Jam packed weekend

The title is self-explanatory. We’ve had a jam-packed weekend, actually a jam-packed few days. It all started on Friday. DD had extra music practice since her music class was performing for the first time at the annual day function for the local temple. My BFF’s daughters and DD are in the same music class. We both also needed to do some shopping – she, since she has recently undertaken a weight loss program and has done phenomenally well with it. She needed to update her wardrobe to fit her new size. I needed to shop since I recently threw out clothes that I have owned for over 3 years and have washed so many times that it is difficult to say what color they originally were. So post music class we decided to shop with the girls in tow. We had a super fun time and we ended with dinner at the girls’ favorite restaurant in the mall.

On Saturday morning, I took DD to her last swimming lesson for this session, brought her home and put her down for a nap. Her class was performing at the temple in the evening and I wanted her to get enough rest. On Saturday, my cleaning lady ditched me, too. I have a cleaning lady that comes in once in a while and does the vacuuming, dusting, mopping etc when I am really pressed for time. She was to come on Saturday since I knew I would have no time to clean during the weekend. However, she couldn’t make it due to a personal emergency. My house was filthy and I realized there was no way I could leave it looking like that. So after DD went for a nap, I spent 2 hours scrubbing, mopping, dusting, cleaning and got some quality time with the vacuum. DH was MIA in all of this since he was out picking some supplies for his hiking trip.

Come 4:00 PM, I got DD up, dressed and to the temple. The kids did really well for a first time performance. They’re all between six and eight years of age and performed on stage the first time ever.You can hear them here. Post the performance we went to a friend’s house for dinner. The night went by quickly with good food, music, laughter surrounding us.

Sunday morning, DD had a music class. We finished that and set off on our drive to Seattle. We were headed to a SONU NIGAM concert. This was our wedding anniversary present to each other for having successfully stayed together for 12 years. We got to Seattle with a couple of breaks at about 6:30 PM. The concert went on till 11:30 PM that night. I can’t say anything about Sonu Nigam that hasn’t been said before. He was phenomenal. Worth every penny we spent and every minute of the back and forth drive. We started driving back at 12:30 AM, got home at about 3:30 AM with DH driving all the way. It was a difficult drive. DH had to try really hard to not fall asleep at the wheel while I tried to stay awake next to him and keep him talking. We got home and bundled a sleeping DD into bed. We were up at 7:30 on Monday morning since DD had a field trip to the local beach. We got her to school and DH chaperoned the trip with a few other parents.

DH and DD came back from the trip looking wet and bedraggled at 3:30 PM in the afternoon. A quick shower and a quicker lunch and we all took a nap on a Monday afternoon. The lack of sleep had finally caught up with all of us. We woke up and went to the temple to seek God’s blessings. We came back and went to dinner with friends and thus ended our 3 days of celebrations.

It feels like quite the accomplishment to have completed 12 years of marriage. When I look at our life, I only find reasons to be thankful. God has been immensely kind to us. I end this with the hope that our life ahead will continue to be full of love, laughter, kindness, lasting friendships and an ever-increasing readership of the blog

P.S: I have found a way to add videos w/o revealing faces, so here’s DD’s school talent show piano recital and here’s my class singing at the local Kalakendra performance

Theory of Relativity

DD and I went for a long walk yesterday. We were gone for close to 75 minutes. When we came back DH enquired about the route we had walked on (he didn’t accompany us since he has a bad ankle sprain and has been limping for the last couple of days). I explained to him by way of landmarks the route we had taken and I ended by saying that DD did really well considering it was a 4 mile walk.

DH’s immediate response was “That is not 4 miles, it could be about 3 miles but you most definitely did not walk 4 miles.”

The point that needs to be noted though is that last year when DH used to jog the same route it was a 6 mile jog.

 

Should I be worried?

The DH is going on a hike to the Grand Canyon for 6 days. He’s going to hike from one end of the Grand Canyon to the other. Now this alone would not bother me. However, we were visiting friends yesterday and he was in serious discussions with a couple of them regarding shooting lessons, they also discussed state laws regarding the possession of firearms and scuba diving too.

I am wondering if he’s preparing to get rid of me and researching the best ways to accomplish said task and disposing of my remains. Why else would a non violent man suddenly want to take shooting lessons. And what’s with a 6 day hike all of a sudden? DH is a fairly sedentary man and doesn’t tax himself unnecessarily.

Fishy business, I tell you, all this is very fishy

Life lessons

Every time I come back from India, I try to recreate my life there in my house. My routine in my parents and in laws house is fairly constant. I wake up and before I can brush my teeth my mother and my MIL will ask me if I want coffee or tea, what would I like to eat for breakfast, would I prefer daal or sambhar for lunch? You get the picture – spoiled brat. And all of this will be routinely punctuated with “You’ve lost so much weight, poor you, taking care of everyone by yourself and neglecting your own self” all while I make sad cow eyes and milk it for all it’s worth. Never mind that the weighing scale never registers all the weight that my mom and MIL see melting off of me. There’s something wrong with the weighing scales back home. We probably need new ones in both houses.

If I ever express a fancy for going out, in my parents’ house there will be a driver willing to drive me to the far reaches of the earth and also very politely telling me that the mall I want to go to is in the opposite direction, that no matter how many miles we drive on this road, we’ll not reach said mall (my own human GPS that drives me to the location I want to go to. What’s not to like?). In my in-laws’ house, though they don’t own a car (they don’t need to, given that they live smack dab in the middle of Chembur, everything is within walking distance or a short ride away), God forbid, if I walk out of the house and hail public transportation. My FIL will ask for a car and driver to show up in order to ferry me wherever I want to go.

My clothes get washed and ironed, DD gets taken care of and I go around like I am to the manor born.

Fast forward to reality. Here, I wake up and I can yell all I want “Sunita tai*, chaha dya” (Sunita, please give me chai – Sunita’s our household help, more like family, she treats me like an errant child most of the time and is probably the only one who has called me a lazy bum, all while catering to my every need) but Sunita tai is not going to materialize and no chai will, either. Here, if I want a tree planted, I’d best get a shovel out and start digging and that mountain of clothes you see, well no iron-wallah is going to come take them off my hands, it’ll be Meera tai doing all that ironing. And if I want to go out, no driver is going to politely tell me where the mall is. It’ll be the robotic voice on the GPS saying. “Please make a U-turn at next signal. You are now 5 miles farther away from your destination of choice.”

Now you must wonder, why I called this post “Life lessons”. I did, because there’s a valuable lesson to be learnt here, for me. I am not a very capable homemaker, I hate household chores. I should have married a king or at the very least a billionaire. Not the snorting DH – for when I imperiously command him to make chai, he says “Get your lazy butt off the couch and make chai for me too.” I wonder where all his declarations of “Tum mere dil ki rani ho, mere ghar ki mallika ho (you are my queen, the indisputable ruler of this house)” go the moment I ask him to do something :’(

At the very least I should have stayed in India. I may not be able to imperiously command household help (they just up and walk away if you do that, I’ve heard it said) but I could always politely request “Tai, chaha dya, please” and I will have a cup of chai in my hand.

I wonder if DH will also make me chai if I politely say “Please chai bana do (make me a cup of tea).” Maybe he will, but hey I’m a queen, I’ll die before I stop imperiously commanding – that day may arrive sooner than I think. The DH was looking at a butcher knife very affectionately last night and then he gave me a funny look too.

*Tai – It is an affectionate term for older sister.

The much awaited India post

You already know the trip to India was hectic, busy and tiring. If you didn’t know, now you do. What you probably didn’t know and I will now tell you about is how this trip to India was satisfying to the senses.

I will start with the sense of sight. This was a trip where I saw color wherever I went – when I packed saris for all the ladies in the family to give at the wedding or the hint of rose on the blushing bride’s cheeks or when DD came back soaked in color after playing Holi. There were fiery reds, cool blues, pretty peaches, warm yellows, dusky pinks, lovely greens – all immensely pleasing to the eye and some that had me coveting them like I had never done before. Also satisfying my sense of sight was the joy on my parents’ faces as they saw their baby boy take on the responsibilities of a householder. He, who came along when all the extended family had granddaughters. In a house full of pavadais and frocks there finally was a boy who played with cars, ran without looking and was thoroughly spoilt. I saw my uncles beam with pride because in this child they saw their own sons – much before they came along. I saw in him, images of my grandfather, when he was a young man. My brother is almost a spitting image of my paternal grandfather – the whole family has compared pictures and agrees. I saw a moment of grief on my dad’s face since his parents could not make it to the wedding due to advanced age and ill-health. I also saw enormous relief on his face when he conveyed to his father that the wedding had been conducted successfully. I saw my mother beam with pride when people told her how beautiful the wedding was. Conducting a South Indian Iyer style wedding with all the rituals in a 5 star hotel is not easy. There are too many small details to take care of and she pulled it off with aplomb.

There were beautiful sounds on this trip to India. From DD’s squeals when she met her favorite dogs, to family meeting each other after a number of years to oohs and aahhs of surprise when long time friends’ saw each other’s kids and marveled over how time has flown – this was a trip full of joyful sounds. There was uninhibited laughter, quiet chuckles, sighs of satisfaction, tones of surprise, beautiful music and the sounds of the ketti melam that signified the proverbial knot being tied. Nary was a harsh word spoken or heard. Even if it was, it was probably overwhelmed by all the goodwill and happiness surrounding the happy couple.

The smells, ahh the heavenly smells. The earthy henna that adorned the hands of all the women at the wedding, the aroma from the wonderful spread during all functions, the smell of jasmine flowers, the rose-water that was sprinkled on guests as they walked in the door, the smell of sandalwood that perfumed hands and the fragrance of the holy fire that bore witness to 2 people making a promise for life.

The taste buds were supremely satisfied and I can speak for everyone when I say this. For a week I gorged on my mother’s cooking. She made all my favorites and I ate 3 meals a day and woke up hungry every morning in anticipation of more delicacies. The food at the wedding was phenomenal. There was enough variety to satisfy everyone’s palate from the most hard-core South Indians to some international guests with more eclectic taste. Is it any wonder that I am having a hard time fitting into my jeans now?

This was a trip that satisfied the soul. My parents are extremely relieved that their son is now married and are extremely pleased with the choice he’s made. The newest addition to our family is extremely beautiful (I’m not biased, she’s a former model), exceptionally well qualified (Ivy league education), extremely warm and personable and I’m sure she’s going to be more daughter than daughter-in-law to my parents. My brother and SIL are both smitten with each other. They couldn’t keep their eyes off each other nor did they stop smiling throughout the wedding. It is said marriages in India are not just about 2 people tying the knot but about 2 families coming together. Fortunately for us, the 2 families have gelled extremely well. It was a pleasure to see the bride’s parents hand over their only child to my parents with supreme confidence and my parents welcome her with open hearts into their home and their lives.

I leave you here with some pictures from the trip.