I Need a Fresh Start- Update

It has been 4 weeks in a row and not a single update on my blog!!

I felt clueless and in parts powerless to write about the rhetoric that seemed to be playing back and forth.  Two months at my mum’s place has been all about relaxation at one end of the life spectrum while the other end made a nervous wreck out of me

Four weeks of utter bliss where I did not have to care about what Mimi’s eating, when she’s sleeping and who’s doing the laundry. But these four weeks were ridden with inglorious dark circle inducing tension of getting back to work. I didn’t get around doing any weekly updates because, I knew it would spell only the tantamount of ranting about the difficulty I am facing, getting back to the work front. I even tweeted about it – “Advice: To would be mums/new mums. Be very sure about leaving your job and staying at home. Searching for one after a break is very difficult” which was retweeted several times and proved that so many stay at home mums felt and seconded my opinion.

So this is the primary thought on my mind and rest all seems sundry.

Apart from that to keep my sanity and to release the negative energy I joined the local gym. My instructor made sure that I had nothing on my mind when I left the gym. I joined the gym for 20 odd days. My schedule was a gruelling one resembling a boot camp. The session spanned over 2.5 to 3 hours everyday barring Sundays and public holidays. To start with,

Some simple warm up exercises and light stretching.

Running on treadmill for 30mins ( 5 mins running – 2 mins walking). I have always run on the treadmill for 30 , 45 mins to 1 hour but this walking -running strategy tired me out more than the running at a stretch. The heart rate plummeted up and down making it very difficult to complete the 30 minute session followed by some stretching.

Weight training ( different parts – different days) with 3-4 sets of 25 repetitions.

Ab crunches + leg raises ( 250 in sets of 10 +200 in sets of 8 )

20 minutes of elliptical trainer

20 minutes of cycling

Finally, some extreme stretching which was a nightmare. But after that I was able to walk back home in one piece.

But towards the end of it all my trainer was devastated when the weighing machine did not move in the favourable direction. My weight remained effectively the same, but I feel fitter, more energized and pepped up. But my enthusiasm did little to assuage my trainer’s disappointment who thought he did everything towards making me look like Deepika Padukone in Dum Maro Dum . I had to console his depressed soul that all the fat had converted to muscles and the weight hadn’t budged despite this was because muscle was heavier than fat. He only nodded while posing for the photograph above.

In other news, driving had to be abandoned because of the lack of time from both the student (me) and my teacher. A lot of public holidays ensured that I didn’t get enough practice and my reversing skill is a thing my teacher wouldn’t be too proud of. But I am confident that I can drive safely through shorter distances where I wouldn’t need to reverse, which unfortunately means, I wouldn’t be able to park my car in a parking spot!

So with all my thoughts centered around kick starting my career I have decided to let go of the negativity that came with all the rejections. I have decided to take one thing at a time with a little planning thrown in. I have decided to make a fresh start and to see how it goes from there. If it means taking a few risks, so be it. It has been in my nature to take risks and I am not afraid. I need blessings though to keep a straight face when things aren’t going my way.

So cheers to a second chance at life!!

The Smashin’ Week

Disclaimer: Long post ahead.

After a lack-lustre last week, this week was brimming with stuff to do. A lot of it was happening for the first time. I have to admit, this recounting of the week gone by is a great mental exercise along with the promise to myself that the coming week would be better than the last one. Since long-term planning isn’t something I am good at or maybe it doesn’t work for me, I look forward to each week and in turn each day with equal measure of planning and anticipation of the unexpected.

1. Here, in the State of Kerala, the atmosphere was electric as the election season was on. Loud speakers blared the entire day and hoardings of young something candidates graced both the sides of the road. It was impossible to miss the fervent sense of purpose that hung in the air. I got the taste of the extent of how politics affected the common man in this state, when I was stopped en route to my driving class and was asked by some stranger whether I was going to vote. I was flummoxed to begin with but then managed to convey to him that I didn’t have the voter’s card for the State of Kerala. He seemed unconvinced and left me with a disdained look on his face. Whilst in the driving class, as I patiently waited for my theory class to start the fellow students asked me the very same thing. I went on an explanatory mode telling them about how I have an Uttar Pradesh voter’s card rendering me incapable to vote here. I could sense the utter disappointment in their eyes and the informal meeting was adjourned only after a lot of head shakes and comments of how one precious vote was lost. I felt like a total failure and shivered at the thought of ever confessing that I have never voted in my life. So finally all the voting culminated on the 13th of April and with it my guilt of never having voted. (Don’t anyone of you judge me. I have my own reasons of why I haven’t voted so far.)

2. The week also saw me writing an online exam to enable me a learner’s license. It was an experience to go to a government office, in this case a Collectorate’s office. I had to battle an insanely long queue for every single activity to reach the final goal. To add to everyone’s woes the weather was hot and sultry with no circulation inside the area where the test was to be given. Since this was the first time I had to interact with the government employees I observed the whole process where people had to appear convincing and a little servantile in the actions to get their work done. So yay! I got my learner’s after all and what it means was that I could start my driving sessions on the road. So the first and second class have already happened and my on road experience has been mixed. I am not terrified being on the road and I mind my own business by looking ahead and not bothering what vehicles are climbing from the side like aliens out there to attack ( Okay, I admit I am bit terrified but I pretend that it is still a simulator lesson going on. Seriously, it is easy to trick my brain. But don’t try it okay!!). I have theorized 3 driving rules and have decided to follow them no matter how the external factors influence the cruise.

1. Look straight ahead as far as I can see so that I have an 180 degree view on both side, even if hazy.

2. Keep my hands straight on the wheel

3. Relax my shoulders and keep my grip on the steering and gear a little loose to enable smooth maneuver and avoid strain.

These have worked for me but since only 2 classes have transpired, I would have to keep up at it. Driving in India/Kerala needs a different mind-set and an iron heart but I guess it all works out in the end.

3. Mimi’s NI( Naughtiness Index) has jumped to new levels all of sudden. She seems to be endowed with extraordinary stamina and a speed to match. She runs and runs and runs till the cows come home. Even after that, she shows no sign of slowing down. I feel that in certain characteristics it wouldn’t be wrong to say,” Like mother, like daughter” and it also proves that life comes full circle. Every now and then I see my mum smiling ( a little contemptuously) which says, ” Now you know, what it was like with you running around and not paying heed to anything”. I constantly worry about Mimi’s safety when she makes dare-devil jumps off the bed and the couches. In one such event, she dashed her forehead against the wood shelf  and now sports an ugly looking gash. It was terrifying for all of us but some ice packs and little ointment later she was back to her usual stuff.

She has also started to imitate our actions and apes us all the time. It is funny, really. She has also learnt a lot of new words in Malayam and understands most of the instructions. It is a joy to see her respond and how she celebrates each of her accomplishment by clapping hands and running round in circles. There is so much I learn from her. Being hard and self critical about myself all the time, hasn’t really done any good. I can be a little short sighted and neglect the fact that I have done a few things  in life that I could be proud of and should celebrate. But  years of such conditioning amounting to baseless self doubts and unnecessary complexes make it ever so difficult to appreciate what I am and I have achieved in life. But I have to thank Mimi for atleast making me aware of these disabilities. So to celebrate this new self awareness, Mimi and I shopped!!!

Well any reason is good enough to shop, isn’t it? We roamed about some local stores and struck some good bargain. I bought Mimi her third set of Pattu Pavada- which is an ethnic wear in this part of the country.

Mimi’s vaccination too happened in the week and she scared her doctor by not even flinching a bit while being vaccinated. She just strode off my lap once the vaccination was done and got around exploring the doc’s room. The doctor was shocked beyond words and was rendered speechless for sometime. I had a doubt whether the vaccination was actually administered or not. But the doc showed me the empty syringe. We all had a good nervous laugh about it.

4. I miss Amit a lot but I constantly get a feeling that he misses Mimi more than he misses me. I appear to be understanding but somewhere it does hurt me a little when he only wants to listen to what she has done and wanting to only see her on skype. Grumpy:-(. I think I have to understand what he must be going through and be a good sport about it.

5. 15th of April was our New Year and my ( and Mimi’s ofcourse) first in Kerala with my parents. So it was rather a special one. One of the rituals for Vishu includes looking at the “Kani” at 4:30 am in the morning. Kani is a paraphernalia ( all  items such as gold, yellow mangoes, yellow cloth, yellow flowers-  Golden shower tree called Konna in malayalam- and all things yellow are arranged in a plate). It is considered auspicious to see it the first thing in the morning. We were all dressed up in Kerala trademark white and golden get up. Mum had gone through the trouble of making “sadya”- traditional feast which included ripe mango curry, mixed vegetable called avial, sambar, chakka ( raw jackfruit) uperi, payasam ( rice pudding) etc. We had a sumptuous lunch after which it was difficult to keep our eyes open. It was a fantastic Vishu- New year for us.

kani

Sadya- feast

6. 16th of April was the day my uncle ( my mum’s brother) was turning 70. It was a huge occasion and his sons wanted to celebrate it in style. All the relatives were invited for a grand lunch followed by a musical orchestra and dinner buffet in the evening. The only problem was the heat and the humidity. It managed to get on everybody’s nervous as we were drenched in sweat at all times and fans were absolutely ineffective. But the musical programme was enjoyable since some eminent music directors, playback singers and reality tv singers were invited to sing and perform. Mimi had a fabulous time interacting with her cousins.

7. Amidst all this drama  I managed to make apple jelly pudding. A detailed post about it would follow in the next one. It is one of the best puddings I have had till date. After having spent zillions of hours on food blogs, I have probably acquired the knack of selecting and distinguishing a good recipe from a bad one. For this reason,whatever I have tried making in the last few weeks has invariably turned out well. Touchwood. I hated it when many times in the past, I had so many failed attempts trying to bake and cook out of a bad recipe. But, now I know better.

8. Finally, the week was marked with some good news with BlogAdda featuring one of my fiction pieces as  Tuesday’s Tangy Picks. Some recognition definitely motivates me and pushes me to do better.

So that is how my week culminated and am already looking forward to the current one. Here are some photos of the fields around my parent’s home. My camera and my photograpy skills do little justice to the panoramic view.

*Shrugs* Week

How sometimes, when you are travelling and you fall asleep, you wake up with a start to realize you have crossed so much distance and time had evaporated. It feels surreal and imagined. That is how my week went by me. It happens, when you are in too much of comfort that you stop thinking. I realize now while I write this post, that because I stopped thinking, life doesn’t seem like a struggle anymore. But for that matter, life doesn’t seem anything.  A Frame (of time and mind) devoid of any feeling and emotion and just passing by  like a rivulet flowing when it had rained torrents  the other night. I also realized since I didn’t feel neither satisfaction nor dissatisfaction, I had nothing to crib about. Nothing to crib about meant, you are automatically happy, no?

Now from my rant, you can pretty much make out how thoroughly useless I have been this entire week.

With the exception of this, I have done nothing else but watch the Cricket World Cup, eat tonnes of maggi and be on twitter, like my life depended on it.  I spend the insane amount of time on my laptop that my father almost believes that I can play the harmonium.  He refuses to believe that it is all for job hunt. Darn! he is always right.

Also, this World Cup matches have ensured that my husband and I have very little communication. Only when India wins we softly congratulate each other over the phone. That must change. We are breaking all the rules of a long distance relationship.   If our past experiences of staying apart have to be taken into account, we are very very very very bad at being good to each other. This is mostly because, both of us are totally uncomfortable phone users. Chatting does help at times but mostly the Internet – God ensures that by the time we have only finished exchanging pleasantries, the connection conks off. I might have conducted a video chat with innumerable friends, a zillion times but in the last two weeks, my husband has managed to see me and my daughter for a few measly seconds. So that is how things are. No, I am not complaining. We are used to this, and we have accepted it too. It helps keeping tempers from flaring, you know.

My daughter is probably the most unpredictable toddler ever. I was expecting her to show some signs of separation anxiety or the likes towards me. But it seems she is showing such anxieties only towards my father. But it is the sweetest sight ever to see her huddled up and going to sleep when my father’s taking his afternoon nap. When I insist she do the same with me, she never obliges. Mothers are not supposed to be treated like that!! But because she spends more time with him and lesser and lesser time with me, she has learnt to mouth a few words in malayalam.

My mum would be taking voluntary retirement towards the end of this month and is looking forward to spending more time with Mimi. She is more enthusiastic about my food blogging than anybody else I know. She helps me select props for the photographs and constantly pushes me to do better. Since the time I sent my Chatti Pathiri entry to the Kerala Kitchen community, she has been following up with me about when the round up on the same was going to happen. She has always been like this. Very competitive and always wanting to do the best she can. I think I get that  quality from her



Finally, some action did happen towards the end of the week. One of them was, we  ( India) won the cricket world cup and I showed some emotion akin to what looked like tears in my eyes. Unfortunately I had zero avenues to  get drunk and enjoy, so I had to be content with tweeting with drunk people. Also, on Sunday, we ( my parents, my daughter and I) took a trip to my grandmas’ home. She lives in a village and it takes about 5 hours travel by car to get there. The serpentine roads make sure that by the time I reach there, I have no energy or excitement left to enjoy the few hours that I get to spend with her and my cousins, aunts, nieces and nephews. By the time, I am feeling upbeat, it is time to head back and to feel wretched again. In between my usually jolly daughter vomitted and by the time she reached home, she was exhausted and cranky. In fact when she stepped inside the house, she actually heaved a sigh of relief which sounded a lot like “phew”. Then she shrugged and got on with what she does at home, that is, making  a mess.

So each time something emotion-worthy happened, I caught myself shrugging like I didn’t care. This isn’t like me at all. I don’t shrug, I don’t usually let go. I hope I get my mojo back on this week since there are a lot of exciting things waiting to happen. It even hurts my fingers to type exciting which is mostly because Mimi has plucked some important vowel keys from my laptop keypad.

Well *shrugs* again.

The Holiday Week

Life couldn’t get better than this. As I wake up ( at whatever time I please), I get a whiff of freshly ground coconut chutney tempering and filtered coffee. Yes, I am in heaven or somewhere close, that I call my mum’s home. Breakfast is always ready, bed always made, clothes already washed & folded and dishes do the themselves ( well a maid does them).  However hard I try, I don’t seem to be waking up to help my mum or she seems to be done with it before the cock-a-doodle crows. Life is bliss right now, as I look out of the bedroom window and see a red cow grazing in bucolic grace. Our flat is surrounded by lush paddy fields. The cool breeze, the dancing rice saplings and the herons flying off in the horizon are the sights that welcome me each day. I could sit here forever and find inspiration to type away on my keyboard. All that restlessness is fading away and I feel every inch of me relaxing in a way, I haven’t for a long long time.

Until… my daughter sneaks up from one side and switches off the power button on the laptop. Grrrr…

Well that’s the real life. My life.

For weekly update, there hasn’t much happened to quote and note. Each day seamlessly blending into the other before I look up notice. I haven’t even decided on how long I am going to stay put ( my idea is forever but I am sure my parents may think it unreasonable ) here in Cochin. Before my hubby left for Bahrain ( he left because his office reopened and he was summoned immediately), we had a chance to cruise around the by lanes of Fort Kochi. An unappetising place, to say the least. We also happened to sample a lot baked delights from the local bakers. K. R. Bakes, Cochin Bakeries, Bread World to name a few. Though am not sure about the star quality of ingredients used, the cup cakes and the meat puffs were delectable. Through Bread World, I also stumbled upon their gourmet super market that sells cooking chocolate and fleur de sel. A pleasant surprise indeed. I stocked up on butterscotch chips, chocolate chips, cooking chocolate, food colour, ricotta cheese and all that.  My only glitch in this excitement is that my mum doesn’t have an oven. But as she is pretty upbeat about this whole food blogging thing, we have geared up to take up some challenges. Watch this space for some delectable  Kerala delicacies! We did indulge in one such staple snack that you can catch up with here.

Apart from the gourmet hoarding, I chanced upon a Betty Crocker Mix of the Devil’s Food Cake that I made for Namit’s Birthday. I wanted to see if I was close to the original or not. Also, it would be an experiment – first of its kind for me – to make the cake in the microwave. Well it turned out quite okay but was extremely rich after I slathered the decadent dessert with plenty of chocolate glaze.

Rest of time I spent being on twitter, watching the Cricket World Cup  (especially the India Vs Australia match) and reading some books I ordered through Flipkart. I flipped ( literally) with joy when the courier guy rapped at my door to do the delivery. Books ( affordable ones) are so hard to come by in Bahrain and for me a service like FlipKart is a blessing. I ordered for, not surprisingly, “Julie & Julia” -by Julie Powell,  ”How to be a Domestic Goddess” by Nigella Lawson, “Women & the Weight Loss Tamasha” – by Rujuta Diwekar, “Cake decoration for Beginners” – by some publisher. Once  I am done with them or any of them, I shall post a two liner review about it. I still  have some more books to order but my purse strings have been tightened by my conscientious hubby. I know eventually he will come around.

Being here in Cochin has its own perks because my daughter has found her own toddler community in the building and spends absolutely no time indoors. I hardly get to see her as she is running out to play with her mates or even by herself. She ignores my existence until she feels hungry or sleepy. I am not complaining!

In other efforts to keep myself busy, I tried to enroll into a driving school but due to some paperwork and the  likes, it did not work out. I have to figure another way out. Also, I am trying to enroll myself with a pastry making course  in Kochi and that too hasn’t met with any success. If anybody can give me any leads, I shall be most grateful.

Finally, I want Amit to know that I miss him very much ( he would blushing to his temples by now) and such a public declaration of my affection would send him to his shell instantly. I also miss my dear friend Namit and all the wonderful weekends we spent doing restaurant reviews, dinners, and sight seeing ( by now Namit would be a deep shade of crimson, slowly turning purple and shades alike). I am sure Mimi misses you both, but right now she is a tad busy doing her stuff. Also, Gayathri, I miss our chats. Somehow, since the time I have come here, we haven’t had the time to connect properly. Hoping that it would be better over the coming days.

Because I miss seeing both of you together