The crosses that we bear

It's been so long since I wrote here: and it seems even longer considering how much my earlier posts seem so much different to who I am these days.

How often I have thought of all of you in these past few weeks: tossing over in the night, everytime Nino said anything funny, everytime I made a memory that made life worthwhile, with all its precipices.

I'm an honest wordsmith - my words are my confession-box, and they are perfectionists when it comes to exorcising demons, those that dwell within each one of us, that push us and despair us in equal measure. It is this - this cross of truth that I will have to share if I write about it, but can't because it is not fair - that has prevented me from writing here in this space that I share with you.

All is not well: but perhaps you know it, women tend to have a sixth connection with the not-so-happy things in life. I can't show you my sorrows here: not so much because I sometimes suffer from my mother's inherited don't-wash-your-linen-in-public values, but because it is not fair, not to the one who will inevitably be crucified on this cross.

I have tried - even gone so far as to starting to write a post about other things - before giving up. I'm not a small talk woman (something that has made me hugely unpopular at the school gate mums' club!) and I can't escape this sadness that pervades my body and my soul, my words and my secretly-shed-in-the-office-bathroom tears.

Thank you for checking on me time and again, for investing time and affection, for reaching out to check if things were okay. I'm empty and battered right now - and even the deep recesses of my being are empty and bereft of things to say to you, although I want to, so badly.

And unexpectedly or perhaps as the cliches predicted, Nino continues to make me marvel at my own resilience, my survival instinct that kicks in everytime, albeit with a timing that's slightly off. He is testament to my faith that life will find me once again.

I hope I have tided over my reluctance to come here: and I hope I will now come here more often: to talk to you, to hear you and to be healed by what you have to say. Much love my dear friends, much, much love. You, every single one of you, is my thoughts. Big hug to all the babies.

The 100th post

My son and I had our first heart-to-heart talk today: we talked about life, its tough parts, the goal at the end of the road. I, the mother, the more knowledgeable adult, talked about the journey being important, the silver lining, the possible outcomes. I was not speaking from experience: don’t I ask myself these same doubts each day? I was speaking from the collective wisdom of those before me, around me and inside me. It is what I feed myself too, this pep talk that I gave him. He, the younger one, the innocent one with a trembling lip, reiterated what I said and went to sleep - the carefree sleep of the trusting. And I, the one who had shown the path, will experience a doubt-riddled and guilt-heavy slumber. He rests, knowing his pain is right, because I say so. And I wonder if I am.
My son is 23 months old and he hates going to playschool alone.
- Wednesday, November 21, 2007

A page from my diary. It lies unused now, having been morphed into this, electronic avataar. Nearly a year in the making, resting on the remains of two hastily-abandoned blogging attempts, with the fledgling confidence of a someone who's finally found her playmates, happy 100th to me. And thank you.

I've been tag-ed and I'm contagious

VJ, Chox and Tharini tagged me last week to list the five things I love about being a mum, and I just want to tell the girls that I'm going to do this tag pretty soon, just as soon as I'm done doing the things I seem to be doing endlessly these days.

I've almost written and re-written the post in my head, mostly while drumming my fingers on the irritatingly insufficient Times of India while on the pot, but getting the right words to queque up for the keyboard is taking a while. Hunting for five women in five different countries is part of the problem, but only a teeny part of it. Like the rai ka dana in my sabzi this afternoon. Sigh.

Chin up, Nino's Mum and girls, thankoo. *tight hug*

Everyone in Mumbai, listen up!

A dear blogger friend has just written her first novel and it's being released in Mumbai at the Juhu Crossword tomorrow.


Manjushree Abhinav's A Grasshopper's Pilgrimage, which I'm still reading, having picked it up on Sunday at a delightful read-meet which left me in tears of joy, is a beautifully honest book. It's resonance with my current state of soul was unnerving and humbling - it joins me and defines parts of me in my quest for labelling this 'quest'/'search' for the purpose of my being, that has gnawed at my soul since I could think and pen words down. The writing is so simple and lyrical, you'd think Manju is speaking to you from across the table over some hot coffee. It's the story of a young woman's search for spirituality and her love for a mountain. I haven't read it entirely yet, and I'm hoping to do a post on both - the book and the experience of the read meet.

In the mean, if you can, please go see her and say hi at the launch. It's at 7 pm, on Wednesday, 15th April, at Crossword, Dynamix Mall, Near Chandan, Juhu, Bombay.

You're likely to meet a mix of celebrities - Manju's a documentary filmmaker plus her sibling is a best selling author herself - but you're most likely to see a beautiful woman with auburn hair, most probably in a white sari and a big bindi, her face lit up with the most benign smile ever and wet, expectant, eyes. Give her a hug from me.

Top Clicks

I've put up a Top Clicks section on the right-side column of the blog, just below Nino's b'day ticker. So often through the day, I stumble across a story/an incident that just grabs my attention and my soul, and I can't get it out of my system, purely because I believe it needs to be heard more.

I work with a magazine, that like all of them out there, has its own agenda and a soul that is more market-driven than cause-oriented. I can't put these stories there, and so I put them here, hoping you will read it, hoping the word gets spread.

And even though we may not always be in a position to effect a change, I believe no story, no life must go unheard. These are my recommendations. I don't know how often I'll change it, I was looking at once a week, but some stories need to stay on longer.

Like this one about lesbian women in South Africa being subjected to 'corrective rape' by men who believe that freedom of choice is basically a lack of experience in the 'straight fine thing'. The video (linked in the third para of the Top Clicks) section is heartwreching - you've a young man saying that while he wouldn't commit 'such a rape', he's very happy someone else is doing it, because the women need to be taught a lesson. The story itself, as reported in the Guardian, is so heart-breaking, it left me feeling with what I've come to term as 'arm chair vulnerability'. Its so shocking it gives me jitters just thinking of it, forget putting myself in those women's battered and bloodied shoes. Please do read. And remember.

Umm...

...My post on the World Wide Web's 20th birthday, was selected as one of Blogadda's five 'Spicy Saturday' picks for last week.


If this is a hoax, don't tell me. I'm enjoying it immensely :)

New pinch!

I love my new header - all thanks to Sujatha and Preeti :) You guys are the best, like totally. Thank you so much and big, big, big, giant hug.

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Edited to add:

It has just occurred to me, and yes it is one of those days when light travels slower than sound, that there just might be other mums like me who're currently obsessing with the alphabet. Nino's trying to learn his abc's right now, and I've wanted to show him the alphabet in so many shapes and different ways and you know, cloud formations, that well, I'm almost dreaming of it.
That's also the reason for the new header, see?

That's why I loved the Spell with Flickr link. Photographs of letters based on the names you enter, with a database of millions of Flickr photos to choose from. Don't like how A looks? Click on it till you found one that feels just right.

The time I spent spelling the names out was a nice reminder to adolescence when I'd doodle names on a paper for hours :)

Links to the original photos with larger sizes are available and this means you can print them out/ frame them for some educational wall art - just what I'm planning to do for Nino as a get-well-soon gift (After about three illness-free days, we now have an ear infection). Although, I must add, I don't think this is legal for commercial purposes, that is selling this idea as a product. As long as it's between the baby and you, have fun!