I'm on Google

My daughter was looking for Wallpapers on Google. She did a search on me and found me..several pictures and articles I've written.

She is thrilled. She thinks I am famous.

Should I burst her bubble and reveal that it is SEO (search engine optimisation)?

A 'Perspective' Ramble

It's funny how a little something can put so much of ourselves into perspective.

For the past few days I've been suffering from repulsive mouth ulcers. Yes..eeewww... According to the doc it was a pretty bad case and for almost four days, I could not eat, drink or speak - a word. The pain was truly unbearable.

I survived day 1 of the gruesome ulcers without food or water. In the evening I had a cup of cool milk after I administered a gel that kinda numbed the area. But the gel was almost ineffective on the following days as the condition aggravated.

By day 3, I was dreaming of food. 'How nice it would be to have a thin crust pizza or a butter naan with dal makhani' my mind kept taunting me! I'd reached a pitiable state of craving for food in exactly 48 hours. What was strange to me was that for the past three months I'd been on a self imposed, restrictive diet that I was even beginning to enjoy. But 2 days of a 'compulsive' diet had virtually driven me crazy! Bottom line is I realised that I hate not having the choice "not" to eat!

The condition even took over my passion - writing!

My work depends on my yakking - if I can't speak I can't call/interview/interact with people for my newspaper stories.... A dear friend even joked, "Your dhanda must be affected coz you can't speak, right?" referring to my sense of helplessness as I sat at home, rented DVDs, watched my handphone call list pile up with 'Missed Calls'.... Again a 'compulsive' break that was wreaking havoc on my schedule and deadlines!

On day 4, I felt I could treat myself to an Idli dinner. Although I still couldn't speak, the gel was working long enough for me to gobble down a solid meal. Off I went to the nearby restaurant. I wrote - Idli parcel, no sambhar only chutney - on my handphone and showed it at the counter.

The man behind the counter instantly offered me a place to sit, not customary, because a lot of other 'parcel' people were standing around waiting in the filled-to-capacity restaurant. I realised that the staff assumed that I am disabled when the waiter who brought me my dinner chose to tap me on my shoulder to get my attention, rather than call out the token number given to me! Perhaps he assumed that I am speech and hearing impaired..

What does it feel to lose your job/career/passion when circumstances compel you? How does it feel to not be 'normal'? How does one go through life compromising with their very existence? Ulcers are not life threatening or contagious, but in four days I came this close to losing my demeanour, my sense of humour and my optimism...

I've known a few people who've lived through the worst circumstances that life could possibly offer. And they've done it with dignity. My feelings for them just moved up from mere 'empathy'...They're heroes... Hats off to them!

Grooms for sale!

I wrote this piece over four years ago...and strangely, nothing's changed in the years gone by...

Lately we have begun bride hunting for my brother, who at 29 is an eligible bachelor and in baniya parlance, a little old to find a good bride. However, we have been barraged by relatives enquiring about what kind of a girl we are seeking and since he happens to be a handsome fella, our expectation has been narrowed down to looks. Fortunately my folks are not the dowry seeking type, despite the relative reserve of my close family regarding the stand. Even though I believe that there can never be a certain criteria to find a suitable match for anyone; especially not looks or money, my opinion hardly matters since I am a small fry in this vast cesspool.

But for all my relatives, including my parents, the search for a match has to begin with a criterion. In almost each case, it happens to be the affluence of the other party and / or their ability to hold a lavish wedding. Most parents go beyond their financial capacities because of the deep rooted belief that money can go a long way in ensuring the happiness of the wedlock.

The pressure is immense on parents who have a daughter. To understand how this works it is also important to understand that I belong to a community where your status in society is largely dependent on how lavishly you marry off your daughter, if you have any. Some of my close relatives have spent anywhere between 8 million to 10 million rupees for the future happiness of their daughters. My parents were spared the pleasure of going berserk at my wedding since I zeroed in on a tamilian. Yet, as per tamilian standards we had an ostentatious wedding and as per baniya standards, just average.

Parents stoop to all sorts of levels to get the marriage under way. I have been witness to weddings where the groom has refused to marry the girl but is coaxed and coerced into the same after the bride’s father offers to cough up a few lacs more. The groom’s parents readily squash their son’s feelings for the extra dough. Groom selling at its best. Similarly, the bride’s parents coax her into marrying a man far below her caliber simply because he is rich or affluent or both.

The very same cousins are certainly not the happiest lot in the family today but “at least they are married”. Incredible but true! Daughters are married / carted off to avoid the social stigma of having an unmarried girl staying put at home. Since all the girls are brought up in a relatively regressive atmosphere where education and empowerment are not encouraged, an unhappy married girl is left to find the ways and means of adjusting in her lot.

But do such parents sleep at night, knowing that their daughter is unhappy? A question that has no clear answer.

And that’s the reason why couples, from most North Indian communities, even from affluent families are so scared of having more than one daughter. Whether one purchases a groom or adjusts with what is available, marriage these days has become a trade. It is no longer a union of two souls and two families as was believed. It is a business deal, negotiated, bargained and closed with the satisfaction of both parties. I cringe at the thought that my brother is going to be on display in the marriage market. And I can't change the mind set of the clan.

Brings me back to the point I’d iterated through my post. That one cannot bring about any changes in society merely through legislation. The Anti Dowry Act is a law in point. Despite the rampant prevalence of the practice in almost all north Indian communities, how many cases are actually reported or registered? Marginal. It is the failure of law enforcing authorities as well as the society at large.

Going by the way things are, I am skeptical about the search being undertaken by members of my large clan to find a suitable match for my brother. I just hope the girl he will eventually marry walks in to our lives without compulsion or compromise. That will be a wedding to celebrate!

Today I saw his profile on Face Book. It was in the 'You can add as a Friend' section on my page.

Stirred up a lot of uncomfortable memories. But then that was it. I felt nothing else. Guess I have ACTUALLY moved on.

Phew! I am relieved!

Tale of a Honeymoon

When it was finally decided that we would marry (and not simply start living together) with the consent of both sets of parents and the hoopla that surrounds a regular wedding, we were left with the very serious question of where we would go for our honeymoon.

To me, it seemed like a formality. Honeymoons are an extremely overrated, but necessary part of the couple acclimatization exercise I used to think. And I didn't need it because I'd known Harish for almost two years by then.

Moreover, after the wedding we were to move into a lovely beach-facing apartment in Vizag by ourselves (minus the in-laws from either side), which according to me would leave us enough time to 'honey - moon and swoon' at our convenience and leisure. I was too casual in my style to actually want to go to some far off place and spend time and energy sight seeing...if you know what I mean ;-)

All those who've been there, done that, please raise your hands - honestly!!!

But we succumbed.

And eventually decided to go to a swanky resort in Kumarakom where I'd recently spent a day enjoying the last few days of spinsterhood with my friends over a lavish buffet and loads of masti...followed by a two day stay in Munnar.

5 days in all, spread over two resorts sounded really hectic to me but Harish could not be bothered about the details since he always wanted what I wanted and as it turned out, in this case, I didn't know what I wanted. So we went with the flow.

We arrived at Kumarakom after a lovely boat ride, checked into our room, a tharavadu style duplex cottage with an open toilet and set out to enjoy THE honey moon.

We swam, we loitered about in the resort and actually went out for a sunset view boat ride too. In those days I was a very poor eater so I didn't even pay attention to or enjoy the food really... It was also the peak of the Kerala monsoon and after 24 hours of an incessant downpour, we both got tired of it. In a day and a half, we were stiff bored!

At the end of the second day, I coaxed Harish into going back to Cochin and he agreed in an instant. Firstly because (as mentioned earlier) he always wanted to do what I wanted to do, and secondly because, he was bored too.

On day three, we took a cab and landed home. Thus ended our 'honeymoon'.

My mom was concerned. "I hope you haven't had a fight?" she asked worried that we'd already begun doing what typically starts a few weeks after the honeymoon, not on the honeymoon!.. I mean fights...

We admitted that we actually got bored even though the confession didn't speak well of us - we had fought our respective families to be together, and could quite apparently not endure five days of 'togetherness'....

In retrospect, I think the pressure of "enjoying the honeymoon" got to me. I didn't want the sight seeing bit...didn't want to be part of the 'how was your honeymoon' kinda jibes either...

Fifteen years and two lovely children later, I would not mind another shot at a honey moon. I think I can handle the jibes and comments with maturity...

And this time, something tells me we won't be bored.

Shaadi ki tayyariyan

I was a very happy bride. All brides are happy...well, usually...but I was an exception to the extent that all I had cared about in the months preceding my wedding was that I was going to spend the rest of my life with this wonderful person I'd met and fallen for in an instant.

I was oblivious to the shopping sprees and hectic activity that surrounded the wedding. I had no clue what I was going to wear, what my parents were buying as gifts (for me as well as others) and what would happen on that day.

My parents took me to Mumbai to buy jewellery and I actually argued with them about not wanting to spend money on it. I reluctantly bought myself a 'lehenga' and didn't really care about the sarees or clothes that were to form part of the trousseau.

I spent all the time I had dreaming about being with this man...the nitty gritties of the wedding were just nitty gritties to me....left to the others to handle.

And I concentrated on eating papaya to get an 'internal' glow on my skin and trying to lose some weight before d-day.

I recall the wedding morning... Harish and his parents had landed up at 530 or so (in the morning mind you) to begin the ceremonies. My oblivious parents and relatives were roaming around in their night clothes when they walked in. So was I!!!

By 830 I was to get draped in a 9 yard saree for the Tam-bram ceremonies and it was at the nth hour that we realised that I had not stocked up on the customary head jewellery, hairpins to hold my step-cut hair (bedecked in flowers) in place and even enough safety pins!!!

My brothers ran helter-skelter to buy these things and chaos reigned as aunts and cousins laboured over the bride trying to dress her up! To their dismay they also discovered that ignorant of the fact that 9 yard sarees don't have falls, my mother had a fall, not stitched, but peekoed on!!!

Some of my cousins were aghast that I had chosen not to get dressed or made up by a professional on the most important day of my life...and furthermore, I hadn't even had a dress or make-up rehearsal before the auspicious day! 

All this happened even as the elders of the family insisted that we were running out of the 'mahurat' time and the groom sat outside anxiously waiting for his bride.

When I walked out, the 9 yard saree draped on me with the 'fall' visible on the outer layer, I don't know what went on in other minds, but I was totally bindaas...glad that we would finally be able to get on with the ceremony.

Fifteen years hence, I am helping my parents prepare for the weddings of my brothers. Meanwhile, I have decided what I am going to wear, what my kids will wear and to an extent how I will help Harish buy his outfits. From our clothes, to our footwear and jewellery I am working on each aspect.

Wonder what's changed in 15 years!!!

Thoughts on dying

My earliest memory as a child is of sitting in the back seat in our maroon Fiat, with my chin perched on the part where the rubber beading meets the glass of the window, looking out, and trying NOT to look down at the water. I was always afraid of heights and furthermore of water.

I grew up in Cochin, a quaint town (now of course a bustling city and a strong contender for the 9th or perhaps 10th Metro of the country) made up of several small islands. To go from mainland Cochin to Ernakulam, the district headquarters, we'd traverse two bridges built across the backwaters by the British.

The first bridge, the Mattancherry bridge was constructed by Sir Bristow somewhere in 1940. By 1980's the bridge had survived way past its original expiry date.

Often we'd get stuck in traffic snarls on the bridge which had a wooden drawbridge (which could be raised from two ends with pulleys to allow big ships to pass under it - although it was never used in anybody's living memory).

Due to the age of the bridge and the load of vehicles, the bridge would sway in a ripple like manner (almost like a wave), often scaring the daylights out of visiting relatives. My parents would, very matter of factly say, "Oh this bridge can fall off any day" lamenting inaction by the local authorities in constructing a new one as we'd stand on the bridge, swaying. The irony was never lost on us.

For many years, my nightmares fed on this fear... I am in the car and the bridge breaks and we're all sliding down to our deaths... Ofcourse, many times, a super hero would come to save us, but that would depend on whether I was recently influenced by an actor or not. (OK, I admit, most often it was Rishi Kapoor!!!)

What I do recall is that in my dreams, I was never alone. I was always with my family. This is perhaps because every time my parents had this morbid discussion of the bridge breaking, my mother would always say, "I only want that when it happens, we should all be in the car together. What's the point of leaving someone behind to mourn?"

Reading about the families that perished in the Mangalore air crash recently and the agony of those left behind,  I am veering toward my mother's thought process.

The day I decided HURT is just another FOUR Letter Word

It hurt. No doubt it did. The memory of that incident that I'd been repressing all these years, as it came back to me, left me wounded. My heart broke. Again. Then I resolved and wrote the following:


The day I decided that HURT
is just another four letter word
I was liberated
from an endless cycle of
playing victim
who sobbed herself to sleep
who wished the world would stop
and listen to her woes
place a caring hand on her shoulder
kiss her fears away

I let go
Of the glint in my eyes
that screamed I am a victim
love me
care for me
pity me
just...just...
LOOK at me!

Look at what he did to me
Look at how he changed my life
Look at how he altered my future
Pity pity pity!
Revenge sounded sweet too
Hate him
Indict him
Ruin him
Make him pay the price

No more!
Forgiveness may take time
But retribution and hurt
won't touch me any more
I am free....

A Childhood Memory frozen in Time!

I don't recall how old I am. But I do remember that I always loved playing on that terrace. A major part of my childhood memories revolve around the red tiled terrace that witnessed a lot of growing up too.

I run up the stairs, two at a time. I am trying to take three, but I can't. On my way down though I jump off four at a time and land on my feet. It is an achievement for me!

It is not hot today. The sun is not out. The sky is overcast as if its going to rain. I look up. Oh yes! The sky is crowded with pale clouds, not black yet that look laden with rain. I hope it rains. I love getting wet in the rain. I love it when the rain soaks my clothes, down to my undies.

Mom has placed a huge transparent jar of carrot kanji on the ledge of the terrace that overlooks Alkesh uncle's factory. It looks mouth watering. I try to shake it and watch the yellow specks of crushed mustard rise from the bottom and colour the water. I hope its ready to eat today. I know mom will send the servant to pick it up and take it home since it looks like its going to rain.

I want to play a make believe game. But I am alone. Both my brothers are downstairs at home. I have no idea what they're up to. I look up at the other side of the terrace, the elevated side that belongs to Mama. I want him, Mami and Didi to come upstairs to feel the wonderful breeze and see my new frock. I want them to call out to me so we can watch ships in the distance.

I decide to jump down to the lower level of the terrace and land on my feet again! Ha ha! I am so pleased!

I want to go under the ledge and peep into my house from the glass ventilator, but the fear of lizards is quite real. I am a little scared. But I also want to see if I can catch my mom's attention from there.

I go down and gingerly peep into our drawing room. My youngest brother is lounging on the sofa. He has just woken up from his nap. I call out for mom and he looks up and smiles. I ask him to call mom. But he doesn't speak yet so he won't be able to call her.

I crawl backwards out from the area watching my head and run to the window that opens in to Mami's house. Their dining table has morsels of food on it. They must have just had tiffin.

The thought of a crisp dosa, idli, korakattai or upma makes me hungry and I turn around, put my feet on the drain pipe to climb back on to 'our side' of the terrace. I run to Mama's terrace, reach their staircase and wade through a curtain of their washing - Mama's white veshti, Mami's green petticoat - all damp. I run down the stairs all the way and jump five steps landing with a THUD.

Mama is calling out to me, "Is that you Kukku?"

He is sitting on his lounging cane chair. "Yes Mama," I am saying.

"Come inside and have a dosai..."

Ah! Just the words I've been waiting to hear!!!!!

When children express their love

When children welcome you home with open arms, huge smiles and big hugs, you know you were missed. The card is ALWAYS the icing on the cake!

Thank you bachchas!!!