The Duck docks here

Wish I were as eloquent as Ellen!
(I was inspired to blog by her and it is appropriate that I link to her even in my last post here.)

I started blogging not only as a form of catharsis but also to keep my immediate family (including my most dear friends in far away Delhi) updated about all that was happening to me in my life at Bangalore.

Dh would often tease me that I should post my intensely personal updates to those who would be able to follow the drift of my random thoughts. My kids would debate on what should or not feature on my blog. My friends would read and respond, offline of course.

But gradually it changed. There were more friends, colleagues, dh's colleagues, relatives, acquaintances and others reading this blog. Given the extremely up-close and personal stuff I put in here, I think its time to stop this blog.

I shall, no doubt, continue to quack a lot, - but not here.

Lets get quacking...

Miles...

to go.

With my present levels of apathy and fatigue, wish he had stopped by, but given that there will be time for that and more, heres this and also this!

Yet another milestone around the corner, a significant one, if we go by what Newsweek says.

Of late

Of late

I see a yawning distance creeping in
Between us, a swelling gap,
The rend getting too big to mend
The organic link, shriveling

There will never be a vacuum.
The distance will continue to extend
Others would step in to mark the milestones
And like elastic, it would keep stretching.

At times you may rush back to me
Seeking some sustenance, solace, else,
Some tangible manifestation
Of how things were or would be

Occasionally, I may claim you again
To just hold against my bosom
To validate my achievement
To proclaim my nebulous hold

Meanwhile, there would be others
With significant, strong needs
Who would play out distinctive roles
And seek the matching recompense

As you grow, we grow apart
You strike out on your path
I wish you would climb high, wander wide, delve deep
Savor the thrills, experience the ecstasies
And that I could but be along on all those rides
Yet for all that we need to disentangle, disengage

These profuse wishes are of little avail
Unless I give you the freedom to fly
The space and time to test your strengths
And uncharted waters to try, and plumb

On these journeys which are yours alone
Your companions, I may not invariably approve
But would learn to school my censure
And not deny you the right to choose

No other woman can be what I am
And I cannot be what they would be
It is an uneasy treaty- no foes, but still
To surrender a vital part of me- you,
To them, who may not know your value to me

No other woman can be so thrilled
By your warm hugs, your deep kisses,
The feeling of knowing you within,
Your moist soft mouth at her breast,
Your eyes forever trained, mutely,
Your words which followed, so sweetly,
Your pranks, your serenades,
Your triumphs, your disappointments-
All these, are eternally mine alone.

I would treasure this familiarity
In my heart, my womb, my lips, my eyes
Each pore of me which has known each cell of yours

Others would crave and know your love
And you would similarly sip theirs
While I stand guard at this fount
That we discovered and shared

You always resent that you weren’t my first -
You wish to alter that order
But does this primacy matter
In a mere issue of sequence?

Lets settle this row once for all -
You are the shiny bright pearl
Charmer, soldier, my own treasure,
I commend you to the world.

A gut feel of pain

It was meant to be an hour long 'exploratory' abdominal surgery- they didn't know what exactly was wrong.

The X-rays did not reveal the cause of the steady decline, the green aspirate, the abstinence which made the Doctor's advice of Nil Per Oral so totally redundant, listless eyes which had aged over that week of suffering and had gone beyond pain, the scooped out hollows which constantly asked but one question- how long the torture would continue, how much more the shrivelled body had to bear its burden of shallow breath.

They wanted the mother to be there till he 'went down' under anaesthesia and to be around when he came to. So all there in the green pant suits and green caps set about their work like so many workers in a green-uniformed factory, all working on that tiny body under strong lights. You can leave now and wait in the recovery room of the OT for about an hour, they said.

They cut in to realise the extent of internal damage, the rotten portions of gut to be cut cleanly without spilling any of the lethal toxicity it had acquired, and then the subsequent stitching of the gut with each vessel being matched and patched together like a complex but vital jigsaw puzzle. Anastamosis is not an easy job!

They worked fast and furiously, staunching the blood, topping the anaesthesia, introducing appropriate levels of morphine, checking on vitals.

They were half way done before they realised the enormity of the exercise. There is just so much of anaesthesia that 12 kilos of body weight can take. They would lose him if more topping up was done and the option was to do the actual stapling when he was 'coming to'.

Someone needs to hold him, to calm him - not only to mitigate the pain which the morphine was unable to deal with but to deal with the mute terror in those eyes which accused the world much more sharply than the piercing shriek, like that of a lamb at slaughter.

The hard nosed professionals that they all were- handpicked for such eventualities, they had to call in the mother again.

Later, much later, in the ICU the anaesthetist came in to check. But she did not look at the post-operative patient at all. She looked at me, one mother to another, and said, It isn't easy being a mother, is it? I looked down at the exhausted bandaged bloodied bag of bones, tubes, pipes and monitors which was precariously clutching at me, pulling on my heart strings just much as yanking at my hair. I saw an intrepid spirit there, a physical manifestation of Life itself, dry heaving and wracked in a terrified, traumatised, irregular tattoo of tachycardic breath. I wished to take away all that pain through those fluttering kisses lightly touching his hair.

But her eyes pleaded with me, beseeching me to forgive her for hurting my baby. I transferred the teensiest-weensiest bit of my attention to her. She was in tears. She, the doctor and me, the mother of the sick baby. The roles reversed completely.

The words came gushing out and she started telling me how it hurt her to see her juvenile diabetic daughter suffer and how being a mother is so tough. As the tears flowed, the words came out faster. I was holding her hand (didn't know I had a hand to spare) and comforting her much as gently as I was stroking my baby and as strongly as I was telling myself that it would all be OK.

Break Break Break - Disorder Changeth

Happiness is not a possession to be prized. It is a quality of thought, a state of mind.

Guess the accepted thing to say about my non-blogging would be to crib about the desertion by a muse and how the flow of creative juices has all but dried up... but how about the truth for a change?

The fact is that for ADD-afflicted me, this blog has lost its limited (at best dubious) charm and am reluctant to waste more bytes on it.

Plus want to organise myself better in this year which promises to bring MUCH change in my life.

And have PLENTY of things to sort out in the real non-blog world and not time enough to do a halfway decent job of getting those things done.

Am terribly disorganised and tend to be obsessive at nearly all the diversely varied and immensely interesting things(!) that I take up and compulsively see through till the damn end.

(The words 'obsessive' and 'compulsive' together in a single sentence, draw your own conclusions, dear reader!)

Most pertinently, my maid has abandoned me (I continue to live is another matter!) and am obsessively compulsively perversely scouring dishes, doing laundry and various other domestic chores which have taken over my former on-line hours. So all you who flocked to my blog are hereby invited to drop in to check out the fare at the table, the shine of the cutlery, and all the rest (see I am still learning).

Au revoir or as a favourite icon would have said, Je Reviens (chez nous?)!

Or lets just say, brb huhn? :)

UPDATE:

There are maids lurking in the horizon but resolutely, I still hold my ground, not hiring them and surrendering my soul to them. DH, when he visits us occasionally from his busy work schedule, is worried as he knows that I may well be perverse but am also inconsistent and that any moment the dam would burst. Meanwhile I wallow in my domestic drugde surfacing for but a few moments online.

The upside is that the kids are loving my 'genius' at cooking (they thought their mom could just NOT cook!) and kissing my fingers when they get time off from licking the 'divine dishes' off their fingers! DS has even learnt to appreciate things other than the spuds - if this was all it took, wish I had done this earlier! :)

A Beacon and a Rant!

Needless to say, as is evident from the title of this post and the tone of the previous one, I aint starting this year on the high notes.

The more things change, ... Another year finds me on a course of treatment, errm, management which was offered to me over a decade ago! Hullo 2007, err, is it 1995 again?? *sigh*

I was floundering along, on my precarious, and thankfully, rarely used heels, mooching about in my gloamy gloom late one night, last week, (attending a marriage reception of a friend's son) with the vacuous smile plastered onto my dreary face, when one of my beacons, she called. Thankfully, I did not have to explain, she soon realised the depths of my dark despair. She is one of the few who can reach me through my fogs. She beamed a message in a song. Given that she is the punjab ki kudi, I expected some tappa-shappa which she does send every now and then. (There was a teensy fear that she may lapse into Chitra Singh, even though she knows how I hate THAT) But then anchor and beacon, she surprised me with a song in her sweet angel voice. God bless beacons.

The next morn was no better and I was tempted to beg off my usual hospital rounds. DH insisted I go and dd (being rather worried for her silly old mom who has 'lost it') tagged along. We were doing great together till suddenly there was a storm. A gaggle of women totally incoherent and wailing loudly in different pitches and scales assaulted all our senses. They had wheeled in an adolescent girl, who seemed totally inert. But as quickly as the storm came, it passed. Constrained by dd's presence, I did not do anything actively to help any one of that group and was merely relieved that the storm blew over so quickly. (Did I mention that I felt very cowardly that moment?) Maybe it was just a LOT of over-reaction from the hysterical folk, I hoped.

But then, this truth biz, it has a way of getting out and catching up with one. I learnt that the girl had committed a crime under Section 309 of the IPC and was denied admission in the hospital because the hospital did not wish to be tainted with the consequences of the treatment of a criminal. And the country is worrying itself silly about some Section 377!!! But then that subject is far more glamourous and happening, aint it? How insensitive we are as a nation and just how antequated. NOTHING absolves me of the guilt of keeping quiet and not offering the minimal help and support I could have given to that group of women. Wonder what happened to that little girl!