After I left Malaysia, I pretty much worked hours that I wanted.. So there was never a question of work and home balancing act.

In Malaysia, life was really easy. There are 4 food courts withing walking distance from my condo. So the days I was too tired to cook, I could buy something healthy from the food court. I could get cleaners working for the condo management to clean my place if I didn’t have time and it didn’t cost an arm and a leg.
The market was just across the street and is open Monday to sunday from 6 am.
There was the night market every sunday. So life was easy.

If there is one fictional person I could say I resemble a lot, it will be Bree from desperate housewife.
I am a perfectionist, I pay the bills on a certain days,do the laundry on a certain day, clothes are hung according to a certain order in my closet. I never go for shopping mid week,Once I ran out of salt mid week and though the super market is walking distance from my place, I used soy sauce instead of salt and waited till the weekend to buy salt. I don’t really know why I do things like that when the most sensible thing to do is just go and buy salt and the problem is solved..and to prevent such a catastrophe from happening again, I now have an extra bottle of salt in the pantry.

I am obsessed with making sure that the food I cook is good, healthy and is presented well. It has to be a balanced meal as well..( not often possible, but I do try)

I never make the same dish again for weeks may be even months. I hate to eat the same thing over and over ( if you had to eat rice and moru for most of your childhood, then you might understand)
Because we have lived in so many places and have international integration in our family, it is pretty easy to make different types of food. My children are not fuzzy eaters and love good food. I tend to cook, Malaysian food ( that alone has malay, indian and chinese dishes!!) italian food ( my son loves Italian food), sometimes Russian ( Broscht, Piroshki, golubtsi etc) and of course Indian food..
I hate to keep left overs in the fridge, which means that I always have to make just enough for four of us each day.
I never send sandwiches for school lunch. They have always got hot lunch in their thermos.
If any of my children asked for a particular food, I will make it. Yesterday baby asked if we could have spaghetti for dinner and I made it..although I was planning to make chicken pot pie. Amma always had issues with me cooking things for the kids just because they asked for something. she thinks I am spoiling them. For me, it takes less than 30 minutes to cook the pasta and make pasta sauce..the same amount of time it would take me to make the chicken pot pie..So why not?
I always keep my word.
So now that I will be working full time, I am terrified.. Life was good till now.. There was never a conflict.
How do all you working women cope with work and raising children?

I really admire those wonderful women who can handle working and mothering with such ease..I wish I could do it. I hope I can..but right now.. I am simply terrified

Most children when they are growing up, promise themselves that they are going to be a better mother than their own mother had been.
I certainly promised myself.
I do try my level best to be a good mother.
But there is a part of me that is probably stuck between the the line that divides a malayalee and non malayalee mothering, I stand there totally clueless.
I have been often told that I live in a different world.
It is true.
I left Kerala in 1988. I left India in 1994. Sometimes when I go to Brickfields ( KL, Malaysia), I would buy Vanitha magazine. That was my only link to Kerala and trust me, I never understood half of what is written in that magazine. Of course I could read it, but if there was an article about a politician, I couldn’t relate to it. When I left Kerala, I knew Karunakaran, E K Naynar and Gauri Amma.
I loved finding all the bondatharam written in the magazine. One block wrote about his travelling experiences.. He travelled on a highway from KL to Jakarta..It probably will happen, but not in the next 50 years. Then there was an article about how to travel in a dignified manner..As a woman, it will look better if you use both your feet simultaneously to enter the auto..( randu kalum vechu chadi autoyil keruka!!)
Ok I went off track
What I was trying to say here is that I probably am a Mslayalee in only some aspects..My comfort food has always been kanji and payar . I celebrate onam. I own a Kerala saree..Now I even have 2 settum mundum..one with green border and one with golden border. And during Christmas time, I miss not having a Christmas star and I miss the carollers.
On Friday, Yaya came from school and while we were having our tea she said
“Mom, guess what?”
( there are few sentences that gets me worked up, guess what? you know what? and a simple mom that followed by a long silence!)
I braced myself for what is coming.
“Mom, two kids in my class were making out during lunch time” she continued.
I cringed.
I didn’t know what to say.
What would I say?
I wish I could just holler like my malayalee mother did, scream at her, yell at her and tell her
mottennu virinjilla avaludey making out
But you and I know what result it would bring about!
I took a deep breath, made sure my voice was still mine ( ie I didn’t sound like someone was strangling me) and asked her
“Don’t you think that was inappropriate? I mean, there is a time and place for everything?”
She looked at me and replied
“Totally mom. I agree with you”
She then talked about her home work and what she learned that day and I am left wondering what next.. so my child knows there is a time and place for everything and what I don’t know when that is and how am I going to cope..

That is my favourite Malay quote, loosely translated it means “not try, not know” or in another words nothing ventured, nothing gained.
However, now that I got a pretty good job, I desperately need a child minder.

There are two types of visa you can apply if you want to work in Australia as an Au pair. For either of the visa you have to be between 18 and 30 yrs old.

1. Working Holiday Visa (Subclass 417).
You must be a citizen of Belgium, Canada, Republic of Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Republic of Ireland, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Taiwan or the United Kingdom

2. Work and Holiday Visa (Subclass 462).
You must be a citizen of Bangladesh, Chile, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Thailand, Turkey and the USA.

if anyone is interested to help me out and is from one of the countries above ( How I wish India was in the list!!), do mail me.

I really really can’t believe this.
All of you know how I struggled getting a job. I send 280 application in the first 6 months I was here!
My cousins are GP’s here.
One is a partner for the largest clinical path company here. I begged,pleaded, tried everything..no luck
I even went to one of my cousin’s medical practice, pleading with him to get me a job. He suggested that I take all my qualifications off my resume and apply as a practice manager at his clinic ( he can’t hire me directly because the practice management is done by IPN).. I even did that. No luck.

I called the association for health service managers, asking if there is any chance they could help me.
One of the directors forwarded my cv to his contacts. One of the contacts called me and told me, he needs me to work on my resume, as it is not selling me the person.

I contacted a resume writer. she charged 150$ an hour and changed my resume totally.
I have to admit, I went to her with absolutely no hope. Because if you have applied for so many jobs, go for interviews so many times and not get a job, then you don’t really see the rainbow.. you only see dark dark clouds.

I send my resume out.
I now have three confirmed job offers, 2 with QLD health and one with a private practice as their manager.
If only someone had told me to get my resume re written earlier.. ( hindsight is a bitch, I know)
To make things worst, I don’t know which job to take.( life sucks eh?)

Years ago, when my favourite tante turned 40, I thought the world ended.
She suddenly became very old to my eyes. 40..
I felt 40 was the stepping stone to old age. I felt sorry for tante.. that she was old all of a sudden.
I think she acted the ‘old’ part well too..She ate like a pig, for who was going to be concerned about how she looks, now that she is 40?? dressed not so well, again who cared any more?
I have to tell, Tante was one of the few people in my childhood who wore high( read very high) heels and wore sleeveless blouse often with plunging( read really plunging) necklines in the early 70’s. she also had matching jewellery for all her outfits.. from that, she morphed to this nondescript woman who wore ill fitting clothes, flat bata slippers and no matching jewellery when she turned 40.

So technically I thought hitting 40 was the road to no return.

well.. this morning, I am officially 40 years plus one day old. I still feel the same. I still want to marry Bon Jovi when I grow up..( My kids still haven’t come to terms with that and are trying to figure out when exactly would I grow up)
Nothing has changed.
I still can wear the same clothes i wore 20 yrs ago. ( kept my jeans from medical college day, just as a token of memory and it still fits!!!)
So all in all , it is good to be 40..Hopefully i feel just the same in a decade..and if not, I shall crib here as usual.

The thing about a bad childhood is that, you ensure your children don’t have the same fate.
At least I tried
and failed so many times..

When I was about three of four yrs old, my parents left me with Ammachi at chengannur house.Staying with her was something I looked forward to. She with her million stories and plus the fact that I don’t have to watch my parents fight for few days. Pure Bliss.
But then one day Ammachi had to go somewhere and she left me with the maid. I don’t even remember her name. But I can see her vicious eyes to this day. Ammachi told her to take good care of me and left. I wasn’t really worried about staying alone without her. After all the maid was there.
From the veranda, you can watch Ammachi walking towards the bus stop through the coconut treesm you can see her white chatta and mundu. I watched her till I could see her no more.
Then the maid told me, she thinks she saw a tiger in the thicket and ran inside. I have never seen a tiger till then and with pounding heart, I too ran inaide the house. I wasn’t sure how big the tiger is, so I quickly closed the main door and started to call the maid. she didn’t answer my call. The house has too many windows and I knew, if I walked the tiger might see me through the windows. SO i crept down, went to the kitchen to look for the maid. There was no sign of her. The door leading to the outside from the kitchen was made of two sections. The bottom half was closed and I knew the tiger could jump inside from the open top half. But I was too scared to get up and close. Then I actually heard the tiger roaring. I wet my pants. I don’t know how long I stayed crouched under the table. Eventually she must have seen Ammachi coming back, she came inside and laughed her heart out seeing me sitting in a puddle of urine. She then asked me to clean up the mess before Ammachi came and scolded me!
I had promised then that one day when I have kids, I would never inflict this kind of pain on them.
I tried so hard.
It was easy in Malaysia. I had an Amah or could ask my next door neighbour to have an eye on the kids if I have to go outside to do errands.
It wasn’t so easy in Canada.
When I moved to Canada,initially, I didn’t have my own car and baby was just 3 yrs old. I had to carry her on my back every where I went. ( pushing a pram while it is raining even with a rain guard was tough, plus the fact that the school was uphill. I had to make three trips each day to the school. Drop Yaya in the morning, come back, then take toothless to school in the afternoon, come back and pick both of them in the evening. Each of these trips I carried baby on my back. Then the kids started playing indoor soccer and one particular day, it was very cold and was rqainign non stop. I was exhausted. I asked baby, if she would be ok, if I switch on the pokemon video and I will be back before the movie ends. She said fine. I usually tell my landlord if I go out leaving the kids alone and they have an eye on the kids. But that day they went to the gurudwara. Long story short, the movie got over quicker than I expected and my child got scared on her own and was crying. She could hardly breath when I returned home. Trust me, there are moments you hate yourself absolutely. it was one such moment.
I learned my lesson and ensured that I never left the kids alone..not even for an hour. As a single mother, that is the most difficult thing to do. I never went any where without the kids. Never.
Few days ago, I received a call at 2.30, asking me to come for an interview at 4.30. Interviewer aplogized for the short notice, but he was deployed to NZ after the quake and was leaving the next morning and it was the second interview and a govt job!
Most of you know how much I struggled to find a job and I didn’t want to lose this chance.
I picked the kids up from school, told them not to do anything till I come back. ( No cooking, not going outside. Just stay in the room. My son usually goes for bike riding and I told him he can go after I come back.
I called Yaya and told her to txt me when she reached home.
I rushed for the interview.
There was a mini storm and my house is in the middle of 5 acres of land and a three legged dog, sone how got in to our property and started running around. My son being the ever kind child that he is, knew if the dog went to the main road, it will be run over by a vehicle. So he came out of the house, and called out to the dog. someone driving on the main road saw my son calling out to the dog, thought it must be our dog, so he stopped the car and got the dog.
He found out that I left the kids alone at home unsupervised. An offence here
He called my children’s father and I suddenly became the most irresponsible mother on earth. It didn’t matter that in all these years I have only left baby alone at home once..
Things are settled now for the moment.. but the thing is..there is no escape for me. Everything I do will be judged.
And for the first time I am starting to think, perhaps the kids are better off with their father. He is rich and can afford three child minders. I am just a good for nothing mother.

I want to know if there is something wrong with me?
Is that why I can’t find love?
All this while, I thought perhaps it is my karma.
But there is a limit for Karma, is there not?
I have never harmed anyone, not even an animal. So don’t you think I paid for my karma in the last 40 years? Is that not enough?
What is wrong with me?
Why do I stand here alone on my birthday?

It has been a hell of a week.
I have my kids back.
I am 40 today
and thank you for all the mails and support.
I guess I am still Methran Thambi’s grand daughter and I will survive this storm as well..

When I was a child, each time my parents fought, I believed tomorrow, it will all be better.That all their fights are temporary..that they will learn to accept and love each other and we will be a family.

when chechy used to hurt me, be it her words or physically mauling me with her sharp talon like nails, I believed everything will be alright tomorrow. That one day she will get tired of hurting me and will accept me as her younger sister.

When my sisters used to call me names and say deaf and dumb and blind, I knew I couldn’t change the deaf and blind part but I could change the dumb part and I worked my ass off trying change the dumb part. The only english word I knew when I was in 8th std was the word ‘Why’ and I worked and worked. I had no one even to ask for help. I didn’t know any spelling so I couldn’t use the dictionary and those words I learned the spelling, I didn’t know how to pronounce them. I couldn’t figure out the phonetics and never understood how to use the phonetics in the dictionary. But I worked..really hard and learned English, did well in my studies and was the one of 19 students out of 183 students to have passed MBBS without ever repeating a subject.
Each time Amma talked about how good my sisters are.. I knew one day she will tell the same about me. I knew it will happen. I was sure. i wanted to hear one time from her that I was good.

Each time I was alone, I knew I won’t be alone tomorrow..for I knew, there is someone there to love me and I will find him tomorrow.

When my sisters were fooling around, I got married, had children and though I was dying inside, I stayed put..because I knew things would get better tomorrow.

Amma used to say always, God only gives you what you can cope with. In my case, he was a tad too liberal. But me being who I am, I took whatever came in my way,,because I was stupid enough to think that I still have my tomorrows.Let God or creator or whatever take my todays and play his cruel games..I have my tomorrows.

All I ever wanted was to be loved.
That is all I needed to wake up each morning.. to know that I have been loved and cherished.
I have never asked for anything but love. I just wanted to be loved, for someone to just love me and accept me.

I never wanted money, never wanted any of those materialistic stuff. My ex husband earns quarter of a million dollars a year and I have never owned a thing that is of any value. No diamonds, no nothing..Money never gave me happiness.

But i desperately wanted to be loved.
I gave all of myself because that is all I had to give.

All I ever got was hurt.

I was never good enough.

I wasn’t good enough for my mother
I wasn’t good enough for my father
I wasn’t good enough for my sisters
though I was a brilliant student, I had to fight my way through medical college because George has ensured that I wouldn’t be good enough in front of my professors.
I wasn’t good enough for my ex in laws
I wasn’t good enough for my ex husband
I wasn’t good enough for anyone

Yesterday I gave the sole custody of my children to their father.

I don’t have anything in me to keep going.

I have reached the end of the road.