Monday, July 28, 2008

Bringing up Mowgli.

“Mowgli! Mowgli! Mowgli!” The girls scream themselves hoarse. “We want sixer. Mowgli!” Mowgli walks into the stadium, quiet and confident looks at the crowd and points his bat at them. The crowd waits with bated breath. Will he or wont he? The first ball comes, Mowgli slowly strikes it as if warming up. The disappointed crowd boos and the chants increase in fervor. “Mowgli! Mowgli! Mowgli!” The bowler bowls the second ball and Mowgli swipes at it. The ball is up in the air and IT’S A SIX!!! The crowd gets delirious. Mowgli looks at them and says “I play for myself not for the girls”
Oh yeahhhhhhhhhhhhh…
This is what I heard while eavesdropping on a father-son moment. The BH has got Mowgli’s entire career mapped out. He can either become an IPL star so that BH can retire on Mowgli’s earnings or else win any one of those reality singing shows. Please note that nowhere is it mentioned that “you should study well so that you can get a good job”.
Modern dads!!!

Snippets

a looooooooooong interval... the net was down for a couple of weeks and with this and that and what not there was no time to blog.
here are some snippets from the weeks gone by...

The BH has gone on a week long trip and Mowgli is acting up. He is on a hunger strike where even the sight of food is enough to make him feel full. Two spoons and the drama begins. Throws everything on the table to the ground, refuses to open his mouth, starts crying, the entire works. I have tried giving him only things that he likes, but of no use. Totally fed up I put him on the floor saying “Go! Do whatever you want!”. The little imp started crawling full speed towards the front door. On reaching the door, he stopped and gave me a look as if to say “ This is it mama, I am leaving!”
I now have to take ATTITUDE from an eight month old????
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The tooth fairy has still not visited us. So we are still gnawing on carrots and beetroots and chappals and dustbins and mama’s weary nerves .
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Last week was an accident prone week. Mowgli fell off the stairs. Yes, we were planning to put a gate and no we didn’t think he would learn to climb them so fast and yes, we should have listened to all of you and done it when he was 3 mths. It happened in a split second. He was playing with his toys pretty far from the staircase and when I turned my back he was on the second step. It was quite a shock to me, though mowgli stopped crying pretty soon. We are taking no more chances, the gate was fixed that night itself.
The next day I burnt his hand!!! We use an electric steamer to steam his nose whenever he gets a cold. He hates it and is almost always crying and flaying his hands and legs. In the process, his finger went too near the nozzle and it got burnt. Quite a bad one. There was a huge blister and it covered almost the whole of his short stubby finger.
And the many falls in the course of daily life.
My ears are steaming from the advices and the admonishments while my bonny baby is happily crawling about without a fear in the world. Alls well that ends well.
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A new development that is tooo sweet for words. Mowgli has gotten intio this habit of sleeping with his head on my tummy or snuggled into my neck. It is so sweet and tender and nice with his nice baby smell lulling me to sleep. The BH is grrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeen with envy :-) hahahhaha

Unemployment

Jul 1,08
Finally the curtains have come down. Starting today I am officially “unemployed”. My notice period is over. The promises of being allowed to continue as a part-time consultant didn’t work out. Well, it had to happen someday…
It’s just that till today I never realized how much I identified myself with my job or the institutions where I studied.
It sorts of hurts inside when I meet anybody and they ask me “So what do you do?” I used to feel proud when I mentioned that I am working in XXXX as a XXX. Now I sort of give a whole story about how I was working for the past 4+ years and now my company had closed down and so for the time being I am jobless. But in introspect do I really have to reveal so much? Why cant I just say ‘I am a house wife” and leave it at that. Why do I feel I ought to give others an explanation as to why I’m a house wife? Why is it that people look at you in a different way when you mention that you do not work?
In a way I am glad about this break. I am not constantly worrying myself about what he is doing, what is the maid doing. He is too young for playschools/day care and even when he is older I am not comfortable with the idea of leaving him in day care for 8 hours. On the other hand, I miss working. The daily routines, the mad rush, looking forward to Fridays and most importantly getting a fat paycheck at the end of the month! There is a fear that when I finally start looking out again ( should happen in 3-4 months time) will I get a job that suits me? In terms of flexibility in timings, work form home options etc etc. well, no point breaking my head over the future. As the song goes…
Que Sara Sara,
What will be will be.
The futures’ not ours to say
Que Sara Sara

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

life and what we make of it

was cleaning my inbox and came upon this old forward. thought i'll share this with you.
Suppose someone gave you a pen - a sealed, solid-coloured pen. You couldn't see how much ink it had. It might run dry after the first few tentative words or last just long enough to create a masterpiece (or several) that would last forever and make a difference in the scheme of things. You don't know before you begin.Under the rules of the game, you really never know. You have to take a chance! Actually, no rule of the game states you must do anything. Instead of picking up and using the pen, you could leave it on a shelf or in a drawer where it will dry up, unused. But if you do decide to use it, what would you do with it? How would you play the game?Would you plan and plan before you ever wrote a word? Would your plans be so extensive that you never even got to the writing? Or would you take the pen in hand, plunge right in and just do it, struggling to keep up with the twists and turns of the torrents of words that take you where they take you? Would you write cautiously and carefully, as if the pen might run dry the next moment, or would you pretend or believe (or pretend to believe) that the pen will write forever and proceed accordingly?And of what would you write: Of love? Hate? Fun? Misery? Life? Death? Nothing? Everything?Would you write to please just yourself? Or others? Or yourself by writing for others? Would your strokes be tremblingly timid or brilliantly bold? Fancy with a flourish or plain? Would you even write? Once you have the pen, no rule says you have to write. Would you sketch? Scribble? Doodle or draw? Would you stay in or on the lines, or see no lines at all, even if they were there? Or are they? There's a lot to think about here, isn't there? Now, suppose someone gave you a life...