washing their mouths diligently after every meal and brushing their teeth with a precautionary thoroughness which gives me some amount of satisfaction.

DENTIST AT WORK: TEETH UNDER CONTRUCTION

I really am fed up to my teeth about my, well, teeth (or whatever remains of them). I’m a veteran visitor at the dentist’s, and I’m sure he’s planning an academic research paper on the subject of my teeth.

Various kinds of civil construction work continue to take place inside my mouth, leaving me feeling distinctly uncivil.

I’ve had root canals, metal crowns, ceramic crowns (in the inverted world of dental logic, steel crowns are more expensive than gold crowns, and ceramic ones are the costliest – figure that out), bridges and other architectural marvels in my mouth. Does that make me a big-mouth? I shudder to think what my real teeth look like under all that reconstruction. A bomb-hit, devastated, charred-and-filed to bits archaeological ruins of what was once a white and wince-free city?

I’ve had two wisdom teeth taken out. The remaining two should, by definition, make me a half-wit.

And now, I’ve got to go for another bridge-work, adding to the existing two. With the number of canals and bridges that I have, I sometimes feel like an oral replica of the city of Venice (and here I was hoping to be a Venus with a perfect smile).

So, there I’ll be again – in the dentist’s scary-chair, open-mouthed and resigned to my fate, wincing at the drill and blinking at the light. Oh, for the toothless joys of infancy/old age! Maybe, that is much less painful than the ruthless re-shaping of my dental geography.

ODE TO INDOLENCE

A beauty parlour offers much more than a makeover – it offers a few hours of complete indolence and indulgence, an experience so different from the rest of my rushed/panting life that it is almost surreal.

I’m not talking about the ten minute, pop-in-thread-eyebrows-pop-out kind of visit. There you are made to sit upright and uptight in a chair while a beautician painfully plucks out your eyebrows. All tampering, and no pampering.

I’m talking about longer visits, when I can leave all my daily cares outside the opaque glass doors and enter the warm and welcoming red-and-black interiors, lie down in one of the beds in the cubicles (don’t get any wrong ideas, though, it’s perfectly above board) and surrender myself to being pampered and fussed over.

There’s a head oil-massage, which I totally adore because of the way it relaxes my neck muscles. There’s a l-o-n-g two hour facial, which includes a decent back-rub and many complicated things being done to my face (including a thick mask of gooey stuff which covers my eyes and mouth and makes me feel like a sci-fi zombie for fifteen minutes). I close my eyes and go with the flow, rather, rub. My angel of a beautician takes it as a compliment when I doze off, since the whole rigmarole is supposed to be relaxing (the dim lights and soft music help).

Especially decadent is the combined manicure and pedicure, when you have two people simultaneously attending to (cleaning and cosseting) your usually-poor-and-overworked hands and feet. I feel like a thirty-minute celebrity!!!

But the pleasure comes at a price. And some pain, as well. It is not all unmitigated blissful eyes-closed floating-in-a-scented-cocoon kind of experience. When your belligerent blackheads are being dug out of their trenches, or your cussed cuticles being poked into shape, it is a painful battle for beauty. What agonies we suffer, what waxing of reluctant hairs and steaming of recalcitrant pores in our quest for beauty.

But for me, the pain is just a small part of the beauty-parlour-parcel. Even the ‘beauty’-bit is passé. What I crave is the pampering. And the forgetting of the clock and the phone for a few hours every month. When I step out, my freshly-pedicured feet are still floating on air. Till I reach home and come back to reality with an almighty thump.

THE UNBEARABLE SWEETNESS OF BEING (IN YOUNG LOVE)

This evening, the ‘ladies’ of the household were all watching an episode of the hugely popular syrupy-soppy-soap “Bidaai” (running successfully, and sentimentally, on Star Plus). Almost half-an-hour of the hour-long telecast was devoted to a pair of, er, devoted lovers having a rooftop midnight tryst at a picnic with their families a few days before their wedding (hopefully, unless the devious scriptwriter decides otherwise).

What struck me was the sheer inanity of the romantic meeting. The conversation, or lack of one, was punctuated with minute-long sighs, and gazing-at-each-other and gazing-at-the-moon. There was a lot of heavy breathing, hand-holding and half-smiles. There was lot of giving-of-lavish-compliments and making-of-promises-of-eternal-love, repeated ad nauseum for half-an-hour (with, thankfully, some ad-breaks between, for relief) . There was a lot of sugar, but absolutely no spice.

The overdose of calorie-rich cootchie-cooing made me irritated and nauseated. I tried to be less intolerant and sarcastic, thinking of my college days when the then-boyfriend-and-now-spouse and I must have exchanged similar hour-long idiocies, but I could only recall spicy fights and spicier making-ups.

Young love seems so unreal, so uninteresting, so vacuous-empty and so over-sweet, it can give any mature person like me diabetes. It is very definitely a great thing to experience (once or twice, or many times over), but a very awkward and annoying thing to witness. My maid, who is usually silent and wide-eyed, sneered and made catty comments about how this shower of mutual love will dry up, post-marriage. My mother hardly looked up from the Sudoku she was doing (give her a juicy in-law drama and the sudoku will lie forlorn). Only my elder daughter was glued and giggling, thrilled at her first exposure to ‘adult’ things like ‘love’.

I guess it’s all about which side of the fence you are. If you are young, then young love is the stuff of dreams and desires (I used to devour Mills and Boon paperbacks during adolescence). And if you’ve crossed the first-love-phase, then the sighs and cries will probably make you want to puke (I picked up one of the new ‘Indian’ Mills and Boons, but I couldn’t go beyond the first chapter). What's your take?