Depression: Survival Strategies (That Don’t Work)

(Clearly, I’ve not yet made up my mind whether titles should be in sentence case or title case. Does it even matter?)

Yeah, I’m still depressed. It seems to be getting worse, if anything, but it’s not yet reached the point where I stop communicating all together, which must be a good thing.

The weird thing about depression at this stage, is that even while I’m behaving in a unpredictable, emotional, unreasonable, mean and bitchy manner, a small part of me stands back and watches and says, “why are you reacting like this?” - but despite that, I can’t stop or change the way I behave/react.

So anyway, on the weekend I decided I would have to put some of my depression survival strategies to work.

Food, always first on the list, was ruled out because of my diet. If I fail to lose weight, it’s only going to make me more depressed. So I couldn’t indulge in binge eating involving chocolates, ice creams, pizzas and other unhealthy stuff. We had three-and-a-half dinners out (or ordered in) in succession, but if you don’t let yourself go all out and eat like there’s no tomorrow, it doesn’t work.

Shopping - I’m not much of a shopaholic, but it does help sometimes. It’s been ruled out since the advent of the twins, just because getting out of the house is so difficult. And going shopping with two toddlers AND a husband in tow, each with their own idea of what constitutes a good shopping experience, is completely impossible.

Spending money - You don’t have to actually go shopping to spend money. There are certain kinds of shopping which hardly even qualify as shopping, while they quite easily can require satisfactorily large sums of money to be spent. Such as, for example, buying a new refrigerator. Ours is very old and extraordinarily small for a family of four. Unfortunately, Amit is not being adequately supportive of this strategy. Sigh. Husbands…

Getting a haircut - this always works. It is one of the wonderful things about having short hair, that you can always make it shorter. You can change the length, the style, the shape, whatever, and come away looking almost like a different person. (People with long hair never really do benefit from haircuts - they just cut off an inch or two, and with 39 or whatever inches from root to tip, an inch or two is neither here nor there, is it? They never get to enjoy that wonderful feeling of shaking your head and finding that nothing moves about on top of it.)

As a stay-at-home mom, it is quite difficult to find time for a haircut, though, involving, as it does, a protracted stint away from home, preferrably during daytime hours. So when I found a small window of opportunity on Saturday evening, I grabbed it. I had only enough time to head for the nearest local beauty parlour, which I had never ventured into before, far less trusted my hair to. But I figured it wasn’t too much of a risk - how bad can a haircut be, after all?

On entering the beauty parlour, I found four women, sitting around and gossiping, one painting another’s nails. Apparently, none of them was a customer. This was not confidence-inspiring - do all local beauty parlours employ “beauticians” (note the double quotes around that word) to sit around and beautify each other?

Anyway, I took a chair, and had a sheet flung around me and fastened at the neck. They put what must have been the most inept of the four on to me. My hair was distinctly oily, but the hair dresser didn’t offer (far less insist on) a shampoo; in fact, she didn’t even comb it, just pinned it up and started cutting. I could tell by the way she handled the comb and scissors, that she was no expert, and the results soon showed just how inexpert she was.

In short, she butchered my hair. I came out of there looking like a serial axe-murderer. True, I had asked for a ‘boy cut’, but I hadn’t counted on getting a ‘mad-boy cut’ - that is, a haircut that looked like it had been executed by a mad boy. What’s worse, it was too short for any more experienced hairdresser to be able to rectify it.

Amit was most kind about it. He said it made me look younger. Then he drew some similarities between me and survivors of the Union Carbide gas tragedy, and followed that up with comments about how people look when recovering from protracted bouts of severe illnesses. In both cases, he concluded that they generally did not look as bad as I did. He was clearly reluctant to be seen in public with me, for which I could hardly blame him - I’m not sure I wanted to be seen in public with me, looking the way I did.

After I had showered and gotten about a million bits of hair off my neck and shoulders (the wrapping having been at least as ineffective as the haircut itself), Amit relented and took us all out to dinner. We chose a quiet restaurant where I attracted only half-a-dozen funny looks, and came home by 9 p.m., just as the Saturday evening crowds were beginning to build up.

Now, I’m only worried about the upcoming adoption hearing. What if the judge takes one look at me and decides that I must be an escaped convict who is not to be trusted with the health and welfare of two small kids? Maybe, if I wear my most terrible scowl, he will get really scared and decide not to get on my wrong side, and pass the order in double quick time.

The only consolation is that it’s hair - it will grow back eventually and then I can get it fixed. Meanwhile, I only have to stay indoors for the next three months or so. That should be easy enough - misery hates company anyway.

It’s SO not my day today

It started with the plumber.

Have you noticed how most bad things start with the plumber?

And the plumber saga started a week ago, when I was in Pondicherry. One toilet started leaking like it thought it was a shower. The other was leaking like a sieve. So, when I got back, the first thing I did, almost before I took off my shoes, was to call the plumber. We have this deal with this handyman service provider where they are supposed to provide plumbers and electricians on call. The next day, the plumber came, took a look, said it couldn’t be done right away because he would have to buy a washer (two washers, actually) and he didn’t have time to go out, do that, and come back and finish the work. So, he would put in his report and the next day another guy would come and put the washer. Why not the same guy? Well, it was his day off, of course.

The next day, nobody came. The shower-impersonating toilet, which was leaking worse than ever, had been turned off, so only the sieve-impersonating toilet was functional, which wasn’t very convenient. The rate of leak on this one too had increased and was fast tending towards shower-like.

On Friday, I called again, fired them for not sending anybody the previous day, and requested a plumber to finish the job ASAP. The same day, a plumber came, “fixed” the sieve-like toilet, said that the shower-like toilet needed to be cut open (don’t even ASK) and a major part replaced, which he didn’t have time to do that day and he would come the next day to do it.

So, Friday afternoon, I called AGAIN, reminding them to send the plumber to finish the work on Saturday. You know what they said? “Saturday? No, madam. We’ll send him today itself. He will be there by 5.30-6.00″

Well, that’s the time I take the kids to the park, but I did need my toilet to stop acting like a shower and become a toilet again, so I agreed. Frustrated would be too mild a word to describe my mood by 6.30. when no plumber showed up.

So Saturday I called YET AGAIN and royally screamed at the customer service rep - I think this company has just one, so it was the same person I was talking to every time. Well, they sent the plumber - same guy as Friday, thankfully - but he spent more than two hours here, and when he left, the problem came right back as bad as ever. And on the other toilet, the original problem was fixed, but a new and related problem had been caused by the plumbers’ tinkering.

So today, the plumber was back. Yet another guy, this time. At least this fellow seemed to know what he was doing. He tackled one toilet, then set about working on the other. Meanwhile, I found the one he had tackled was still not quite ok. He started to fix that, and I found that the other one was not quite ok either. Sigh. It took him well over an hour to get both of them done, but since then they seem to both be ok.

Meanwhile, the girls took advantage of my distraction and the fact that the bathroom door was open, to quickly nip inside and get to work on the roll of toilet paper. Yep, they had the whole dang roll of toilet paper strewn all over the bedroom in about 15 seconds! And it was a fresh roll, so it had just about as much toilet paper on that roll as you could possibly get. ALL OVER the bedroom, like birthday streamers being take down. Only, all white, of course. Oh and, in ribbons too. Shredded. Like spaghetti. I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry… so I called Amit, who laughed. It’s easy for him - he’s not the one who has to try to salvage what’s left of it.

So with the household schedule running one hour late and minus a roll of toilet paper, why I decided to clean out the drinking water tank I don’t quite know, except that it was long overdue. We have that Reverse Osmosis system, which wastes three times the volume of potable water it generates. Since we hate to waste water, we have a complicated system for retrieving it and storing it for washing dishes and cleaning the house and so on. This complicated system naturally involves a hose pipe and the hose pipe naturally manages to displace itself from its moorings every once in a way and floods the entire kitchen. And of course, this had to happen today.

Meanwhile the girls have been up to their usual quota of mischief - playing with water in the bathroom, trying to bring down the full-length mirror in the bedroom, getting their hands into the trashcan in the kitchen, throwing around the cushions and pushing around the furniture in the living and dining rooms, and all that sort of stuff. The usual.

There wasn’t enough food for my lunch, so I’m still hungry.

It looks like it’s going to rain again, so the girls and I are going to be stuck indoors this evening as well.

And Amit just called to say he’s going out for dinner!

Powerless (and being really stupid about it)

On Sunday, we had a power cut that started in the morning around 11 and lasted till around 5 p.m. The papers spoke of some major fault that had resulted in large areas of the city being without power on Saturday evening, and that repairs would be underway on Sunday, rendering those areas and some others powerless on Sunday.

On Monday, the papers reported how the repair work had been progressing satisfactorily, when some minor disaster had occurred and put paid to all the labours of the day. Repairs would be resumed on Monday, again resulting in prolonged power outages in various areas.

So, on Monday morning, when we lost electricity around 7.30 a.m., I put it down to the electric repairs under way, and thought nothing about it, apart from working out how it would affect my day. It turned out, it wouldn’t make much difference: the weather was pleasant enough to make life bearable without fans even in the daytime; our house is bright enough to render lights in the daytime largely unnecessary; my mobile phone battery was fully charged; the fridge was due for a defrosting anyway. And for once, there would be no loud doorbells interrupting the kids’ afternoon slumber. The only things that posed a minor inconvenience for me were that I couldn’t play the music system (I played some music on the mobile phone, but it’s not at all the same thing); the laundry would have to wait till evening; and I’d have to spend the afternoon hours reading instead of staring at the monitor - which could be considered a good thing.

The day passed off all right, and it was only around 6 p.m. when electricity still hadn’t returned that I began to get irritated. It was getting dark, and the kids and I were stuck indoors due to the rain.

Then, the street lights came on, and I sat up straight and took a long look around. It finally dawned on me that all around me there was light, current, power, electricity, bijli - whatever you choose to call it, it was there in abundance. Only our house was in darkness! Damn! And I’d been putting up with it all day!

By this time, Amit was home, and it was he who went down, did the footwork, found the burnt-out fuse and got it changed. I was too busy sitting at home in the still darkness and feeling foolish and really angry with myself.

A Young Woman Travels Alone (And Lives to Tell About It)

I wouldn’t say that I’m quite the quintessential intrepid woman traveler, exploring the farthest corners of the globe alone, bravely going where no woman has gone before, without a thought for my safety or sanity; but then, I have done some solo trips in India that have been considered quite… adventurous, for want of a better word. I have been led to believe that it is rather brave - if not downright foolhardy - for a woman to go traipsing off into the remotest corners of Madhya Pradesh, Ladakh, and Tamil Nadu alone, as I have done on various memorable occasions. Reactions of friends and family have indicated that this is not quite the normal thing expected of a well-bred, seemingly intelligent and sane Indian woman.

And for what, pray? Not for anything sensible and laudable like work, or even social work – merely for pleasure, for a holiday. What’s that? A young and respectable (married!) Indian woman holidaying alone? Who ever heard of such a thing?

Very few people, apparently… and not just amongst my friends and family. Reactions from members of the general public who have see me travelling, then looked around for a companion and found none, have been varied and diverse, but unanimously incredible.

There is, it seems, a peculiar and unspoken hierarchy for women traveling in India, which I’m not sure exists anywhere else in the world. At the top of the ladder are women travelling with husbands, mothers, sisters, and other members of the family – the more, the merrier. Women carrying babies or young children, whether in all-women groups or with husbands, are at the very highest rung of the ladder, and young men will sometimes even give up their seat in a bus/train for them, while older men and women will offer to hold the kids, or accommodate sundry pieces of luggage that inevitably accompany such travelers.

Women travelling with husbands, but without children or extended family are also generally judged to be respectable, and are usually left alone. They might, however, be subject to some harassment if they are sufficiently young, even remotely good looking, or if there is any suspicion whatsoever that the accompanying male might not be a legally wedded husband. I faced such harassment in rather scary circumstances at the hands of a local traffic cop just outside Delhi, who was not convinced that Amit and I had been married eight years, and demanded to see the kids as proof of our relationship! This was rather difficult to arrange, as we didn’t have any at the time. He then took each of us apart and asked for the maiden name of the other’s mother!

Elderly women traveling alone (not as rare as one might suppose) are strictly left alone. They are immediately recognizable as the Family Matriarch, withered and old, loud-voiced and not averse to obscenity, immune to leers and (being partially deaf) lewd comments, used to having everyone around them come running, snap to attention, and do exactly as they’re told. They will immediately remind you of your mother, mother-in-law, grandmother, great-grandmother, and the archetypal Aunt Agatha, all rolled into one. Nobody, but nobody, messes with them.

Younger women traveling in groups are seen as fair game for young men roving in gangs, but the larger the group of women, the rarer the men who will take them on.

A Young Woman Traveling Alone (AYWTA), however, is right down there on the bottom-most rung of the ladder. AYWTA is viewed by some with a leer, and by others with extreme suspicion normally reserved for cobras, scorpion and the like. For example, AYWTA on a bus or sitting in a restaurant (in semi-urban or in rural settings; big cities have their own, completely different set of rules) will be carefully shunned by all the respectable “family” men. Wives, if present, can be safely parked next to her, and perhaps young male (and, of course, female) children, but other male members of the family will conspicuously avoid sitting or standing nearby, or even looking in her direction. The unfortunate bus/train conductors and restaurant proprietors who must deal with her do so quickly, with an air of embarrassment, while carefully avoiding her eyes and all the other eyes focused on them.

I’ve had bus conductors show very visible reluctance in having to place male passengers next to me while I was traveling alone, even when the bus was quite full and the seat next to me was the only vacant one left. I’ve even seen the young men selected for this terrible task blanch and visibly pale at the prospect. But then there was the guy who not only sat willingly next to me (though other seats were vacant), but, much to my disgust, fell asleep (and drooled!) on my shoulder. Only after waking up and taking a careful look at me, did he realize with a start that I was - horrors! - AYWTA, and quickly moved away with a muted apology. (Probably the fact that he was significantly inebriated had something to do with his belated realization.)

If the reactions reserved for AYWTA were to vary only between embarrassment, suspicion, and shock, things would be great for us women travelers. Unfortunately, however, too much of the attention focused on AYWTA is of the unwanted type. Young men, singly or, more worryingly, in gangs, will leer at her unabashedly and perhaps make some lewd or disrespectful comment, blandly assuming that AYWTA must be a foreigner. I have had the dubious pleasure of retorting in the vernacular, and leaving the ruffians somewhat abashed; they didn’t intend to pick on an Indian woman, nor did they want their ribaldry to be understood.

I have also been the subject of a most “decent” indecent proposal, when an elderly Greek (?) gentleman (who must have been at least 80 in the shade, 95 in direct sunlight) communicated to me that he would be delighted if I would care to join him in his room that evening. Well, I declined, but you have to hand it to the old grandpa for trying.

Not all indecent proposals are so polite and lacking in deceit. On a particular occasion in Manali, I found myself hunting for a roost for the night the hard way - on foot, luggage in tow. It was June - peak season in Manali - and decent rooms were impossible to find. After being turned away for the umpteenth time, a young and smooth, smart sort of chap approached me and suggested a hotel just down the way. I normally brush off these touts without even looking at them, but tiredness and the beginnings of despair dulled my usual alertness and I found myself following him into a hotel. “A room for this madam,” he said authoritatively to the chap behind the counter, adding in coarse vernacular, “she’s alone.”

Well, they found a room for me, of course, but by then my stranger-alert antennae had picked up some really seedy signals, so I beat a hasty retreat. I could just see a long line of men queuing up outside my door once darkness descended, with the tout selling tickets for the gallery view no doubt.

The other sort of attention AYWTA attracts is that of the con artist. This could be either man or woman, decently dressed and well spoken, who approaches with an innocuous question, perhaps concerning the time or else asking directions. The person then proceeds to sit at a very respectable distance from AYWTA and slowly (and completely without prompting) brings out the sob story… Robbed, cheated, or somehow hoodwinked out of all their money, credit card, cell phone and vital addresses, they are roaming the streets of a strange city without enough money to get home, do you think you could help, sister…

Oh, sure, I’ve heard that one before, brother. I might be AYWTA, but do you think I was born yesterday?

And so it goes… the good, the bad, and the downright ridiculous. I wouldn’t say it’s dangerous for women to travel alone in India, but I wouldn’t say it’s easy either. You have to keep your wits about you, and you have to remember to be suspicious, even if it is tempting to be trusting. And it helps if you are completely immune to staring, leering, and general lewdness. I’m sure a course in self-defence and the company of some reliable weapons of male destruction would help, but so far I’ve traveled with just my wits and my backpack, and I’ve managed alright. One thing’s for sure: if you do travel alone, you might be wary, tense, lonely, scared, or just plain bored – but you’ll never be left alone.

The Lucky Ones Land in the Dungeon

So my former company (and those of you in the industry - but not in the know - might be able to identify it from what follows) has shut down the small (?) team that I belonged to during my tenure there, and put all the 80-odd people in redeployment.

And we all know what that means.

Except there’s this small sub-group that has not been put in the redeployment pool right away. Lucky buggers, right? Yeah. Those guys, who are apparently working on something too critical to be abandoned right away (and a project which is in deep shit to boot), have been put in the dungeon instead.

Dungeon? What’s that?

That’s what I asked when I heard of this the other day.

The dungeon process has apparently always existed in the said organisation, but I was blissfully unaware of it during my three long, dry years there. (Well, naturally, considering I never worked on anything critical and any projects nearby that had to be abandoned were abandoned without missing a beat. But that’s another story.)

So this dungeon process apparently means that the entire team of, say, 20 engineers, gets to work out of one single conference room all day long - and they work extended hours at that. There are scheduled hours (sorry, minutes) for coffee breaks - and probably for toilet breaks as well. (These would have to be staggered, though, to avoid people wasting time standing in queues, or, heaven forbid, getting carried away and actually chatting in neighbouring urinals! - most of the team members being male.) Anyway, miss your designated break, and you’re screwed. It goes without saying that, with 20 of your colleagues and your boss perpetually within spitting distance (literally I mean, not figuratively), personal calls or some leisurely web browsing is out of the question.

So these lucky guys had apparently already spent 2-3 months in this manner when the larger team was summarily disbanded and placed in other groups, or allowed to leave the company with a substantial parting gift. Meanwhile, these guys continue to slog their way through the dungeon. When their project is satisfactorily concluded, then they will be given the redeployment or golden handshake option. Bonuses and promotions? Rewards and recognitions, at least? Sure: “Great job, everyone, thanks for all the hard work. Now you’re fired.” Yup, that’s a great motivator when you want a team to put in long hours in stressful circumstances where they’re trying to complete some work which presumably is going to make (or save) the company a whole lot of money.

Anyway, as they say, it’s a great place to work.

A Sordid Affair

It seems Amit is having an affair. Yes, after ten long years of faithfulness, apart from the odd fling or two, he’s now having a passionate and rather noisy affair, which is being conducted blatantly right under - or rather, right above - my very nose: in the upstairs neighbour’s apartment.

In their bathroom, to be precise.

The object of his passion is the plumber. That’s right, wake up and rub your eyes, I said plumber. The two of them, along with some other young men have been doing a lot of banging in the upstairs bathroom over the last ten days. (Pun intended.)

Ok, if you’re properly awake and interested now, I’ll explain.

It all started many years ago, when the paint started flaking off our bathroom ceilings and walls. This was a clear indication that the upstairs bathroom had sprung a leak. Or two. We could not really blame our upstairs neighbour for this - leaky bathrooms, it seems, are something of an epidemic around here. There has even been some speculation that the workmen, including the original construction workers, deliberately sabotage the plumbing to ensure that they or their brethren are always in demand. If so, their strategy seems to be working admirably.

In the course of the past five years, we have already ripped apart the upstairs bathroom three times, unearthed a leaky pipe - or, in once instance, a pipe blocked by a mountain of cement - fixed it, and covered it all up again. To no avail - the seepage reluctantly decreased, but never really went away.

At last, after delaying the inevitable for as long as he possibly could, Amit decided he would have to renew his long-dormant love-hate relationship with the plumber.

This time, he resolved, he would do it properly. So properly that it would never leak again for the next 20 years or so. The plumber assured him that it could be done and would only take three days. Four at the outside, he said.

That was two weeks ago. They’re still working on it, but things are not progressing very smoothly (to put it mildly). One reason for the slow progress is that Amit and the plumber are both two-timing each other. The plumber has a “day” job; so does Amit. Of late, though, it would have seemed to any impartial observer that fixing the bathroom plumbing was Amit’s day job, while his regular work was relegated to evening hours, or, more often, completely neglected. Despite his putting in long hours on this work, much of his effort seems to be going - so to say - down the drain. The workmen are being lazy, inefficient, uncooperative and playing truant as often as they can - which is to say, they are being workmen.

The first step in fixing the bathroom was ripping it apart and taking out everything that was in it. And by everything, I’m not talking about sinks and toilets; not even about wall and floor tiles; I mean EVERYTHING that was IN it. For five straight days, one or two disinterested workmen with flimsy scalpels scraped away gingerly at about 20 tons of brick and mortar until they had excavated a gaping cavity about two feet deep where the bathroom used to be. For most of the five days, there was a huge mound of debris piled up in the space outside the bathroom, which was at last carted down by the resentful workmen, and dumped just outside the building where it still lies, awaiting a decent burial (or re-burial, in this case).

Following this, there was a series of delays. Some delays were due to the appropriate tools and materials not being available. This was really infuriating for Amit, who, having honed his project management skills to a fine art in the course of his career, had been running around for days trying to procure the materials in time. Then, finally everything was ready for the first layer of waterproofing to be applied. This took about 20 minutes, after which it was left to dry overnight. When the workmen returned the next morning, they found a nice knee-deep swimming pool in the bathroom, rendering the waterproofing a non-starter. How the water got there remains a mystery; some have suggested that it was drainage (or sewage?) water from the bathroom one floor above that had flooded out through the open drain pipe, others said it must have come from the washing machine’s drain pipe - a somewhat less revolting prospect.

Once the water had been bailed out and the area had completely dried, waterproofing was applied in two layers, followed by a layer of cement. Next, the pipes would have to be laid. So, early on the morning of our eagerly-awaited tenth anniversary Amit drove off with one of the workmen, and returned a couple of hours later with a whole lot of horrible pipes and traps and other gory bits and pieces, which were flung into our balcony - and about 200 kg of cement and sand, which was unceremoniously dumped in our study! This material was supposed to keep the workmen gainfully employed for a couple of days, when Amit would be traveling on work. When he returned, he hoped to just check the work and then have the bathroom sealed up and returned to a functional condition in another couple of days.

However, plumbers make rubbish out of the best laid plans much more easily than they do with the best laid bathrooms. First, the plumber refused to do any work in the bathroom until the layer of cement had been cured. To add insult to injury, he took one derisive look at the pipes Amit had bought on our anniversary day, and declared they weren’t “good” enough. So he went off to buy some better ones - taking cash from me along the way. That was the last I saw of him. When I called him on his cellphone, he said the better pipes weren’t available, so, not knowing what else to do, he did nothing. Great. I tried to break this news to Amit as gently as possible, then I quickly hung up on him. Distance is supposed to make the heart grow fonder, but the last I heard, Amit was expressing an ardent desire to meet the plumber so he could throttle him.

Meanwhile, in addition to his guilt about neglecting his official work, Amit is also suffering from a severe guilt complex at the suffering we are imposing on our hapless upstairs neighbour, given that they have been so good as to allow us to destroy their bathroom. Currently, the seven people in their household are reduced to queueing outside the one functional bathroom, while their washing machine occupies pride of place in the kitchen, effectively putting paid to any efforts to actually do any cooking in there.

I pointed out to him that actually the said neighbour is not doing us any favour, considering it is his leaky bathroom that has completely ruined the paint in both our bathrooms and our dining room. By rights, we could sue him for it. If we were litigiously inclined, we’d have him running around getting his bathrooms fixed and getting our flat painted for us into the bargain. That sounds like quite a good proposition, until I consider that our leaky bathrooms are probably wreaking havoc on our downstairs neighbours’ walls. Perhaps it’s not such a good idea to set a precedent and open up a can of worms - I really, really wouldn’t want anyone doing this to my bathrooms.

I somehow get the impression that Amit has had enough of his plumber too. He does occasionally talk about tackling the second bathroom as well, but hopefully he will not want to prolong this affair for quite so long.

How to Lose ~40 GB in Minutes!

Do you want to lose ~40 GB off your hard drive? Here’s how I did it.

You’ll Need:

1 Microsoft Vista Home Premium (a flavor of Windows that is particularly lousy)
1 Ubuntu 7.10 (a flavor of Linux)
1 Hard disk (in my case, 250 GB SATA hard disk - you’d think losing a mere 40 GB wouldn’t hurt, but you’d be wrong!)

Procedure - In Five Easy Steps:

1. Load Windows Vista
2. Enable System Restore (don’t ask me how - there was an option somewhere and apparently I checked the checkbox)
3. Partition the drive and load Ubuntu into the ~150 GB partition, leaving Windows with ~75 GB (apparently, with a 250 GB hard disk, you actually get only ~225 GB memory; who knows why?)
4. Now, you’ll find after a few months that your Windows partition has run out of space. This is - as you discover after a great deal of research - because your data is taking up only about 20 GB; sundry program files and data are taking about 10 GB; the recycle bin has about 5GB; and something called System Volume Information is eating up about 35 GB!
5. Since you habitually use Ubuntu to access Windows files, you can easily navigate to the $Recycle Bin and the System Volume Information folder and check that there’s nothing that looks remotely relevant in there. So, you simply delete the contents of these folders (or delete the folders themselves), thus freeing up 40 GB on your disk, right?

Wrong! If you do this, Windows, being kinda stupid, doesn’t realize that you have actually deleted 40 GB, and will not free up that space. Even if you made a copy of that data before deleting it, and then you copied it back afterwards, trying to fool Windows into thinking it was never deleted at all, it won’t work. Windows will not copy it back onto the freed up memory, but will gobble up another 40 GB for that data (a 40 GB which I did not actually have to spare in that Windows partition). In fact, there is just no way (that Amit has been able to discover after some research on the Net) to get Windows to realize that 40 GB of data has been deleted and that it should therefore politely let go of that memory, thank you very much.

In short, don’t try this at home.

And if you happen to know of a solution to this one, please, please tell me, pretty please, I need my 40 GB baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack…

DON’T!

It’s not so much fun being a toddler, I think. There’s so many things you’re not allowed to do. For instance:

• Don’t touch that (about 25 times a day for phone, computer, broom, dustpan, dustbin, and mop, dirty diaper…)
• Don’t open that clothes cupboard
• Don’t open that kitchen cabinet either
• Don’t put your hand in the toilet
• Out! You’re not allowed in the bathroom
• Don’t take off your clothes unless I tell you to
• Or your shoes
• Or your hair clip
• And DO NOT open your diaper
• Nor your sister’s
• Don’t bang on the washing machine, or dismantle its detergent tray
• Don’t stuff the washing machine full of toys (unless you really dirtied them, in which case, don’t)
• Don’t mess with the TV
• Don’t bang on the window, the mirror, or the framed paintings
• Don’t tug on the electric cable of the fridge
• DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES EVER pull the childproof pieces out of the electric sockets and stick your fingers or bits of metal things into them
• Don’t pull the paint off the wall
• And double-don’t eat it!
• Don’t climb on the dining table
• Don’t unravel those bedsheets which I just spent 15 minutes folding
• Don’t pull/push/pinch/beat her or poke her eyes out or pull her hair - she’s your sister!
• Don’t attack me - I’m your mother!

And lastly but most vehemently: DON’T lock me or yourselves into or out of anywhere or anything (including, but not limited to the bathroom, verandah, apartment, and car)!

A Few Loose Nuts

Thank goodness for shoddy workmanship.

Our apartment, which is about ten years old and which we own, is if not the epitome, then at least a pretty good example of shoddy workmanship. According to those who know, the foundations and basic construction quality are sound; but when it comes to the plumbing, the painting, the woodwork, even the plastering of the wall, it leaves a lot to be desired. I never thought I’d have cause to be grateful for this.

Typically, I sneak in my shower in after the twins’ bath and before their lunch. I say “sneak in because I have to be pretty quick, else they’ll fall asleep before eating lunch, which is a headache for me.

Today had been a typical day thus far, so I went into the bathroom as usual. What was new was that I decided to bolt the door from the inside – I haven’t done this so far, when if I’m alone in the house with the twins, so that they can see me and not feel worried. Today, I thought they’re well adjusted enough to not notice if they don’t see me for a few minutes, and a few minutes of privacy while bathing is always welcome.

No sooner had I shot the bolt from the inside, than it occurred to me that perhaps this was a dangerous thing to do. The reason is, the bathroom door has a latch on the outside as well, which is just about within reach of the twins if they stand on tiptoe. It’s the sort of bolt that slides into a hole in the frame and the twins have figured out how it works, though it’s not yet in the list of limited activities (such as come, go, give, take) that they can carry out on instruction. We have the same sort of latch on the other bathroom door as well as on the two verandah doors, but the only one the twins can successfully operate is the one on the verandah that opens off their room. On the other doors, thanks to shoddy workmanship, the alignment of bolt and hole is not perfect, so you need to hold the door (sometimes very firmly indeed) with one hand and shoot the bolt home with the other. This is thankfully still beyond their abilities.

Unless, of course, you helpfully bolt the door from the other side. I had never checked this (never having tried to bolt the door from both sides at once) but apparently bolting the door from one side causes the bolt on the other side to become perfectly aligned. Just as I bolted the door on the inside, I wondered whether this would actually make it possible for the twins to bolt it from the outside.

Before I could so much as complete the thought, I heard the bolt outside neatly slide home.

Horrors!

I hastily unbolted the door from the inside, hoping the bolt had missed its destination, but tugging on the door only confirmed my worst fear – it certainly hadn’t.

I immediately called out to the twins, hoping they would obligingly undo the action, but that would really have been asking for too much. I didn’t even know which twin was responsible for imprisoning me – when I stepped into the bathroom, neither one was in the immediate vicinity of the door (which just shows how fast kids can move when faced with an opportunity for serious mischief).

At first, I told myself it was only a minor matter, I’d be out in a few minutes. But slowly, as I looked around the bathroom, realisation dawned: it was very possible that I’d be stuck there till evening!

There was absolutely nothing in the bathroom that could be of the slightest help in my predicament. No phone – who carries a cellphone on them when going for a bath? No pointy metal object that I could slide through the crack where door met frame and try to manipulate the bolt. I tried to use a tube of shampoo as a wedge (why does shampoo come in tubes nowadays? it used to come in bottles), but it was completely useless. I could not see any way that bath soap, detergent, mugs and buckets, or a bath towel could be of any earthly use in persuading the bolt to slide out of its home.

I tried to think things through. I wasn’t expecting any visitors. If anyone did ring the doorbell, it was unlikely they’d hear me shouting from the locked bathroom. There was a window, but our downstairs neighbours would be out, their house empty but for their two dogs. I was due to attend an online meeting at 1 p.m., but my unexplained absence would likely occasion only mild surprise, not alarm. Amit might call at some point, but if he couldn’t get me on the phone, he’d simply surmise I was busy with the kids and forget about it. If I couldn’t find a way out on my own, it looked like I’d be stuck here till 6.30 or so, when Amit would (hopefully) come home and let me out.

To top it off, I was nude, with only a bath towel at my disposal. Even if any alternative manner of rescue could be found, I wasn’t sure I’d want to be rescued by anyone other than Amit.

Meanwhile, the kids needed their lunch, their tea-time milk, and their various diaper-changes.

The worst part was that this scenario was not entirely unforeseen. Amit and I had discussed what we could do in such a situation, and had agreed that we probably needed to get the bolts shifted up on the doors, out of reach of the twins. We just hadn’t got around to doing it.

After thinking everything through, I decided there was nothing for it but to apply brute force. Pity that I’m not (in my opinion) much of a brute – Amit would certainly have yanked the door off its hinges at the first try. It took me several desperate attempts before something gave on the outside and the door opened a crack.

But only a crack – I wasn’t home and dry yet, but at least things were looking more hopeful. I tried slipping my hand through, but the crack was much too narrow. So I applied myself to pulling the door with renewed vigor. All that happened was that, with the next tug, the handle came off into my hand!

This was not so good. There was nothing else substantial enough to tug on on this side of the door. True, I could use the detached handle as a level, but it didn’t look like it would stand up to much. Luckily I could curl my fingers around the edge of the door and tug on that directly, but I didn’t think it would be as effective as the door handle had been thus far. All the same, that’s what I did, bracing myself against the wall with my left hand and tugging with my right.

And a few minutes later, the second set of screws holding the bolt in place came out with a loud pop, sending the bolt skittering on the floor a distance of several feet – and I was out, free.

Which is why I say, sometimes you have to be jolly grateful for shoddy workmanship.

I Still Prefer Nuclear

Man, it’s good to be home.

Having said that, I must add that the eight days of eternity were not that bad… or at least, not as bad as I thought it might have been. Some of the battles were lost, it’s true; some were won; and some were never fought. The “fishes” were not quite as troublesome as I had anticipated; I was very happy to see that nobody fed the kids anything that we said was on the list of banned substances; the twins’ daily schedule was adhered to fairly regularly, with some variations; the language seemed more comprehenisble to me than ever before and I even attempted some genuine communication from time to time; and I managed to get away with only one sari-day.

Amit and I even managed to leave the kids alone and go out for walks together a few times. True, it was mostly when the twins were in bed and fast asleep, but once we left them when they were wide awake in the evening. According to subsequent reports, they were not exactly happy about seeing both parents walk out the door, but they did not cry while we were away. When we returned after about half an hour, though, Tara immediately came to me, took my finger in her hand and promptly burst into a flood of tears! Strange…

Anyway, considering we have never left the kids alone with anyone else till now, it was a landmark of sorts. We aren’t really considering baby-sitter arrangements till they are a bit older and able to talk, so it was good to get even those stolen half-hour walks together.

Being in Calcutta with kids was a different experience for me. It forced me to drop many reservations, just playing with the kids and being my usual goofy self in front of the Family. I didn’t feel the need to get away from people and find some space for myself the way I usually do – I could do much the same thing just by getting engrossed in the kids. Plus, of course, the usual activities in keeping the kids fed, bathed, and rested gave me enough time to do “my own thing”.

I, of course, came in for a certain amount of indirect criticism and a certain amount of indirect praise. Everyone seemed to think that the kids were completely under-dressed and that they ought to have been swaddled in sheathes of warm clothing from head to foot. Since Amit and I were in summer clothes, I completely ignored this advice, even though Tara had a cold and Mrini developed one towards the end. They must think I’m the most callous mother ever, but I simply don’t see why I should shroud my kids in warm clothes simply because everyone else thinks it is cold. And runny noses are a normal part of toddlerhood, to be endured and largely ignored, if you ask me. I refuse to be one of those paranoid, hypochondriac parents, or let my kids become that way.

The praise was for a rather unexpected reason. Apparently, it is highly commendable to quit your job and be a full-time mom without an ayah (maid to look after the kids), as opposed to being a working mom, or even a full-time mom with an ayah. And not just “an” ayah, but one per kid. I’m not sure why, but having opted to bathe, dress, feed, and play with my kids seems to have earned me serious brownie points in the Family.

The kids, for the most part, enjoyed the trip. They didn’t get unduly upset by the flight, the change of location, the presence of so many new people, or the frequent outings and exposure to yet more people. They ate well, slept a lot, and were generally happy – with a couple of notable exceptions.

On the day of the big function, the kids’ feet never touched the ground, they were passed around from person to person like cushions in Pass the Parcel. Of course, they mostly enjoy being picked up, so it shouldn’t have been a bad thing, but they also do need to run around and do their own thing after a while – which they absolutely couldn’t. By late afternoon, they were grumpy… and then there was a photo shoot. These photo shoots are those formal affairs where everyone is made to line up and say cheese. With 40-50 adults and several children to arrange, these tend to be noisy and time-consuming affairs. Naturally, the twins were squirming like snakes and demanding to get away after five minutes.

But then, that was only one day. The bigger problem was that on the other days too, there were simply too many people always picking up the kids. I was frankly surprised to see how people will insist on picking up the kids even when the kids make it quite clear that they don’t want to be picked up right then. And then, of course, they mostly do want to be picked up, which only adds to the problem. In just a few days, Mrini became unbearably clingy and whiny, always wanting to be picked up by anyone, but preferrably by me. Over the last few days, this manifested in her clinging to me like a limpet. She howls even if Amit holds her. Thankfully, though she was whining in the taxi on the way home, when we got home, she and Tara plunged into their toy box in utter delight and proceeded to create chaos and pandemonium in the house in their usual manner – so that was a relief.

Naturally, I can see the benefits of having a large family when you’re handling two small kids. Having lots of people around not only lets us get some time to go out together, but also means there are always people willing to feed, play with, or otherwise look after the kids, leaving only the diaper-changing activities to the hapless parents. But, if the flip side is that the kids are going to become whiny and indisciplined… well, I think I’ll stick with nuclear.