ANNOUNCEMENT

This is A (BEV's husband) guest posting to announce the birth of our son, Bojjandi (who in the way that babies have, threw a googly - we were expecting a daughter, but of course we're thrilled!).

Mom and baby are doing fine and BEV will be back to posting, albeit sporadically, in a few days.

More Suppandis

My present domestic help is far from being the only Suppandi I have come across, and some of the stories are too good not to share. Years back, at my office, we had a security guard named Pyarey Lal. A thin, weedy-looking specimen with reedy voice to match.

Once one of the girls in office had complained that the cab driver had tried to act fresh when he dropped her home late at night from work. So the head of the office issued a diktat that if any girl worked later than 8 p.m., one of the security guards would escort her home in the cab. One night, I was working till about 3 a.m. editing a film. It being winter, the night was bitterly dark by the time I finished work so I called up the guard from the studio and told him he'd have to drop me home. Of course, with my luck, the guard on duty was Pyarey Lal.
"Who said I have to drop you home?"
"The head of the office"
"How far is your place?"
"Half an hour"
"Goodness gracious, you expect me to travel back alone in a taxi at this hour of night after dropping you home? No way!"
I figured in the case of an attack, I'd be better equipped to defend myself if I was alone rather than have him with me!
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One of A's clients had an irritating habit of calling after 6 p.m. on a Friday or the eve of a holiday to load him up with work on his days off. One week, A was rather fed-up and when she called, instructed Pyarey Lal to tell her he was not in office. Of course, this was way back before mobile phones, blackberries and emails.
Pyarey Lal had an earnest confab with the client and turned to us with a worried face:
"She's saying it's urgent."
"Please tell her I am not in office and you have no way of contacting me."
Pyarey Lal goes back to the telephone...
"Sir, I told her you are not here but that you have got the message and will call her in half an hour!"
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Once A was in his cabin having a discussion with a colleague about some client issue. The colleague strolled out to freshen up and hadn't returned for a good 15 minutes so A poked his head out of the cabin and asked Pyarey Lal: "Where is S sahib?"
Pyarey Lal: "He is sitting in your cabin talking to you!"
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Then there's the famous CPWD or Central Public Works Department, which used to be responsible for the maintenance of our house back when dad was in government service. One day, dad and I were heading out of the house when we saw a CPWD worker diligently working away at the hinges of our front door.
Us: "What are you doing?"
Workman: "We are replacing these old doors with new ones, as per the department order."
We looked around and didn't spot any new door lying there.
Us: "So where's the new door?"
Workman: "My job is to take out the old doors. That's the job of another department. They'll install the new door within 2-3 days!"

Cross-posted at we are like this only

Baby Update

Babies are unpredictable little critters! You may have plans for them but they have a mind of their own right from the womb. I'm due the middle of next month, and while I had few hopes of being able to go full-term thanks to past history and the fact that this too would be a C-Sec, I had discussed possible dates with my Ob-gyn and figured sometime around the first week of October. So I was all set to work till tomorrow and then take a few days off to prepare and to rest up and enjoy my two brats before going into surgery.

Well, this weekend put paid to that. I get a pregnancy-induced liver condition, cholesthiasis, which basically means the liver turns toxic. There is medication to mitigate the effects, but one of the annoying side effects of the condition is an uncontrollable itch. The soles of your feet itch, the palms of your hands and all kinds of un-gettable-at places, and the point is scratch as you might, the itch doesn't subside and you even find yourself scratching unconsciously and being unable to sit still for a moment. We had anticipated it this time too, because if you get it the first time, it's a 99% possibility of getting it the second and third times around. So my doc had been giving me medicine for it all through but Friday night the cholesthiasis broke through all the defences of the preventive medicine. I've been itching like a monkey hunting lice ever since, unable to sleep and elbows and ankles sore with scratching. the first time I got this itch, I was discovered one morning around 3 a.m. sitting in the bathroom scratching the soles of my feet with the clothes-washing brush. The only thing that prevents me from repeating that this time is the lack of a clothes washing brush in the attached bathroom.

So now, depending on whether I think I can maintain my sanity till Tuesday, the baby is going to pop on Tuesday next week. If I think I may go insane from the itching before that, the operation is likely due Thursday. But Chubbocks has a performance in his school assembly Thursday morning, which he has been mighty excited about for the last month and I think it'd be a shame for me to rain on his parade. So then I'll beg the doc for one more day and haul myself in to surgery Friday. Until then, if you come across a 5'5" woman the size of a house who's scratching herself like she's got fleas, come say Hi!

Tales of Suppandi

Suppandi is the mythical hero of a series of funny south Indian traditional folk tales. Suppandi is a simpleton who inevitably gets things wrong and makes the weirdest and funniest mistakes. A couple of posts back I had mentioned my maid who appears to be a near-relative of his and one of my blog readers said they used to call their old maid Suppandi. I've decided to adopt the monicker for mine, as she fits the bill so well.

Yesterday, Puddi was to spend the night at my parents' house. I asked Suppandi to bring her pajamas, bottle and a diaper. Suppandi brought the items one by one - but of course - and laid a trail of them all across the drawing room. "No, put them in a bag". "Bag?" "Yes, you know - bag? Plastic or cloth one?"

Suppandi went off and came back with a cotton bag and Chubbocks pajamas, and promptly started putting his pajamas into the bag. "No, Suppandi, Puddi is going, not Chubbocks, so you need to put in Puddi's clothes and stuff." She took out Chubbocks' pajamas, laid them on the arm of the rocking chair, then promptly started folding them and putting them back into the bag.

"Suppandi, Puddi is going. You need to put in Puddi's Dora pajamas, which are lying here on the table, her diaper and her bottle. Chubbocks is not going; don't pack his stuff."

Pause. Chubbocks clothes come out of the bag and go back on the arm of the rocking chair. Pause again.

Chubbocks clothes are again taken off the arm of the rocking chair, folded and put into the bag. That's when my BP spikes to a dangerous level. "Suppandi, I just told you three times in the last five minutes that you need to pack Puddi's things and not Chubbocks!"

Suppandi withdraws with Chubbocks pajamas and bag in tow and fails to return. Eventually, my parents carry Puddi's stuff home in their hands.

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Later last night...

I was in the throes of agonizing pelvic pain yesterday thanks to the effects of the hormone relaxin. I had been unable to sleep all night or during the day, no amount of analgesic gels had helped and I had literally cried with pain. I decided to try a hot water bottle at night and since our house is still in a shambles due to the move, sent Suppandi over to my parents' house to borrow theirs.

"Suppandi, can you heat a steel pan full of water? When it is hot, please pour the water into the red rubber thing you just brought from my parents' house."

Suppandi goes away with a puzzled look on her face. A and I decide discretion is the better part of valour, so we ask her to show us what she got from my parents' place. She comes back with a small steel box full of kesar which my grandmom had given me a few days ago to have with milk!

"Is this what You just brought back from my parents' house? Where's the big red rubber thing?"

Suppandi goes away looking totally bamboozled.

Finally A gets up, goes into the kitchen and hands her the hot water bottle which she has kept upon the kitchen counter in plain sight a few minutes back!

What makes a home?

It's funny the things that come to mean a home to you. I would have thought the people, the memories...well, it is those things, but it's also a whole lot of animate and inanimate objects, and that's what surprises me. We're in the throes of getting the house we live in refurbished. It's a rented house but we've never thought of it as such and thus never hesitated to spend out of our own pockets or put in time and effort to do things a certain way. When we moved in, we decided on a slightly strange living plan. On the first floor, we have a small drawing room ( enough to seat about 6-7 people) and 3 bedrooms + a kitchen. On the second floor, we walk out onto a marble-floored terrace and then there is one really large room, one medium sized room and one additional kitchen/ storage which is quite small. I decided that I wanted the largest room to be our bedroom and turned one of the first floor bedrooms into the dining room, one into a family room and one into our 'messing room' - the room with all the wardrobes so we needn't have heavy wardrobes taking up space in any other room. Upstairs was our bedroom, a storage room for odds and ends and the guestroom/ bookroom, until the kids came along and usurped it for their bedroom.

We'd lived in luxurious government bungalows growing up in Lutyens' Delhi, with the last one being set on a half acre plot in the heart of town, with 100 trees on the perimeter of the house. My bedroom window looked out into the boughs of a neem tree, we had a front lawn and a huge paved-over party space on the side with a bamboo bar and a kitchen garden at the back. yet those were the years that I was busy with my career, a hectic social life and dating A, so the garden existed in the periphery of my life. It was only once we moved into this house that I realised I needed that touch of greenery.

The terrace garden started, innocently enough, with some motley potted palms which I would water in the evening. Then over time, I began getting interested in gardening and read a whole assortment of books on what I could do with a container garden. I started studying about plants, not in a botanical way but simply about the names and species, which did better where, which flowered. I read about garden design. And slowly the motley collection began taking shape as a terrace garden. In the winter, I'd get a whole lot of seasonal flowers planted, ready for spring. I got fragrant plants and night-blooming ones, ones that were perennially blooming, creepers, foliage plants, cacti, bonsai...Once I picked up 100 different types of succulents, intrigued by this species - unfortunately my gardener did not understand the variety and killed off all but two.

The garden became a living, breathing part of the home...and it became a critical part of the spirit of our home. Visitors to the first floor often wondered at how we managed to live in such a cramped space - and then we'd proudly escort them up to our terrace garden. The nondescript brown iron door opens on to a veritable tropical paradise, with color and fragrance, light and movement - and suddenly the house is transformed into a place of surprises, secrets and delight. It is such a lush green space that one feels vaguely surprised to look down and not find grass beneath one's feet. We've made a habit of morning tea in this space whenever the weather is cooler, and I've sat out with my kids during the rain, watching it pour down upon my plants, watching the plants spring up joyously and raise their faces to the deluge. The kids have swum in their plastic wading pool there. Birds have nested there and left their nests behind as a gift for us. A and I have sat out at night, drinking in the scent of raat-ki-rani and madhumalti and jasmine and watched the moon rise over the house. We have loved this unique, private space which made us feel as if we were on an enchanted island far away from the world, because neither of our neighbours uses their second floor. No television, no neighbours, just us and our magical realm...

And now the terrace garden has to go. Apparently the marble floor leads to seepage upon the walls of the house, and since we don't own the house, we can't make structural changes which would allow us to keep the terrace garden intact. If the house belonged to me, I'd get a landscape architect to break down and recreate the terrace floor such that no seepage occurs ever again, and while he's at it, plant a lawn. But sadly, it doesn't. So we have to dismantle the garden. We are moving down to occupy the ground floor as well so we do have a small patch of lawn in front and back where the plants can go. But the place of magical delights, the secret garden of fantasy that we had built up here will be no more. I know there are worse troubles at sea...but my heart is breaking with each plant that I move out of its accustomed place and down into a conventional space.

It seems I can keep a small selection of lightweight, seasonal plants up there. But to me, that's like replacing a jungle with a strip of manicured lawn. The longing for a home of my own, that I own and can take decisions about is growing upon me, brought about by this. Because an emotional investment in a rented house is like having an affair with a married man - ultimately the commitment lies elsewhere. I find myself withdrawing from this house that suddenly seems to be constructed of four walls and a roof, nothing more, and not wanting to pour more of my heart into doing up the new spaces we are moving into. We're moving out of the enchanted kingdom and back to the real world...

Still a baby

There are times when Chubbocks seems like he's already turning into an argumentative teenager. And then thankfully he lapses back into being my first baby - still naive, still soft and sensitive...

His class in school has a stuffed toy class mascot every year. This year it's a panda named Tennyson. Each child gets to take Tennyson home for a night and then get his or her parents to write up what they did with the toy. Chubbocks got Tennyson home one day last week but completely forgot to tell me about it when I asked him what he did at school. His response to my question was the usual laconic, "I played", and then he was off to the park and so on. Later that evening, just as his dad was putting him to bed he remembered Tennyson and pulled him out of the bag. He was too sleepy to help make up any story about what he did with Tennyson, and I have to confess the book of stories some of the other moms had filled in was intimidating. the stay-at-home moms had gone all out with plasticine models, paintings and detailed stories while thw other working slobs like me had barely had time to pull together a one-page write-up.

Well, I'm not a writer for nothing so I made up some stuff in line with what Chubbocks usually does once he's home from school and we were off to bed. Around midnight, we were woken up by Chubbocks asking for his abba. "What happened?" "I'm feeling bad that Tennyson will go back to school tomorrow and I won't have him anymore" says Chubbocks with a woebegone face. Given how blase he'd been all day, this was a turnaround for the books! We quickly made space for him and tenny to curl up in our bed and Chubbocks hugged Tenny to him all night, brushing his teeth in the morning and feeding him cornflakes before taking him back to school!

Many thanks to my friends and fellow bloggers Neera , asaaan and Dipali for giving me this award. I entered the world of blogging sometime last year on a whim, starting off with my travelblog, as I thought that would be a great way of recalling holidays especially years later when the photos might not bring back details of all the fun moments we enjoyed. Then I started off my opinions blog and a food blog and then this one on life with kids.

Though I love writing, I'm terrible with keeping diaries, and I have beautifully designed babybooks for my kids which are sadly blank so I figured something that makes it convenient for me - just type and it's all done - may be the easy way out. It was more an outlet for me and a way to preserve memories, both for myself and for my kids - after I had them, I discovered how important it is for moms to remember all the details about their kids. I'd pester my mom for details on everything about me and my sister - the pregnancy, what we did at each month, when we learned x, y or z and get frustrated when she couldn't remember. But as Chubbocks grew up, I realised for myself how easy it is to forget - each phase is so all-consuming that the previous stages are forgotten or recalled only if you've been lucky or smart with a camera. When I saw newborn kids after Chubbocks was a year old, I used to think they were super-tiny and that Chubbocks had been much larger when born, only to realise later that he'd weighed less so had probably been as tiny or even tinier! So, to cut a long story short, this blog was really to ensure my kids didn't cuss me out when they had kids of their own years later!

I didn't realise at the time how compulsive blogging could become or that it would ever lead to anything further. But after a wonderful online shower organised by Tharini earlier in the year, I've discovered a whole community of online friends who're always there with a willing ear (eye?) to rant to, to answer all kinds of questions or just to lend a supportive shoulder. And many of them have turned into offline friends as well. I'd like to say a big thanks to blogger as well for being so easy to adopt! And to pass on this award to some bloggers I've enjoyed in the last year, in no particular order:
Sujatha whose blog I love and whom I'd love to return to the world of blogging;
Dotthoughts who has a spirited son like mine and who's always thought-provoking;
Asha who blogs about food and brings an enormous enthusiasm for each and every festival, event or meal that she prepares for her family;
Boo who always has a funny take on what happens;
Beth who's fallen in love with Bollywood and whose reviews are always interesting - funny, thought-provoking or really incisive;
Aspi, whose wicked reviews of India's reality shows and movies are hilariously rib-tickling ;
Noon whose posts are so wonderfully heart-warming.
Here's looking forward to disovering more wonderful blogs and bloggers over the next year!

Rules:
This award is for blogs whose content and/or design are brilliant as well as creative.
The purpose of the prize is to promote as many blogs as possible in the blogosphere.
1. When you receive the prize you must write a post showing it, together with the name of who has given it to you, and link them back
2. Choose a minimum of 7 blogs (or even more) that you find brilliant in their content or design.
3. Show their names and links and leave them a comment informing they were prized with ‘Brilliant Weblog’
4. Show a picture of those who awarded you and those you give the prize (optional).
5. And then we pass it on!

Progress Reports

Got about a month to go before baby # 3 turns our world upside down, as per the doc. Can't wait to pop it out, methinks - more due to my growing discomfort than excitement at the new arrival as of now. It's been rough the last couple of weeks as I grow increasingly larger. I've outgrown my maternity wear! And wish I could wear my comfy, worn out old nighties all day, even to the office.

I had to make an emergency run to the nearest FabIndia to stock up on some affordable maternity wear to tide me over the next few weeks. Some of their stuff is nice and comfy but i need to remember to try on everything I buy from there - some of their clothing looks okay on a shelf but hideous on. I had an all-day conference at office on Friday and decided to get into the maternity dress I had just bought. Guess what? The dress is really, really long - longer than mid-calf but not ankle length which is funny and makes you look weirdly proportioned, especially when your ankles have ballooned due to pregnancy. Asked A if it looked ok, and just to be supportive he said yes. Then I asked my friend and colleague who'd come over to ride along to the conference - does this look like a housecoat? At her reluctant yes, I had to go back in the house and change.

Finding it increasingly harder to sleep, what with my back and pelvis aches and my stomach getting hard and bloaty every night - no amount of Eno seems to help and I spend half the night pacing around waiting for the bloat to go away. The weather has been pretty horrendous - hot so you need the AC full blast all night, leaving me with the sniffles. Am hoping the sniffles and cough go away soon - am shuddering to think how it'll feel to cough or sneeze with stitches in my belly :( And of course I can't believe I'm still nauseated. I have to keep eating every couple of hours or else I'm hunched over the basin, and I'm getting really tired of eating. During Chubbocks' pregnancy, I just couldn't bear to eat anything except bananas for ages, and then I lost weight during the first trimester so the doc had me stuffing my face. We'd nicknamed Chubbocks Pate, since I felt like the stuffed goose - I think this baby has me heading the same way!

On the plus side of sleeplessness, have come up to level 12 and 7500 points on brick-breaker on A's blackberry. Maybe I'll borrow the blackberry to keep me busy during delivery!

What with the house still under renovation and the workmen dragging out the schedule, I've almost no bandwidth to think about the new baby. The only thing I'm hoping to manage is to shop for baby clothes this weekend since I sent off all the baby clothes I had to my sister after Puddi was born, in the fond belief that I would never need them again. When Chubbocks was born, we arrived at the hospital with a suitcase full of clothes for me, but none for him, since I had checked in a week before he was born for pre-eclampsia. When Puddi was due, determined to redress the balance, I went to hospital with a suitcase full of stuff for her - clothes, bibs, diapers, bottles - but forgot to pack clothes for myself. This time I'm hoping to get it right - I knew there was a reason we were having a third baby!

Speaking of first and second, Chubbocks is really making strides in his swimming classes now, and swam by himself in the 5 feet deep area on Sunday, under the watchful gaze of the instructor. It's wonderful to see his growing confidence and enthusiasm for swimming classes. No matter how thrilled our own achievements may make us, there is nothing comparable to the thrill of seeing your child master something - the pride and confidence in his or her eyes.

His answers about what he has done in school remain laconic as ever, though he has plenty to say and ask about all kinds of unrelated matters. "I played" is his stock answer. His review with the current class teacher is coming up and I hope she'll be more eloquent than he is. His teachers from nursery seemed to be really fond of him and I remember that every time we went for a PTA meeting, the two of them would start giggling and laughing when it came to Chubbocks, which made us feel he was doing all right. His current teachers haven't made much of an impression on us so far, so I'm looking forward to the PTA meeting - hope it happens before the baby!

Puddi has become naughtier than ever and the best way to make her do anything we want is to forbid her from doing it. "Don't come and kiss abba - never come and sit on abba's lap" will immediately see her scrambling onto abba's lap and covering his face with her kisses. She's also learning English of a Tutti-frutti variety, mostly from hearing Chubbocks talk. So she keeps coming up with sentences which are grammatically correct but which she doesn't understand in the least! Five times a day, she asks, "Can I have a Toffee?", mouth all deliciously pursed up - but has no clue what she's asked for or what we have granted permission for when we say yes. She shows signs of having gymnastic inclinations and clambers up our inlaid Planter's chair like a monkey, holding on to its back. I wish I knew where one could enrol her for gymnastics lessons. With all the discoveries she's making about the world around her, her energy levels are sky-rocketing so it's become a real task to get her to sleep at night - she keeps getting more and more active as the night goes on. Good practice for # 3.

And last on our updates, I had a real Birbal moment at home yesterday with our latest and most gormless domestic help. My mobile phone was ringing and I couldn't get up. I asked her to fetch it, so she comes back and tells me it's in the bathroom.
Me: "Please bring it here"
After an interval when it kept ringing and she hadn't fetched it, I went out of the playroom to see what was the delay. I found gormless hunting for it in the living room, despite her having just seen it in the bathroom!