Gold, gold, gold

India's first ever individual gold at the Olympics!!! Yippeee!! Feel like doing a hop, skip and jump but have had a nasty fall and am not up to the gymnastics of joy. Anyways, the whole nation is rejoicing. Everyone feels victorious by association. Suddenly Abhinav Bindra is not just some obscure shooter; he's history textbook- material. And like his father said in a television interview: 'Singh is King'. Trust a Chandigarh-ite to come up with that!!

Terror invasion

Like people in so many other parts of the world, terror has caught up with us as well. It's no longer something that happens only to someone else in some other part of the world/country. Admittedly, no actual incident has taken place as of now but the fear that something may happen is suddenly very real. The Indian Express recently had a feature (in the city pages) on how each of us can contribute to the city's secutiry: you know, practical tips like reporting strangers lurking in the neighboourhood, unattended packets, and things like that.

The first inkling I had that the world could be a bad place was when I was a kid studying in Salalah and Iraq invaded Kuwait. Suddenly we were taught to hide under desks (in school) at the sound of the siren and people were thinking about returning to India (then, a safe haven).

Will our children ever think of India in the same way? Which is the way to peace?

Togetherness

That's us, a pretty happy, quirky, crazy family. Only one side of the tree though, cos that's my parents and sister and of course, my husband and kid. ;D

Whatever happened to romance?

That's perhaps one of the foremost questions on our minds once we get married, I suppose. We hear it from friends who have been married a while, relatives who frown at the idea of wasting time on romance after marriage and generally, the world and its mother!! Soon, you begin to hear it from your mouth... Is that really you yelling at your husband about promises not kept, candlelit dinners expected and not delivered and horror of horrors, are you really using your old love letters as evidence of once-passionate love?
If you are, I'd advice you (in the lyrics of a highly popular Bollywood disco number) to 'just chill'. The love, the passion, the romance, it's all there, perhaps simmering under the surface, perhaps hidden deeper but the love you shared endures. Love doesn't just disappear; marriage therapists say you gotta work at it. But who's got the time? Ah, there's the catch... that elusive quantity.
But sometimes, life gives you breaks and you have to hold on tight and make the best of it. My parents have taken my daughter home with them for a week (she'll be back on Wednesday), to help me out with a particularly deadline-filled period. And I did a lot of catching up with work and a little bit with hubby, doing some things out of the ordinary that we wouldn't have done with a sleeping two-year-old at home: like taking a late-night drive just to check out a new railway line that cuts across a bridge and then stopping at my favourite cafe for some absolutely sinful dessert! But it was on Sunday that spontaneity really kicked in (something I always accuse Abhi of not doing: spur-of-the-moment things). We borrowed a friend's motorbike and took off to a beach some kilometres away. Now, I am the beach person (as in wallow-in-the-water type) and Abhi's more of the sit-by-the-shore-far-away-from-the-spray kind. But we had fun. On our way back, it began to rain. Abhi asked me whether I wanted him to stop, I said 'no' and boy, did we have a lovely, drenchy ride in the rain. It was beautiful and soooooo romance-inducing. Or was that romance? I don't know; suffice it to say that we felt a tenderness for each other that we didn't have time for in the busyness of everyday life. The rest of the evening was, to say the least, great...
So people, take a break. You are doing enough for others; make a little time for yourself. Even the simplest of things is enough to rekindle love.
Have fun.

Selling land? Be prepared for hell

If you are not a professional real estate person/agent, you are bound to go through hell if you have a property you want to sell. Or buy, for that matter. But buyers can be assured of a certain amount of security if they are dealing with reputed real estate developers. And Kochi being in a state of flux right now, with the impending Smart City and Metro Rail developments, both buyers and sellers are looking for bargains. Prices have shot up abnormally, stabilising to a tableau phase in the past couple of months. But sellers are still on their high horse, sure that the only way to go (for land prices) is up. Add to that the tentative 'fair prices' for land announced by the state, which is up for review. Quite high, by any standards. The govt wants to ensure that its coffers stay full, and that people do not try to trick it out its due (registration fees, taxes, etc.). But is the average buyer ready to bear the cost?
Well, amid all this hungama, here we are with our three-year-old villa on the market. Dealing with seasoned real estate agents has never been our forte. So what do we do when one such real estate agent (a retired policeman) approaches us to buy the house? He quoted a very low price at first, which we flatly refused; so he upped the quote by a straight Rs 5 lakh!! And he calls Abhi every day, asking to close the deal. Abhi is understandably reluctant; he has a gut feeling the guy is not all he seems to be, and he is wondering if this is some sort of trick. And now that there are other interested buyers, this guy is matching them quote from quote!!
Dunno what to do........ Waawaah

Bus journey

It's been ages since I've been on a bus, and it was good fun this time. Sitting on that city bus, the breeze in my face and plugged into Race Saanson Ki on an FM channel (Rainbow, I think), it was an easy ride.
I am a mostly anti-bus person. I know that's not the most environment-friendly comment to make but before you jump on me, do take into consideration five-plus years of horrible bus journeys on jam-packed buses, with every other person seeming to be a pervert who seemed to be there just to feel up the women. And, God, was Thiruvananathapuram the worst of it!! If any of you reading this are planning a trip to that mostly sleepy capital city of ours, stay off the buses, unless it's for a short ride (just for the experience) on an uncrowded route. Some of the roads there are just beautiful and you would be better off just walking down them; a feast for your senses, if you ignore the rude people. Sorry, I am just not a fan of the capital.
So it was with great thrill that I relocated to Kochi when I joined The Week as a sub editor trainee. That was six years back, and I have grown to love this city a while lot though I do miss the fact that there is not much happening here on the cultural scene.
What I like best here is the fact is that the people are so open and hospitable, a refreshing change to cold Tvm, where you are either looked down upon or ignored. And single women have a tough time finding apartments in that city. Not that they have it easy in Kochi, but at least there's hope in the changing scenario of a fast-evolving city, and empathy from fellowmen.
Sitting on that bus made me happy, happy that I have chosen this city to call 'home'. Every time I return from a trip to my parents' or in-laws' place, I get that feeling: it starts as a warmth in the pit of my stomach as we near Kochi and builds to an all-encompassing cheer and a bit of langour sets in. It's good to be home. No, make that great. Absolutely fantastic.
I know, I know: the city is mismanaged, there are waste disposal issues, traffic problems, sanitation issues and God save you from those stingers (mosquitoes, if you have never been here) once monsoon sets in. But you know what, I love this city, warts and all.

Children see, children do

It's probably the most cliched saying out there but like most cliches, it's so bang on the spot!!
Happened to see a new video on a friend's profile in orkut that drives home the point. Liked it so much I added it to my page as well: it shows parents drinking, getting mad on the road, abusing others, and their children (hanging around like shadows, as in real life) doing the same. Ends on a good note, though...
Are we doing enough good? Perhaps not. Yesterday, I took my daughter down to play. We live in a multi-storey apartment and there's not much by way of a play area but kids play in and around the driveway and parking lots (when the main gate is closed). There was a 20-something and her kid cousins; the boys were teaching her to ride a bicycle. Took me right back to my school days when I used to ride to school. In fact, I could see this girl doing exactly what I used to; the wrong thing, that is: staring at the handlebars rather than the road ahead. Is there a parallel to our lives in there?
Well, anyways, she had to weave around a couple of enthusiastic toddlers and preschoolers, my own two-going-on-twenty year-old included. There was this other little girl there, a little older than three, with her mother. The mother is a quiet sort, not inclined to much conversation, and very much under the thumb of her mother. She is on permanent vacation with her mother, so to speak. The mother prefers to keep her only daughter and her two little girls to herself and rarely allows them to visit her dentist-husband based in the Middle East. Perhaps all this history will serve to explain the incident I am about to describe.
The three-year-old, let's call her Sammy, is being brought up exclusively on her grandmother's ideas and ideals (which include non-tolerance of other religions, a less-than-kindly attitude to the opposite sex and a general miserly attitude to money and life). Forgive me if I sound biased; I am. Sammy wanted to play with Ditu's tricycle and I let her. My little mad hatter prefers other kids' stuff, anyways, and the more broken-down it is, the better. So she got onto Sammy's cycle (her legs barely grazing the ground) and toed away relentlessly. Sammy made some tart remarks to Ditu and I thought to myself, "The things these kids learn in school!"
But perhaps it wasn't learnt in school, I realised, when she came cycling past me and yelled, "Make sure you keep my cycle back in place after you are with it!" And believe me, when said in Malayalam, there was no mistaking the child's tone or her amazing rudeness. Tempted as I was to yell the same back at her, I bit my lip and focused on Ditu's miserable attempts to go around the building while Sammy's mother beamed in pride at her child's precocious words.
A pregnant friend of mine, on her evening walk, turned me to said, "There is nothing childish about that child!" Yes, I thought. That little girl was already turning into her grandmother, a woman widowed in her forties and with a penchant for telling others how to live their lives. She is so adamant that only her way is right that half the year, she goes away to her hometown after having picked a fight with one of the neighbours in the building. The last time she did that was when a couple of the boys said they wouldn't play with the girls anymore and Sammy got upset. The grandmother charged on the little fellas, yelling at them for making her 'baby' cry. And she was kinda bugged with me, too, I think for being the mother of an 'alienated' girl and not saying anything about it. Ditu did snivel a bit at being excluded but then she found her own thing to do, which would have been Sammy's way if she hadn't been so cossetted.
I remembered when I had first seen her, when she was just about a year old: bright-eyed and eager to experiment with Ditu's toys. How much the child has changed!!
Parenting is not just another day-to-day activity; it's the shaping of a personality through a lot of everyday interactions. And it's not just our interactions with the child that matter, but our relationship with others and our outlook on life. I sometimes feel that we as parents are so caught up in the chores of nappy-changing, meal-making, etc. that we forget the essentials. Children, I strongly believe, are God's gift to us. And He could not have chosen a more profound gift. These little things are a constant reminder to better ourselves so that we can better them.
Do I sound like one of those supermoms? God (and all my friends and family) know I am not. :)But I do try. After all, they are watching. And learning.