Miss a brother…

The husband has three sisters. And he is a generous soul. Naturally I am half tempted to tie on an additional rakhi on his hand every Raksha Bandhan, given the largesse he distributes every year. And it would be valid also, I could argue, given that Raksha Bandhan is about protecting a woman, and he jolly well protect me from the big bad world and romeos who dont wolfwhistle any more, but thats another post. But having failed to convince the traditional about the logic of the husband needing a rakhi to protect his wife (and as most husbands might add, needing protection from the wife) I desist and wonder why the good Lord in his wisdom chose not to give me any siblings. Not that the parents didn’t try. Many miscarriages later the frail mother gave up. I have been too lazy to even contemplate going through a csec again and being catheter bound and spouting geysers of milk while the entire world comes over to visit you is a definite put off. Never mind that the star of the show is a mewling brat. No plans for part deux.

The brat is following in his fathers’ generous supersized footsteps. He gifted his cousin sister a pair of Converse Shoes and a watch. The sister in law tells me the husband would give them five rupees each every Raksha Bandhan and then throw tantrums in the evening for his money back. The current largesse is therefore payment with compounded interest for all those years of taking back aforementioned five rupees.

I long for a brother. Not for the gift, though that would be nice too, but for the sheer comfort of knowing that there is some more of my genetic pool around splashing around, should, god forbid, anything happen to my mother. As things stand, the only blood connection close to me right now is the brat. And I lived a lonely childhood. So lonely that I withdrew completely into books and an inner world of fantasy and story telling that I became a fabulous raconteur of imaginary escapades that had most of my friends label me an airhead loony. A brother clouting me on my ear occasionally would have done me a world of good. And a brother to come to and complain when the random wolfwhistle came my way would have been the icing on the cake. Perhaps he too would have stormed off to go get the loon a free eye check up, rather than do the filmy thing and bash him to pieces. I leave that for the husband. He loves getting into a good scrimmage. Perhaps he should have taken up rugby rather than swimming, he’s a natural. But then I digress.

I really miss having a sibling. Friends dont make up for not having a blood sister or a brother, someone one has grown up with, someone shares a common history and parents with, someone who knows your every secret and your deepest fears. I envy my husband his sisters, and I envy his sisters such a loving brother. God bless all brothers. 

Home sweet home

Proved right. Women are genetically programmed to shop.

I really like reading the newspaper these days. A lot of the news just proves that the powers above have set out little elves working in remote labs to validate what I always knew. The sleep as much as you like theory was one. The second was validated today.

Says the newspaper report and quote I, “The University of California researchers found that women really are better than men not only at finding their way around stores, but also at remembering where those fruits and vegetables are stored in shelves. The reason for this lies in evolution, the researchers stated. Women, over the centuries, have honed their skill of finding the best fruits and berries to sniffing out the best bargains.” Which is why I know instantly, the moment I walk into a store whether that humunguous 70 per cent off sale sign in the window is true and on Gods oath, or whether the creeps running the show have jacked up the prices 70 per cent sitting up the previous night to change all the tags and then crossed the jacked up price out neatly with computer programming cross and printed on the supposed 70 per cent discounted price. Caught one store out, stupid of them, considering we women really have a Tally spreadsheet ledger in our brains on price comparisons between stores. Yes, this is even in my Oh-God-I-am-going-to-flunk-algebra brain. We women know exactly how much off a regular price a sale price is on that must die for pair of shoes, even if we need to take out a calculator to check our total at the local sabzi wallah.

Am doing strange things these days, the MIL almost put her hand to my forehead to check my temperature the other day at Lifestyle when I spent an inordinately long time in the crockery and home furnishings section. It was such a deviation from normal behaviour which has me glued stubbornly to shoes and bags section, with the occasional meandering towards the kiddy wear and clothes section, that it warranted for checking of the pulse and administering of intravenous glucose. The new house is almost ready to move into, and have managed to drag the husband into many furniture shops to buy a new sofa set and dining table set. And therefore, the mind is now not focused on adorning self, but instead adorning home. So there was I fainting orgasmically at the wondering silk cushions and throw pillows in brocade with gold borders, hunting high and low for leopard print cushions (Yes, yes, am not ashamed to admit, I have a fetish for leopard print. Don’t know what that says about suppressed aggression levels, considering one is only animalistic when one is thwarted from taking a good nap. Rouse me from slumber at your own peril. The family has learnt that and tip toes around me when I am napping. Seen a lioness disturbed from her post lunch snooze on Discovery? That’s me. Add on some extra kilos for the realistic shaking with anger effect though.) The mental ticklist is on constantly with things I must buy to make the house complete. This is a woman who would pore through interior designing magazines as a child and plan out exotic room decorations, and shock her mother every day by doing some abomination on the interiors of the existing home in the name of decoration. Think scrubbing off the steel plating on all the taps to restore the bronzed look, think drawing roses on all the lampshades with felt pens to create an English countryside cottage look, think painting patches of the wall with watercolours to create a stippled finish when no one, read no one, was doing walls in different coloured patches. This was thirty odd years ago. For those who lived then and remembered those prehistoric days, we all had uniform white walls, and Godrej cupboards and sofa sets with antimacassars painfully embroidered by some lady of the house and those three flying geese on the walls. I hated it. I wanted more than the chintzy floral curtains every house had so I cut up my mother’s brocade sarees one fine afternoon and hung them up with safety pins. I will not even dare to recount the tongue lashing this manifestation of my creativity received. And then I married into a home which had painfully copied artworks by one of the daughters of the house on every wall. Luckily, I didn’t have the nerve to suggest any changes here, until the husband took it on himself to get the interiors redone. So we called in an interior decorator who put in Italian marble flooring, and designer grills and wooden flooring in the bedrooms, and wood and plaster of paris false ceilings and such like. But those paintings still stayed on. You get my drift. So here I am, with a brand new house at my disposal. Am like a kid salivating in front of a candy store at the prospect of doing it up my way. My vision is a home with a trendy urban vibe to it, with a tinge of Indian heritage through the fabrics and the embellishments and artefacts. The husband sees a Bollywood mansion in the making with gold framed ceilings and plush knee deep carpets, and I suspect mirrors everywhere. (BTW, just what has this man been watching?). The MIL plans a god on every wall. God bless us all. 

Goodnight…am off to sleep…

Without having to bribe research scientists, my favourite theory about my inexplicable weight gain has been validated. So goes the news report, “Every two years for 16 years, the Nurses Health Study collected data from more than 68,000 women between the ages 40 to 65, which included information on sleep habits and body weight. The study found that participants who slept five hours a night were 32 percent more likely to experience a weight gain of 33 pounds or greater, and 15 per cent more likely to become obese compared with participants who slept seven hours a night.”

That crash you hear is the floor collapsing under the impact of me leapfrogging with joy. There, I can now tell the world, its not me downing everything edible I can lay my hands on. Its the milkman. He’s the one responsible. I am going to shoot him down with brat’s dinky air bullet toy gun in mock protest. He’s the one who comes in at the unearthly hour of 5.30 am when ghouls are still roaming the earth and insists on giving me the start of my life. Considering that by the time the brat winds down enough to be cajoled into resting his head on the pillow its well past eleven thirty, you do the math. I am getting by on six hours of sleep. And thats why the kilos are piling on.

Says the study and I quote, “The group who slept for six hours were 12 per cent more likely to experience major weight gain and six per cent more likely to become obese when compared with those who slept seven hours a night.” The rationale, the lack of sleep causes the body to burn calories less efficiently. My theory, the lack of sleep makes me hungrier and gives me more awake time to eat more. Why then, can someone explain to me, does this not work for the brat, who sleeps like a bird and is skeletal. Maybe this is true only in cases of pre-menopausal women like me, and with hormones being thrown into the fray of explanations, everything irrational can be rationalised.

The study also talks about leptin and ghrelin, hormones that regulates how hungry we feel. I have an overdose of the latter, am sure, its the one that makes me feel I could eat an ox every half an hour after having eating one. Its also the one that makes me want to bite off everyone’s head, should I not be to lay hands on said ox. I need to get some shots of this leptin thing, it is said this is the hormone that makes you feel full. If this really works, every weightloss clinic should be offering shots of this to go with the celery sticks and radish salad they put you on.

Yesterday was at home, and fed like a starving famine stricken refugee. Two parathas for breakfast, plus oats porridge, a bowlful. Chicken curry and rice for lunch. Cake for dessert. Tea and bread butter in the evening. No, it is not the ideal diet. But I was on holiday yesterday, and allowed myself the cake and the butter and the ghee soaked parathas. I skipped dinner in abject apology to self, and hoped not much damage had been done to reduction efforts. By night, was so ravenous could have raided the refrigerator and finished every single leftover languishing in remote corners with fungal life spores spawning on them, but with admirable self restraint watched fashion channels and the skeletal women marching up and down. The distance between them and me was so great that one vowed to stay off butter and ghee and cake for the rest of one’s life. Not that one wants to be skeletal, but it would be nice to know that one doesnt need to have to do a twist and turn and jump and wiggle everytime one needs to get into a pair of trousers.

Going to the gym can only happen, one has concluded, when the brat begins regular school thanks to the fact that no one is willing to risk babysitting him for two hours at a stretch in the immediate household, including MIL and hubby. The mother who would is too far off to make the babysitting trip, and would spend an hour just dropping him off and picking him up. Half my exercise session over.

I used to be the kind of girl who slept through her adolescence. One great occasion was when the door had to be broken down, and an anguished mother fearing the worst, found daughter in deep dead sleep, on the divan, right next to the main door. Needless to say, I hadnt heard the banging of the door, the umpteen doorbells, the calling out of my name, nothing. Dead sleep. That was me. A self set record was the time I slept from eight one night to 2.30 pm the next afternoon. The mother says she just checked occasionally to make sure I was breathing and let me be. Some rest for her, from having to churn out the delicacies. Needless to say, I was as heavy an eater as I was a sleeper. I awoke, much irritated by the growling in my stomach. Ate some, and went right back to sleep. Those were the days. And I had a waistline with an indentation too, rather than the tub that masquerades for a waistline now. So now I know. I am fat because I am sleep deprived.

My solution is here. Am off to sleep. Will sleep anywhere I can. On the way to the office. Between appointments. Waiting in the reception area at the doctor’s. Waiting outside school to pick up brat. Voila. Within a week, a slim trim and new me. One who actually fits in the trousers she bought last month. Bye then, am off to buy the wrap around pillow that allows me to sleep standing. Shouldnt have any trouble doing that though. This is a woman who had perfected the art of sleeping standing in rush hour local trains in Mumbai.

The skirting of the male gaze

 

Lunch with the girls. Chic café, with an impressive Continental brunch menu which allowed you one drink or beer, one soup or salad, three starters of your choice, a main course and a dessert, all of which you can choose off an extensive menu. Am dogfacedly ashamed to say, I couldn’t make it past the starters. Slumped in my chair thanks to excess greed and superfast ingestion of food which was so delicious almost planned a heist of the chef, with third degree torture as part of the plan to extract recipes and chef’s secrets.  Had to shamelessly ask for the remainder of the uneaten to be packed for the doggy at home. And let me inform you that this is the ultimate compliment I can ever pay a restaurant, asking for food to be packed to take home. To me that is the ultimate in cooking that I will think I will rue the uneaten later.

They had to call in a crane to hoist me off the chair, and wondered whether the door needed to widened to haul this body off. Due to exigencies of circumstances, did not have a car and driver so was reduced to searching high and low for an auto willing to risk his suspension, and seat frame. Having found one, realized that being thrown around at breakneck speed on potholed Mumbai roads is great for the digestion. In fact, so great that was hungry by the time one reached home. And then ate some more. Needless to say, I will not even talk about my weight at this point. Suffice to say, the husband is making a CD of all episodes of The Biggest Loser and threatening to gift it to me as a wedding anniversary gift.

Much girl talk happened. Unrelated to the lunch though, why are divorces and bad marriages spreading like a rash amongst couples I know? Why is it that you look at a billing and cooing couple one fine day and say, how tongue curlingly sweet a pair they make, and isn’t that so cute, they are still so much in love, only to learn the very next day that they’re filing for divorce. And that each hate each other, and have been having rip roaring affairs on the side. Now should I really be grateful that the only time the husband holds one’s hand in a public situation is to drag a dawdling me across a high traffic road, if this is what couples who are all over each other are reduced to.

In the midst of all this divorce talk comes up an unexpected byproduct, the search for spanking new boyfriend material. Now most of them women have been devoted wives for over six to seven years, and consequently have forgotten the fine art of snagging a man. And it is an art, this man snagging business, it needs practice, and if you’re out of practice, its tough getting back into the game. You have to practice the look. You know, the look. The fleeting look into the eyes of the objet d’interest and then look away and then look back. And then move in for the kill. I donot talk from experience. I learn this from friends who have unparalleled expertise in this field. Of course they have the looks and the figures to carry the look off. Should I try the look on any male, I will have a stalker notice set out on me. The look, I am told, with complete authority, from marvelous friend, she of the light hazel eyes, porcelain skin and slinky feline body, always works. Babe, have you looked at yourself. You don’t need to give the look to anyone. They’re already looking at you like lapdogs at a juicy succulent bone (Not to imply that you are a bone, dear). I cannot give anyone the look. I would probably squint with dust in the contact lenses, and squint some more to decipher the look of absolute, unabashed disgust. So there.

On the flip side, if a man does try to woo me (not likely given current state of corpulence, blackheads, grey hair, pimple encrustations, nose hairs and assorted uglies) will probably think, oh isn’t he so sweet, why don’t I introduce so and so to him, they will really get along well. They will make such a sweet couple. Thinking about it, getting the occasional wolf whistle used to validate one’s sense of attractiveness, even if it came from a lowlife wannabe with oilslicked hair and bell bottomed ‘jean pants’ and platform shoes.

Interestingly, one has realized that one does not even look around to look if anyone is worthy of being given the look or is being looked at. Some lucky planetary configuration actually made me speak to current husband when passing through a college corridor. End of dating and wooing experience. The poor man did all the work. If anyone looked at me intently even back then, all I would wonder is whether my trouser zip had split on me, or whether I had something green and ugh stuck in my teeth. And today if any remotely attractive male looks at me, you can be sure it’s a sympathetic look for a ruined monument. Not that I would notice it. Somehow being out of the game for over two decades have lost any radar about noticing strange men. And if a random attractive male does cross the path, you can be sure he’s looking over my shoulder at the cute girl sitting behind me, so don’t even bother looking anymore. It’s finally, one admits, that matronly vibe, the complete lack of pheromones in one’s blood stream, one is post courtship and mating and nesting. One is now a village elder. One sits in groups and tut tuts about the young couples billing and cooing anywhere they can find a minute and an audience. In the good old days, I go wagging disapproving head, we did our billing and cooing anywhere we could find a minute and a bush or an empty classroom.  Still remember then boyfriend, now husband, doing his kissing in instalments between dashes to the end of the corridor to check for approaching predators, read watchmen and peons. Something infinitely sweet about stolen kisses that cannot ever hope to be matched by this open display of lust that most teens seem to think equals lust today.

So back to the dating game, I sometimes feel sorry for the friends who are back into the dating scene after marriage and motherhood. Life gets so complicated, imagine telling your child you’re going out on a date! I stick with my old man. With blinkers on. And hope he sticks with me, adipose and all the more of me to love. Don’t have the mental energy to be seductive ever again. Imagine me doing a seductive hip roll walk. Would be like a tsunami approaching. Can just see the guys keeling over in my wake.

 

Back to the blog. Withdrawal symptoms awful…

For a week, wordpress has held me at bay, like some unwanted maladrous suitor chasing a high society diva. Never got beyond the login page. Kind of reminded of my days of youth and not so much glory, when faint hopes of being the arm candy of the current flavour of college studhood was always dashed to the ground by them soda bottle spectacles and pustules and globules of excess sebum secretion. Not to mention the adipose. (Be careful of your dreams, they might come true. Actually got married to college hunk. Don’t ask me how, miracles do happen. And he is not even short sighted!). Withdrawal from blogging is not to be recommended. Temper tantrums, overeating and irrational behavior, aka, checking whether one can log in one zillion times a day, and resetting one’s password ten gadzillion times is not the sign of a normal healthy hobby. Perhaps I should check into blogaholics anonymous? Only if they let me hook up with a computer and a broadband once a day…might consider it.

So here I am, thanks to a super efficient Barry on the wordpress support team, back to lamenting the sudden rash of sales all over again, and the current dismal situation of the wallet. Is there some metaphysical law at work here? Will some kind scientist with no better research topic investigate why 50 per cent sales always happen when one is at one’s brokest ever, without even a penny to spare for chewing to kill gnawing hunger pangs caused by totally useless self starvation that only results in growling acidity and absolutely nil weight loss. Because one is delusional enough to eschew gym and chew gum, for one refuses to take to smoking. Responsible mother and what have you, and also the husband doesn’t smoke so he would immediately know the ashtray mouth. Not that one hasn’t tried. In the prepubescent era, one snitched a smoke from an ubercool Europe settled aunt’s bag and lit up in the dark confines of a musty bathroom only to have to emerge sputtering in embarrassment. That was the end of my smoking escapades. One has not smoked since. I like air to go into my lungs, God knows, breathing in Mumbai’s air is probably equivalent to chainsmoking in these smog infested times. Why add to the carcinogens already free floating in my bronchial tubes. Reading up about the ABCs (Atmospheric Brown Clouds, get real, one is past the ABCD as in alphabet stage by now, even though the writing might not reflect it.), and one doesn’t really want to know what soot and chemicals are congealing to create alien life forms in one’s nasal passages. As long as the lungs keep functioning, one is thankful.

Coming back to me and sales (Isn’t it absolutely delightful how I can go off on a completely irrelevant and needless tangent and emerge triumphant having bored the socks off all concerned?) Lifestyle is on a 50 per cent sale. They have some wonderful shoes I would break into a bank for, and if those are on sale, I want, I want, I want. I am in troth carrying around two gift vouchers from Lifestyle which were a birthday present from dear friend. Remember the birthday happened way back in June. And this is August. You just have to commend me on my incredible self restraint, or if truth be told, the brat is the permanent fixture to the side once one enters Lifestyle, and I am not decimating my birthday gift vouchers on a megablaster Power Ranger team. Perhaps I should be thankful to the brat, he is actually the main reason why one is not shopping as much as one used to. Never stays still enough for one to look at any shelves. Everything whirls into one dizzying mélange of colours as one passes through at warp speed, throwing aside hapless souls who dare block one’s path as the fruit of one’s womb runs helter skelter. A future career as a decathalon athlete is guaranteed.

Options is still on its 50 per cent sale. Havent been able to step into its hallowed slippery marble confines because though one passes it every day, one has brat attached to one’s person, and taking him in there would mean hara-kiri. The last time one went into it, to pick up a few pairs of jeans which had been bought the previous day, without brat in attendance and just had to be altered down to my size (read snipped into exactly half. These are jeans meant for lush long limbed Caucasian women.Which one is not, no matter how delusional the tripping around with four inch heels is.) had half the sales staff chasing him all over as he ran through shelves, behind counters and into, gasp, changing rooms. While people were changing. Horrors. Its amazing how the child can slither through the narrowest of gaps. Lokhandwala market is on a perpetua sale. I pass through it with the kind of hangdog expression roadside romeos reserved for the model types who emerge from chauffeur driven cars with the practiced smoothness that comes from repeating the same moves a thousand times over with different cars. One shop, god bless my greedy heart, even has a 70 per cent sign on the window. It was difficult to get out to take a dekko with the brat hanging onto the leg like a koala bear, so one abandoned the thought. What I really need right now though is the big ticket items for the house. The dining table. The sofa. The kitchen cabinets. The objets d’art. But somehow buying for the house isn’t arousing the right kind of fervour in me. I should now begin thinking of the market research as exercise. Walking up and down furniture stores is a legitimate form of exercise isn’t it? And given that I now have a waistline which rivals the hipline, any form of walking is welcome. Even one with a koala bear hanging onto right leg. More energy required to lift said leg. More energy expended equals more calories burnt. Wonder why talking doesn’t get one in shape? After all, the tongue is a muscle isn’t it, the strongest muscle, I am told. I would be the J Lo of suburbia by now.

Shopping withdrawal pangs…

Havent shopped for a month now. To me thats like saying I havent eaten for a month now. Both of which were unthinkable to start with, and only one who sees me can imagine how antsy one has become. Climbing the walls. I have dreams of being let loose in a mall with carte blanche. Dreams of running amok with a trolley in the hypermarket, ruthlessly pushing aside dwaddling, indecisive shoppers and flinging all I can find into my staggeringly loaded trolley which then mows me down in act of retribution. The husband senses this and knows the snapping irritably at seeing the bedsheet all askew after having straightened it for the one zillionth time is only because of shopping deprivation, and not because of total frustration at one’s poor housekeeping skills. Speaking of which just discovered a pigeon’s nest in a potted plant in my bedroom window grill. Under my airconditioner. Bleeding heart me, carefully shifted the damn plant from the location to warmer spot, braving irate mother pigeon trying to peck out my eyes. Poor eggs. They dont deserve a perma drip wet location in this already freezing monsoon situation.

Coming back to the no shopping situation, it would seem rather ridiculous to go shopping just because. Considering that the wardrobe has war cries emanating from it in the still of the night with clothes fighting for space and bags shoved under beds and shoes now making their way slyly into hubby’s shoe drawers. So now have shifted focus. Will shop for the home. That way can continue with the pleasure of shopping. And the home will look a bit presentable too…Coming to think of it, I’ve been dressed to the nines and the house is groaning under five year old upholstery and furnishings. The heart always finds a reason.

Gossiping with the girls

 

While the rest of the city was getting itself flooded and twisted into knots over cancelled trains and delayed flights and such like, yours truly and a couple of friends chilled over a lovely home cooked lunch, while the brat and friend chased each other round in circles. It was truly a sign of being a ‘mom’ that I was now doing the mom things I always associated with my mom. Primarily, running sternly behind the brat with wagging finger terrified of him demolishing anything in above mentioned friend’s pristine and immaculately maintained home. This is a home with not a single crayon mark on any of its walls, and her child is in junior’s class. My home is a veritable art gallery in contrast, and was terrified lest the brat thought that these walls were just begging to be decorated. I know I have a right graffiti artist growing up in my home.

Isnt it amazing how children make themselves totally comfortable in some homes and get totally antsy in others? The brat settles right in like he lived here all his life, even down to going to the loo on his ownsome lonesome, pulling down his pants and using the facilities. Without asking for mamma. In some homes, he has been known to start an incessant whine from the moment he steps in, “Wannagohome” which of course, makes the visit a non starter from the start. Unfortunately, I don’t do much entertaining at home, despite being the kind of person who loves having people over, for multifarious reasons, not the least being the constant tornado the house is in, so I really don’t know how other kids perceive our home. The few who do visit get right down to the task of breaking the few remaining toys that are not broken. And then, there is the fact that I am a poor hostess. It has been clinically proven that when guests arrive I put up my feet and expect them to help out with the cooking and cleaning, especially if they plan to stay for over an hour. Also, I live with the maxim of do unto others, therefore, since I hate being egged on for a second serving because of a) excess adipose tissue and b) really not liking what I’m being goaded into taking a second serving of, I am the sort who leaves guests to eat their fill and raise themselves from the table without doing the perfunctory “please have some more,” unless of course, I am terrified of the prospect of being stuck with bucketloads of excess food, which is guaranteed to be the case if I have cooked for the occasion. Me being one of those cooks who has no sense of proportion and no sense of salt. Enough of my wondrous and legendary hostess skills. One day that went down in the annals of family history was the day I actually got guests to help me with the dishes given that the maid was on the bunk. Hmmm. Wonder why no one has visited me since?

Getting back to today, have realized that a simple day spent in the company of friends that interest me and the brat is worth more than all the mall playzones put together back to back with unlimited credit and a zillion free rides. Therefore am going to try to be a good hostess and invite more friends over. I promise a decent lunch (not cooked by me) and great entertainment from the brat. I will even throw in a free demo of my hippy shake shake that has the brat rolling on the floor. Any takers?