Thanks folks for all the kind wishes for handicapped me. Miss you folk and hope to catch up soon. I've started finally with PT though still not taken any pain-killers or muscle relaxants. I know I am far from the ideal patient but am at least patiently waiting for the pain to pass. And it shall. :)
Meanwhile, a random post about this that and nothing very much...
We'd bought a karaoke system recently which made ds discover an amazing repertoire of songs from Ricky Martin to Mohd. Rafi and he has great taste too in picking up songs to learn! But he gave bathroom singing a whole new twist when he grinned naughtily and sang Rim jhim gire Snaanam!
We got free (?) tickets to Abs-2 complete with the popcorn coupons! The abs on display were fantabulous. Nothing else was worth a mention. The small (debatable) mercy was that AB baby's abs were seen covered throughout the movie! I was predetermined to dislike the movie for the simple reason that there was no JA. Hrithik aint no Johnnie, despite all his six pack abs, smooth dance steps and the where in the world take this film should have rightly been called Krishh 2 not a sequel to Dhoom. The family had much fun tearing the movie apart.
The recent hoohaa about this made me think of the more famous parallel. Would things be very different for Bharti than they were for Sahiba?
Ain't that a long left handed post?
The cardboard hero of the Mahabharata, Arjuna was true to type- macho, indecisive, insecure about his mother's love for him, competitive, exploitative, suppressing all legit competitors by fair means or foul, polygamous - the epitome, as it were, of Indian malehood. There was one thing, however, truly remarkable about him. The facet of Arjuna which fascinated me, made me blind to all his faults and made a hero of him in my eyes, from was that one of his appellations was Savyasachi (the ambidextrous one).
While I can do a few simple tricks like writing backwards and to a limited extent even writing longhand with my left hand, I cannot type with my left. This and other such constraints to my ambidexterity are made very apparent to me now that my right wrist is afflicted with RSI.
So folks till my right rights itself, among other things, no more blog hopping for me and no more posts here...
It started as early as the first of November itself. The initial excitement started with Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties that the school is organising a trip to.
Then one evening when I came home dog-tired as usual, there was an insistent shrill demand that I make a chart of Chacha Nehru, followed by other such demands. There were many discussions and questions regarding the man and why his birthday meant that all kids could have a day off. After much of this grilling, I was on the receiving end. I was being told by my little one how everyone should love children, be kind to them and celebrate and have a great time on chilluns day.
Celebrate childhood!
PS: Show me a woman who is not guilty and I'll show you man- said 'feminist' Erica Jong. But then O. Henry thought it could be the man too who could be The Guilty Party. On children's day (ouchie, sounding a bit preachy) lets remember to do our bit by the kids of the world, most importantly, our own.
During the Suvarna Rajyotsava week , I took a trip out of State.
Went just across the border on a short hop to Kerala. As usual the pace was hectic there. Things were happening, or were they? There was a road strike and had miles to go on those narrow ribbony roads through the furiously fast untamed traffic (at least in contrast to my now-becalmed Bengalooru senses).
It was a major-shock for me - a reflection of how the others (aka non-Bengalooreans) live. The sweat literally poured out in rivulets. The heat was an assault of all ones senses, especially the visual and the olfactory. One longed for the beautiful Bengalooru weather.
And whats with the men outside of Bengalooru? They actually STARED. In namma Bengalooru if one as much as looks at another person, he, and it would be a 'he' of course, would smile nicely before converting his curious gaze into a downward glance.
Later, was discussing this with dh and he asked, So what did you do there then? And I had to reply sheepishly, that I reverted quite seamlessly to my dilli-waali self!
It was still the early chapters of The Pelican Brief. Strange how some irrelevant associations endure and they usually point to books I was reading when something significant was happening in my life. But that Thursday night, I was reading it and reading it rather desultorily.
Without any prejudice to the writer or the plot, let me explain why it was so. There was a growing unease within me which was extremely discomfiting, unlike anything I had ever felt before, induced both by my own body and exaggerated by the slooow Syntocinon drip on my right arm, which produced syncope-like feelings. In addition were the gut-wrenching moans and wails from the invisible woman in the next cubicle, a primi who had to undergo the labours of ejecting a piece of tissue which had grown in her for eight months before quitting spontaneously. Far more disturbing than all these was the low but clear tones of a discussion that two people were clinically having in that unreal endless night- the burden of the conversation and an extremely heavy burden it was, was how the two women wished they did not ever have daughters as girls would have to undergo all the travails of child bearing which they were exposed to as Ob-Gyns day and night.
What disturbed me was not the fact that these were not merely trained educated doctors speaking but that they were real women and yet did not feel the joys of being a woman. All through my pregnancy I had fervently hoped for a daughter and I could not believe my ears that here were women (women who participate in the birthing process, no less) who wished that their own progeny did not participate in the most visible celebration of life!
***
A dear friend of mine, one of my 'anchors', is from the cultural (and very political) holy city from the banks of the Ganga whose guavas are as sweet as the language and fine sensibilities of its people. Now constrained by physical distance, we talk over the phone about this and that and all the rest that goes into our lives- about birds in the bird bath, crows having a parliament and such important matters. During the course of one such invigorating session, she asked me to listen to both the versions of this song- this and that. She knows just how much I appreciate these songs so I presumed that the newer version of Umrao Jaan would, if any, be better - with songs to match.
Alas, more fool me - the lyrics of Shahryar and the music of Khayyam with even a gem of Khusro, how could they be matched by a 'politically correct' poet who receives such public proclaim and is even proclaimed by his enlightened wife of having re-written history.
***
When I was pregnant with my second child, I had to, for some obscure reasons, undergo five ultrasound scans- four of them with a self-proclaimed expert radiologist who never picked up the congenital defect my baby was born with but invariably harped on whether I wanted to know whether I'd have a cricketer or a cheerleader. No, I did not take him to court, which he deserved to be especially given his acclaimed academic background, though some may pig-headedly disagree.
At the end, if I were to do things again, I'd say agle janam mohe bitiya hi kijo. Now to talk to my friend...
