A Suitable Boy

When I was 23, my mother started dangling photographs of eligible men under my nose.

According to her, I was an old maid and the earlier I settled down, the better.

All my talks on child marriages being a stigma to our society fell on deaf ears. She was hell bent on pushing me out of her house. My father, who was , and still is, the quiet sort, started dropping in on my office just to see if I fancied any of my buddies. My brother started calling regularly reminding me about my dotage and my mother took out an advertisement in the Times Of India.

What an embarrassment. Not only my family, now the entire country knew about my sorry state of affairs. At 23, I was not only unmarried, I did not even have a boyfriend. How pathetic.

My mother found a man who she thought would suit her daughter just fine. An only son of doting parents, a professional doing rather well in life. And most importantly, a man who belonged to the same Bengali community. Holy cow. It was a match made in heaven. I, who always stayed away from such narrow minded way of thinking, rebelled. How could I get married to a Bong? I grew up in Delhi and I loved everything about the Punjabis...even their vulgar display of wealth. Secretly I always entertained the thought of getting hitched to somebody like Shashi Kapoor.

When it came to matters of such mental anguish, I always ran to my cousin and her husband. They were my pillars of strength, my staunchest allies. They would surely rescue me from this predicament. "Give in gracefully" was their advice. Did I just say they were my allies?

After prolonged discussions and temper tantrums, draining conversations and staged walk-outs, I finally gave in. Fine. I would meet this suitable boy. But only this once. And if this did not work out, they would not bother me again. And also, I got to meet him first. I did not want them to coerce me into making a decision. Relieved, my parents gave in.

So, just before the summer set in in Delhi, when the weather was beautiful and romantic, one evening, I went to my cousin's house in East of Kailash to see this paragon of virtue. My father had vetoed my suggestion of meeting him in a coffee shop. As he threatened to disinherit me if I did not have any chaperone with me, I wordlessly gave in. You win some, you lose some. So on the appointed day, dressed in my designer outfits., professionally done up hair, I arrived at my cousin's door-step to meet the man of my mother's dreams.

Well, how do you know, in only a few hours whether this man you were meeting for the first time, would be your soul-mate? How do you select someone for you? Do you see his age? Do you see his qualification and work experience? Do you see whether he was polite to his elders and kind to dogs? Do you see if he has all his teeth and hair? How do you simply judge a man on the basis of one single meeting ?

As I sat, talking to a rather pleasant man of 28, wearing simple jeans and a T-shirt, polite to my cousins and playful with the family dog, a chemical engineer from IIT, working as a manager at Hindustan Levers, with all his hair and teeth intact, my mind went completely blank. What do I do? Do I say yes? But why should I ? I am only 23! Why shouldn't I ? After all I am 23! I was faced with the biggest dilemma of my life. Do I marry him? He had a nice smile. But is that a strong reason for marriage? He was articulate and seemed to like reading. He did seem caring, and there was some connection... But still...

I again turned to my cousins for their views on this. My brother-in-law, who had this ability to take down everything to the lowest common denominator sat down with his wisdom;
IIT grad. Means upper storey loaded.
Age 28. Means not too young to be reckless, not too old to be staid.
Polite and courteous. Means good family values.
Refusal to go to USA for parents as he is the only son. Means loyal to the core.
Staying away from parents in a different city. Means not too clingy and dependent.
Working in India's topmost (at that time) company for the last 7 years. Means stable and responsible and incredibly good work wise.
Just go for him with your eyes closed.

So that's when I took the biggest gamble of my life and plunged into holy matrimony. Since he lived in Bombay and I lived in Delhi, ours was a long distance courtship, wooing each other with cards like " Me here you there, no fair." We had a typical Bengali wedding with all the typical Bengali food. Our cousins told us later they had fun. All I remember was the endless amount of feet touching I had to do and the dramatic way I cried, clinging to my cousins, and the car, mentally singing "Main sasural nahi jaaoongi, doli rakhdo kaharo."

That was July 8, 1992. Yeah, yeah I know. Some of you were in diapers. It has been a long journey. It started almost as a business decision and ended up in love and respect for each other. When someone asks me what made me choose him as my husband I always say it was the smile and the dimple that did me in. But I know actually it was the IIT stamp.

Oh, I am so brand conscious.

An Angel Without Wings

Let's just call him Ajay.

An ordinary Indian name for an ordinary Indian boy.

When he was 5 years old, his dad was posted in a small town in the Arabian Sea coast. Like all ordinary boys, he loved to play on the beach, kick some ball with his dad, and fish.Or at least he pretended to. He could never handle the slimy bait and hated holding the wriggling fish. The mother generally sat a little far away, smiling indulgently at the father and the son. An ordinary family, doing ordinary things together. Can you see them? Walking hand in hand?

They lived in a nice house in a quiet area. Though they lived far away from their family, they had many good friends and they had fun going on picnics and long drives. Ajay was very happy as he was the only child there and everyone spoiled him terribly.

One day, his father brought a nice young man home. He must have been around 23. He had just got a job there but he was yet to find a place to stay. Being a good person, Ajay's dad thought the young man could stay with them till he found a suitable accommodation. Ajay was ecstatic. He was yet to start school. This man, whom he called 'Bhaiya' ( elder brother) was his new play mate. They would play cricket in the lobby, fly a kite on the streets and just chat sometimes. The young man would often bring some books for him and read out those stories to him. Ajay had not yet learned to read. The family of 3 gradually became a family of 4, without anyone realising it. Perhaps you can see them now, walking on the beach, laughing and talking and flying kites.

Then one day, the young man bought a new story book. In the evening, when the mother was cooking, the man started to read to Ajay. The book at first did not make any sense to the little boy. It talked about men and women doing strange things. In the book, which had some pictures, ( Ajay loved stories with pictures) the men and women did not wear clothes. The man became strangely excited reading the story and asked Ajay to climb up onto his lap so that he could see the pictures better. Ajay did not like this story at all, but he kept quiet. Bhaiya was his friend and he did not want to disappoint him. And since bhaiya trusted him to keep this their little secret, for the first time, Ajay did not tell his mother what the story was all about.

Slowly their games changed. Instead of playing football and cricket, bhaiya started playing with his body. He would ask Ajay to sit on his lap and touch him at shameful places. He would often ask Ajay to do the same. The little boy was confused. He did not like these new games anymore but was too scared to say no. He wanted bhaiya's love and approval. And what if his parents came to know? Will they think he wanted to play such games? May be he did... may be he was a bad boy who deserved what bhaiya was doing to him . If his parents came to know his shameful behaviour, surely he would be sent away to a hostel.

He would now panic when the man called him to read out a story. But on those rare occasions, when the young man would play cricket, he would also cautiously but trustingly reach out to hold his hands. And some days, that same man, would smile and coerce him to do things which made him feel dirty. He now started washing his mouth and hands rigorously with soap when he bathed.

Some days, when things became too painful, he would just curl up on his bed and pretend to sleep. There were so many things going on in his mind. He wanted to tell his mom and dad what was happening to him. He wanted them to make him feel better. He wanted to tell them that he was feeling broken, just like that superman figure with a broken limb that he had. But his parents never noticed any thing. He felt enraged and often burt out in tears, but his parents just dismissed his outbursts as a normal temper tantrum of a 6 year old boy. He hated his parents. And he hated the world. He no longer laughed when he walked on the beach. And he no longer wanted to fly any kites. He withdrew to his own isolated world, with his guilt, shame and confusion. His parents, who never dreamed someone could ever damage their little angel, who never thought such predators even existed in their normal, happy world, were blissfuly unaware of their little boy's trauma and sorrow. They never came to know the reason for their precious child's sudden abnormal behaviour.

Ajay exists. He is my friend from college. Although he is no longer prone to violent outbursts and depression, he continues to believe that he played an integral part in this abuse. He blames himself for any physical contact between him and his abuser, although he knows he was only 5. And the man was 23. I always thought, perhaps like a lot of you, sexual abuse happens to only girls. His story changed my belief. Our children, both boys and girls are equally vulnerable to sexual abuse. Everyday, some child below the age of 10 falls prey to such despicable behaviour and does not know who to turn to. Most children know their abusers. They are simply unable to cope with such repeated sexual offence by someone they trusted and end up with long lasting scars.
Please believe your child if he comes up to you and reports such behaviour.Teach him the difference between good touch and bad touch. Tell him his body belongs to only to him and no one else. Nobody has the right to touch or harm him. Never take it for granted that the child will come and tell you anyting. Tell him that you are there to listen about any behaviour of an adult which he finds uncomfortable. Please be alert.
And most important, please do not blame him. It was never his fault.

I was tagged

I was tagged by ZillionBig to do this one.

I am supposed to list a few things that annoy me. To be honest, I am not overly fond of tags. I fail to understand why some people would spend some of their precious time reading about what turns me on or puts me off. Moreover, a lot of our blogger friends have recently posted on the same topic, so things are getting a bit boring. But since I promised him to do the tag, here are some of my pet peeves. But there's a twist. Instead of doing a tag on things that annoy me, I decided to do one on people who, at times, bug the hell out of me.

1. Those who are never on time. (Read elder daughter.) People who are never on time for anything irritate me. My daughter feels the sun rises when she gets up and school starts when she reaches there. Every morning there are some shouting matches in the house but lessons in punctuality are yet to be learnt. The madder I get, the more unhurried she becomes.

2. People who are good in mathematics. Those (read husband) who have been born with the ability to understand this dreadful subject annoy me senseless. Not just that, they also love to show off their talent even in their sleep. The other day, just before my daughter's exam, I had to nudge my husband awake to solve a rather complicated problem. He mumbled the answer and the process without opening his eyes. It was annoying as hell. As a punishment, I have decided never to talk to him again while he is sleeping. The silent treatment will serve him well.

3. People who think food equals love. (Read mother-in-law.) Those who go to the house of a diabetic with a box of sweets or insist on feeding some fried stuff to heart patients bug me. I have never understood how feeding the wrong kind of food to the people you supposedly care for, express your love. And if you go to some one's house with apples instead of gulabjamun, does that mean you love that person less?

4. People who thrive in clutter (Read mother.) As a child I was always cleaning up after my mother. Fold a Saree here. Pick up the book there. Straighten up the wardrobe. And now as a mother, I am doing the same thing. Some jobs never change. My mother claimed she could not function in an organized household. As if I believed that. She simply knew she had a daughter who cleaned up rather well. Extremely, extremely annoying.

5. Men, rather boys, (read brother) who think dangling smelly socks and sweaty shirts under noses, practising karate chops on unsuspecting bodies and pulling braided hair show heartfelt love for their sisters. The gullible, adoring, hero worshipping sisters, (read me) also have to deal with horrid pranks, merciless teasing and blackmail threats. (If you tell mom I smoked, I will tell her you were making naughty eyes at that boy.) So annoying. Ask me. Had to deal with that till he left home. I am on my knees right now offering thanks for that big mercy.

6. People, ( read me) who lose their temper at the drop of a hat. You are always on tenterhooks around them. You never know when Mt. Etna will decide to erupt. So after a rather fierce eruption, daughters are in tears, husband is in the ice-cream parlour and I am watching an Ekta Kapoor serial. How annoying do you think that is? And don't you even dare laugh at this folks. People who laugh at my anger top my annoyance chart.


And finally, number 7.


Those people (read you) who come to my blog, read it quietly and leave without any comments. I hate it. Honey, I have eyes. and I have FEEDJIT. I am not so bad at math that I can not calculate. The number of people visiting my blog and the number of comments I get do not tally. So Lexington -Kentucky, Patna- Bihar and London- U.K. , stop bugging me further, okay?

Ufff. Now that I have finally got all that load off my chest, I can look forward to some interesting reading. So I am passing on this rather annoying tag virus to my blog buddies

SJ , because she is a superwoman and I would like to know what annoys her. Purnima, because she has a rather whacky sense of humour and she will make this one really interesting. Meira, because I loved the post she did on her Mangalsutra. And lastly to my daughter Ishita because she wanted to do this one. And because she writes rather well. And if you (read those of you I haven't tagged) want to take this up, please feel free. I guess there is always some space in our lives for some more annoyance.

Heal My World

This entire week has been traumatic.


Last Tuesday my baby came down with a viral attack.


Generally she is up and active by eight in the morning, but that day, she appeared a bit slow. I thought she would be better in a couple of hours and left her alone. But as the day progressed, she grew more and more sluggish. I was getting worried and called up my husband. He just dismissed my worry and told me to wait till he came home. By the time he came, I was a complete wreck. I generally do not fall apart at such situations but this was different. I felt so helpless.


My husband, after looking her over, decided to wait till morning. He just told me to cheer up and I felt angry. How like an insensitive man. Here I was, sick with worry and he was telling me to have fun. I felt bitterness rise up my throat.


The whole night I was restless. I kept getting up to check on my baby. I would gently caress my fingers over her body. Try to figure out if she was getting better. But she was unresponsive as ever and seemed dead to the world. I knew this was something serious.


Next morning, my husband and I knew it was time to call in the experts. Bundling up, he gently lifted her and put her in the car. I wanted to come too but what could I do there except wait? My husband decided that I would be better off in the house. The old bitterness rose again and stayed in my throat this time.


It seemed nothing I could do would take away my anxiety. I went about doing my daily chores feeling listless. Then my husband called home with the shocker. Her memory had failed completely. Sensing my grief, he gently said " Don't worry, they are doing their best... she will get better and will be back home before you know it." At last some understanding. But I was too numb with emotions to appreciate his concern. Anger. Sorrow. Anxiety. Frustration. All seemed to boil inside. Why me? And why now when I had so many plans for her?


The next few days seemed to blend into each other. Apart from the daily progress reports from them, we could do nothing. Apparently it was a bad virus. I was devastated. I took such a good care of her. Never exposed her to any potential threats, then how could this happen?

I was also pained by the behaviour of everyone in the house. Nobody seemed as affected as me. I was the only one slowly dying inside.


Then the unthinkable happened. Michael Jackson died. And my husband came home with guests. He decided I needed some cheering. What could be better than some elaborate breakfast and and lunch? So here I was, making poori- sabzi and serving them early morning, when the doctors were tearing apart Michael's body and my baby was slowly being given a new lease of life.


Finally, this morning, I decided enough was enough. I had to leave my home. If I had waited even a few more hours to write, surely a dam would have burst inside me. So I am now here, at a cyber-cafe venting my feelings. My family is peacefully sleeping at home. After all what do they care if the PC is not at home? They do not blog after all.

My husband has promised me that my baby will come back soon. I have been told that she is getting formatted. She will get a new configuration. She is also getting some brand new software.
So till the time she is home I guess I will have to use this seedy cafe. I hope you all will be more understanding than my family. Please feel free to fill up my comment box with your get well messages. I desperately need some sympathy to heal my world.

And Rest In Peace Michael. You will be sorely missed.

Come Soon, Monsoon

Before you guys cringe at my tacky header, let me clarify that this awesome line is not my creation.

Yesterday, when I went to the school to pick up my daughter, I heard some 6 year olds chanting this masterpiece.

Come soon monsoon,

We are tired of watching cartoon,

When you come we'll play in the rain,

The summer heat is such a pain.

As I have not heard this before, I am assuming some budding young poet or poetess has recently penned these lines. Nature has been such an inspiration to us writers over the years. Think Wordsworth.

I can't help agreeing with this new young talent though. Everyday, I am doing the Lagaan act in Mumbai. Any sign of a passing cloud, I am rushing to the window. Is it raining yet? Just when the Ghanan ghanan ghana ghir aayee badra starts playing in my mind, the clouds disappear. Bummer. Apparently cyclone Aila has sucked out all the moisture and the rains are stranded somewhere.

The heat has been unbearable in the meanwhile. The kids look drained when they are back from school. The thick, 'protector of all virtues' uniforms do not help either. Their brand new umbrellas are yet to come out of their original packs. To add to their woes, I have started keeping them indoors till late evenings. So they grumble about the loss of playing time. What's more, the water supply is playing truant. As I refuse to let them bathe in muddy brown tanker supplied water, the poor kids have no option but to wait till late at night when fresh water comes, to wash off the accumulated grime and sweat. Yuck.

People all across India have a special fondness for rains. Come monsoon, we all shed our inhibitions and turn into peacocks. As a child, I remember dancing on our terrace , getting completely soaked . The lunch would consisit of khichdi and in the evening, if it still rained, we would all sit in a circle, have tea and pakodas. What bliss. In Kolkata, where I spent my summer vacations, the Kalboishakhi would cause a lot of cheer. The gusty wind signalled the onset of monsoons and we would all welcome the rains with glee.

Ayee brishti jhepe,

Dhaan debo mepe,

Dhaaner bhitor poka

Jamai babu boka.

( I am pretty bad at translations still I shall try. This is a popular Bengali limerick that invites the rain. Pour down fast and furious, rain. We will give you rice grains. The grains have insects and the brother-in-law is a fool ! See ,I told you I am bad at this. Please help me someone to authentically translate this.)

Delhi, a city where I grew up, rains often come as late as August. There, the monsoons,which last for may be around 15 days, are like the quintissential Punjabis. Passionate and loud. Accompanied by frightening lightnening and thunderstorms, the torrential rains would often uproot trees, cause waterlogging and bring cheers to thousands of children. The parched land would spring to life, there would be some peacocks dancing in the ridge area and the Punjabis would celebrate with spiked gol-gappas.

Baarish ayee chcham chcham

Lekar chchata nikle hum,

Pair phisalkar gir gaye hum,

Upar chchata neeche hum.

Mumbai rains are more sedate. There is a continuous, steady drizzle.The monotonous sound of rains falling sometimes act as lullabies and sometimes cause immense irritation, depending on how your day went. We initially love the respite it brings from summer heat but soon grow to resent it. The dug up roads can't handle the pressure. Water logging ruins many evening plans and housewives get increasingly angry about the wet clothes perpetually drying inside the house. The four months of continuous downpour finally starts to get on our over worked nerves and we start offering our fervent prayers to the rain gods to just leave us alone. After four months, the roads are hardly recognizable. Our houses permanently wear the aroma of mildew. Our leather shoes and bags are ruined beyond forever. And the kids have grown bored of paper boats and have started watching cartoon again.

Still, come June, next year, we will eagerly look at the sky and pray. We will still buy new umbrellas and loathe to throw away our old ones. We will pack away our cotton clothes and expensive shoes and take out our tacky, synthetic ones. We will keep a change of clothes in office just in case we need to stay the night there. And the latest, we will keep a hammer in the car so that just in case, there is a repeat of 26th July, we can escape from our cars by breaking down the windows.

As I am adding finishing touches to my post, I can hear the faint grrrr sound of thunder. It has become cloudy again. May be all of us should sit in front our computers with some coffee or tea and some pakodas. We can swap our favourite rain stories.

What do you think? Shall we?

Pressure Points

My husband is 5 feet 9 inches and weighs almost 90 kgs.
I am almost 5 feet 5 inches and weigh 54 kgs.
My husband is what a lot of my Bengali relatives call "phat". My biased mother however calls him "pleasantly plump".
The same Bengali relatives think that I can give the size zero "Koreenaa Kaapooor" a serious run for her money. My mother thinks that I am too thin and need to put on some weight. Thank you mom, I love you too.

My husband is passionate about his sweets. From rabri to kheer, cakes to tiramisu, ice-creams to puddings, he loves them all equally. He also gorges on all fried stuff.
I hate sweets. Never liked them. Never eat them. I also dislike fried stuff. The same goes for oily food like parathas, puris and kachoris.

I generally try to go in for some serious work-outs. For the past year, yoga has become a daily fixation. I also go for walks. Before that, I was into gymming.
My husband's idea of a work-out is to jump into water and float for an hour. At the end of which he feels ravenous and gorges some more on fried stuff. If I raise my eyebrows, he compromises and eats a tripple layered cheese sandwich.

My husband travels most of the week. Last month, he was home for may be just about 7 days. He takes those' god-awful 'early morning flights. Comes back late night. If he lands early, he reports to office straight from the airport. In a month, he travels almost all over India. If he has some left over time, his boss sends him abroad.
I am a stay at home mom. My travels are restricted to schools, banks, local super markets and my friends' houses. Once a year I travel to some exotic place with my husband for our annual holiday.

My husband is the COO of a reasonably big sized company. There is always a crisis situation somewhere. He has to deal with global recession, transport strikes, credit crunch, corrupt government officials and staff mutiny on a daily basis. I only have to deal with home works and exams, absconding maids, moody drivers and innumerable guests.

Both of us refrain from drinking. Occassionally, with his friends though, my husband drinks beer. I stick to a glass of red wine.

So 2 days back, when we both went to the doctor's for a physical, what do you think we found?

My husband was disgustingly healty. No blood pressure, no bad cholesterol and a happy, healthy heart.
Yours truly had a sky-rocketing BP, abnormally high pulse rate and slightly high cholesterol. My over anxious doctor put me through a series of further tests. The same doctor told my beaming husband ,"Congratulations, please continue to lead this healthy lifestyle".

So my husband has taken the kids to the local ice-cream parlour to celebrate the verdict. And here I am , blogging my woes.

ARRGHHHH. Life is soooo unfair.

A baby of her own

After 15 years of trying, my cousin Raktima finally got her baby.

Her uncluttered, orderly house these days sport a new look. It looks untidy and messy.Walk a bit and you will stumble across a teddy. Explore further and you will surely find a bassinet in the living area. The pillows have been thrown on the floor. There are some really cute toys strewn everywhere. Considering how finicky she was about her designer home, I can only marvel at this transformation.

She has been married for 16 years. The last 15 years went in trying for a baby. She quit her job to be a full time trying -to -be- a -mother..There have been monitoring temperatures and maintaining charts. There have been 4 doctors in 4 different cities. There have been various drugs that saw her weight balloning to 74 kgs from her normal 55kgs. There have been routine pokes and invasive procedures. There has been a surgery.There have been the rather humiliating experience of revealing extermely intimate details of her life to all those in her family who considered themselves feritlity experts. Then there was the exorbitant cost of the treatment. Plus she also went through the mandatory pilgrimages. Why leave everything to science. God also performs miracles.

So her god finally performed a miracle and fulfilled her greatest desire. She became a mother last June. Beaming grandparents, exhuberant friends and well wishing cousins all lined up in her home to welcome the new baby. She was a scrawny,hairless bundle. Her tight fist held on to my cousin's finger. Even sleeping her face would at times turn to her mother as if seeking reassurance. When her aunt tried to take away the baby from the mother, she protested loudly. None of us were in any doubt about her spunk. The baby made her presence felt from day one. The entire household revolved around her schedule and she knew it. Her every whimper would bring her doting parents to her side and she made full advantage of it.

Nothing really has changed since last June. The baby is spunky still. The parents are doting as ever. They just look exhausted all the time. After a really exhausting cleaning ,feeding and cleaning again spree, I asked my cousin whether all this was worth it. The numerous visits to the doctor. The traumatic treatments. The severe depressoin. All that money spent. She could have taken the short cut long back... got a baby home from an adoption centre.

My cousin disagreed. The last 15 years strengthened her desire to be a mom. Motherhood was not easy. And if she could handle this pain, she could handle anything. Because she went through all this, she realised how precious each child was. And because of that realisation, she could so whole heartedly embrace this precious new baby.

Raktima is not the biological mother of her baby. After 15 years of trying, she defied nature and became a mother. She adopted a tiny little girl. She opened her heart and welcomed this miracle into her big family, waiting so long for a child. She showered her love and care, her patience and her devotion and transformed this once scrawny, underfed little girl into a healthy, happy one year old. This was not a short cut to motherhood. This was an obstacle course that finally led her to joy.

After 15 years of trying, my cousin Raktima finally gave up depression and adopted happiness.