Another Pablo ki pankhi

It hits you and drenches you at the most unlikeliest of times and manifests in the most unlikeliest of people. Someone I never expected to be a Neruda fan (pablo ki pankhi), turned out to be one. A colleague at work gave me her visiting card recently. On its backside I discovered a beautiful extract from Neruda’s poem, Your Feet. And it seems just apt to write the lines here and for all of you who stumble upon my blog…

...But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.

Au revoir!

When you leave, what do you say to the city that embraced you unconditionally and let you have what all you could reach out for and grasp. I am leaving Hong Kong in less than a month. I am going to a better place, so everyone says. But what is better when you have no complaints and no grudges against the place you live in. I miss India, I miss its colours, I miss its ability to be all that I am and want but it is Hong Kong that let me pause, look inward, reach out to my husband, treat three years as one long holiday and rejuvenate, heal , grow and bloom. I am not a new person. I am the same old person but more at peace, more calm, more courageous and stiller.
I have often rued about feeling rootless among the sea of faces that look different and speak a strange language. I am still different than them but as I look out of the cab at the HK skyline, skyscrapers, mountains in the distance, and clouds teasing the sun, I realise that roots I have developed. The bond is definitely there. Love does not need proof to prove itself. The pain you feel is proof enough. The tinge of regret you feel at having to go explains it all. I have had a wonderful time in Hong Kong. When I came, I was a 27-year-old woman, still unsure of her place in the world. I am still unsure of myself but my feet are firmly on the ground and I know that uncertainty is what fuels the journey. The enlightenment would not have happened if I had not been here. I fell in love with myself among all the consumerist pagans that walk around. I did crib about it but in trying to carve a place among them and in defiance to not be like them, I found myself, my likings and my tastes. While overall, everyone I met was and has been good to me, and left me alone, the few who did make me uncomfortable or seemed to be biased against me, helped me to stand against the odds, prove myself and give back in an equal measure. And while I cribbed, felt like having run out of patience, the city never gave up on me. Hong Kong will always hold a special place in my heart and wherever I go, I will carry a bit of it with myself.

A girl or boy?

I don’t know yet and I do not care. Whether a boy or girl, it will be loved and pampered the same; taught the same lessons; and be told to be a good human being before aspiring to be anything else. Because religion, upbringing, values, status, achievement, bank balance, etc, they all pale if one fails to be a good human being. `

Mug woes

I love collecting mugs. My helper on the other hand loves breaking them. Perhaps her clumsiness is nature’s way of ensuring that my kabootarkhaana of a kitchen is never overrun by mugs. I tried saving my beauties by starting to wash them myself. But whenever I err, my helper delivers the fatal blow. Since the time I used quickfix to glue together a mug I have had since college, she makes it a point to collect all broken pieces of the mugs she breaks, so I can glue them later. I am now the proud owner of mugs that are chipped or have some part missing. I am so scarred by the experience that I haven’t bought anything in the past few months. Every time I look for a ‘mug of the day’ for my weekend chai, my no-so-perfect mugs make me sigh. But the hoarder in me refuses to part with them. I am saving them to use as planters some day.

If only I had...

Some decor sense!Everyone wants to have a beautiful home. But working towards a well-done home is one of the most difficult tasks for people who lack the creative bone. I love all things beautiful. I love browsing through décor magazines and blogs. In an alternate life I would had loved to be a purchaser for a home store. But that’s it. My love of knick knacks, curios and interesting stuff has never translated into an interesting concept or eclectic mishmash that defines an individual’s style and home. However hard I try, I cannot say what wall colours will look good, what kind of furniture would suit a corner or how an empty space could be transformed using simple pieces. Now that I will soon be unemployed and have an empty house to cast my magic on, the lack of one talent I would have loved to be blessed with is bothering me big time.

A flame is extinguished

When a person is gone you are only left with regrets – about not seeing them often, not doing more for them, doing something to bring a smile on their face and taking away a bit of their loneliness. My maternal grandfather died last night. When I called my mother in the middle of the night, it was impossible to speak to her through her sobbing and pain. My Nanaji’s death does not hurt me the way it hurts mom. She once said she will be truly orphaned once he is gone. I cannot even dare to imagine what life would be without my mom’s comforting voice a phone call away. My mom and Nanaji were not exactly close. It is impossible to be close when you are the seventh of eleven kids. But mom says Nanaji was all that a good father could be in small town India almost 35-40 years ago.

When my Nani was alive, their home was like a refuge; a place where each of their kids and their families fled to round the year to seek love and comfort that only comes from a warm heart and not a big house. After Nani’s death things changed quite a bit. Sadly, Nanaji was around to see it all. I suppose nothing could be more tragic for a man than to see the values he brought up his family on crumble before his eyes. Old age and its infirmities make the experience even more difficult.

I never spent a lot of time with Nanaji but as a kid I spent a lot of time under the same roof with him. My favourite memory of him forever will be watching him take off his false teeth and handing them to one of my cousins for washing. I was fascinated and repelled at the same time. My love for sattu (gram flour) also comes from having watched him have a big glassful of sattu mixed with water and some salt every day. As a teenager, when I spoke to him sometimes, I was astonished to see how well read he was. It has always been my regret of not knowing him better and talking to him more.

Three years ago when I was moving to Hong Kong, I went to visit him. I knew in my heart it was probably the last time I was seeing him. I wanted to visit him when I went to India earlier this year but it could not happen because of lack of planning, limited time and laziness. It will always be my regret that I did not go back to meet him. Wherever you are, be happy Nanaji.

孕产 (Yùn chan)

When my mom says she can never stop worrying about me and my sister, I cannot understand why she is so clingy. Three months into my pregnancy and I am getting to see things as she does – as a mother although I am not there yet.

Since the day I saw that faint second line on the home pregnancy kit, I have been nervous and scared. I am not tearing my hair apart neither have I turned obsessive. But below the careless façade that is not a façade but my true, genuine self, I am totally terrified – of doing something that might hurt the baby.

When the doctor said after looking at kiddo at two months that it was not growing and the amniotic sac was flat instead of being round, the first crease of worry crept on my forehead. Till the time I did not have my second ultrasound, I could not help imagining and living through the worst of possibilities. There was a whoop of joy and lots of relief when the doctor pronounced the little one as active and healthy. But if you think the joy of that 30 seconds of information that cost 800 dollars lasted for long, then you are wrong.

The next challenge is the Down syndrome’s test, which happens next week. It does not seem to be a big deal but every night when I go to sleep, I wonder what if my baby is one of the thousands who end up with it. Believe me, deciding whether you want to let your kid come into the world with that kind of disability or relieve them of a challenging life is the most difficult decision you could ever be forced to make as a parent that has just had a look at the tiny blob that took just a fortnight to grow hands and feet.

I am all optimistic and have left everything in God’s hand. We will have to wait for almost two to three weeks to know the test’s results. It will be a real long and painful wait. And I already know that would not be the end of it.

As I said to P the other day, we will never be relaxed now. Throughout our lives we will be worrying about the little one. One hurdle crossed would just be one hurdle down and nothing more. This is what I suppose my clingy mother lives with everyday.

PS: All is well and we have successfully cleared the Down syndrome’s test. The lil one is yet to make its presence felt and I am patiently waiting to feel that first kick.

Venting some steam!

I have never been a people’s person and I have never been good at faking goodness and friendliness. When I am friends with someone, I am a good friend with all genuineness and when I withdraw, I do it completely. Quite a few friendships have gone kaput in the past few years. Some fizzled out naturally, some because they were forged for convenience and out of need and others because the wavelengths stopped matching somewhere along the way. Every time I have seen a relationship lose steam, I have wondered whether ego, expectations and lack of communication were its undoing. I have probed myself, my actions, my thoughts and why I felt in a certain manner. I am not without fault. I cannot be because sometimes I fail to see where I went wrong. But in many cases I have seen the other person turn into something I never thought they could be. Worst is when you know them a bit more than they think you know them and you can see them through the faked niceties, hollow words and the strained conversation. They conveniently forget what they did wrong or rather cannot realise it because they do not think they did anything wrong. Worst is when they feed lies about you to other people and you can see some people withdraw without any reason. And you can understand it all because you have been there, you have heard about someone too – but then you were too deep into the throes of a friendship to not believe it.

To do or not to do

I am a no-nonsense person. Rather I am a person who gets so worked up over nonsensical stuff that I prefer to not even test the nonsense potential of a situation. More simply, I hate complications. I am willing to put up with a bit of inconvenience and extra work if I can avoid getting entangled in all the nonsensical anxiety that complications bring along. But today, a dear friend of mine has put me back into the throes of thinking, that I usually manage to ignore, by pointing out how fresh food is worth a bit of trouble. I cannot turn a blind eye to the matter anymore, especially now. And the timing of the thinking assault is perfect.

My boss has already been forcing me to think by expecting me to unravel and simplify the meaning behind various paradoxes for junior school kids. I wanted to tell him, if I could have cracked logic and reasoning then I would have been punching numbers and figures in a crisp business suit in some hotshot corporation.

So in this very delicate state of mind, when my guard is down, there comes a problem that I would normally label nonsensical. But you see it is not nonsensical. At the same time it is because I can solve it by either doing the needful or blocking it out. But I can’t because I like drama and some theatrics. And I definitely suffer from the dominoes effect.