So it was Barbeque Nation yesterday

And as luck would have it I was well and truly starving by the time I reached the hallowed premises, child in tow, like those tug boats that go ahead of the huge steamers in order to clear the path for their arrival. Thus it was that the kid hopped, skipped and jumped before me into the restaurant and promptly, with unseemly enthusiasm one must admit, began investigating the contents of the buffet being laid out, getting in the way of waiters bearing hot coal sigris to be set into tables and tripping them and generally making a nuisance of himself.

It being 26th January and Republic Day and all that, I had been generally cheesy enough to coordinate my ensemble with the colours of the flag, orange fitted tee, layered with green tunic, worn with jeans and green shoes. I’m cheesy that way. I even poured the child into a green hoodie with a white tshirt and jeans, lucky for me that the child dont protest too much when it comes to hoodies which are like what his idol Justin Bieber garbs himself in. Thankfully, he doesnt warble Bieber songs to complee the illusion of being the desi Bieber or I would be pulling out the remaining strands of my hair in handfulls.

We sat at the designated table and attempted to make polite conversation, despite the aromas from the open kitchen hitting us slam dunk in our nostrils, me and the  friend who had accompanied me, while we waited for the rest of the gang of lunchmates to arrive. The waiters hovered around. finally we gave up all pretence at being nice and courteous and minding our etiquette and waiting and told them waiters to get the starters moving. They arrived, bearing skewers of various carcasses marinated and grilled on them. Chicken. Fish. Mutton. Seekh Kabab. Prawns. Paneer. Mushroom. Baby potatoes. Broccoli. I dissolved into a puddle of drool right there at the table. The children squeaked for their share of the skewers and for a moment I was tempted, in most unmaternal fashion to shout, each man for himself. But better sense prevailed and the accusing eyes of other diners added their weight, and added to this was the clear and present danger of the kids putting their eyes out or branding themselves if they handled the hot skewers themselves which meant me serving them and once they were engrossed completely with the contents of their plates get to the real business of throwing edible stuff down my gullet.

The skewers kept coming, and they kept getting ingested at top speed. The folk gathered at the table. More chairs needed to be pulled up. The buffet was attacked, after a short recess which allowed the starters ingested to settle and coagulate and make space for what was to follow. Being a national holiday had put most people in a celebratory mood, and the buffet was all out war, poke elbow, bump plate against back, hover over shoulder, cut into line and all the wonderful things we tend to do at buffets for fear they will run out of food in the kitchen before they have their chance to reach the daals.

The lunch spread comprised Methi Chicken, Mandarin Crab, Nellore Fish Curry, Mutton Biryani, assorted salads, dals, some stray mixed veg and paneer stuff for the vegetarian folk amongst us who really felt shortchanged with the lack of choice available for them, and with good reason too. Dessert, which needed another short recess before it could be even attempted, was brownies, a sinful phirni, cheesecake, coconut cake and the mandatory fruits and icecream with chocolate sauce which the children couldnt get enough of. I of course, like any person who remembers the phirnis of distant childhood growing up in a Muslim household, attacked the phirni straight on, without pausing for air. By the time I finished the meal, I am sure I had food stains all over my face that people around were too polite to tell me about. The effort to haul oneself to one’s feet required assistance from able and willing hands of friends present, and I had to be helped down the stairs, so bloated was I with the sins of my gluttony. Dinner, needless to say, was skipped yesterday.

Two big minuses at Barbecue Nation, indifferent service. The waiters and the coated floor managers act like theyre doing you a favour, we had to wait for 15 minutes for one chair to be brought to the table, this after me telling them well in advance that we would need either a bigger table or more chairs before the guests arrived. One rude suited character who told me I cant help you please go outside and speak to the manager when I asked for a chair, and then took another fifteen minutes to organise an additional plate. Finally I was forced to stomp to the restaurant manager and do a stomping on the ground hissy fit Rumpelstiltskin tantrum to get one chair organised.

And the food selection for the veggies. Poor fare. Uncooked baby potatoes on the skewer and bland paneer. Steer clear if you are a veggie. For us carnovores of course, it was an afternoon in glutton’s paradise.

So this is the new IT bag…

The Balenciaga Motorcycle bag. The Hindustan Times Cafe today tells me that it has been spotted on the arms of every fashionista in town, therefore I must sell my soul now and run out squealing to buy it from wherever it is one buys this particular IT bag from.

 

Ah, now as I see the article in further detail, I note they have kindly supplied me with prices and where to order from details if I have 80k in spare cash to fling on a bag that looks, well, just plain ugly.

Sigh. Is it a sign of how old I am rapidly getting that the heartbeat doesnt even flutter just that wee bit, nor do the palms start sweating, nor does the mouth go dry.Nor do I go furtively to my account online to check my balance and calculate rapidly whether I could live on chewing gum, fresh air and love for the next month or so, if I did transfer all the contents of said account across to the sellers of said IT bag.

I saw the Balenciaga Motorcycle Bag first I think almost a decade ago when a magazine told me the Olsen twins had almost a 100 of these between the two of them. I looked at the bags and wondered why would someone pay good hardearned money to buy 100 of the same ugly bag.

It definitely is an indication of the fact that my fashion sense is now rapidly going to seed. I haven’t bought a new bag in god knows how long, surely the staff at Esbeda and Guess and Hidesign are sobbing their mascara off into tissue papers at the drastic drop in sales. The last bag I bought myself was purchased three years ago as a wedding anniversary gift to myself and post that, I haven’t slapped credit card down at cash till for anything resembling a bag. I desperately need to buy myself new shoes, given that all I have are the extreme party wear stilettoes which double up as weapons of assault in a pinch, and them flat soles and sneakers and nothing in between for days when I want to be pretty and feminine and tick tock around without feeling like the Swamp Thing. And worse, I actually have space in my wardrobe for things to be added. I can open my cupboard without alerting residents of the home to be prepared for an avalanche.

And what is even scarier? I don’t feel the urge to run to the stores and buy up everything in sight. The hoardings and ads screaming Upto 51 per cent off which reeled me in like a hypnotised sleepwalking subject into the store without fail now fail to enthuse me. I no longer pick up a pair of jeans which are one size smaller because they have cute decals on their pockets and promise to slim my butt pronto in order to wear them and figure out that five years down the line, they are still lying untouched in the cupboard screaming my name everytime I open the cupboard, begging to be worn or given away to have the purpose of their existence fulfilled.

I peruse through the Vogue which is faithfully delivered to my residence every month and marvel at the perfection of the women contained within and wonder how much time they spend on grooming themselves and how much a national disaster a broken nail must be to them.

Coming back to the Balenciaga Motorcycle bag, it looks like a perfectly ugly like studded bag to me. I might carry it if a gun was held at my temple, or if I was seriously out of bags. Or if the son bought it for me. Come on, I wore a tinsel crown with The World’s Best Mudder on it for an entire day. What? He spells phonetically, this child, and this was two Mother’s Days ago.

Frankly, I have now lost the urge for a LV Alma too, the monogrammes all over make me goggle eyed and physically sick. Also I was seen too many women marching around like they haven’t moved their bowels in months because they have that piece of canvas dangling from their wrists.

I would rather carry a Holi bag these days. You know, they’re so very pretty with their embossed leather and brocade. And they make me feel all feminine and beautiful. Not all in your face studs and random expanse of leather aka said Motorcycle bag. What really makes this bag look good, according to me, is the women who carry it.

Maybe that is what an IT bag is really all about. Making whatever you carry IT.

No TV day for you too?

For the past so many days Hindustan Times has been telling us that January 29 is a No TV day. And they have, praise them, chalked out an entire slew of things one can do with one’s family on said No TV day to keep one occupied. Interesting stuff. Going for nature walks, and visiting museums, and going on heritage walks, and music concerts and such like. It intrigued me. I live in a house that swears by its televisions. Three of them. When the brother in law lived with us, we had four.

If you enter the home in the evening you will find all three television sets on, or two at least mandatorily on. This time lasts for perhaps an hour or two. It keeps the peace before dinner time, if we are all compelled to make conversation, it might cause trauma. Seriously. We find it is better for world peace if each member of the household is deeply engrossed in their zoned out little world located in the flickering idiot box. The spouse will be glued to CNBC until 9pm, after which he will flick around for a random movie to watch. If he finds nothing worth his eyeball time, he will read through a book, or get onto his laptop.

The grandmother will lie down on the sofa and watch a couple of serials back to back until she drifts off into the welcoming arms of sleep. The child will scuttle between rooms for the little while the televisions are on when he returns from playing down in the park, find something that interests him, and settle down to watch it for a bit before it is his designated bedtime. He watches roughly an hour of television everyday. I watch approximately the same, with interest, discounting the time I sit with the grandmother and converse about the incidents of the day, and rip apart some folks who need serious ripping apart the way only two women can do.I am often seated in front of a television which is on because the grandmother is watching something and with my nose in a book. The brat will be playing with his action figures in one corner of the room.

On most evenings though, you will find me taking a walk in the park chatting with my friends, the brat down playing with his and causing minor world wars with shifting allegiances to various groups within the band of tykes who run through the compound like hunting dog packs, the spouse will be with his nose in a book for a major part of the evening, the elderly relative will be out with her group of friends, returning home at the comfortable hour of eightish just in time for dinner and sleep. I will be with my nose in my book du jour or my thumb moving furiously over the keypad of the phone. The child will be marking my spotless tiles with infernal whirring creations of the devil called Beyblades. Television. We don’t live our lives in it.We have other addictions.

Which is why I wonder whether it is worth having a NO TV day in our household. Maybe a no books and a no Beyblade day would work much better. And the scariest for me? A no internet day.

So the jinx was broken….

The best part about being in the blogworld is that one gets to meet a hell of a lot of folks who feel like theyve been childhood friends, and when one finally does meet them face to face, one realises that they are far far different from the mental image one had of them. So it happened with me yesterday. I was shocked. Pleasantly so.

After much planning, cancelling (on my part) and coordination, Chandni who is a blogger from Delhi, and not a mommy blogger, but a mommy blog reader, and a girl who comes across as being so larger than life, and I finally met up for lunch yesterday. I reached the Mainland China venue first and settled myself at a table for two behind a pillar and decided to utilise the waiting time I had by snooping around on twitter and figuring out just which conversation to jump into uninvited when a tiny, chirpy little college girl came upto me and hugged me. The face. It was the same. The persona, it was as bubbly as her blogs and her tweets suggested. But this was no larger than life person, this was a little tiny creature, so delicate I would be terrified of bear hugging her, you know, what if I cracked some bones.

It felt good to be on the other side of the divide, because I have had some right disconcertening moments when blogpals meet me and ask me if I’ve always been so tiny before they remember their manners as to how to behave when meeting elders, and how their parents brought them up and say a Hello. (*Raises stern eyebrow at the Sue*) Or when I meet up with other blogpals who tower on either side of me like Amazons, them being some six feet tall each and I the dwarf in the middle put there for comic relief.

It was a buffet. And a buffet, with some never ending starters I did full justice to, never mind the stomach which was groaning in protest. Then I hauled myself towards the buffet spread and had to hire a passing trolley to take my plate back to the table.  And so I ate. And we chatted. And time flew by, until it was time for me to rush back to pick the grumpy child from school and time for her to reach the airport for her flight.

Thank you for the book, C, true, we came to meet the bloggers and left having met a friend.

Ahem, ahem, I was on the Beeb!

Excuse me while I crash land back to earth and back into my fading red chair, yes, the one with handles gently eroded where my elbows dig in and the seat cover peeling away rabidly at the back like the pelt of a really sick animal. Give me some time to breathe deep, pull my scattered thoughts together and be really gracious and dignified about this. I was on the Beeb, take that bitch. Err. Well. Okay. That just about sums it up.

It all happened thus. I got an email, while I was twirling a strand of hair around a finger and reading Dave Barry, a very complicated process and one that brooks no interference or disturbing the concentration. With one hand on the page I was reading, I opened said email to find that a lady from the London office of the BBC was looking for Indian moms to talk about raising kids, specific to Amy Chua’s article on Chinese Moms which has been doing the rounds of the blogosphere for the past couple of day. Plenty of us had frothed at the mouth at being bracketed in the category of pushy parenting that Chua had described, but, since I was never going to fit in her category, given that the brat spends three hours on unstructured play unsupervised every evening, I didnt think or mull too deeply about the points she raised, except to thank my stars that the mater never ever called me “Fatty…” I would have been an instant entrant into the category of those suffering from some form of eating disorder and would probably be at bariatic surgery requirement now, had she done so. I am sensitive that way. So when I read that mail, my first thought was, no way. I’m not a typical Indian mother. Seriously, my idea of pushing the brat academically is making sure his four pages of weekly homework is done and submitted in on the day it is meant to be submitted.And not the next day, because it is  ‘allowed’.

But this was the Beeb. You know. Understand how difficult it was to control myself and rush out into the street and hail a cab to reach their studio. My excitement was reigned in by the man who raised a stern eyebrow and said, with all the authority he could muster, being the man of the house, and me being driverless and therefore dependent on him, “At this hour of the night, no way.” The man has no sense of occasion. I’d have expected him to pull on his trousers and drive me to the studio at F1 speed.

The car they promised to send for me would probably be stuck in traffic for the entire duration of the programme which was barely a couple of hours away, before it even reached my gate. So I thought, there it goes, my once in a lifetime moment and sadly passed on my phone number, thinking they were not going to be keen to get a disembodied voice on the phone when they could probably get interesting face to camera from anyone else in the vicinity of their studios. But nope. The emails kept coming, then a call arrived, and I was asked to be on standby at 1800 hrs GMT, which I ensured I was by depositing the child, snoring openmouthed, next to the spouse, also snoring openmouthed, in our bedroom, and gently closing the door on them so that the snores didnt impinge on the sound quality and snored open mouthed meself on the sofa watching a really bad movie which involved snake like things coming out from the ground and scaring the *scatological word* out two random men and one token woman. Ergo, when the phone rang suddenly, I jumped up with a start, banged my shin on the coffee table, hobbled to the armchair next to which the phone is placed, picked it up to realise the wire had gotten all tangled up and the phone got lifted up along with the receiver.

Polite friendly voices introduced themselves, and asked me to chat about, what else, these are the British innit, the weather while they checked on sound quality, and we had a little run through before the programme actually went live and there I was live. On air. On the BBC World. Dispensing gyaan on parenting contrary to Amy Chua’s declaration about the Indian parent being like the Chinese parent in being focused and pushy. I am not a driven mom. Ah yes, I was driven when the child had to go for therapy and such like, but once he had come up to par with his peers in terms of development and skills, I’ve slackened the pace. Maybe when I shell out money for his therapy, he will gather courage to tell me how I made him mediocre. For now, I’d rather he has a childhood he enjoyed.

We had a mother of two and a producer at the BBC on the show, a mom and a journalist from New York, and a Chinese American and her father, a professor and a Chinese parent giving their points of view.

Listen to us here. http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/whys

We are on the Chinese mom link.

Now I can die happy. Have ticked off the BBC from my bucket list, even if it was just mine disembodied ghostly voice floating through the airwaves.

Happy 15th Anniversary to us!

(Goa-1997)

Its been 15 years.

15 years of love and laughter.

Of fights and tears.

Of nagging and shouting.

Of a whole lot of loving.

Of one squirming mewling red faced parcel who now is a four foot know it all.

It’s been 15 years of being together

In the kind of way that makes being apart feel incomplete.

Its been 15 years that we have been man and wife.

Spouses. Mr and Mrs.

Bonded to each by the holy skeins of matrimony.

Shackled to each other by heavier chains of destiny

which drew us together, and kept us together

through an off chance glance at each other

on a crowded stairway in a college fest.

It’s been 21 years since that glance.

We have changed. You and I.

You have greyed. The laughter has faded from your eyes.

The worry lines have etched into your forehead.

I have thickened round the waist. And thinned on the scalp.

The hair is shorter, the sighs are longer.

The conversations are few, the silences are many.

The silences are comforting, there is no compunction to fill them up with words.

There is understanding in a glance.

There is a quiet comfort that doesn’t need extravagant demonstrations.

The love. It runs. Deep. Stronger than it ever could be.

Happy Anniversary darling husband.

Thank you for making this a great ride.

(October 2010-Goa)

So how did you spend your New Year’s Eve?

Me? I was curled up in bed in the child’s room by 10.30 pm,  with the child held fast in my arms. The spouse was downing his celebratory vodka in our bedroom and I had every intention of waking up by 12 am and padding across to wish him a Happy New Year, but as is evident, sleep was too stern a mistress and refused to release me from her clutches. So I slept in. Gah. Maybe it is time to call up that old age home and check myself in. Pass me that adult diaper too while you’re at it.

Seriously though, the last time we went out to celebrate the New Year’s Eve was probably circa 2000. We had, along with a group of friends, passes to a party being held at Madh Island. I was much excited and had bought myself a shiny new black velvet top for the occasion and slathered on much dark eyeliner and red lipstick and fancied myself looking quite Spanish and exotic, I’m sure given the heavy handedness with which I applied the same, others around me would have thought of less flattering terms. We set off for the party at around 9 pm, which seemed a decent time to set out, given that Madh Island was on a regular day, a ten minute drive from our home. On this day we inched forward. Minute by minute. When the clock struck twelve, we wished each other a Happy New Year in the car. The spouse, never known for being cool, calm and collected and the man who has his head on his shoulders when the rest around are losing theirs, was boiling with a rage he didn’t know whom to take out on. I was, right there, and the handiest target. Of course, we ended up having a massive spat barely we hit the dance floor and all I can remember of the rest of the evening is that I tried to find an auto to get me back home, and this was pre-cellphone possession and yes, clout me on the head, it was also not a very sensible thing to do, given I hadn’t carried a purse or any money on me. Anyway, the man managed to extricate me from a very very tricky situation involving leering drunk men leaning into my auto, (Thank God for traffic jams, which ensured the auto had got no further than ten paces from the gate of the party!) We have since not gone out for the New Year’s Eve celebrations.

A couple of years down the line, I got pregnant, and the kind of pregnancy that has you lying on your back through it all, with your feet elevated, and stitches put in to keep the brat in making stay put in place, all going out officially stopped since then.

A number of my friends attended house parties, or went out to various hotels where parties were being held at loot the bank cover charges. I grumbled amicably at them and keeled over with jealousy when they, sadistically, might I add, detailed the fun they had, while I planned out which angles I should throw the knives at them. And when I checked out FB pictures this morning, I hunted around for spoonfuls of water to chuck myself into. And there were a couple of others like me, who had brought in the New Year at home with the family, and we shed some hot tears on each other’s shoulders, promising each other that we would make the year rock more than the bringing in of it did.

To be honest though, and don’t you dare tell anyone, especially not the spouse, since I have been very vocal about my disappointment that we Never Go Out, I am a little relieved at not having the pressure to dress up and go out and party. Its a nice feeling to bring in the New Year, curled up under a blanket, a little head on your arm, a little hand holding you tight and a leg thrown over you, almost afraid to let you go. A few years down the line, the child will be partying with his friends and not want me around. Till then, let me revel in him wanting me around. And say to myself, 2011, the year I brought in, with my son kicking my stomach hard while fighting sleep demons.