What is your taste of winter?

For me, it tastes like spicy Pudina and muted Paalak. 

The winter has finally (FINALLY) started in Mumbai. In a la Ratatouille scene, the first chilly wind that hit my face immediately transported me back by 23 years, to a December morning in Delhi. The chills had just set in then, and my sister and I wanted to soak in the heat (Sigh!The Sardi ki Dhoop). So, we had set up two chairs in our terrace and encapsulated it in a huge bed-sheet to form a tent. We had settled in and were reading our comics, when our mother came in with the lunch: Pudina Thuvaiyal (Chutney) and Paalak kootu (Daal).  
I can still recall the steamy combination and the exact taste of the lunch – and the memory is crystal clear everytime the winter sets in. None of us would have foreseen that more than the big things, the smaller events would remain indelible in our minds; that without warning, we would get hit strongly by a wave of nostalgia so unexpected in its vividness that it would require a literal stopping in tracks and a moment of appreciation! My most significantly insignificant memories include- 

• The keerai koottu; 
• Paati telling the story of Ahalya while giving us lunch;
• The tasty (and as yet, unbeatable) Delhi’s shani bazaar’s chole bhature, and the accompanying carrot pickle; 
• The first scooty accident with sister, while I was having ice-cream; 
• The first trip to Chills-Thrills-Frills and having a thick shake with sister;
• Eating Mumbai Masala Sandwich with sister for the first time at Egmore;
• Having Spring rolls with Suba at Raahat Plaza;
• Seeing the completed Katipara junction from an Airplane; 
• The first ice-cream outing with the person I eventually ended up marrying; 
• The first view of Mumbai; 
• The first time my son (and niece for that matter) came running to give a hug; 
• and the first time he finished his lunch and said “Amma? Nalla irundhudhu” (It was good.). 

I wonder if I am creating an equal amount of good big and small memories for my son – the kind that would hit him 23 years later, tug his heart, and make him smile wistfully like nothing else can.

Cold Wars

“It takes about 1 week to get over a cold if you don't take medicine, but only 7 days to get over a cold if you take medicine.”

 I am sure you have heard that adage. I can actually see you smirking and smiling knowingly thinking about how some idgits take medicines.
Now, give yourself one tight slap. 

So, the common cold does not, apparently, have a cure. There are hundreds of viruses and no one knows which virus does what and how it can be attacked. Yada Yada Yada. That logic took a major extrapolation to that obnoxious phrase above – a phrase that I took so literally for four years, that I ended up with two nose operations, and put my son through a lot of trouble. 

So, I get this feeling that many people want to punch when I smile knowingly like I have been through worse and their nose problems are paltry by comparison, but I am such megalomaniac like that. Moving away from my character issues, if you have a cold, don’t be a loser, and think of a way to cure it. 
Are you averse to allopathic cures? Welcome to the hundreds of thousands of the members of the paranoid family, who think that all medicines- eat-into-the-stomach-walls-and-weaken the body-and-make-the-bones-brittle-and - OMG I CAN'T BREATHE! I am right there with you (Paranoia is my chief characteristic trait, followed closely by, yes, megalomania. *word of the day*). 
But cold, as much as it is common, can actually be tackled in the simplest of ways: 

1. Do Pranayam: My worst bout of nose-block was during pregnancy, and my yoga instructor told me to do the Pranayam to “channel the energy of the sun through one nostril and moon through the other. The former will ensure that the child is intelligent, and the latter will ensure that he/she is wise”. Now, I have no idea where my son is in the scales of wisdom and intelligence, but way to make one feel guilty for being unable to breathe in either sun or the moon! 
I digress. Do it. Nothing like Pranayam to clear up the depths of your mucked up castle walls (and rooms if your sinuses are into the act as well). Imagine giant cobwebs full of dirt, and infected with fungi, which can be killed only by clean fresh air. 
2. Clean that nose: No, not by nose picking *rolls eyes*. That’s like cleaning the chowpatty with a tissue paper. Take some saline water and a pump. Pump in the water in each nostril, while holding your breath (or you daredevils can breathe it in – the sting is enough to keep your eyes wide-open for hours). Bend down, and all the water comes out. You wouldn’t think this is much, but this is like spreading a disinfectant in the ruined castle.
3. Cave in and use some drops: And again, make sure they are saline. If you have to do step 1 and 2, you need to create some space – and saline drops work well (unless you have a more serious issue – go to the doctor you lazy person!). 
4. Try the Ayurveda route: Now, the recommendation-post is going to take a slight historical detour. 
In all my maternal wisdom-glory, I strongly refused to give my son ANY medication for his cold except the usual hot water, drinks etc. The result? In about a week, he developed a chronic cold, a very bad chest congestion (I could feel the congestion when I kept a hand on his chest – nightmare I say), frequent vomiting out copious amounts of mucous and a lethargy that was painful to watch. Quite by chance, one of my friends suggested ‘Bal Gutti’ – which is, a packet of some 20 actual jadi-bootis, that have to be extracted in limited quantities and mixed and given (it’s an interesting procedure – ping me, and I will share the rest). The jadi-booti required for each problem was different. Fascinated, I got to work (I am sure all our grandmothers did the same – but we are such a screwed up generation). Within two weeks, the son was back in form. 

But all this happened after around 6 nebulising sessions, and 2 months of strong antibiotics and steroids. 

So, if you have a cold, don’t sit down, close your eyes and say, “sigh, no medicine will cure it”. Or take a painkiller/analgesic and take a nap. Get off your rear and do something, before it becomes worse.

Know Thy Neighbour?

I am awkward and socially inept.
So, when I was a teen, I was sure that I would grow out of it and blossom into this lovely, graceful and assertive woman, who would be every woman’s best friend and every man’s secret desire. Instead the dangly teenager grew into a dangly woman. The tripping-over-my-own-feet traits carried on well into the late-twenties, and the brain-freeze during conversations continued unabated.

So, like Project Presentable, I decided to take up ‘Project Social’. I had a shorter list to adhere to this time:

• Smile at everyone.
• Make an effort and know the neighbours.

For a week at least, all seemed well.  On the 8th day, it all came crashing down. All because of two back-to-back neighborly incidents.

Case I: Distracted Dads
On one of our usual Mother-son walks in the building compound, I ran across this father playing cricket with his 9-yr old son and 3-yr old daughter. Deciding not to chicken out now, I introduced myself and asked about his children, school etc. His son, getting impatient. started talking to his father, giving no heed to my lame conversation attempts.

Son: DAD! Are you attracted to her?
Dad: No, But I AM distracted.
Son (nodding sagely): Me too Dad. Me too.
And they resumed playing.

I am sure there is a compliment hidden here somewhere, but in the face of the blunt rebuke; I can’t seem to find it.

Case II: Mistaken Identities
As all festivals are wont to do, we were making the expected neighborly rounds for some gossips and some blouse pieces (When you think about it, it all comes down to that). One of these visits involved an old Paati, with whom we had conversed via the balcony a couple of times.In case you are wondering, yes, such things still happen. She lives with her son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter- who we didn't have the fortune to meet or converse with.
When we went to her house, there was another couple present. Considering that we didn’t know much about the family, we were relieved when the lady introduced herself as the daughter-in-law’s mother. Conversation flowed freely thereafter, but, I really wanted to see the daughter-in-law.  So, I asked the man,

Me: “Has your daughter gone outside?”
Man: Who?
Me: The grand-daughter's mother. Has she gone out?
After a moment’s silence,
Man (Smiling): “She is not my daughter. She is my wife. I just didn’t have time to dye my hair today. And yes, she has gone outside.”

As my dad succintly put it, "That's a nice way of ensuring that they never call you again". But there was a silver lining in this - the next day, I saw him with freshly dyed hair.


So after ‘distracting’ one man and creating confusion in the family of another, Project Social has also been parked indefinitely.

Sock Up!

The tiffin boxes for son, spouse and self are ready and packed. The morning ablutions are done and a half hour Yoga session has happened. The kitchen has been marginally cleaned. I leave home on a relatively high note. Much much later, I note the white socks.

Considering that the outfit of choice today was a steel grey shirt, a black pant and brown (men’s) shoes, the white socks are an abomination; even I can’t ignore the flashes of white my feet provide as I half-run to catch the train.
That took me back by 15 years, to my last year in school in Gujarat, which, unfortunately, believed that skirts made for ideal uniforms for girls. Some of them, even then, looked pretty or charming or plain hot. Some, like me, looked like a scarecrow. The skirt, however, was the least of my worries. The socks were a different issue altogether.

My parents invested in quality socks – there was always a lot of importance attached to neatness at home. Shoes were polished almost every day, and the loose socks were immediately discarded. Despite that, we all liked to make statements with our socks:

Socks Types
Source: Google Images and musingsanddoodlings.blogspot.in

• Prim and Proper: Ideally ironed, the socks were pulled to their maximum capacity to let no crease show.
• Baggy and Sloppy: An attempt to appear cool and sloppy at the same time, the socks were purposefully made baggy by lowering the elastic band.
• Rolled and Strong: This was usually ideal in making strong statements, especially during the Sports class.
• Folded and Neat: I cringe when I realize that this was my favorite version, my dangly legs ending in this bow-like thing I created lovingly every morning.

So, I never knew what statement to make, and ended up making one every day (A Psychiatrist would have had a field day with me).
Now that I have grown wiser (Stranger things have happened), I realize that we need to don all the four roles at least once a day;

• Prim and proper to run the family on clockwork,
• Rolled and Strong to get through the daily challenges,
• Folded and Neat to manage a schedule, and
• Baggy and sloppy to remember to have fun while doing it all.

Of course, this does not add any value or provide consolation to the fact that I look like Michael Jackson with two left feet today.

Girlish Cars and Boyish Flowers

So, the 2.5 year old offspring of mine has been going to school diligently for about a month now. A lot of compromises and rearrangement of priorities later, things were finally falling into place.

That is, before I realised that pre-school was more for the parents’ benefit rather than the child’s. In Ahaan’s own words, he goes to school to play. For us however, the school has taught us time management, wardrobe management, lunchbox planning and alarm clock dependencies. It has been an interesting experience to say the least, and we were becoming experts in that… until the school decided to throw a curveball, in the form of a “Hawaiian day” (cue: Eye roll). Secretly, I was very excited about my first mommy-assignment, and started planning strategies and counter-strategies. 2-days before the D-day, we go shopping, just to find that there are no shirts with flowers (or leaves or trees) for boys. No as in NONE.

After almost 3 hours of running unsuccessfully from one shop to another, I called for reinforcements. My sister (while she was first in line when the lords were distributing imagination, innovation and creativity, I was in the ‘talking without thinking’ line) listened patiently before asking why I can’t make it myself. She gave a lot of ideas and sent me multiple photo-sets, and a bit of an effort later, the shirt was ready.

Tada! My version of the Hawaiian Shirt!

So, apart from being an egoistic post showing off my borrowed creativity, I was very upset about what we are doing to our children. To put it succinctly,

Characteristics	Boys	Girls
Colors	Black, Blue, Grey, Green, Red, White	Pink, Yellow, Orange, Red, White
Tailoring	Loose and Baggy	Tight fits with frills and fluffs
Designs	Vehicles (2-wheelers, 4 wheelers, trains, aeroplanes) , Fierce Animals, action figures	Dolls, pretty girls (& fairies), Domesticated animals, flowers, lot of lace and glitter
Messages	Macho and Muscular (I am strong!)	Cute and Feminine (Daddy’s little girl)
Toys	Vehicles, Animals, Mind Games, Action figures	Dolls (and lots of it), Doll houses (and other sets) and handicraft kits (jewellery, pots, sparkles etc)

 

We as a society either have a zero tolerance for uniqueness or don’t have the patience to nurture it.  To be fair, a change is tantalisingly around the corner. Men are wearing skirts now and two of the most admired characters on TV include Jassi (from Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahi) and Tyrion Lannister (Game of Thrones).  The boy-who-wanted-to-be-Sheila was one of the best stories to come up in Bollywood (Bombay Talkies) in recent times (if ever). As parents, we can contribute to the change too, by remembering some basic points:

·         Blue does not make a boy, and pink does not define a girl.

·         A girl likes kitchen sets, but given a chance, she would also like a toy-truck.

·         A boy would love to cook, clean the house and say hello to plants.

·         When (and that’s a giant When) you catch yourself stereotyping people, give yourself one tight slap.

That ought to do.

Note: This is a hypocritical post, and I know I stereotype as well. But well, to modify the Stark motto: Change is coming.