Do Bees Do It? Do Trees Do It?

I remember the days when I waited impatiently for the kids to properly start talking. Well, they started quite a while ago, and have been going at it pretty much non-stop since then, but recently they took things to a new plane. This happened a few days ago, so what follows is certainly not verbatim, but this is the gist of it.

Mrini: Mama, dogs do potty?
Me: Yes, dogs do potty.
Mrini: Cows do potty?
Me: Yes, cows also do potty.
Mrini: Ummmm… horses do potty?
We were driving out for a prolonged outing at this point, so I began to not like this obsession with potty.
Me: Yes, pretty much all animals do potty.
Thinking to myself: Do they? What about bees? Or earthworms? Or ants? Do they all do potty? Am I on safe ground here? Oh well, she’s only three years old, it should be safe enough for now.
Mrini: Tree does potty?
Me: No, see, a tree is not an animal. A tree is a plant. Plants don’t do potty.
To myself: They don’t, do they?
Mrini (after thinking it over for a minute or two): Then what is a plant?
Me: See, both plants and animals are living things. But animals move. You know, like dogs, cows, horses, people, they all move, they can walk and run and play. Plants don’t move.
To myself: Now I know some plants do move. Surely I don’t have to go into those kinds of exceptions right now. It will only confuse the matter.

Mrin (on a different track)i: Then cycle is an animal?

Uh-oh. Now what have we gotten into here!?

I explained to Mrini that cars and cycles and the like can be made to move, but they have to have someone do the moving – like a driver. Dogs and cows, on the other hand, move on their own volition. Of course, they can be made to move too, with the use of kicks, whips, reins, or whatever. I didn’t want to go there. Plus you have other machines that move without a visible driver – like robots and things. I didn’t want to go there either. So, since we had reached wherever we were going, I let the topic drop.

It was about a day and a half later, that Tara piped up (yeah, maybe she’s a bit slow, but you can’t say she wasn’t paying attention): Mama, fan does potty?

By this time, of course, I’d completely lost track of the previous discussion. I was busy in the kitchen and I answered with a preoccupied no. I didn’t know where she was going with it until she fired her next salvo.

Tara: Fan is an animal?

Hmmm… of course, it moves, and it doesn’t have a driver, so by that definition, it should be an animal. And animals do potty, so…

Sadia is right: it’s time I started giving the girls basic science and logic lessons.

Thinking Vegetables

I read in the papers today that doctors have managed to communicate (or establish contact) with a patient who has been in a vegetative state for five years!

How?

Apparently, they just told the patient to think of tennis if he wanted to communicate yes, and to think of walking through the rooms in his home if he wanted to communicate no. These thoughts use different parts of the brain. They scanned the brain and sure enough, as they asked the patient questions, activity showed up in either the “yes” or the “no” part of his brain. Apparently, they asked fact-based questions to which they knew the answers, and so could be sure that the replies were correct, not random.

It’s horrifying! People who have been vegetative for five years can still think! They can hear, they can understand, and they can direct their thoughts. After five years – an eternity! – of nothingness, of being “brain dead” they remember what tennis is and can visualize what their home looked like. They can attempt to communicate!

How many such people have we killed in years gone by, on the basis that they can’t think, that they practically don’t exist? Without having asked them whether they wanted to live or die?

That’s horrifying too – if you couldn’t move, couldn’t (I’m guessing) open your eyes, couldn’t breathe without a machine… if all you could do was to think, if you were nothing more than a brain, and one that had no means of communication (well, practically none), would you still want to live? Or would you want to be “put out of your misery”? Is it misery? Or is it, maybe, some weird kind of freedom? What is it like, to be all brain with no way in or out? What do you think of, after having had five years to think and no fresh input, no exchange of ideas? If you can hear sound and understand language (which this patient must have, or how would the doctors have explained the process to him?) does your whole world revolve around what you hear, who comes in, who goes, out, the things people say? Is that enough to keep a brain going? Or do you just go out of your mind with sheer boredom?

Yesterday, for some strange reason, I stumbled upon a list of ten people who had been buried alive, whose coffins were later opened up to discover all that they had done in their efforts to get out. If I that thought was gruesome and horrifying, this, today’s news, is much, much worse. In a coffin, a fellow only has a few hours of agony to endure before dying, presumably of suffocation. In a vegetative coma, you have to endure for years and years and you can’t so much as flicker an eyelid.

And if you can hear and understand, how does it feel when you hear people talking about pulling the plug on you?

Cinderella Only Lost One Shoe… AND She Got The Handsome Prince

Hard on the heels of forgetting to send the kids rice for their lunch, which, for the record, was Amit’s slip-up, not mine, came another “little” goof-up.

Forgetting to send them rice happened on the day of my birthday, which was a little more chaotic than usual, because we all left home together in the same car and we had to be extra organized to do so and we had an extra load of stuff to pack because of the impending late night out and so on and so forth.

Amit, strangely enough, selected the following day, Wednesday, to send his car for servicing. This meant that following the late night, he had an extremely early morning ahead, when he had to clear all the rubbish (sorry, important stuff) and car seats out of his car and get to office extra early so that somebody could come and pick up the car for servicing. All of this he managed and he got the car back that evening. Thursday morning was still very hectic for him, because he had to put all the rubbish back in his car, along with the car seats, and then he had to put the girls in the car seats and drive them to school. Thursday was my day for tennis, which meant that I was sleeping late and could not be counted upon to help. Anyhow, he managed everything and got to school ridiculously early as he always does, only to find that, although he had got both the girls plugged in all right, he had only one pair of shoes between the two of them. The other pair was lying on top of a pile of empty cartons in the garage. Yeah. That’s what comes of having a garage large enough to stack piles of empty cartons and other such junk in.

Being the practical and level-headed fellow that he is, he carried Tara from the car to the classroom, much to her joy and Mrini’s amusement, and updated their teacher about the current oversight. “Have her carried to the school van and she’ll be fine,” he said, cavalierly. Lucky for him that the school teachers were not aware of the previous lapse in the matter of their lunch, or I don’t know what they would have thought of him and, by extension, us.

Of course the daycare teacher knew all about the oversight with their lunch. She had questioned me about the wisdom of not sending any rice the following day and I’d had to explain the whole thing to her. So she already was not very impressed with our efficiency. Now Amit wanted me to be the one to call her and tell her that Tara would be arriving barefoot at daycare today, but I flatly refused. “You’ve got to handle your own messes,” I said and handed him the phone. “I’m SO not getting involved in this one.” I, after all, would never have left either girl to manage without shoes for the whole day. I’d have either gone back home for the shoes, or gone and bought a pair at the nearest shop. What WILL they say when they grow up??

We found out later that the school teacher – or the assistant, perhaps – had sent Tara off wearing a pair of bathroom slippers; all kids are barefoot in class, which keeps the place clean, and they all share a few pairs of bathroom slippers when they go to the bathroom. The bathroom slippers are not quite appealing as a choice of footwear, really, because if you’ve seen kids between 3 and 5 years of age take themselves to the bathroom, in school, you have some idea of what all goes on in there; and the smaller the kids, the smaller the slippers, the messier they are likely to be; and the slippers Tara had on were as small as they could be; but I suppose it’s better than having to wander around barefoot.

Luckily, the girls don’t yet know how completely infra-dig it is to be seen anywhere wearing bathroom slippers. In fact, they both thought it was a bit of a lark. They didn’t seem to mind that the other kids were laughing at Tara. That’s the magic of being three-and-a-half. With great delight, she took the bathroom slippers back to school today and announced to Akka that she was returning them. There was nary a handsome prince in sight.

We have been sleeping at 10 p.m. the last couple of nights, so if we can catch up on our sleep deficit soon, then maybe we can stop being such immensely neglectful parents. Otherwise some social worker probably will come calling soon enough…

Sleep Deprivation Disasters

January was a tough month. What with two jobs, no household help and a change in residence, we were sleeping past 11 each night (usually closer to 12) and getting up between 5.30 and 6 a.m. all days except Sundays, when the kids kindly let us sleep till 6.30 as a special favour. After one full month of this, we both have a serious sleep deficit. I’m not one who thrives on six hours of sleep a night – even had I been getting it; I need between 7 and 8 hours, the more so when life becomes more busy and stressful.

So this week, I’ve been practically falling asleep at my desk – all day long! The struggle to keep my head on my neck and my eyes open starts at 10 a.m. and lasts till… midnight, actually. It’s terrible – I really don’t know what kind of work I’ve been doing and whether it is at all up to the mark or not.

So it was probably not a good idea to add to our stress levels and sleep deficit by going out for dinner on a weekday evening, but Amit was adamant: Birthdays must be celebrated on birthdays, not on any old “convenient” day. Perhaps, too, I should have skipped tennis yesterday and settled for an extra 30 minutes of sleep – but what the heck: on my birthday, at least, I should get to play tennis, shouldn’t I? It was a bad idea, though, because what with the terrible cough I have (remnant from an exhaustion-induced cold I got some ten-odd days ago) and the general tiredness, I just couldn’t get my game going. That was frustrating and disappointing, and the only redeeming thought was, at least I tried.

I’d decided that I wanted the Best Ever Fudge Cake for my birthday. That’s not just a description of the cake, that’s its name. I’ve made it  many times over the 15-odd years since I first discovered it, and I’d have to say that its name lives up to its promise – it is really delicious. But, it’s a lot of work. Since Amit hasn’t ever really gotten into baking, I knew I’d have to do it myself. So I started on Sunday. Night. Right around 10 p.m. after the kids had gone to bed and I’d got their lunch and stuff packed for Monday. It was past midnight before the cakes were done, which gave me all of Monday to do the icings. But first, I had to find icing sugar.

Icing sugar is one of those things that is practically impossible to find when you really need it – just like cocoa powder. When I’m baking, I usually need both and it’s a given that I will, at best, find one – and perhaps not even in sufficient quantity. And that was back in Koramangala, where you can find most things in walking distance. Here, out in the middle of nowhere, I didn’t really expect to find it easily and I was right. I drew a blank on Sunday, so on Monday evening, I drove around the shops near office and eventually got lucky. Then, of course, I picked up one year’s supply of it. (Looking back, I find that I had a similar experience last year – hopefully next year will be better, if this lot doesn’t expire by then.)

Monday evening was a busy evening even by our standards. Some aggressive efforts over the weekend had resulted in one domestic help being engaged and she reported for work on Monday evening. She speaks only Kannada, which I speak very little of, so somewhere in our communications I understood that she would both clean and cook. By 8.15, when she had finished cleaning and washing dishes (and practically emptying our water tank in the process; why do these women always use much, much more water than required to wash dishes? Haven’t they ever faced water shortage in their lives? Don’t they – they of all people, they, who might have to carry water in buckets to their homes, who might have to share a toilet with 20 others, which will obviously run out of water – don’t they realize how precious water is????)

Anyhow, when she had finished wasting our water and giving Amit a heart-attack, she tied up her sari and made to leave. Cooking? It’s too late – some other day, perhaps, she said. Great. If I’d known that, I’d have made her do the cooking first. Who wants a clean house when you can have a hot meal instead? But it was too late now. So after she left and the kids went to bed, I got to work on the cooking and then right around midnight, I finally finished up the cake and it was ready to eat.

Why wait? I plunged the knife in with minimum ceremony and…

It got stuck!

Oh, right – that’s why the recipe calls for baking powder, which, in my sleep-deprived state on Sunday night, I’d forgotten to put. So instead of the light, soft, melting cake I usually get, I got a tough, leathery load of lead. Great. This was clearly not the best ever Best Ever Fudge Cake.

At least the icing was ok, so I gritted my teeth and stolidly worked my way through a slice; Amit, of course, gave up after a few bites. That was probably a smart thing to do – I doubt that kilo of lead in my stomach late at night did anything to improve my tennis six hours later. But what the heck – I had to have birthday cake on my birthday, right? (Sometimes, determination is SO counterproductive.)

So late nights, bad cake, and erratic tennis notwithstanding, we were headed for dinner out on birthday night. We drove to work together, dropping the kids at school, their lunch at daycare, and enduring innumerable traffic jams along the way; and a little after 5.30, we left office together, picking up the kids, enduring further traffic jams and heading for our old home. There, with many disclaimers as to the quality, we dropped off birthday cake and kids with S&P (many thanks, guys) and went for dinner. We went to Via Milano, an Italian restaurant that we’ve been to once before. It was a good evening – good food, good beer, good ambience, good service. (It was, of course, ridiculously expensive… but we only go out thrice a year without the kids, so we didn’t mind too much.) It would have been a fantastic evening if we hadn’t both been falling asleep immediately after dinner. From around 10 p.m. onwards, we both had a battle on our hands – and, in my case, a losing battle at that – to keep our eyes open till we could pick up the kids and drive back home. Luckily, Amit was driving – he does a better job of keeping his eyes open at critical junctures. Also, we did get stopped for a breathalyzer test, which I would probably not have passed.

Leaving home for a late night out with the kids is like going out of town for a week. We had the kids’ school bags, with snack boxes and water bottles; their lunch bag, with a zillion boxes of food and a change of clothes; their night bag with yet another change of clothes and a blanket; their shoes, which they had worn all day, but weren’t wearing now because they were asleep; our laptop cases; my handbag; and a bag of stuff we’d picked up from S&S along the way. At least some of this would have to be sorted out before we could crash out.

Just as I was dumping a bunch of dirty clothes in the laundry bag and the quadzillion lunch and snack boxes in the kitchen sink, I noticed that the rice box from the kids’ lunch bag was missing. Where could it be? The daycare was too organized to have forgotten to send it back. With a sinking heart, I opened the fridge, and… sure enough, there it was, sitting neatly where I’d left it on Monday night.

We had forgotten to send them any rice for lunch! Poor kids!

I was so exhausted that I didn’t have more than 5 microseconds to feel horribly guilty about it before I fell asleep. That’s what sleep deprivation does to you.

So today, the new woman in my life is going to be hit with a load of cooking; she is going to have to wash dishes with a tiny fraction of the water she’d normally use; she is going to manage the laundry; and I am going to bed at 10 p.m. Or sooner.

Let’s hope I can make it that far without slipping up on something critical.

I’m not sure this is something I’d want my kids to know about when they’re all grown up

I must be desperate or crazy – or both.

One of the nice things about our new home is its balconies. We have four – one at the top of the steps, one attached to the study, one attached to the master bedroom, one attached to the dining room and one attached to the kitchen. Ok, that’s five. Two of them are deep, squar-ish, and covered with a sloping tiled roof. The others are small, and largely or entirely uncovered. The one attached to the kitchen is enclosed by a metal grill, which makes it safe to keep the washing machine there and hang clothes there, though everything is exposed to the elements. The one attached to the study can actually be accessed directly from the ground floor, which makes it a slightly public balcony, though it is hidden from view from the road. The other three balconies are very visible from the road, but they are nice for sitting on with a cup of tea. Not, of course, that we’ve ever done that yet; or ever did in our old home which also had a couple of balconies. As a matter of fact, we don’t even have chairs and tables to put on the balcony, yet.

In addition to the five balconies, we have terrace at three levels. Technically, the terrace is shared with the tenants on the ground floor (and I suppose that, equally theoretically, their garden is shared with us), but I’ve never seen them use it.

And of course, we have a large garage, which should do for two cars but for all the junk lying in it; and a separate side parking area for my car.

So basically, we have a lot of open space in this place – a lot more than we’re used to. Which is great, except when it comes to cleaning it.

We haven’t properly cleaned the whole house more than once or twice since we moved in, so obviously, we haven’t cleaned the outdoors areas even once. I decided to tackle the many areas one-at-a-time over the weekends. By the time I get done with all of them, it’ll be time to go back to the top and start again. It’s as good a way to spend the weekend as any…. Well, almost.

So on Sunday I decided to tackle the balcony attached to the dining room. Since it is larger than the others and covered too, and since it is centrally located and cannot be access from anywhere other than the dining room, it has unfortunately been elected as the best place to hang clothes to dry. Unfortunate, because I’d much rather not have to see our clothes drying every time I pass by – about 200 times a day – but it seemed to be the only practical option. The other balconies are either too far away from the laundry area, or too small, or too public, or too exposed to the elements. So, since we had to hang our clean clothes there to dry, it seemed logical to get that balcony cleaned up as quickly as possible.

Now, if I have to get my hands dirty cleaning up our new place, why should I have to do this alone? Especially when I have another two pairs of hands that are only too eager to get themselves dirty? So I tore a large rag into two small rags and one large rag, handed the smaller bits to the twins, equipped us with a mug of water with some detergent in it, and we all got busy. I cleaned the upper surfaces, while the girls worked on the lower surfaces. We did the glass doors, the ornamental railing, and the floor. By the end of an hour or so, much of the dust that had formerly been in the balcony had been transferred onto parts of the girls. I’m not sure whose idea it was – most likely, not mine – but somebody decided that the muddy water in the mug and the muddy rags in our hands would be ideal for mopping the dusty floor with. Given that large quantities of water had already been spilled on the floor, though, this probably did no more harm than had already been done.

Like I’ve said before, when it comes to my own kids, I have nothing against child labour. But… just that weekend I’d heard of two small kids who’d been hit by something allergenic and had to be taken to the hospital in a hurry and put on a nebulizer. Neither of these kids had any known history of asthma, so probably it was something in the air. And dust is the last thing you want to expose people to if they’ve already got breathing problems. Why, exactly, was I making my kids practically roll around in the stuff?

The good part of all this was that I got some very funny looks from people passing by on the street below. Hopefully, some of them were domestic help, and some of them were people who know or employ domestic help. If they have no pity for me, they might at least take pity on the two little girls scrubbing away so Cinderella-like and come and ease our pain. Till that happens, there are plenty of equally public spaces that I can coax the kids into spend the next several weekends scrubbing.

If It’s Broke… Don’t Fix It

That seems to be Hyundai’s motto. I sent my car for servicing and told them that two things were broken: the windshield wiper (somebody flicked the blade while we were in Calcutta! Nasty *%&$%@*#); and the switch of the cabin light (or overhead light or the light that’s supposed to come on when you open the door). Apart from these two minor problems, I just wanted a routine servicing. It was, as a matter of fact, the second free service for this baby, who’s only just six months old. The latter problem (the light switch) should not even have happened in a six-month-old vehicle. (The former problem should never happen, no matter how old. What could anyone want with a windshield wiper blade???)

My car was delivered back in spotlessly clean condition. Everything looked ok, so I paid up and sent the chap away. It was only late at night that I found that absolutely nothing had been done about the light switch; it was still broken. Damn, I thought, I’ll have to call them to get it fixed. I’ll jolly well make them come and pick up the car and drop it back free of cost.

So I called. I was told that the light switch hadn’t been fixed because the part wasn’t in stock. The “assembly” would have to be changed. It would cost me 1500 bucks. So they had done a “temporary” fix.

I was in shock. What temporary fix? And why should I have to pay 1500 bucks for a simple little plastic light switch that had no business breaking when it was less than six months old in the first place?

I asked for the manager’s number, then I decided to call the Head of Servicing. He directed me back to the manager. In fact, he said he’d speak to the manager and ask the manager to call me, but when did Service people ever start actually calling a disgruntled customer? When I called, the manager had been briefed by both the service engineer and the head of servicing. He had all the answers. A Hyundai engineer had seen the problem and declared it to be not a manufacturing defect, so not covered by warranty. I vented some ire on him, politely, and got him on the defensive by asking why I hadn’t even been told any of this to begin with. And, of course, I ended by asking him why I should have to pay big bucks for something which shouldn’t even be broken in six months. I added, for good measure, that I’d never had any such silly problem with my old car even after eight years! Which was absolutely true, apart from the little matter of the axle falling off while I was at the wheel.

Anyhow, he put me on to somebody in Chennai, so I called and fired that guy as well. That fellow said he’d speak to the manager and ask him to call me back. I gave the guy several hours, then called him again. By now, apparently, I’d fired enough people, so they decided I was a nuisance. “We’ll replace the part as soon as we get it, possibly next Monday,” they told me. They probably think I’ll forget all about it by then, but they don’t know me

A Little Bit Of Many Things

I can hardly believe we are almost three weeks into the new year. Time flies when you’re having fun, they say, but they forgot to add that time also flies when you’ve got more work than you can handle. We haven’t got any form of domestic help yet, so in addition to working and managing the kids, we’re also doing ALL the household work ourselves. At least we managed to find a dhobi… but it would be more reassuring if we could count on him to pick up and send back the clothes whenever he says he will. Currently he promises the earth and delivers nothing – which is very worrying when all your office-wear is in his sole possession.

At least we managed to get all our cartons of books and assorted STUFF unpacked. We found just about everything we needed, then we threw away some of it, and boxed some of it up again and stuck it in the pooja room which is serving as a store room. Books and knick-knacks were the primary targets – this new place has nothing like the amount of bookshelf and showcase space that it should have. It is so sad to see so many of my dear friends (the books, I mean) boxed up and tucked away – psychology text books, archaeology text books, german text books… Amit bid adieu to Bengali song books and his old computer text books as well… may they all see the light of day sometime soon.

Meanwhile, we spent two very hectic weekends working ceaselessly to put everything else in its place and stash all the empty boxes and rarely-used stuff away into deep, high, or otherwise inaccessible places like lofts and the garage. At last, we can actually see the floor in the study and around the bookshelf in the living room. We even have most of the bathroom fittings up; only the paintings are still on the ground, facing the wall, looking sad.

There have been a couple of casualties of the move. My new (but very cheap) pair of black sandals has disappeared completely. One framed picture has had its glass smashed. And our 3-CD changer has mysteriously gotten stuck in the open position and cannot be closed. This is a big problem – left in its designated place, it is going to attract the kids like a candle to a moth. It also doesn’t look like anything that we are going to succeed in getting fixed anytime soon. And today when I ran the microwave, though it hummed and its light came on and the tray rotated like it should, the food simply didn’t warm up – so I suspect that’s going to be on the casualty list as well.

Last Thursday, before we were quite set up, we had our first attempt at entertaining. There were still cardboard boxes littering the place, but my cousin and his wife happened to be passing through Bangalore for a day so of course we had them come over for lunch. Fortunately, it was a holiday for me. Unfortunately, it was also a holiday for the kids, which hampered my effectiveness quite a bit. Even more unfortunately, it was not a holiday for Amit; but fortunately he could work from home and do his best to help me. I was, of course, sorely tempted to order in lunch, but we haven’t really discovered any very nice places to order in from – only the keep-body-and-soul-together variety – so I decided I had better cook. Tired and uninspired as I was, I managed to churn out an edible meal of pasta and meat sauce, chicken with mushroom, mashed potatoes, and mixed veggies. Naturally, there was ice cream – which I had to dash out and buy while my cousins were already in the car on the way to our place. Luckily, of course, their driver lost the way, so I made it home before they did. Apart from the cartons strewn around and the antique (50-year-old) melamine crockery that we were forced to use, it was an almost acceptable level of entertaining. (Of course my cousin took us all out in the evening, and we went to Ebony, which was just wonderful – it’s been ages since I went there! We reserved a table on the “main” terrace and were warned in no uncertain terms that if we were as much as 5 minutes late, we’d lose it. I’ve never been under that kind of stress for a mere dinner reservation! We were, of course, about 11 minutes late, but we did call them on the dot of 8 to say we were almost there and would they please hold the table for us, pretty please?)

We have been taking the kids to the play area quite regularly. There’s a good collection of swings there, so they enjoy it, but… it’s not the same thing. I do see some of the same people there everyday, but neither the kids nor the attendant parents seem to have formed a gang, like we had back in our old place. There’s a gang of grandmas who stand around in a circle, chant, clap, and eventually descend into prayer; and there are some small gatherings of women walking briskly around outside the park, some with dogs; but in the park, each of the mothers/grandparents/maids focuses their attention on their children/wards and the children focus their attention on the swings, and there doesn’t seem to be much interaction between anyone. I’ve been making eye contact and smiling at all the women, in the hopes of eventually finding my way to a maid (domestic help, I mean), but it doesn’t seem to be working. Amit says they must all think me daft. I don’t mind if they do, so long as they spread the good word. The next step has got to be just going up to some of them and telling them outright: Hey, I’m not smiling at you because I like you, or even because I’m daft: the thing is, I need a maid. Can you lend me yours?

Of course it’s also true that even if I get to know the people and the kids begin to play with the other kids there, it might not be the same. We had a good gang in our old place and it doesn’t automatically follow that we can get an equally good gang in the new place.

So once the dust settles (and that took quite a while), it looks like we fixed something that was kind-of broken (the evening commute) and in doing so, broke several other things that were working so well. Sigh. Why is life always about trade-offs? Why can’t everything go right, just for a little while?

Meanwhile, thoughts on the new year

• Forget trying to lose weight.
• Forget trying to get my books published
• Forget getting back to playing my violin regularly
• Forget studying archaeology

All I want to do this year is:

• Keep my head above water at work
• Avert any major household crises
• Spend as much time as possible with the kids (without losing my temper)
• Remember to smile – this is (mostly) the life I wanted

Moving Out

It was a chaotic weekend, made much worse by extraneous factors that should have had no influence whatsoever in the manner in which we moved house.

To start at the middle, it has to do with the twins’ adoption, which is still (yes, STILL) not quite done. The legalities, I mean, are not quite done. Our lawyer has to file some papers in court and when we went there in December and signed the papers, we didn’t know where we were going to be shifting to, so we gave our current address, which is now our old address. Then we decided that a 75-90 minute commute back home each evening was simply unacceptable, so, contrary to our lawyer’s advice, we decided we would shift home anyway. But, a social worker has to visit us at some unspecified date in the near future and this person will only visit the address given on the papers filed in court. And not only must we have physical possession of the premises, we must also actually be living there. It is not enough to show them an empty apartment with our nameplate at the door and say that it belongs to us. Actually, I’m not finding fault with this process – I guess it is done to check that adopted children have actually gone into a loving family with a proper home and are not being kept in terrible conditions or subjected to any kind of visible cruelty or abuse. As far as that goes, it is a good thing. Of course, people who really want to do child-trafficking of any kind would not be caught out so easily, but at least the authorities have to make this effort – it would be tragic if people could, for instance, adopt a child and then keep them locked up or tied up, and nobody ever even came to check.

So I’m not complaining about the process. Only, the timing is so terribly off. I suppose I should have waited a couple of months (or six) to start working and then we would not have been in such a tearing hurry to move. But then, you have to grab the opportunity when it comes, so… Whatever.

On Thursday evening we returned from Calcutta and greeted the new year with a bottle of rum and several bottles of Coke (ThumsUp, actually, but Rum and Coke just sounds so much better). On Friday, we went and investigated our new home once more and didn’t manage to achieve much of anything, really. Reluctantly, late on Friday night, we started packing clothes into suitcases and soon ran out of suitcases… and backpacks… and plastic carry bags. So we did what any sane person would do – we drank some more rum and coke and crashed.

On Saturday morning, the packers arrived. They were supposed to come at 9.30 a.m. and the showed up – ten minutes early! We started directing them – pack this, leave that, don’t touch any of the books, nor the paintings, and we won’t need that dining table either. Our plan was to take just the bare minimum stuff with us to the new home so that we still had a semblance of a home at our old home. Then, after the social worker’s visit, we’d cart the rest of our stuff away. How we’d manage for several weeks without all our stuff I don’t know… but we’d signed the lease, paid the advance and got the keys in our hands, so we were definitely moving.

Half an hour into packing, we suddenly reversed our decision and decided to pack everything; moving half our stuff just wasn’t tenable, nobody can live like that, not with two kids to manage and a full-fledged household to run. What would we do about the gas stove, the washing machine, the curtains, the fridge and TV? We decided to move lock, stock, and barrel. The confused packers threw things into cartons absolutely at random and chaos ensued. Shaba-Aunty arrived with two children in tow.

Our two were mercifully busy. In Calcutta, they had been exposed to “party” meals. That means, plates are laid out in a long line, along with bowls, spoons and glasses. Then food is served on each plate in a row, by serving men. It is a prolonged affair, course following upon course, beginning with salt and rice and ending with three kinds of sweet. When all is done, the guests rise, and the servers pick up all the used plates and bowls etc. to lay out the whole process for the next round of guests. While unpacking, Amit came across a carton full of paper plates, spoons and bowls left over from the twins’ second birthday (which, if he had uncovered this treasure trove several months ago, would have been put to good use for their third birthday). This carton he handed over to the delighted kids, who proceeded to diligently spread out rows of paper plates on our huge mattress, add all the accessories, meticulously for each place setting, serve an imaginary party meal to an imaginary throng of guests, and then, carefully, pick up and neatly stack up all the “used” plates. It was a spectacle of a lifetime – I wish there were some better way of preserving those moments than these completely inadequate words which will probably get lost in the sands of time.

Meanwhile, the packers were quickly turning our lifetime’s acquisitions into a jumble of cardboard cartons. Since we hadn’t done anything by way of preparation, Amit and I were scrambling to get the more personal of our possessions packed away ourselves. This included a whole host of things – clothes, jewellery, documents, computers and their bits and pieces like printer, scanner, monitor, whatnot, and of course… food! At least I’d had the cook do some work the previous evening, so we had lunch ready for the kids. At last, around 12 noon, I took the four kids and Shaba Aunty and a lot of assorted items in my car and drove to our new home. Shaba-Aunty got to work scrubbing and cleaning, while I went out with the kids to buy brown paper to line the cupboards with. By around 3.30, the packers arrived with a truckload of stuff. By 4.30, everything had been unloaded and was lying around in an advance state of disarray. Our rocking chair, which we had put away when the kids came home and had decided that was now safe enough to put back in use, had had its back broken. Additionally, the glass on one picture had been cracked. Apart from that, nothing that I’ve discovered so far seems to have suffered much damage, which, considering the manner in which they packed and moved, is nothing short of a miracle. I managed to put a fresh sheet on the kids’ mattress (which was a bit of a waste, considering they themselves were nothing short of filthy) and they went to sleep reluctantly around 4.30. Meanwhile, I left for the long drive back to our old home, where I had promised Shaba Aunty I would drop her.

On arriving back at our old home, I was shocked to find that Amit seemed to have left about half our worldly possessions behind! None of the cupboards was completely empty, and some of the lofts were as full of stuff as they had ever been! Additionally, our packers had mysteriously neglected to pack sundry essentials like one gas cylinder and the kitchen trash can. It looked like we’d need another truck to get everything shifted out of there. I loaded a few items into my small car, then gave it up as a lost cause and drove all the way back to the new home again. Naturally, we went out for dinner.

On Sunday, we managed to unpack 90% of the things that we needed to keep our household going from day to day. The kitchen became largely functional, and most of our clothes were located. Certain vital gaps, however, were indisputable. We couldn’t find our regular coffee cups. In fact, we couldn’t find any cups at all. We tried drinking coffee out of some plastic mugs that were gifted to the kids in some remote era, but the coffee just didn’t taste the same. Then, our table mats were missing. It shouldn’t have been very important, but it was quite irritating to have to keep food directly on our wooden table and have stuff spill all over it. Strangely enough, our microwave was up and running right away, but, crucially, the round glass plate that fits into the bottom and rotates was missing – so, the microwave just couldn’t be used. All our toiletries made it and have been found, but of the hand towels, there is no trace. Even worse, the gas stove and one cylinder had made it and we had them connected up and ready to go, but… we couldn’t find the gas lighter! Matches? We don’t smoke – who keeps matches other than smokers?

Several days later, the coffee cups and the microwave’s bottom are still missing. And cardboard cartons – mostly full of books – litter the living room and the study. Our computers and associated paraphernalia are still stranded in our old home. Our bookshelves are empty and all our framed pictures are straddling two dining table chairs, waiting to find their places on the walls. Thankfully, our new home has a puja room into which we have haphazardly shoved an assortment of cardboard cartons, some of which, no doubt, contain the vital implements that we are missing. Only the kitchen, the kids’ bedroom, and our bedroom have some semblance of sanity. Which is saying a lot, because I think I’ve completely lost any semblance of sanity and I’m not sure how much my better half has left either.

My immediate problem is that we now have no household help whatsoever. Not only is there nobody to clean this beautiful and spacious new home of ours, there’s nobody to cook food for us either. Even worse – if anything could possibly be worse – is that we don’t even seem to have a dhobi nearby. I’ve been diligently working my way through a monstrous stack of laundry (including some backlog from the trip to Calcutta!) and the thought of now working my way through the ever-increasing stack of clothes to be ironed is driving me to the brink of a nervous breakdown! Plus, of course, the house has not had even the whisper of a cleaning since Shaba-Aunty did her magic last Saturday, and it is much the worse for it. Amit and I haven’t had a square meal at home till date – it’s all I can do to ensure that there is sufficient food of a sufficient standard so that the kids don’t starve.

Then, of course, there are the little things: no broadband, no TV, and no newspapers. But that hardly matters – what with just trying to keep us going from day to day (not to mention feeble efforts to find my precious coffee cup), who has time for all of that?

Oh, yeah, our commute back from work now is about 30 minutes. Yesterday I did it in 20. We’ve taken the kids to the park every day this week. So I know this was a good decision, but how am I going to survive another week without Shaba-Aunty?

And WHERE’S my coffee cup???

Tagged

It’s strange, the way the mind works. I remember when I first started working in a dotcom company ten years ago, ID badges were disparaged and people who wore them – these “doggie tags” – were mocked. It was a symbol of a perverted kind of bravado (sorry, “cool”) to not wear your doggie tag. Of course the doors were not security-enabled, so you could waltz in and out without a badge hanging from your neck if you wanted to. Everybody knew everybody, there was no question of anyone actually stopping you and asking for your badge. The whole thing was a bit of a joke. In the last company I worked for, things were totally different. You couldn’t get into the main areas of the office building without an ID, and even in the more “public” areas like the cafeteria, you had to have your badge visibly on you, even if it was a temporary badge or a visitor badge. Badgeless workers would be questioned and tailgating was just not acceptable. Between these two extremes my various organisations showed various degrees of seriousness about ID badges. My own attitude was largely indifferent – I wore my badge because I was supposed to and neither liked nor abhorred it… or so I thought. I don’t know when the badge became a symbol of anything to me, but when I joined my current organization, I looked forward to getting my badge and wearing it like a medal of honour, to proclaim that I too, now, was a member of the workforce (the paid workforce, I mean). When I joined my new organization, it took them a couple of working weeks to get my badge. Meanwhile, I had nothing: no temporary badge, no visiting cards, not even a simple parking sticker. Strange as it is, this made me feel… unsettled, I think is the best word. I lacked the sense of belonging. I had my cube, my laptop, my desk phone, but… my attire was incomplete. I still didn’t have the look of a gainfully employed person. For that final, crucial touch, I needed the badge. And now I have it: a gaudy red tape with a badly scanned image of my face – wearing a somewhat sardonic half-smile – at the end of it. It really is not something potent enough to be a symbol of anything, but… somehow it feels good to have my doggie tag back.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

I believe that the Pope (was it?) recently said that greeting people this festive season could be an obscenity, because you never know what kind of hardship they are going through. So I just want to say that, whatever kind of hardship you may or may not be going through I wish you a healthier, wealthier, and happier time in the new year.

We are off to meet the in-laws again, and will be back in time to spend new year’s eve in our old home. On New Year’s Day, we hope to shift to our new home… which currently, despite all the urgings of plain common sense (summarised by Supriya in her comment to my previous post), looks like being the independent house.