Motta is what I am going to get for my exams in a few weeks time. One would think that an adult woman of 43 would know the implications of procrastination. somehow, I can only study when the pressure of failure is looming in the horizon!  Even yesterday night instead of studying I read a novel and this morning when I woke up, two things came to my mind. Today is Ash Wednesday and like every year I give up drinking for lent out of respect for my grandmother who observed the lent every year without fail.. I am a vegetarian, so giving up meat is a mute point. As I was counting how many days are  in  valia noymbu, in other words how many days I will have to survive without having a drink, l it occurred me  that my exams are also approaching very quickly.

Panic is what you feel when you know you have not studied anything and you really don’t have enough time to study everything.

When I was a medical student, apart from dating and spending as much time as I possibly can with the bf, the only other distraction that kept me away from studying was novels. And now, I work, I drive my children to various activities and when I sit down to read, I like to quickly check what is happening in Ukraine and that leads to What N. Khrushchev did in ’54 and in between, I also take a quick look at my FB, read my emails, and check what happened to the bid I placed on Ebay.

My life was a lot easier till the technology started to become a major part of my life.

I am going to take time off blogging. ( Otherwise I will get motta)

Back on 29th March.

Adios.

update.

A minute after typing this post , I checked my fb..and saw this..thought I shall post it here

Yesterday was a good day for me. A reader send me the link for Sidney Sheldon books and I thought I was going to make my son’s day when I got back home. He was waiting for me to get back home and as soon as I parked the car, he opened the car door and asked “guess what?” ( I was hoping to do the same and ask him “guess what”, entey helium balloontey kattu shhhhhhhhhhh nnu poyi)

“What?” I asked

“I won the school election” He started jumping up and down.

As most Ivy league Unis are interested in admitting students who are all rounder and not just academically good, leadership qualities will be an added bonus. My son knows that and is working hard to ensure that he does all that is needed. My son is not your typical  popular student. You know the one who is sporty and acts like a male model etc..Ok, I didn’t say that right. My son is good looking and wins all the maths awards and won the academic gold medal last year.. what I meant to say was, the popular guys are the ones who has Justin Bieber hairstyle, athletic with 6 packs,, wearing branded clothes, vans shoes, owning those expensive headphones etc.

So, I asked ” How did you manage to win?”

” all the girls voted for me” He replied

“Really?” I asked

My helium balloon was back to its original fully inflated shape. For you see, I have always been very careful about raising my son well. I don’t want a girl to come and ask me later “why I did such a terrible job as a mom and raised a jerk”. So if all the girls voted for him, obviously I did well, don’t you think?

he must have seen the grin on my face and felt he needed to explain.

“It is the zones, mom”

“What do you mean?” I asked

” well, it is like this. when you talk to a girl, if you are going to be a jerk, then she will place you in a ‘no go zone; and you have no hope of ever dating her. If you are going to be her best buddy, then she will keep you in the ‘friend zone’ and she will never date you because she will tell you it is like dating your brother. so you need to keep them in a ‘strike zone’ where you have some chance of dating her..You are not a jerk and you are not the best friend. I keep all girls in the strike zone”

I took a deep breath and sighed. There is so much you learn from your children.

I do not own anything from my father, not even his photos. When I left home after completing medicine, Amma insisted that I can’t take anything that my father gave me ( things like my cassette collection, my hair dryer, even the plastic table cloth I used in the medical college, not that I was planning to take that anyway !) for they  belonged to the family and my sisters have a right to use them. It was time before computers and internet and I couldn’t take a copy of the family photos , not that we had much left after my older sister went through all the photos and cut her head out when she decided she didn’t want to be a part of the mad family and wiped all traces of her.

But I have lots of memories. When I want to think of my father, I just close my eyes and I can see him doing all the things he loved !

Last weekend, I attended  a jumble sale at a local church. I had given away my collection of  Sidney Sheldon books only to find my son suddenly developing a liking for Sidney Sheldon. I had kept my Sidney Sheldon collection for almost 10 years, Yaya didn’t like to read them nor did  my son and I needed the space. So I gave them away few months ago. During the last school holidays, my son found a copy of Sidney Sheldon’s book at the thrift shop and now wants to read all his books. Our local libraries don’t keep a copy of old books and I am now forced to go to all Charity events to get the books for him. As I was going  through  the books, I found a book I last saw when I was 4 years old.

End of 1975, my father had gone to Trivandrum for work and he bought few books from the Russian cultural center when he came back. Until then most of the books we owned were printed in India and the paper was not smooth, the printing was crappy and the binding was always coming lose. Where as the Russian books were beautifully illustrated and printed on smooth white paper that had a unique smell. It was like Manna from heaven. My father sat with me that day and read the stories for me. Although I didn’t understand a word of English, I never forgot the story of the little girl who went to collect mushrooms with her oldest sister and survived  by laying down on the railway track when the train came.

My parents considered my older sister to be the custodian of family treasure and gave those books to my sister for safe keeping. And my sister with such absolute power and responsibilities to be the keeper of the family heirloom never let me see those books again.

There were few more books my father bought that day. I remember the story of the boy who went to the market to by sausages and the illustration was a picture of the boy and a girl walking holding a basket of sausages and a dog following them eating the sausages from the basket.

If you own any of those Russian books from the 70’s and are willing to sell them, would you please mail me. daofto at gmail dot com.

This was part of a comment I received that I felt was really ‘below the belt’ and didn’t publish.

I love the way you write and have been reading it for the past several years.I was under the impression that you were kinda unlucky for having a bad relationship with  mom, all your sisters, george and now you went to us and pointing fingers at your relatives there. Sorry, i don’t have a photographic memory, so i don’t remember anyone you had good relationship with except your paternal grandmother and that help, akkachi(and ofcourse your kids). enlighten me, if am wrong.

So kinda confused about who the issue is with?  whole world at fault ?”

There are the reasons I didn’t bother to publish the comment

1. Just because I come from a screwed up family and write about it, doesn’t give anyone the right to  insult me. Who I am is a product of what I have gone through. Unless you have been there, you do not know how much it takes to get up each morning as a normal functioning person.

2. I don’t need to enlighten anyone about anything. You are not God almighty to make me enlighten you. You are only a reader. You don’t own me and you don’t get to ask me to do things to please you.

It takes tremendous courage to admit what happened to you and it also takes tremendous courage to be the best mom on earth when your own was the worst.

I write, because it is the only way I can cope.

I saw this article about child sex abuse ( http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/toowoomba-child-protection-officers-words-at-sex-abuse-royal-commission-speak-volumes/story-fnihsr9v-1226836249286)  in the Couriermail yesterday and I have been there. I am almost 43 years old, I still listen to sounds of footsteps in the middle of the night, even though I live in my own home and know for sure I am safe.

Walk a mile in my shoes before you take that rock to cast my way.

Away until Monday.

Last Friday, I was at the basketball court with my son for his game and met the girls team I managed last year. All the girls except yaya and her best friend are still in the team and they played in court 2 while my son was playing in court 1. If Yaya was playing, then both Yaya’s and my son’s games would have been over at the same time and my life would have been much easier. I was really angry with Yaya for being irrational and I knew she was making the biggest mistake in her life. I imagined her frantically trying to do basketball next year to get the hours when she could have finished all the required hours this year and  concentrate on her exams next year.

As usual, I offered to drop Yaya at work on Saturday morning ( still annoyed with Yaya). without any warning Yaya said, “mom,For my CAS, I am thinking of running a marathon to raise money for charity and I spoke to my PE teacher and he said he will help me train, What do you think?”

Every felt as if someone hit your head with the biggest sledgehammer you could ever find?

I was stunned. It was such a brilliant idea. CAS is all about pushing yourself and learning from it, not just filling the hours.

I am  so glad that Yaya is more stubborn than me and I am relieved that she didn’t listen to me.

I am absolutely proud of my daughter.

When I was in the 10th STD, I decided on my own without consulting anyone that I was going to quit my piano lessons. My reason was pretty simple. I was called deaf, dumb and blind all my life and I wanted to prove everyone that I wasn’t dumb by getting higher marks than my sister. I felt I couldn’t handle the piano practice every day and my studies. When my mother found out, She told me, how so and so who happens to be the son of her colleague and scored the 4th rank for SSLC practices Piano every morning. I wasn’t so and so, I was Sarah and I hated Amma comparing me with someone else. I was even more adamant to quit and when my mother realized that I was as stubborn as her and there was no way she could change my mind, she told me ” Mark my words,one day you will regret  this”. She was right, to this day I regret giving up playing piano.  I am still hopeful that one day when all my children have left home and I have nothing else to do, I will hire a hot young piano tutor, yup hot and  young, you read it right and learn to play piano again. What is the fun in life if I am going to be a boring old woman?

Geez, I got distracted. Back to mistakes.

Few weeks ago, it was the sign on day for basketball and Yaya told me as I was leaving to register them ” Mom, I am not playing basketball this year”

“Why not?” I asked a bit stunned, for the decision was rather sudden.

“My friends are not playing and I don’t want to do it”

It is true her best friend had gone to S. America for her gap year. But the team has 9 players and there are still 7 other players. But most importantly, Yaya needs to play 3 different types of sports for a total of 50 hours as part of her CAS. (http://www.ibo.org/diploma/curriculum/core/cas/). Basketball is very easy on me, because the training center is about 18 km from home, often my son and Yaya has training one after the other and their games are also held in the same venue, most often on Friday evening. I don’t have to do too much driving around ! Besides a friend of Yaya who is doing the IB is also playing for the same team.

I made my first mistake by pointing out to Yaya that So and so is also doing IB and is getting her required hours certified by the coach, my second mistake  was to tell my child that, I know all the coaches and I can get them to sign more hours for you. ( I think there is a gene mutation for corruption and most Indians have it)

She stared at me for a very long time..you know the cold hard stare and said ” I can’t believe that you want me to cheat and get the coach to cheat and sign my hours. I also can’t believe that you compared me to someone else.”

We argued back and forth. My points were simple. She is my child and I know she doesn’t like to do  any sports that involves sun or water. I don’t mind jumping in to the pool on a hot day, but I am not inclined to join a swimming team or want to go for practice early in the morning. I like to drink my tea in the morning, not the chlorinated pool water, thank you very much. She has to do 50 hours minimum and there are not many sports that doesn’t involve the sun or water. I find it easier to drive her to basketball training and we get a family discount too. So all in all, basketball was the safest, smartest, easiest and cheapest sports option available.

“No, I am not playing basketball this year” she said.

Eventually I told her “fine, I respect your decision. You are old enough to make your own decisions and make your own mistakes. My mother told me I will regret quitting piano lessons and I do, my job as a mother is to make sure you don’t make the same  mistakes like I did, but if that is what you want to do, it is fine by me”

To be very honest, I thought Yaya would change her mind after hearing about how much I regretted quitting the piano lessons, and how one should listen to their mother’s advice.

She didn’t and I learned a valuable lesson from her..

more tomorrow

Perhaps it was the reality  that with each year that goes by, my mother has one less year on earth and I have one less year with her and my inability to forgive her, so I could cherish whatever little time she has on earth makes me feel miserable every year when Amma’s birthday approaches. This year was no different. Last weekend when I went for Indian grocery shopping, I noticed a packet of Aval ( Beaten rice) on the shelf.

When I was growing up, if Amma was home when I returned from school, She would make Aval nanachathu as a snack. I am never known for my patience and Amma used to get irritated with me because I refused to wait a few minutes for the Aval to soak up the moisture from the freshly grated coconut. She would mutter “Appante makal alle, jathya gunam thoothal poovumo?) ( like father, like daughter).

I haven’t eaten Aval since I went to Bangalore to do medicine. I thought I will make Aval nanachathu and at least I could smell the familiar smell and feel close to my mother.

I came home all excited. I opened the aval packet, took it out, put in a colander to wash. A part of me knew you don’t wash Aval, There was no way I could eat something without washing it. Beaten rice now looked  soaked rice. I wanted to salvage it, so I quickly placed the soaked sad looking aval in my muram, hoping to dry it in the sun. I now own something that is neither beaten rice, nor soaked rice. I don’t even know what to call it anymore.

I am not sure why is that I could eat unwashed aval  without any qualms as a child, yet as an adult I can’t.

When I was in 7th Std, I attended a Sunday school camp organized by the CSI church. The preacher was talking about friends and asked those who do not have friends to lift their hands. I almost did, but noticed that no one else had their hands up and chose not to be truthful. I have always liked my own company and I am fiercely independent. I talked to my classmates, but that was it. I didn’t share any secrets or visit their homes.

However my older two children are very popular at their school and have a large group of friends. I often have 4 to 6 kids in my home for sleepover most weekends. My youngest on the other hand never has a friend over. Her siblings think her lifestyle is very unhealthy and how many ever times I explained to them that I was just like her when I was growing up, they constantly pick on her.

Few days ago while we were having our dinner, my son asked baby ” So, what do you do during lunch break?”

She replied ” I sit in the library and read”  ( I know why she is doing that, library is air-conditioned and why would you want to run and chase a lame ball when you could sit in the comfort of an air-conditioned room and read to heart’s content)

The older two practically pounced on her and went after her saying ” only those with learning disability/social interaction disability stay in the Library during recess, how could she spoil their reputation? Her behaviour is not acceptable, blah blah blah they went on”

I tried to get them to leave her alone, but my attempts were futile. Baby waited for them to finish ranting and then spoke

“You know what, I have right to be a loner. I was born this way. It is like being gay. You know gays have a right to be gay because they are born that way and I have a right to be who I am”

The look on Yaya and Toothless’s face was priceless.

I thought baby handled the issue very well.

Today is Amma’s birthday. For a person who loves numbers, I don’t know Amma’s year of birth. I will be 43 soon and I was born when she was 35, so she must be 78 years old.

This morning as I was watering my ferns in the pergola, I noticed the lorikeet painting on the floor, wind must have pushed it off the window sill.. Amma loved the lorikeets that used to come and eat the birdseeds in the feeder and I bought that painting for her as her birthday gift. She hid it among the towels in my linen closest when she left, so it will be the first thing I will see when I returned. I couldn’t bear to throw the painting out and didn’t want it inside the house, so I kept it on the window sill in the pergola.

I used to think, children who abandon their parents are ungrateful.

When I was doing my master’s degree, one of my professors talked about power of positive manipulation. Instead of telling your child “Don’t run”, say ” please walk” and you will see the difference in their attitude to your command !  I also made a conscious effort not to say “no” all the time and explained why they can’t do what they are about to do.

This was all well, till my children became teenagers and started to question every single decision I made. When I tell them why they can’t do something, they ask me ” why not?”

End of last year, Yaya came to me and said “mom, Avicii ( http://youtu.be/6Cp6mKbRTQY) is coming to Brisbane, May I please go?”

My first reaction was ‘No, effing way, you are too young’. Yaya is a teenager wired like a dynamite that goes off without much provocation from my part and if I told her what my first reaction was, we could have easily started the next world war. I was pretty sure most concerts have an age limit and since she is 15, I was hoping that I won’t have to say No, instead the concert promoter would say No on my behalf. So I asked her. Any age restrictions? for which sadly ( for me) she replied “open to all ages”. I am a firm believer of if one door closes, try the next one. “Anyone else is going from your class” She recited the names of all her friends. “Do you have money for the ticket?” I asked again hoping that she won’t have any and I can use our impending trip to US as a trump card to say why I can’t foot the bill.. ” Yep” She replied.

Since there were no other doors left for me to open, I asked myself, Why she shouldn’t go for the concert. The question she was sure to ask me if I said No and I needed valid reasons. I couldn’t say, I am your mother and I said so..My reasons were 1. She is my baby girl, I don’t want anything to happen to her. And I tried and tried to think of other reasons, there were none. Then I thought to myself, in 2 years, she will go to college and will have to make all these decisions on her own. She is going with her friends and I was sure she will be safe.

So I said “yes, you can for the concert”. Don’t get me wrong, I was not at all happy  to let her go.

On the day of the concert, she and her friends decided to take the public transport to the venue. ( Another sign of independence). Yaya wore a dress and high heels and I asked her “Are you planning to dance tonight?” “Of course”, she said. So I suggested “Wear your boots, after standing/dancing on high heels for a few hours, you will curse the day you chose to wear them, besides, don’t forget there will be other girls wearing high heels and your feet will be sore when people in high heels dance and start to stomp on your toes..” I also told her to take a plastic bottle of water and gave her money to buy more water. ( Most concert venues do not allow you to take bottled water with their caps on ( which can act as a missile when thrown on to the age) and I didn’t want to buy a new water bottle if the security tossed the cap of Yaya’s water bottle. Very rarely my children and I use disposable plastic water bottles)

Then I spend the rest of the day twiddling my thumb and  being cranky. I expected disasters. I sat next to my phone, so I won’t miss my daughter’s desperate call for help.

Her friend’s father dropped her home at 11.50 pm. As soon as she came inside the house, she gave me a hug and spoke to me in a very hoarse voice ( she lost her voice after screaming for 4 hours! ) ” Thank you for letting me go Mom, I had such a good time and thank you for telling me to wear the boots”

I didn’t tell her how I scared and terrified I was while she was at the concert. She will not understand now..but  one day when she becomes a mother and her daughter goes for her first music concert she will know..

I also did better than my mother. I was doing my internship and stood in the line for hours to get the ticket for  Jethro Tull’s concert  ( Feb 1994) and Amma told me ” You can’t go”. She didn’t have any valid reasons why I shouldn’t go, but created so much drama and to keep the peace, I didn’t go.