... कभी ना बीते ये चमकीले दिन

I had been on vacation with my parents, Sanjeev, and Mahika. And it was a great time. It was a short vacation but really good.

We drove down to the place and for once, I was in the front seat without Mahika. She was with my parents in the back seat. We were a bit cramped with a lot of luggage. But despite that, we weren't too tired when we reached our destination.

Mahika behaved really well in the trip. No tantrums, no irritating behaviour! Possibly because she had her grandparents with her with whom she doesn't get enough time to spend. She didn't complain about the food and ate whatever we gave her.

She had a gala time in the hotel and enjoyed the lavish breakfasts in the hotel. Although she did insist on certain set of her favourite clothes, she wasn't very unmanageable.

And what she really enjoyed was being at the sea. It was her first trip to the sea and she just loved it. She wasn't afraid of the water at all and was bold enough to venture out on her own in the water. She also had fun on the beach collecting sea shells, playing in the sand, and being overall very dirty. It was great to watch her at sea.

I had a minor stomach upset and had to take rest. This trip will most probably be the only time when I could rest when I was really unwell and not worry about Mahika, because my mother was there to look after her. I dozed off to sleep while Mahika played with my parents and could get the much needed rest.

While returning, although I drove for some time, I also sat with Mahika in the back seat, enjoying the breeze, greenery, nature, and the drive. It really reminded me of the song from Dil Chahta Hain..."Dil chahta hain, Kabhi na beete ye chamkile din..." as I looked outside the window. I could see the sun streaming in from the high trees and felt really good.

As the song aptly says, this trip has given me a lifetime of memories that I'll always cherish. I only wish the vacation wasn't over so soon!

How Is It Going?

How is it going? That's what you tend to ask when you meet others after a long time. I too haven't frequented my blog site for a really long time. I do have a lot of topics to write on. But no time to pen down the thoughts.

Life has been really too busy: following a routine of school, office, home, weekends, festivals, and back to square one. I had a break from school and office during Diwali. But Diwali tends to be more hectic than the usual routine.

At work, there are multiple releases in the following months and it's going to be busier. I am really looking forward to a very nice vacation at the end of the year. Keeping my fingers crossed!!!

Side Effects Of Being A Mother Of A Toddler

As your baby grows into a toddler, the Side Effects of Being a Mother slightly diminish and you develop the following side effects of being the mother of a toddler:

• You can sing all nursery rhymes, even those that you never knew in your childhood.
• You keep humming the nursery rhymes throughout the day.
• You are unaware of any new film songs, or for that matter any new films.
• Your diet has changed from 'bahar ka khana' to 'ghar ka healthy khana' to benefit your kid.
• You keep on searching for newer recipes for snacks and breakfast.
• You use the new vocabulary that your kid has developed. You'll probably use all those words when you are at office and with friends. You'll also use the same phrases and the same intonation.
• As a mother, you would be the only person who really understands your kid's language.
• Your friends and colleagues are most probably bored to death by listening to your kid's stories.
• Your schedule still revolves around the toddler and becomes a little difficult when it is disrupted.
• You have most probably gone through the kid-starts-school phase and gone through the heart-wrenching 'rona-dhona'. If you haven't yet, you'll soon go through that and you must steel yourself for that.
• In gardens and public places, especially in society parks, every parent will ask you your kid's age. The immediate question thereafter is which school you've chosen for the kid. The third question is the fee structure, followed by the board of education, and where do you keep the kid when not in school.
• You'll secretly compare your kid to the other kids of the same age and pride yourself on your kid's progress.
• You'll hear at least 75% of mothers complain to each other about how the kids eat nothing or are extremely fussy eaters.
• Ultimately, though you love every phase of your kid's childhood, you'll remember your kid's baby days and wonder how fast time has flown.

My Daughter Is Growing Up

Mahika, my daughter, is already two and has started Playgroup. It has been a wonderful journey seeing her grow up to a beautiful, adamant, smart, funny, little girl.

Sometimes, she seems almost grown up while at other times she seems a helpless baby clinging to her mommy.

But I am immensely proud of my little angel. At most times she is well-behaved and cares for everyone around her. She has her temper tantrums and drives me crazy when she throws them. But then, no fun without that. It would be so boring to have a tantrum-free child at home.

Mahika has been going to the daycare since last year. She also used to be in the Playgroup class then. That has given her an added advantage of knowing all the rhymes and loves all the activities there.

But since her official class has started, I've suddenly realised how much she has learnt. She knows most of the nursery rhymes and songs. She knows a few opposites too, in English as well as in Marathi. She can count up till seven in Marathi and up till 10 in English. She knows almost all the colours, blue being her favourite. A few months back it was (b)ink. That's pink. She sometimes says 'b' for 'p'.

Although she can say all sounds, she purposely replaces some on her own. So she used to call herself Makka, which changed to Mika. And now it's Pika.

And she now wants to do everything on her own. It is fun to watch her try things out.

Her sense of humor is quite astonishing. She can laugh at all absurd things and even at herself on some word play that occurs inadvertently. Her humor, playfulness, and caring nature endears her to everyone.

The apple of everyone's eye, she's growing up real fast. It won't be really long when she will be totally independent and out there in the big world.

The English-Speaking Rickshaw Driver

Yesterday I boarded a rickshaw to return home. It was a Saturday, around 5.30 PM, and I was
returning from an exciting day.

As we took a turn, the driver asked me why it was so less crowded today, and whether it was because it was a Saturday. I just nodded, not ready to delve in any kind of conversation.

In a few more moments, the driver started talking about how he was learning English from his son and telling incidents about his passengers.

He told me about two Iranian girls who had boarded his rickshaw. One of the girls wanted him to go faster and faster. So his answer to her requests was, "Next time you call me, I'll come on bike."

He narrated how he was learning "good manners" and had a good sense of humor. He narrated another incident of how he replied to one of his customers by saying that he was "at your service."

He also asked me whether I knew who the father of the constitution was. When I answered correctly, he showed me some script tatooted on his right forearm.

He told me right at the start of the conversation that he was learning English from his son. But then he also quoted quite a lot of sayings in English. I thought that either he was too good at his studies to learn so much so quickly, or else he was lying about how he had just started learning.

Frankly, I was a little unhinged.

He probably had really good intentions. He didn't make any untoward remarks. He did seem respectable and honorable. But still I couldn't really be comfortable.

I just couldn't figure out whether he was real or fake, and what he really had in mind.

I still keep on thinking whether it was necessary to judge him. But I cannot help but also think that in today's world, one cannot be too free with strangers, especially those who start a conversation without any reason, and who try to be too familiar and pleasing.

My suspicion made me stop the ride a little further away from home. I didn't want to take the risk of letting him know my home.

It was kind of a muddled experience.

Hello World!

My last post was in the August of last year. And all this time, I kept on thinking of returning to blogging again. But never did I ever get the time, and somehow didn't have the inclination. I hope that today's post won't be the only one this year.

Three quarters of the year is already gone and we are all looking forward to the Navratri, Dussehra, and Diwali festivals, as well as the end-of-the-year vacations.With all this, I am also looking forward to the end of the current release that I am working on. It will be a good release done and also taking stock of how the whole year went by.

That reminds me of how quickly the year is gone. After Mahika was born, I got back to work after a break of seven months. I rejoined in December and it's already almost a year. Mahika is also one and half years old. This past one year has been full of surprises, learnings, unlearnings, adjustments, frustrations, and of course joy.

Mahika is a constant source of joy. She finally started walking at around 14 months and now runs around everywhere. Full of energy, she keeps me on my toes all the time. She keeps herself busy all the time by playing some sort of game, babbling away all the time, following me in the house, reading books, listening to her favourite songs and watching her favourite videos. When I go to work, I really miss her.

At work, I cannot believe that I have already worked on two major releases this year. A lot has changed at work. We have had a change in management and the team has changed. It really is a reminder that change is permanent. It's been exciting to go through this phase and survive.

I keep on thinking of what should I write about in my next post. And I still don't know. But I hope that I'll keep writing something consistently.

Review: The Golden Notebook

I admit, I took up the novel, The Golden Notebook only after reading about Doris Lessing's death. And I
have a feeling that that must have happened for such other writers too.

I started the 500 plus pages novel with some trepidation. It's been awarded the Nobel Award for Literature and I was sure it was going to be a bit deep and difficult to understand. I was also not sure how soon I would be able to complete it. Moreover, the synopsis promised to be intriguing and and frankly a bit tedious and complicated.

I had expected the novel to be a commentary on life, how people lived in the 1950s. And perhaps it is. But I just could not relate to it. Let me get into the details.

The story is about Anna Wulf. But the way the novel starts, I thought it was about Molly. It starts with Molly, her son Tommy, and her ex-husband Richard. The initial part is focused on these characters and it's only when Anna goes back home after visiting Molly (when the story begins) did I realize that it was Anna the protagonist, not Molly.

Anna is a single-novel writer whose first novel has earned tremendous success. She is living off the royalties of the book. She is a divorced single mother of a twelve year old girl, Janet. She has a huge flat and rents out the upper room to people. Ivor, Ronnie, and the last one Saul Green are a part of the story and affect Anna's live in a peculiar way.

The novel is divided in different parts called "The Notebooks" and "The Free Women". There's one part called "The Golden Notebook" about which I will try to talk about later. The "Notebook" parts are the diaries that Anna maintains, four of them. Red, blue, yellow, and black. Frankly, I still haven't understood why four of them, and what each one contains.

The dairies are full of her nostalgia for the life that she spent in Africa, especially the hotel in Mashopi. Later they move on to minute details of her day to day life, dealings with her renters, Molly, Janet, her boyfriend(s), and her work. I got tired after a point. It was too much details and too many things. Anna keeps on talking about the same things again and again and it becomes tedious and frustrating.

The "Free Women" parts are third-person narratives of what is actually happening with their lives. That was much more interesting that Anna's diaries.

I haven't understood what Doris achieved by this novel. Perhaps she didn't want to achieve anything at all. She was trying out a new form of writing. But then, why write so much then, over 500 pages?

I couldn't understand Anna. She just goes on living each day without doing anything...she just writes in her diaries, feels depressed all the time, is nervous and is always waiting for her boyfriend. She cooks for him, goes grocery shopping, reads newspapers, and overall just stays put in her flat. I wonder if this really was the life of women in the 1950s. It's no wonder that Anna feels depressed and lonely.

Molly and Anna call themselves "free women". But always are they talking about men, sex, affairs, and overall waiting for love to happen. Are they really free then? Anna especially seems a psychotic woman, who cannot live in the present but in her past and in her wild thoughts of nervousness and jealousy. It is a rather disturbing character.

I didn't like Doris's language too. There are just too many words. I haven't liked her style where the adjectives she uses to describe people, events, objects are really her own thoughts. She wants the readers to feel the same feeling and emotion that she has felt. It's like she spells out what you must feel as you read, no space for interpretation. Her words are very strong and overwhelming.

Doris has repeated the same story again and again in the novel. Anna writes a story that reflects her relationship with Molly. It is not hard to see the similarities and I kept wondering what's the need of the double stories. I still haven't understood why so many layers to tell the same story repeatedly. Or I am a dumbo and cannot understand the depth of the novel.

The synopsis says that the "The Golden Notebook" is what will help Anna to recovery. But when I read it, I got more confused. I am now not sure whether the part about Saul Green should be taken as the events that really happened in Anna's life or whether it's a story that Anna writes. If it's a story, then Anna doesn't need a recovery. She is fine already. If it's real, then it's Anna who needs to see a doc to get out of the mental mess.

Doris's language is very strong and at times weird. I felt at a loss with her punctuation and writing style. Pages and pages of a single paragraph. it took my breath away to finish one paragraph. It would have been so easy to break down the words in different paragraphs. But perhaps I am speaking from the point of view of minimalism. (My profession comes in between my understanding of Doris's writing style.) And she has used sentences such as this: "However." Now what does that mean? I really could not get it.

Overall, I heaved a sigh of relief that the novel was finally over. I really had high expectations from it because it won the Nobel. But to tell the truth, I was disappointed.

Does such writing get Nobel? Then why not the essays that we wrote during our graduation and post graduation? May be because the essays we wrote were too simple to understand and did not contain any reference to communism!