Lost & found

Just a day back I found one of my childhood friends on a popular friends networking site. I wasnt really ecstatic in finding him, but as always felt like "ah! Gotcha". His face hadnt changed a lot because one glance at the profile picture he had posted told me that it was indeed him. We had studied together in 1st std in a small little school, far away from my native. I was notorious there because I was always late for the 1st afternoon period. Reason being that I would play more than the others & finally have to eat lunch with both hands instead of one. So while teacher was out calling the attendance, i would be at the taps trying to wash off lunch leftovers from my face & hands & shirt and wherever else I managed to smear it. I remember him as a very pious guy perhaps because he had "vibhuthi" on his forehaed every single day that he came to school. I also have memories of him as an ardent Ayyappa devotee, because for some reason "ayyappo swamiye" used to come out of him at regular intervals. He was also the class topper in 1st std. I remember this clearly because achan was always pushing me to beat him at school. Besides all these, there is another bigger reason, why I hounded him on networking sites. I have very vivid memories of him getting beaten black and blue by his father, for any number of reasons.

Forgetting about the report card, not mentioning about a PTA meet, hiding answer papers because

he got only 48 in math & not 50. They sure didnt believe in sparing the rod or spoiling the child. Of course I have had my share of beatings & slaps both publicly and privately, but achan was never a tyrant, he was much easier to deal with. After 1st std we parted ways, he went to a boys school & I was sent to a convent. We used to visit their place once in a while so we were also invited for their house warming. I can clearly remember that the house was beside a canal or something. But by then, we were both grown up and had lost that innocence binds children irrespective of sex. When you are 12 or so, there this distinct charaterisation of boyish stuff and girly things. So we never cared about each other, after all he had his friends & I had mine. Years passed, and now i see him again and all those memories come flooding. I am yet to ask what is happening with him, though I feel it might be the same old routine. Sometimes i feel that all the friendships i had in school never withstood the test of time. They just withered away or simply gave way to stronger more fruitful bonds.

Of hugs, kisses & emotions

I come from a fairly emotional family which believes in expression of emotions quite plainly. When i was small my father used to say, "How will I know that you love me, unless you say so or do things that show that love?". He's right, no point hoarding all that love in your heart & not do anything about it or say nothing about it. I still remember how my brother & I used to jump at him, crawling all over him like monkeys, overjoyed when he came home on friday nights after his week long tour. When I became a big girl, i used to stand on the side, watching my brother do the same, perhaps sad that i could no longer do it. Hugs and kisses meant everything to me. Showing love physically is still an important way of expression for me. Perhaps that is why when some great tragedy befalls someone and you dont find words to console, it does wonders just to hug and cry with them. It does much more than any amount of words could possibly do. But, when you have friends of the opposite sex, sometimes our minds are too narrow to see reason or emotion behind the physicality. It is easier to hug a girl who is an acquaintance than to hug a guy who is your best friend. I cant understand how people can bottle their emotions up. I have a friend who I can relate to as someone with "supressed" emotions & I realised a lot of it depends on the upbringing also. A long time back when i was onsite in a very cold country with even colder people, there was this couple who stayed in the same building as me, who taught me the basics of how live in that place. His pregnant wife was not very literate & so there was no common language between the two of us. But we managed with my really bad hindi & her even worse english. once when they took me to a nearby shopping mall, i still remember how she held my hand on that cold night. It was a very small gesture but i've not forgotten how it made me feel. Small things make a big difference. When amma was in hospital for her hysterectomy & achan was having his chemotherapy, I was the bystander for amma. One sunday i came home to get fresh clothes & in the amount of time that i was at home, i changed the bedsheets & made tea for him. I remember him telling me that it felt like having a woman in the house & that the tea tasted like payasam. I know that he didnt have the sense of taste much, but the thought behind the act made the sweetness i guess. On the day of my wedding, amma & I had a very small private crying session in the privacy of our bedroom. As we hugged each other and sobbed, we were both relieved that the great groom hunting ordeal was finally over, a sense of relief flooded over us. As luck would have it, I married into a family which had zilch emotions, very matter of fact & normal all the time. If you had to plot a emotional graph, it would just be a straight horizontal line, while mine would go up and down and wherever it pleased. For his kind of upbringing, my better half has fared better i guess. He left no stone unturned to please me in our brief but sweet courtship, flooding me with surprises like flowers & chocolates & many more. When we were about to leave, i had this long session of hugging & kissing every aunt, uncle & cousin good bye, while he & his family simply nodded at each other. It totally stumped me that people could be so emotionless. As long as he wasnt so with me, i didnt have room to complain. i could not see the bond between siblings or the bond between mother & children, in fact there seemed to be no bond at all or probably i couldnt see if there was. Amma could immediately sense trouble if I spoke less, because I always clamped up when i was disturbed. He's also learning the tricks now. In 2 months time, i feel that we have progressed beyond monosyllables. People see the change in him post marriage and are surprised. Well, if the change is for good then why not.

Dinner party

After I got married, I knew I'd have to play hostess at some point or the other, but that it would come so soon & that too for so many people was something i did not expect. We hosted a dinner party for my hubby's ex-roomies. They were 7 in all, 7 full grown males & I dreaded to think of their even bigger appetites. As it is I'm very nervous about cooking for guests, more so when they are all men because you never know how much they will all eat. I'm petrified of that fact that the food may not be enough for us all. We started off by afternoon, though we planned to start in the morning itself. He was a bigger help than i envisioned & gradually i burdened him with more work than i had decided to give him. He cut up onions in the chopper, cut up beans into teeny weeny pieces for me, peeled the skin off the chicken drumsticks we bought & sampled all the items which i thought were ready for the table. So we ended up with rice (lots of it, only because of my above said fear) chicken curry, fish roast made from tilapia fillets(i believe this is my masterpiece),sambar(kerala style) beans thoran, cabbage mizhukkuperatti & salad. The boys were far from being punctual, landed exactly an hour late. We offered a variety of drinks wine/beer/juice & chips to go with it. To everyone's good fortune, we had a movie called "The Gods must be crazy" & we all started watching that. Everyone enjoyed the food, especially the fish & the sambar. I thought of my appachi who had painstakingly made the powder for me for my first US trip. Ice cream was offered as dessert with the option of chocolate sauce to go with it. Though we did not expect them to get us anything, to our surprise, they got us a blender, 2 greeting cards, a TARGET gift card & chocolates. They couldn't have been more perfect in their roles as guests. This taught me never to underestimate people, sometimes the most surprising behavior comes out of people you least expect it from.

A Special Day

I had totally forgotten about this day, November 2nd and it was too late when i remembered. Had I been with the company I started off with, I would have completed 5 years of professional life in the software industry with an MNC. Of course, I do have my counterparts in the same place probably savoring the day and the memories. 5 years ago on a cold winter, I started my career in Mumbai, the city of dreams. City of dreams indeed it was, giving me the only one thing i never had in my entire life, FREEDOM. When i look back, i cannot but wonder at my courage in giving it a go. And go it did, never stopping once. I admit that i changed somewhat in my personality and outlook when i was in college. And changed a bit more after I started working. Like one of my friends remarked, change is one thing that is constant about me. People have this annoying habit of getting used to the person you were some 10years ago. They never account for variable change & in most cases cannot digest that change. It is so confusing when everybody says you changed & you get confused because you who people thought they knew, was not you. It was what they wanted you to be, like a bird not having the space to spread its wings. When you are no longer bound by rules & stereotypes, you tend to discover the real you. It's sad when you realize that you didnt know yourself to start with. I did not know anyone when i landed there with my uncle who was my guardian and he had to see to it that I got settled. I dont think i made any friends till the point we moved to a flat nearby. I think i was queer & weird & strange & definitely an introvert. When i look back i know that Mumbai was the best thing that could have happened to me at that point of time. I made a friendship which is very fruitful & still have great memories of us. She changed me in more ways than one, like smoothening the sharp edges. She gave me the courage to try out new things & more importantly let go & just live. I dont think i would have had the guts to go out at 9 in the night in my home town. But here we were, admiring Queen's necklace at midnight, eating roast corn seasoned with lime juice & salt & pepper. Life was never so beautiful nor was freedom so exhilarating. Office didnt mean much more than a place where you'd get money if you did the right things. When we are small, our parents would frequently ask this question " What do you want to b when you grow up?". Being grown up seemed a distant dream & I always thought i should have money of my own, no matter how little, or by what means, but something to call my own, from the sweat of my brow. Like everybody else, i too made some money out of my onsite stint, but that money is very close to my heart because of the pain, anguish, sorrow & loneliness i ad to endure to make that money. Bangalore was in no way comparable to Mumbai, mainly because the people who made that difference were no longer there. After a while, you realize that you need to settle down, make sacrifices, be with your family more & everything else fades into the background. Nothing else seemed more important. And then there came a phase when everyone I knew was getting hooked/committed/married & then after a while they started having kids while here I was still in the same old place. I had this vision of how we all started off in kindergarten & then one by one people graduated to primary school , upper primary & high school & finally passed out, while I was still on alphabets in kindergarten. Like they say every dog has a day & mine came too albeit late. here I was, married to someone abroad (well, it was my secret dream) but jobless. at every point in life, you need to choose between one thing and another. What ifs & buts seem to be omnipresent in every nook & corner of life. I miss having a job now, miss having my own money to spend, miss my independence. I miss having to wake up in the morning, whiz around the house trying to get ready on time & everything else that come with an office life. On the flip side, I have a husband who loves me for what I am, i have all the time in the world to simply unwind or relax or cook & also for my idle useless mind to be a devil's workshop. His b'day is coming up next month & I regret being so dependent on him, so much that I cannot give him a surprise gift. I cannot possibly get him anything because he will have to get it for himself. Every birthday that I was extensively involved with, after I had a job, had a lot of thought & effort and it did happen though by then the wedding was fixed. God has a strange way of getting things done & looks like he has a plan for everybody.

Sleepless Idle mind

Well, it was one of those nights when i could not sleep even as my better half's snoring tried so hard to rock me to sleep. In moments such as these i think of a lot of things & it's fascinating to observe how one thought leads to another and by the time you realize that you are conjuring up things way beyond your imagination, you might have reached some bizzare point. I thought of my mother, thought of my brother who was down with fever & then realized I was half way across the globe & thoughts were the only things that took me to them, this fast. May be there are a lot of people who would give everything to swap places with me. What exactly is life? When i was in school, everybody said the biggest thing in your life was your matriculation. Now after that was over, it seemed like getting into a professional course was to be the aim in life. After you pass out, it's a job that is most important, and then a marriage or promotion or an onsite trip or kids or whatever. At every point in your life, there is this something you need to achieve because others who were there before you have already done it. The focus shifts from time to time. It will be the same when i have kids & they go through the same grind, if not the exact same things. Ultimately, we all die & do we think of what is it that we did that others also did. Well, i dont think so. Probably we will think of our loved ones, regret something we should/should not have done. Memories and feelings make life or so i feel. you cannot possibly forget the way people made you feel, be it happiness or sorrow or anger. As i lay sleepless, i thought of my friend who lost his sister in an accident. Is there a greater sorrow than to lose a sibling ? May be there is but to imagine loss of someone who grew up with you, fought with you, cried with you, ate stolen candy with you, is something beyond my imagination. I saw a movie today which described your spouse as someone you meet in the journey of life. And it is just a way of life that you love each other because that is how it is meant to be. Your sibling is different or perhaps i think differently.To each, his own. Like some wise guy said, you can live without anybody in this whole world. It is just that we adjust ourselves to their absence. At the end of the day, no one can replace anyone else & it is unfair to try and recreate something you had with someone, with another person.