Hello hello I am back

The reason I don’t post is because a certain someone (you know who you are) doesn’t read my posts and provide adequate encouragement.

And now that I have blamed someone – let me tell you about me in recent times.

Some of you guys know I used to be a banker and after more than a decade in banking I got bored, wanted to do something more with my life, wanted to discover me and so I went from being banker nut to being a nut on a sabbatical.

I took a sabbatical to discover me and after a year long sabbatical I discovered —-umm that there was nothing to discover 😉. This is just about as deep as I go even with time on my hands.

I have to admit I am a marginally better housekeeper and cook since the sabbatical but other than that zilch! I did read a lot more than I did in the last 4-5 years put together. Yay me!! 

But all my lofty plans to write a book, start a business, work in an NGO etc etc –  Lack of Time was never the reason why I didn’t do it. It was just me.

So I decided to get back to doing something outside the house coz honestly I will never be that housewife who has an immaculate house, throws amazing parties, plans healthy meals for the family – I am too disinterested to do that. And just FYI I have full admiration for those who do it and still inspire to be like them. But the reality is I never will be. 

And tada you are now looking at professor  Nut who teaches undergrad students management. It’s  been around 5 months since I started!! 

And Oh my god!! I have never studied so much in my life!! And never worked so hard! As I study everyday sometimes late at night at 2 or early in the morning at 4 – I apologise to all my professors – for the lectures I bunked, for not listening to them, for chatting on icq during lectures. 

In teaching there are no days you can say but today I don’t feel like studying/teaching. And I will get by. In corporate life as a lot of you will admit there are days when you just don’t want to work.

A % of the class – these bunch of kids are looking upto you and you have a duty to teach them well. Not just teach – teach them in a manner where 10 years down the line when they are working they are able to correlate what you taught them.

It is a  responsibility – it’s mentally and physically draining.

But I think I am happy! I feel fulfilled — I think 

Y is for yesterday

Wasn’t it just yesterday that I climbed a wall and cried at the top of it because I was too scared to jump off.

Wasn’t it just yesterday that I cried because I was to leave a girls school and join a co-ed Coz I didn’t like boys.

Didn’t I just realise yesterday that boys make amazing friends too. 

And has it really been almost 20 years since I passed out of school and since I saw Port Blair !

Wasn’t I Just the nervous island return girl joining a college in Mumbai.

Has it really been 14 years since I first went to B school and met the Tall one and a lot of friends I have made for a lifetime?

Good lord , I started working 12 years ago.

Hello, wasn’t it just yesterday that the Tall one and I lived the dink life – back to back movies, late nights and not a care in the world

And the elf he was definitely born yesterday. Why does he keep claiming to be 4!
AAaah I guess this is being middle aged? I feel so old and yet I feel young. I don’t think I am old enough to be called middle aged. I am a bit apprehensive too. What’s next ? Will I have as many great memories of the rest of my life or will I bemoan yesterday. Will there be no excitement? Will I become a better version of me or will I just stagnate and remain who I am now. 

But like I said in the Q is for post – que Sara Sara – what will be, will be. But I owe it to me to live it up, don’t I?

This is my entry for Y as part of the April atoz challenge 

Letting go…

My baby started school today. As an excited elf wears his uniform, my heart feels heavy. I have been feeling this way for a couple of days I wonder why because he has been in daycare since he was less than a year old.

He is very excited, excited about the swings and the slides he has seen, excited about the uniform he gets to wear.

We enter school and I sense his mood change. He keeps telling me to come in with him. We enter his classroom and hang around for a while. It’s time for me to go, I kiss him goodbye. In the commotion, I don’t think he registers what I am saying. We look back and he is crying either joining in the general tears or he actually wants to cry.

I worry – I know he will stop crying once something interests him. But I worry, if his heart is heavy, if he is scared or if he is worried I won’t pick him up. Who is going to reassure him.

We peak in from a window and the tall one sees him trying to open his bottle, the teacher helps him. The bottle is new – what if he has forgotten how to use it. I should have practised with him more.

I worry about school just being too grown up for him. In a daycare he was looked after. Didn’t we look after ourselves in school?

Who is going to blow his nose or help him in the loo. Make him eat?

I know he is not the friendliest kid in town – will he make friends or would he be sidelined. I know he doesn’t know to hit back – will he get bullied?

Is this the right school? Will the school interfere in the unique way in which he thinks?

The logical part of me knows he will figure it out – learn to stand up for himself, eventually make friends – but the mama in me wants to protect him.

I walk out of the school with tears in my eyes. The realisation dawns that everyday I need to let go of my baby a little more. Everyday is a step away from babyhood to becoming a real person

God bless little one! Spread your wings and fly. Don’t mind your silly mama crying at every milestone. Fly my baby – soar!

Through the eyes of my kid

In the elf’s eyes, The world is a beautiful place. I see that changing as he has come to the conclusion that there are some bad people in the world. But he doesn’t know about poverty, suffering, death and pain.

Like all Indian kids, he sees his quota of beggars mostly at traffic signals. I see his curious eyes look at them. The one who always has a question about everything is quiet. He asks no questions. At least not yet.

I struggle with how much to tell him. I want him to be compassionate yet dispassionate. I feel In a country like ours, you can’t afford to be one of the two. You can’t ignore the poverty and suffering, but you honestly can’t weep at the plight of everyone.

I want his world to be beautiful longer where the sky changes the colour and the moon and the sun share the sky.  I hate that he knows that some people are not always good.

So the other day we were at a signal and a blind man was begging. The elf was up to his normal games and trying to attract the attention of the auto driver by tapping on the car window. I told him to stop tapping since the blind man would probably think someone was calling him to give him something (in my defence I was driving and my wallet was in the backseat – no way could I have reached for it)

Elf: Why we have to stop tapping?
Nut: Because this uncle can’t see and will think you are calling him. We shouldn’t trouble him
Elf: Why he can’t see?
Nut: Coz he has no eyes

By now the beggar is near my window and I can see the Elf eyeing him. He can see the eyes are different. I wonder if this is too much of information for him. Is he too young for this? Will it shake his belief that Mama and God can make everything ok?

Elf: Why he has no eyes
Nut: Baby you have have to ask God that
Elf looking at the sky: God God, Why this uncle don’t have eyes ?
M<omentary silence and then he looks at me and says – Mama, God says that he didn't have any eyes.

I am struck by so many things. who told him god made people, who told god is in heaven – but more importantly who taught him to be so logical and find an answer to a question I don’t know how to answer.

I want to know but I don’t ask him more questions. I know that the next time we are at this signal, he will remember and ask about the uncle again. He told his grandmother about the uncle when he reached home.

But he isn’t traumatised. His world is still beautiful. Sure it has some people who don’t have eyes in it.

But his simple answer reassured me that he will figure it out and it will not break him. It reminds me how important my answers to his questions are – In making him a good strong person.

In parenting – they don’t exaggerate when they say every minute is making the person they are tomorrow.

Of birthdays and ‘phoo’ing the candle – day4

So I am one of those who gets excited about my birthday … More because I love stressing out the tall one about getting me something for my birthday. When I was younger (read pre 30) the tall one had reminders on his phone telling him 100 days for nuts birthday – go buy a gift …68 days go buy another one and so on…

I have since grown up I only remind him 45 days prior to d-day.

And of course a birthday blog is never complete without the story of how once while planning a trip to Goa during my birthday, the tall one’s work looked like it may play spoil sport. In a moment of desperation I told him, this year my gift can be you coming to Goa. Can you believe he bought that. I didn’t even receive a chocolate that year. That was almost 5-6 years ago, the nagging he has received since has ensured this will never happen again.

Anyhooo- so My birthday is in 39 days…

I have been told I will be getting a
1. Christmas tree
2. Some umbrellas I can hold
3. A bike I can cycle on
4. Some shapes
5. Few alphabets
6. And some candles

And the elf claims that Dadu needs to give me a laptop. I like how the boy thinks !

I have also been told to make January over and make it march so that a certain 3 year old someone can have a birthday where he will phoo the candle and jump !

The genes have been passed on. The father is in big trouble … With 2 specimens who harp on their birthday …ha! Good luck tall one.

Judgement Day

I met SI last year in Kolkata – 13 years after we had passed out from school.Nothing seemed to have changed – she still stressed about exams (she was studying to be a doc), still laughed endlessly, still had that nervous undecided air about her, as ambitious as ever- proud to be a doctor. Her husband BI came along with her and they took me out for dinner. Over dinner, we told BI stories of our school days, we both teased SI about her nervousness before exams and her endless life of study.

I remember thinking about how many more years she had to study and was quite impressed with how supportive BI was. I remember mentally congratulating the modern Indian man. I remember thinking how sweet of him to accompany her across the city post working hours to visit a friend. I remember

Around a month ago, it was BI’s birthday and i went to his wall on FB to wish him and noticed that the wall had been made private, most of the pics in his album were just him. SI wasn’t a mutual friends.And then the bells rang. Something was not right.

I had noticed that Si changed her name to her maiden name in FB. her profile pic changed to one of her alone, her facebook status updates were philosophical. I mailed her knowing something was amiss. She wrote back saying that BI used to physically abuse her and she had left him!

I was shocked.! I always thought of myself as a good judge of character. Was i so wrong? Are looks really so deceptive.

The good part is SI has a career, supportive parents and will come out of this. And i am glad for that.

This post would have ended here except last night.

Bi went on an overdrive (yes, i forgot to unfriend him on FB), his wall become public and he talked about how someone close to him, had betrayed him despite his support. How people use so ambitious that relationships mean nothing, How people fool people with their so called love and how their so called guardians support them. How people don’t have a heart and have trampled on his and how he needed strength to come out of this.

Another classmate was online then who also had BI as a friend. She messaged me about this verbal overdrive and said “while i dont want to belittle what SI went through but do we know the whole story”. and i have to be honest while i was reading his updates, i felt the same thing.

This coming from good friends of SI – while we did finally come to the conclusion that such public level sympathy mongering reeked of guilt. For a second there we did doubt our friend…

Isn’t it ironic that the one who talks aloud and plays the sympathy card is always considered as the ‘wronged’ one? Silence ain’t always considered golden?
Or is an ambitious woman always going to be viewed as the vamp?

Worse still is facebook too powerful an engine?

In the past the wronged one could whine to a select few. But now FB has allowed him to wash his dirty linen to all of his 300+ friends – most of them will be passing judgement on a woman they dont know – Passing judegement on my friend – the tiny parcel who was friendly to me when i was the new girl in school, the one who had her nose in her books except when she was laughing aimlessly at the silliest of jokes, the butt of many jokes most of which she didn’t get, the one who was so passionate about being a doctor. The simple good hearted girl who just wanted to be in the top 3 and then become a doctor

Yes people’s opinion dont matter…but it still does matter – doesn’t it?

SI – we are in your corner! God bless!