Tribute to Motherhood

A part of me thus far,
A part of my soul hence forth,
Evicted from her cocoon,
Into a rainy day …

Sunshine, like a ray of light,
Piercing the shade cast by the tallest trees,
Bring life and meaning into the heart of the forest…

My little ray,
I give you life,
Not just yours,
But mine too …

-----------------------------------

I m blessed with a baby niece.
(Whose sweet slumber is enthralling.)

' The Butter Side Down'

'When the bread falls, it falls the butter side down'

It’s seven in the morning …
The sun blazes through window, as if it were eleven …
Right through the window, through the passage, through my bedroom door…
percing into my sleepy eyes,
My eyelids fought a fierce and loosing battle,
Finally accepting defeat,
Opened up….

The pain in my back that I have had for a while now,
Reminded me that the spinal cord was still there, in its allocated space….

No No No…. each cell in my brain cries out loud ….
Not the least , after the wonderful training session (read as vaccation) in GOA that my company organized last week and the wonderful week end there after…
He (my brain) didnt really get out of the week end,
Monday morning was a long shot for him.
Each muscle in my body revolted against the thought of waking up….

Finally I did, when I was hungry beyond words,
Amma dear had set up my kitchen with lot of love and affection when she came in last,
So I was obliged to use it at least once in a while.
And I had embarked upon a shopping endeavor yesterday,

The long list included the following items…

1 loaf of bread (home made)
1 bottle of marmalade ( and I love marmalade)
50 gms of coffee
1 pack of milk

And oh yes I did go to the shelf the sign ‘ Milk Products’
Instinctively, my hands went towards pack of cheese spreads, like the rat enticed by the music of the pied piper….
Only that as I was about to grab it my tummy hit the trolley and any further motion in the horizontal direction was restricted…
A reality check set by GOD himself, which i always carry around ;) ….

So the shopping ended there, sans the cheese spread…

And today morning I was all set to attack the Home made bread and marmalade …

Hmmm…. marmalade….

A quick shower and a shave and with lots of expectation I reach the kitchen…

What the ……!!!#!$!@$#%@!$#^Y@!$#^$#%^@!$#^%!$#

In the center of the kitchen, which is other wise empty,
but for a few plates a teapot and a stove….
There it was … my loaf of bread….
With a gapping hole right in its center… made with surgical precession.

Oh no …. he was here last night, the rat who lives below the ground floor of my house..
The nasty fellow didn’t even leave my marmalade alone…


Fine, lets settle for some coffee …
I put the milk on the stove..
1 min , 2 mins ……. 3 mins pass by still no reaction…
Then suddenly the whole thing breaks up into big chunks…
Chunks the size of the ice berg that sunk the titanic…

Great , I end up with paneer butter masala instead of coffee.


I switch off the stove .

And by then it’s already nine…
My phone screams
‘ pick me …pick me …. I know you are there somewhere … come and PICK ME NOW’ !!!!!!!


Time for who wants to eat my brain contest, which goes on every day…

(I am in sales and marketing of industrial equipment)

And a client screams ‘ I had orders for the ball bearings two weeks ago, what are you doing, manufacturing it by your self, or what… where are they now ?!@#@!$!@@@$# ‘

I had half the mind to scream back ‘Sir, I have no bearing as to where those balls of yours are. If you cant find them its your problem. I have greater problems lined in front of me now ’

(Ahem: Dear reader, its not in my general nautre to use such language, but considering the cicumstances, i wouldnt have minded if i were able to)


But remember “ The Customer Is The King”

So I go
‘ No sir….
Yes sir….
But sir…
Sir …
Actually sir …
Ok sir..
Yes sir …
(with a lot of conviction in my voice)
Sir, I take it as my personal responsibility to ensure that the consignment reaches you by the week end’
I know that there has been certain dispatch problems, but I will take care of it myself now.
I know your worry and concern Mr. Karuppudevan (literally meaning THE DARK LORD!!!!!)
But please give me a days time, shall have the required information by tomorrow.’
Yes sir.
No sir, you don’t have to take the trouble. I shall call you myself tomorrow first thing in the morning’


And the day starts…….

'When the bread falls, it falls the butter side down'

Wish you all a better week ahead.

The Victorian beauty- Who conquered my Heart:

The dazzling red dress,
The flawless hair,
Her skin the colour of wheat…
A Victorian beauty…..

I fell in love with her the moment I saw her the very first time…..
It was truly ‘ Love at first sight’…

She stood there with her hands extended,
Motioning me to come forward and take her in my arms…

She gives me a peck on my cheek…
Oh, I am so head over heals for her…
But alas she is my boss’s daughter
I have bunch of red roses for,
It is her birthday today…





Today, she turns ONE !!!!!!




That lill thing is a brat of the first order…

Only recently she got too carried away with the Jhonsons ear buds ad and tried clean her ear with one. A little twist here a little swipe there, one moment her baby hands were working with the bud with the elegance and panache that adults rarely display and the next moment she is totally uninterested in carrying on with the disgusting task of cleaning ones ear wax and walks around with the bud sticking out from here ear.

Then the Einstein in her wakes up…….
‘Lemme see till how far this wax thing can go ……’
And hits the end of the bud with a tight slap …

Ahhhhhh…
Uhaaaaaaaaa…uahhhhh. Uaaaaaaa

The whole world comes running…
Mother comes running
Grandmother comes running
Father comes running from his office…………

They take her to the hospital.
The doctor takes one look at her,
The bantam mount Fuji... The erupted volcano…
The decibel levels in the room reaches near ultra sonic range now…

He says ‘ She has managed to rupture her ear drum’
But quickly adds, before her mom faints
‘Its not a problem at all, she is a growing child and in this age such wounds get healed very very fast… nothing to worry…. Nothings gonna happen to her hearing…. But you got to keep her head bandaged for a week or so’

Donning a bandage that partially covered her left eye,
She looked like side cast from the set of ‘The Caribbean bandits’

... Though with an impish smile….
‘DHUHHHHH, I did it again….’
Was written all over her face…

Now that the pain was gone she was happy to have had all that attention…

She loves climbing up the 8 foot tall slide and slide down to get that ‘wind in the hair’ feel. And might be the HDFC ad influence, she wants to do it all alone “ na sar jhukaya hai kabhi, na sar jhukayenge kabhi…” TV can be a real bad influence you know.

There is one another thing that only children of this age can do,
They do the dew, wherever they want to…
You know the Jadi ke peeche stuff…

And now our lady in red, after having mastered the art of walking, wanted to go and explore the far reaches of the world… her grand mom’s house…
So one rickety step at a time she goes from one corner of the room to the other…..
The tiresome and exhausting journey from one end of her world to the other makes her want to do the dew….
She does the deed and walks right through it…
Only that this time she realizes, that liquids reduce the coefficient of friction…
A new learning, but a little too late….
Her tiny lill feet slips and there she goes
‘Heels over head…’
‘Tumbling upside down’…
Her leg hits the chair near by ..
And there she goes again

Ahhhhhh…
Uhaaaaaaaaa…uahhhhh. Uaaaaaaa

Again
The whole world comes running…
Mother comes running
Grandmother comes running
Father comes running from his office…………

Again.
They take her to the hospital.
The doctor takes one look at her,
The bantam mount Fuji... The erupted volcano…
The decibel levels in the room reaches near ultra sonic range …

He says ‘ She has managed to get herself a hair line fracture’
But again he quickly adds, before her mom faints
‘Its not problem at all…. This is called the green stick fracture… their bone are so soft and tender and grow so fast that she will be up and walking in a few days time… nothing to worry…. Only that we need to put her leg in plaster for a couple of weeks… ‘

So now the bundle of joy is also a bundle of plasters……

‘The Caribbean bandit” turns into ‘The return of the Mummy Part III’

Still she wants to go up the slide…
Still she wants to explore the far reaches of her world…
Though now she is a little more cautious while doing the dew...

" Unspoken Words" - genuine care

Like always, I sat besides my grand mom to say good bye, while returning from my week end visit back home.

Like always she fails to recognize me at the first go……

“ Nan arrane manasillayio, Muthune”( Do you recognize me, granms) I ask her.

She stares at me with an expression devoid of any emotion.

Alzheimer’s can be crippling… it eats away ones memory , the treasure that’s painstakingly collected over a life time. The one thing that makes life’s journey worthwhile.

It kills the soul but leaves the body.

I take her hand in mine.

She is lucky to have caring children. And a daughter and son in law as doctors. They do their best. Give her strong medicines that peps her mind. But which have rather debilitating effect on her body

” Its me, your grand son”

At first she smiles. Then as usual She cries and complains about her illnesses. As usual she tells me that my mother doesn’t care for her anymore. As usual she speaks of how she thinks that the servant aids are conspiring against. She speaks of the man who she always sees standing behind the curtain……

Then, unusually though, she stops crying and stares at me in silence. In her eyes I could see my ever so caring and ever so loving “Muthu” trying to reach out to me.
She takes my hand in hers and strokes it gently………

She tells me that she no longer has any control over her bladder. Sighs and then says that she has to take the help our Man Friday to take her to the loo, a revolting thought for the woman in her….. but she smiles, with a tear in her eye.………

“ Your mother takes good care of me, but what more can she do.” …… and smiles with a tear in her eye………

“ pakshe ni veshmikaruthe to, sookshichodikanne… poitt wa” ( But you don’t be saddened by all this…… you be happy…. And please drive the car carefully… now you go……”

There she was reaching out to me, from with in her delirious mind, fighting against the strongest of sedatives, just to show that she still cares………

" The Unspoken Words"

Huf Huf Huf ……. He gasps for breath as he runs for the mango orchard. Its early May. The road that leads from the house to the garden has an alarming red hue. The mayflowers have come full bloom.

In his right hand he has his seventh grade textbooks.

He climbs up the mango tree with an ease which his simian friends would be envious of. He hides all the books in a hollow in the branch, the safest place he knows, his safety locker. ‘ This should keep it safe from her’ ……. He thinks to himself. He would have enjoyed burning up all of them but he requires them next year when the school reopens. That would be the second time he would be a seventh grade student, all his friends would have moved to the next grade. But he had no qualms about that after all its not the first time he has failed in an exam.
Satisfied with the safety precaution he has taken he was proud of his uncanny ability to provide solutions to the most complex of problems, he smiles . ‘ even Sherlock homes wouldn’t be able to find those’…. He boasted to himself and goes off to play with his friends…

Not far away a small girl clad in a pink shirt and polka dotted frock, searches for her elder brother frantically. She runs up to chandu the Karyasthan who is busy directing water into the garden through the network of channels that he had dug up.

‘ Chandu Chandu, Ramettane kando.’ ( Did you see Ramettan ?)

Chandu stops his work deciding to take a much needed break. This summer has been extremely hot. Sweat trickles down his forehead and drops on to the ground.
He liked ejemanan’s (master’s) daughter. It seems she is always first in her class. Somewhere with in him, he wanted his little one also to be like her. Grow up and become a dakitar (Doctor) or something. But he always blamed himself for not being able to send her to school.

‘CHHAANDUUU, ramettane kandone’. The shriek jolts him back from his day dream.

‘Manthopillku odan kandu, kaill pustam pidiche'…..( Saw him running into the mango garden, with books in his hand.

She spares not a second. Runs off into the mango orchard.

Cahndu shouts,

‘Sookshikanne molutti. Manthopillu muzhuvan pamba’ … ( Be careful dear , the place is full of snakes)

He voice carried genuine concern.

As she walks in to the garden piles of dead mango leaves rustle under her feet. The air gets cooler. She stops. its now that Chandu’s warning really falls into here ear. she was afraid of snakes. More so because of its slimy texture than the fact that they were poisonous and the eerie places that they usually inhabit.
Its awfully painful when they bite, she was told. She remembers little Raghu spitting up frothy saliva and convulsing uncontrollably. They say that it was a miracle that saved him.

But today she had to go in. She had to find those books. She has to finish reading them before the school reopens. That’s how it has always been.

She was really mad at Ramettan. She always wondered why he behaved so rudely to her.
Chitoor gramam in Early sixties was not exactly the place were women were taken seriously. Being in a family with five other siblings did not make things any better.

But she loved her father. He was different from the rest. She knew that he loved her very much but never would let it be known that he liked her more than the others. She knew that she was the apple of his eye.



Years pass by………………………

Its August 11, 1998……… she felt as if a part of hers was being plucked from with in her and removed against her wish. Tears roll down with in her but she cant let it out. She wouldn’t let it come out, that is how she has always been. Strong, fiercely independent………… but she couldn’t really stop or even slow the tears that were rolling down with in her.
She waives her hand and says “Call us when you reach…”

As they drive back home form the railway station she realizes that she had just let him free, she hoped that she has taught him every thing to make him a good man. Or should she have spent more time with him, cared more. But how…………

Her thoughts wander back to that day when he came into her life. A little, dark bundle of joy. “ Oh was he cute…” a flicker of smile flashes on her face a stark contrast to the tear drop just about to fall of her eye . She turns her face away and stares aimlessly through the window, partly to catch the wind on her face and partly to hide that trickle of tear from her co-passengers.

She still remembers how unwillingly she had left her li’ll toddler with his grand mom, to pursue her MD in Gynecology. But most of all, she remembers the way, after six months when she visited him, he first clung on the his grand mom and looked at her with his big round eyes wide open, as if she were a stranger and then all of a sudden with a big happy sunshine grin came running to her and just clung on to her feet saying “ Ammmmma “ …… Oh, that was the sweetest sound she heard in quite a while.
The car stops in front of a house, sight of a familiar facade jolts her back to reality.

“Oh, we have reached home…. So fast… got more important things to do…….” Its surgery day tomorrow. Got a few major cases case posted for the day. Goes to her chamber and starts reading. That’s how it has always been…………