My Birthday

A few days before my birthday this year, A and I were rushing throug a mall for some work when I spotted a yellow straw bag in a shop. I casually commented that it looked like a fun bag to carry around for summer and that maybe I would buy it some time later. A immediately said, "Why don't I get you that for your birthday present? I haven't got you anything so far."

I had been hinting since last year that I would love a surprise birthday party on my 40th birthday but things had been really crazy around the house, with one maid missing, me serving as cook and general factotum and kids being sick one after another. So I figured any kind of party would be impossible. But a straw bag as a 40th birthday present? Sorry, but I'm more materialistic than that. And when he followed it up with "We can at least go out for dinner to Olive", I thought it was shaping to be the worst birthday ever. I mean, going to dinner at Olive is something we do for any old birthday or anniversary, not for a milestone one. So I just grouchily said that we could just order in pizza and eat it in our pajamas as I didn't feel up to making an effort.

I grumbled to my soulsis at length the next day, wishing that she still lived in Delhi so we could at least take off for a spa day together...But I got my cool back and decided anything was ok. Around Wednesday, when I asked him where we were going for dinner, A said cryptically, "Don't ask too many questions and just play along as the evening unfolds." I thought he must have cooked up some romantic surprise at the dinner - maybe a violin serenade, or he would get up and sing one of our songs, "tere bina zindagi se koi shikwa..." or "Bade acche lagte hain...".

The night before my birthday was pretty grotty as Bojjandi had a reaction to some medication and started throwing up. We spent the night cleaning up after him and changing his clothes, hoping the medicine would stay down. When he finally got to sleep, on our bed, we discovered we couldn't sleep because each time one of us would nod off, Bojji would turn towards him or her in his sleep and kick them in the nuts. I finally traipsed to his room at about 4 am and put him back in his crib before we could finally grab some shut-eye. I was starting to feel thankful for my lowkey birthday plans.

My birthday began with the traditional hoopla - I was crowned with the birthday crown and we sang the silly birthday song ( hurray, hurray, it's mama/ whoever's birthday, sing a happy song, sing along, it's a happy happy day). We normally make a crown out of chart paper or wrapping aper stuck onto a headband but we had't been able to find the headband. So A had actually gone to the trouble of trawling kids' stores and gift stores until he found the perfect, tackiest little crown imagineable - it even lights up!

Dad dropped in soon after we came down and gifted me an IPod nano from mom and him - a wonderful hot pink coloured one that I'm dying to charge and use. He passed on gifts from my sister and brother in law and their card which all too appropriately wished for me the three things every mother of kids in single digit age needs, especially one that's forty and has three kids - a little playtime, a good poop and a long nap!

It shaped up to be a great day, with A working from home and both of us actually managing naps in the afternoon for a change. I figured I better cook something nice for dad and the kids since they'd be at home while we were out celebrating and put together a simple Kerala-style meal - Kadala curry and cabbage thoran. A was hurrying me on to have my shower and get ready by the time I finished in the kitchen. I was chatting with Chubbocks while getting ready for my shower, and he suddenly said, "Mama, there's a birthday surprise for you." So I said, "Where?" Chubbocks says, "In the house. But I'm not going to tell you what it is." I thought it must be another birthday present but didn't want to pump him for the details, so I carried on with what I was doing. Just then I got a call from a friend about my business problems and I had a fifteen minute chat with him while A practically danced on his toes rushing me to the shower. I wondered what the hell had happened to him since I'm a 5-minute-shower girl.

I finally went up to get ready and that was another process...I had planned to wear this lovely and sexy black halter-neck dress that we had bought when we visited the US in 2005. I hadn't been able to fit into it since and now that I finally can, I wanted to prove to myself that i could look sexy at 40. A was a little iffy about it, which really surprised me because he's always the most encouraging person around. As it turned out, I thought the dress was - what else - making me look fat, so I begged off. Then I tried on a one-shoulder black top that was incredibly chic and which I had bought in Italy years ago and never worn. So A says, "Are you planning to wear a wrap with that?" I finally decided to give up on sexy and just go for cover-up and dragged out a wrap dress my sister had gifted me a couple of years ago. I pulled on a necklace that was conveniently within reach and serendipitously found nice evening shoes handy - see, it pays to be messy!

I had heard dad and the kids arriving so I A and I started walking down. As I opened the drawing room door, I saw that it was dark but figured Bojjandi had been doing his usual thing of playing with the light switches. As soon as I entered, people jumped out at me and yelled "SURPRISE" and the lights came on, and I saw my soul sis and several of our closest friends gathered in our living room, along with dad and the kids. It was an incredibly wonderful moment, and despite all my hints, a true surprise. But more was in store.

As we popped the bubbly and everyone got their glasses filled, A invited everyone into the family room to watch this amazing video he had put together. He had got friends and family from all over the world to make little videos and send them in and edited them with photos of me from various stages of life to make a tribute film which I am going to cherish forever...He had even ordered the food catered in, from Iram, which specialises in Hyderabadi food and which i am going to blog about on my food blog sometime. And he had ordered a special cake from a friend of ours who recently began catering desserts. All friends who were on the video but unable to make it for the party had been under strict instructions not to call me before 9:30 pm asking how the party and video were :)

It was an amazing night, which I am going to remember for a long, long time, and it felt truly wonderful to have such loving friends and family. Most of all, I was just blown away by all the good things people had to say about me, and especially by the amount of trouble, time, effort and thinking that A had put into it - he had been planning it since the previous September! A - you now have a get-out-of-jail-free card for the rest of your life :)

Chubbocks' Birthday

Blogging about this almost a month late !

We've always managed to put in a lot of effort into Chubbocks' birthday parties, but this year was an exception. A was going to be in Bombay for his company launch and not even sure he could make it back on his birthday. Our maid was away on leave. My parents were in the US and not likely to be back. I had some on-going trouble with my ex-employer who was bent on harassing me. And the two younger kids were down with a viral and throat infection as well as me.

All in all, not the most festive environment to plan a party. A suggested that we just throw principles to the wind and host it at a mall nearby or a Pizza Hut. But I hated the idea, always have...Then I realized that there were so many of Chubbocks' school friends having birthday parties that booking the date was also brcoming critical. Finally I remembered that one of Chubbocks' close friends also has his birthday a day before Chubbocks, and that it happened to fall on a sunday so I thought the best thing to do would be a combined party.

L offered to host it and I gratefully accepted, and we agreed to have two cakes, one for each child, for me to bring macaroni and she would make the sandwiches. I'd pay for the bouncy, we'd each contribute return gifts ( a copy of Enid Blyton's The Magic Faraway Tree, which i have always loved) and she'd organise everything else. Truth to tell, she did organise everything and I felt that I had taken advantage of her enthusiasm since she did a superb job.

She lives in a beautiful farmhouse with lots of open land around, and she had worked very hard on her garden. Every nook was filled with lovely spring flowers, and the weather too was perfect. Apart from the bouncy, L had organised a chaat stall and worked on a pass-the-parcel, complete with silly punishments, hired a magician who was really good, hired dune buggies which the kids could ride around in the large open spaces, and set up musical chairs. When I saw what all she had organised, I felt worse than ever that I hadn't had the energy to invite some of our personal friends and their kids, but I'd been so exhausted I had just not made any effort.

The kids had a wonderful time between the bouncy, the buggies and the pass-the-parcel. Best of all, despite the hired entertainment, it had just the feel I wanted of a party held at home. On the actual birthday, I took the three kids to the mall nearby and fed them McDs, so I guess I did succomb to the McDs birthday party syndrome too :)Happy Birthday C!

PS. Just wanted to post about a little incident with Chubbocks.
A few days back, he came home from the park in a flaming temper. I figured it was best if I let him cool down for a bit so I carried on with cooking dinner while he sat and fumed. Just as I was getting dinner on the table, he asked if he could just go and meet his friends for a few minutes. I was a little reluctant to let him go at that time and asked what was so urgent. He said his friend had been teasing him and he got upset and punched him. So he wanted to go over and say sorry! I was so impressed that he had realised he should say sorry without any prompting from me because he does tend to have a bad temper inherited from me, and hates to say sorry.

Okay, so the big 4-0 is upon me. I will have officially reached middle age tomorrow. So...well, don't really feel all that old or middleaged. While grey hairs abound, no signs of wisdom/ maturity yet. Of course, for some strange reason, I am feeling compelled to do all kinds of things, from getting a facial/ pedicure to buying myself an expensive gift, which I can't afford, in my current jobless state.

But on the whole, while as usual life caught up with some of the goals I had set for myself, I am pretty happy with where I have reached so far. I wanted to lose enough weight to fit into a sexy black halter dress I bought five years ago, just before I got pregnant with Puddi and have since been unable to fit into...Thanks to my now regular gym sessions, that's a check.

I always have a dislike for twilight - it gets me depressed unless I am in the company of friends/ loved ones...thanks to A and the kids, that's a check.

I wanted to be working in an interesting job...I am now working for myself. I love my boss. So that's a check.

I guess one of the things you realise, the more milestone birthdays you have under your belt, is that as you grow older, you change in ways that you want to change, if you are a generally happy kind of person. So those changes don't sort of creep up and make you shout out in horror and say oh no, who have I turned into. On the whole, I am turning into the me I imagined being...hapy birthday, me!

Seven already...

Dear Chubbocks,

How time flies...I can't believe my little chubbu-bubbu is seven years old already. I still remember you as a baby, flashing that lovely eyes and heart open grin that captivated everybody - even strangers on the street would stop, ruffle your hair and smile back. I remember that diapered baby-butt shaking fiercely to Jee Jee Doh - the first sign of your musicality. I remember what a shy boy you used to be, and how slowly, gradually, Jimmy, manu and the other teachers at Julia Gabriel drew you out until you truly became a confident communicator. And how, at every class, the minute Manu pulled out the Casio, everyone knew you;d ask for the Monkey song. Your first ever complete sentence was so characteristic: "Abba, what are you doing my face!" And the first word you learnt the spelling of, from hearing Abba and me saying it in code, when you were merely two years old - M-I-L-K!

You have become such a wonderful little boy and I constantly marvel at you. I know, on a daily basis, we just get exasperated with your early morning dawdling and your teasing of your sister, forgetting little things and eating too slowly. But when we sit down to think about you, there are just so many things I love about you and that make me proud of you.

One of the most endearing things you do is the way you look after your pandas. Even Puddi's one that you adopted after she stopped caring for it. Every night, you make sure their heads rest comfortably on the little herbal cushion and that they are as well covered by your blanket as you are. Even on family sleep nights, you make sure they are made part of the family.

You also look after your siblings pretty well. While you love to tease Puddi and certainly have no dearth of tiny complaints against her almost every hour of the day, let anyone else scold her - even us - and you become her tender protector. Whenever Abba and I threaten to punish her, we have to forget it because you plead with us with your brown spaniel eyes. And you play with her very nicely when you want to, and help her so beautifully with her activities. I love to see the look of genuine pride in your eyes when she does an activity correctly. You're also very good with Bojjandi. You're very gentle with him, and on the rare occasions so far that I've yelled at him, as usual, you've dashed to his rescue. You look out for toys and books to give him and don't mind him trailing along behind you. You're so excited when he learns something new!

I love the way you concentrate on your work. On Republic Day when you played the Casio for the National Anthem and the National Song, what amazed everyone who watched you was the focus with which you did it, oblivious to the crowd staring at you. Even when you're reading you're the same.

And I love how passionate you are about everything you do, whether it's dinosaurs or ben 10, pokemon or cricket. Last year you were convinced that somewhere in America, I could buy you the real Ben 10 watch and you could turn into ten different aliens. This year it's all about Pokemon and how calvados evolved into rampados and who stole your 'legendary'. Your telephone conversations with your friends are very cute, because they are so innocent, to-the-point and so focussed on Pokemon.

Despite all your reading and your activities and exposure, by and large you are still a wide-eyed little boy. You still believe in the tooth fairy and Santa Claus and all manner of fairy folk. I'm sure you really hope that one day you'll find the magic Wishing Chair and the Magic Faraway Tree. You still snuggle up to us, even though you've become too big to be unselfconscious about kissing us anymore.

It makes me so proud of you when moms of your classmates come up to me and compliment me on your reading ability, or the facts you come up with in class, or say that you're one kid with whom they can have a proper conversation about anything, or that their child says you are his best friend. At the moment you have an aversion to girls which is mutual, so no girls are making a best pal of you yet...but I'm sure that'll change!

Chubbocks baby, on this and every other birthday, I have the same wishes. That you keep this enthusiasm for life. That you wake up each day feeling excited to start a new day. That the world does nothing to destroy your illusions and innocence.

I love you with all my heart.

TWMITU

Soul satisfying

As the days go by and the kids are growing up, we find that each and every moment where we are able to completely focus on spending time with them and exposing them to the good things in life are becoming more and more special. This year, without making any grand resolutions about the same, I thought it's high time we began taking advantage of living in a vibrant metro full of culture.

Last weekend, I took them to art galleries around the city which had different types of exhibits. The ones in habitat center had new artists, experimenting with shapes and forms and dabbling in both painting and sculpture. The kids were fascinated by some bronze sculptures which depicted slices of Indian life - one showed a typical tea stall, with the stall owner busy straining tea from a large vessel, while some of his patrons sat sipping tea from kullads. some others were engrossed in debating the news from a newspaper...Another sculpture showed a wall with a hole in it, and a crowd had gathered around it, the way crowds do in India. Some of the people carried implements - spades, iron rods...some were trying to peer through the hole. The sculptures were beautifully detailed in miniature - none of the figures was over a foot tall - and captured the moment in such intricacy, one almost felt one was there. There were some lovely paintings too, of a range of subjects ranging from the figurative to landscapes. Chubbocks fell in love with a gouache landscape of a city gate - I have noticed this about him before that he tends to love gouaches. His favourite painting at home is a JMS Mani of a small little temple - he says it looks 3D, as if he were there.

We then went on to the Krishan Khanna retrospective, which was fabulous. It captured snippets of his entire oeuvre and many of the titles referenced the classic poets. This was followed up by tea at Triveni, where the kids got to work off some of their pent-up energy by running up and down the aisles of the amphitheatre while I caught up with an old friend. Sunday morning was spent having lunch with family friends at the club while being entertained with live western music. The club usually has live Indian film music, and all the old favourites by Rafi, Manna Dey, Hemant Kumar and Kishore Kumar are sung with great gusto.

This weekend we decided to head for our annual winter treat of fondue at Diva. A used to laugh at my liking for fondue earlier, but became a fan when we lived in France, so now it's on our must-dos. The only thing is Delhi's span of really cold winter is so brief that it becomes a challenge, but somehow we manage to make it happen. The cheese fondue was as divine as ever, preceded with some wonderful fresh-baked Italian bread and by a starter of shaved parmesan and roast asparagus served on grilled polenta - simple and awesome. We then tried out a new dessert place called Whipped (read my review on food and laughter) and headed home. The evening was spent playing with the kids and managing the time for a quiet walk for just A and me, and topped off with a flavourful, wholesome dinner of Zuni Stew. After the kids went off to bed, A and I also managed to head out and watch the Sherlock Holmes movie.

On Sunday afternoon, we went to the winter carnival held in our colony. Various residents had done tremendous work in putting this together, and several of them were hosting food stalls which had simply delicious things to eat. Sunday evening, we decided to head for the Bonjour India celebration at Select City Walk Mall. This was a mix of opera, burlesque and circus and was part of a Festival of France organised by the French Embassy. The traffic was murderous and we almost had thoughts of heading back but somehow managed to park and get out.

As soon as we entered the Mall grounds, we beheld the spectacle of 7 or 8 crimson giraffes constructed of vibrant red cloth stretch out over hoops. Each giraffe was operated by two people - one sat in front and managed the head movements and the front legs while the other one sort of lay in the stomach cavity of the giraffe and managed the back legs. The gait of these giraffes was pretty true to nature, and they swayed as gracefully as their natural cousins as they ambled across the grounds. Then the celebration started.

A diva dressed in a white costume rose high up on a craned platform and sang her heart out in an operatic aria, while the giraffes moved close to her and formed an arch overhead.

The music mingled with the poignant light of sunset and the colours of the spectacle to create the sort of divine moment when your soul is moved and lifted. Then the clown who had been lying at the diva's feet on a high charpoy began his act, singing and dancing in a frenzy...

The parade continued throughout the grounds of the mall complex so that people in any of the four malls could see it properly. We carried on for dinner at the Spaghetti Kitchen which was superb. It's been a while since we really relished Italian food, since we have by now had it so often, but the SK surprised us with the quality of food and the service. We headed to the Haagen Dazs for icecream and by sheer serendipity, caught the tail-end of the parade.

The troupe played an assortment of songs - french, tamil, Hindi, Bollywood, fusion and the like, foot-stomping beats which had us dancing right there in the grounds of the mall and then culminated in fireworks...Thus ended a weekend which combined family time, culture and great food…my kind of weekend!

Here I go again…

I just finished watching Mamma Mia, the hit musical film based on ABBA music. Yes, I'm about a year behind schedule, but it was wonderful to finally get to watch it thanks to the power of my new DVR, and as A and I belted out the songs to the assembled audience of a dance-crazy daughter and a slightly embarrassed six year old son, it brought back a host of memories from college days.

My college friend Bhavna has her birthday on the first of January, and every year she'd host a birthday bash at her house on the first. She used to have an all-day party for all her girlfriends, and in the evening the 'formal' party would be held with family friends and so on, cake cutting etc. We'd all land up there bright and early, since our curfews were quite early in those days. There was a gang of about ten of us from college who used to be close friends and we'd all land up together around eleven. Bhavna stayed in a government flat which boasted a large living room, and as soon as all of us got there, she'd dig out her ABBA records and all of us would have a blast singing along at the top of our voices, dancing, gossiping…

It used to be a real feel-good of a day and cast a pleasant spell over us. It was such a wonderful way to start a new year off – hang out with friends, warm sunlight flooding in on a clear, cold day, listen, sing and dance to great music and eat good food all day!

Time for me

As you have kids and life becomes ever more hectic, it's so easy to forget about making time for the things you want or like. After a while, as a mom, it almost becomes second nature to deny yourself what you want and opt for what the kids want instead - trips to the park instead of to an art gallery or museum, eating at the McDs instead of a restaurant, skipping movies, opting for family time instead of time as a couple...

For me somehow, right from the beginning, it's been important to have time for A and I as a couple. We've had good help at home, and my parents living close by so we've managed to go out for movies, out for meals or parties once in a while. But time to myself has been something I've been pretty stingy about, maybe also because I work fulltime.

In the beginning it was so bad that I would put off nature breaks if the kids wanted something, not realising I was hopping uneasily from one foot to the other while getting whatever they needed. Now it's a rare occurrence for me to go out for so much as a mani-pedi, a once in 3-4 months thing. Haircuts have become an annual event. (Of course, the mani-pedi-haircut thing may also be because I'm naturally lazy about things like that - have been even before I had kids.) Reading is once the kids are in bed or while I'm getting ready or commuting. Writing tends to happen late at night or during occasional breaks at work. Worst of all is that I've fallen off the fitness wagon.

I used to work out thrice a week with a trainer when Chubbocks was small. But that was a time I felt I could permit myself since I worked only halfdays. Then, after Puddi came, I started really rationing my me-time so I began working out with the trainer at 5:30 in the morning, as that one hour was a spell during which the kids and A were fast asleep, so I wasn't 'robbing' anyone of that time. And after Bojjandi came along, I just didn't have the bandwidth or the energy, between breast-feeding, pumping, working and making time for the other two and A.

It's only when I took a break from work, starting July, that I felt I could make a commitment to one hour of working out, and enrolled in a nearby gym. It's been a great thing for me, because I'm not a do-it-yourself yoga type, I either need a tape/ DVD or the energy of other people that bounces off the wall at a gym, to push me. I also have always loved weight-training and working out on machines and the gym has more than enough for my needs so I love working out there.

More than everything, though, when I was doing some thinking about life directions as one tends to do at the end of every year, it hit me that being fit and healthy and energetic went beyond just going back to my original size - before the hypo-thyroid and baby-making caught up on me. It was to do with the sense of empowerment I felt just by taking action against something I saw as an issue. And also, it was about becoming healthier, having more energy to do things for myself and for others. That's when it hit me that one of the few changes I feel called upon to make this year onwards in my attitude towards my own health and fitness, and me-time in general.

I have to start thinking of it as an investment in the family, rather than something I'm robbing them of. Just like I try and think of working as something that builds assets for the family - more money, yes, but also a more patient me. My being fit and having more energy to hang with the kids and being more healthy is likely to keep paying off longterm dividends for the family. I'll be around longer, for one thing. And healthier more of that time. And happier, with a better self image and more positivity and a better attitude about how to cope with life's troubles, big and small.

I think a lot of women make this mistake of treating anything they do for themselves as an indulgence and therefore either of secondary importance or 'robbing' their family. Sometimes it is, let's face it. But a lot of times, it is something that's necessary for their physical and mental wellbeing, so let's stop Nirupa-Roying ourselves!

Looking back at 2009

The Good:
Getting to take a break from working
Visiting the US and seeing my sister and family twice and meeting my new nephew; while on business
Having a rare few hours of just my parents, my sister and I - not a spouse or child in sight :)Setting the stage for a great next job
Finding out I do have balls, just like I always thought!
Finding some true friends through a time of crisis
Catching up with lots of old friends anew
Holidaying by myself
Learning to discipline my spending
Getting back to gym-ming
Spending time with the family
Houseguests, including unexpectedly, because he lives just down the street, Dad
Getting the house just the way we want it
Losing some of the baby weight - hallelujah!
Visiting new places - Seattle, Minneapolis
Starting a book club
Reading some amazing books
Sharing lots of laughs with Ali over our bedtime viewing of Friends, Frasier and The Cosby Show
Products we designed getting launched
Alena getting into Aman's School

The Bad:
The sound of the two kaudi I have left in my bank account clinking together
A lapse of judgement and values
Health in general
My ex-workplaceAli's film production gig not working out due to the slowdown

The Ugly:
Armaan's hospitalisation
Armaan and Alena's frequent coughs and colds
Finding out how low some people can sink
An egomaniacal exboss out for revenge
Dealing with cops and lawyers

All in all, a year in which the good and great outweighed the bad and ugly, by far. God - thank you for this, and all the laughter, tears and learning you sent my way last year.

This year, what I wish for:
To grow
To learn
To be more patient and more accepting
To stay true to my core values
For my family and friends to stay healthy, happy and stable...

And for me to get back into shape :)

9 down...

Wow, time flies when you're having fun! It really doesn't seem like all that long ago that A and I were dating and hoping that one of these days we could get married. And now we're just an old married couple with three kids, all the drama behind us.

All?

I suppose when you have three kids in the 0-6 agegroup, drama doesn't quite leave you alone. There's the daily struggles to ensure none of them dies of malnutrition by just waiting you out at the dinner table, the fights-to-the-death over some random toy that lies forgotten until one of them decides to make a bid for it, the tantrums and so on.

But apart from those inescapable scenes, life has taken on a wonderful, peaceful hue. It's something that, growing up, I never aimed for - I was a drama kind of gal. But having mellowed, I find it's wonderful to just be happy with your personal life, to be in a place where every day you're grateful to God for having been this generous, to find completion in your life partner.

A wins the Husband of the Year award all the more this year than every before. For always getting my back. For always looking out for me, in big ways and small ( including reminding me to shoe-shop in the US!!!). For being such a great dad. For being one of my guiding lights. For being the love of my life. For just being himself.

Thanks, and here's looking forward to many more years together :)

Rites of Passage

Every family has its traditions, right? Some carry on from generations, some are created by the family and so on...My kids have started a really sad tradition of making sure each of them gets hospitalised before the age of two, it seems like. Hope that's over now for Bojjandi, as we've had a rough few days.

I got back from the US Thursday morning to find that Puddi and Bojji were both down with a cough and cold. That's standard issue for winters here but given Bojjandi's tendency to breathing trouble, I always get a little worried. Plus the scare of swine flu which has been going around...

We immediately began giving Bojjandi his usual medicines and nebulising him but By saturday we felt he hadn't improved much and it was heart-breaking to hear him struggling for each breath. I've had asthma all my life and I know exactly how he felt. The normally dancing-on-the-furniture, ever-chuckling baby had turned into one who just wanted to sit or lie down listlessly in someone's lap, too tired to even smile.

We took him to the paediatrician thinking maybe she could give him an injection or change his medication and he would get better but she was so alarmed she nebulized him on the spot and told us to rush him to hospital at once. We were in the emergency for four hours, with Bojjandi getting nebulized every twenty minutes. The place was a madhouse, because it seemed flooded with patients of all ages and descriptions, and the hospital was too full to have any beds free. Mind you, this wasn't even one of Delhi's affordable hospitals but a new and expensive one, so God alone knows how the mango people (aam junta) hospitals are functioning under this rush...There was one poor guy lying in the waiting area on a gurney who had been waiting for a bed to be free from the previous evening!

We finally got a bed around 4 pm, mostly because we wanted a single room, for fear of infections and so on. With incredibly bad timing, Dad had left for Bangalore that morning. Usually my parents have been around to pick up our slack when stuff like this happens, and it made me realise how spoilt we are. I wonder how my sister and BIL cope with it in the US, where they don't have people that close by.

I had had no time to recover from jet lag since I had sat up for the past two nights with Bojjandi, so I went home that evening to hang out with the other two kids, and A stayed at the hospital. The next morning I went, and he came home in the evening and so on. It was acrazy time, because Bojjandi was getting nebulized every hour on Day 1, then every two hours. Finally by Day two evening, they started nebulizing him every four hours.

True to form, the minute he felt even five minutes better, he reverted to being his sunshiny self, grinning with his cute four teeth and wanting to wander all over the room. He had cabin fever by day three, and frankly, so did we. It was getting very difficult for us to keep him busy since he's such an active child, and I was petrified of the hospital beds which are so high and have such short siderails.

Finally on Day 4 morning, the doctor said she felt he was 70% better and that while she felt she would like to keep him there another 2-3 days, she would release him at our request. We came home heaving huge sighs of relief. It was incredible to see the look of joy and comfort on Bojjandi's face as soon as he entered the house, and saw his siblings. I think that gave his spirits such a boost that he must have moved up to 80% better right way.

He's doing quite well now, though he's still being nebulized four times a day. Hopefully he'll be fully recovered by the weekend. And so will we!

Our Home

Labours of love always take time. I mean, pregnancy takes a whole 9 months, right? And then the rest of your life to screw up your kids in your own particular way:). Our home has taken more time than it has taken for me to give birth to Bojjandi, and for him to become over a year old.

Last year was a crazy time - I was expecting for the third time, I was working on a huge project at work - in terms of scope, what we were trying to achieve for people and in terms of time and money ( we designed the world's first solar-powered mobile phone, among others), and we were getting to rent the whole house, but first it had to undergo serious repairs. The old neighbours moved out in April, and we found so many things that needed to be repaired/ reconstructed and so on. The kitchen had been infected with borer and ants and the neighbours ad refused to get anything done about it for the past three years, so first of all the kitchen had to be dismantled and the wood treated before the kitchen could be put back together. The outside area, which had been left as a sea of mud had to be paved over, as it never gets any sunlight. One bathroom had neither been used nor cleaned, it appeared, for the 7 years they had lived here, so that required ahandyman with a strong stomach to get fixed. Pipes were leaking, walls had seepage, the floor was stained...

The repairs began around April, supposedly to get over by end of August so we would have a month before the baby came to get it back together. In the immortal and universal manner of workmen world over, the work stretched and stretched until we finally threw the workmen out of the house in mid-November. The baby had already come, we were staying at my parents' house and A was on a break from work so he got to do some bits and pieces slowly and methodically - clasifying the library, for instance. For the rest, we really didn't have much time since my sister was going to visit mid-December and we had to be moved back in before that.

With much huffing and puffing, we managed to at long last get everything more or less together and moved back in Dec 10th. We still had some finishing touches to add - one room had lots of bits and pieces shoved in for later addressing, many paintings had yet to be hung up, but we figured we'd get to it in time.

Well, time has a way of rolling on and it wasn't until the time came for our annual party that we realised we had better get a move on and put our laziness/ life as parents and human beings aside and become slaves to the house. A whole lot of banging, hammering, cleaning, pushing and shoving later, we finally have the house almost as we want it. There are a few finishing tuches to come, as soon as we have any money again...though in some ways I think it'll never be 'finished' finished, since I love to keep changing things around. Want a tour? Here goes...

The entrance hall

The living room

The living room - another angle

Our pride and joy - the library

The Chinese-themed guest room

The Travel wall of the staircase

More travel pictures

Restaurant on the roof of the world - our terrace

The jungle...otherwise known as the kids' bedroom

More friends of the children

The School Thing

For any of you that haven't ever followed any of the school admission posts in Indian blog/ news land - let me inform you - it is a big, big thing. If you never do anything else for your child - become a politician so it can get paroled easy, start exporting lead pipes or some such unglamourous thing so your child never has to worry about where it can find money for the next snort of coke, become a Bollywood star so your child can star in flop after flop for crores...do this - get your child into a good school. And let me tell you, it may be more difficult to achieve than any of the aforementioned.

In Delhi, the courts finally decided the handful of good schools had had a party for way too long and established a point system - so many points for living within 5 kilometers of a school, so many points for girl children, so many points for being a sibling of a child already in that school or the offspring of an alumnus and so on. So you would think the whole process is simple and transparent, and the stress is off. Right? Well, no. It turns out Delhi had too few 'good schools' and parents living farther off were ina real quandary. add to that the limited number of seats available at the good schools and the levels of stress are reaching stratospheric levels. Especially for those who have recently migrated into Delhi, live more than 5 km away from the school of choice and whose elder son is eligible for admission.

We live in Gurgaon, where the number of good schools is even more limited, so we weren't sure how stressed we should get when Chubbocks had to apply for admission. I decided that we were going to be the stress-free type of parents which then meant that thanks to not subscribing to the Times of India, which is where all the admissions open ads come out, we were late for almost every school's list. In panic, we even shelled out an obscene amount of money to book Chubbocks seat in a school which I really, really dislike. Thankfully, we were on time for The Shriram School admissions and Chubbocks managed to get in.

This year, we have to try our luck for Puddi. I can't imagine any school not taking her - can you? but then, I imagine that's what all parents feel about their offspring. In any case, we decided, both for emotional and financial reasons since this year has seen our bank accounts get wiped out, that we're going to put all our eggs into the Shriram school basket. Word has it the school has a friendly policy towards siblings and Chubbocks has been doing pretty well in school. So fingers, toes and all our moveable body parts crossed until our interaction next week!

Learning behaviour

Bojjandi is really my last baby and while on the one hand I grieve that he’s already one year old, on the other hand, I can’t help enjoying each and every minute of his growing up. Much more than either of the other two, perhaps because he is the last or because I have chosen to take a break from a much-hated workplace, I am able to enjoy each and every antic, each stage of his growing up and my sense of marvel at the human brain only grows.

Two weeks before his first birthday, Bojji took his first staggering steps, about two of them, in between my mum and me, and then fell about, flailing arms and legs. Just ten days back, he walked like a high-wire artist strung miles above the ground, arms akimbo and body swaying from side to side perilously. Now he’s not just walking but trying to run all over the house on his stumpy bow-legs and flat little feet. The only time he crawls is when he knows speed is of the essence, i.e. the nano-second that the door to the staircase or front door is open so he can practice his Houdini act. He’s walking splay-legged all the way from the backyard through the kitchen and into the living room, even pausing mid-stride to stoop and pick up something he’s not supposed to and pop it into his mouth, and then carry on with his perambulations!

The other day, when he was walking out of the dining room, I thought I’d surprise him and shout out a Boo! I did and for a split second his face froze in surprise and then he broke into a delighted chuckle. What astonished me a minute later was that he went back into the dining room, waited for me to walk in and boo-ed me in turn! I just find it amazing how their tiny little brains churn and process the amazing world around them and then figure out what they should do and when and how.

He’s also made progress in talking, and can call out A’s name in the sweetest voice possible. He also learned to say mama three days ago and it never fails to get him a hug from me. He knows his thatha very well and any time he spots him, starts saying thatha, at first softly and then more and more loudly until thatha turns and picks him up and plays with him. He is extremely interactive and now is good company for anyone, between his crazy antics, his habit of dancing to The Wheels of the Bus and the various games he likes to play.

All in all, every time I look at him, I can’t help but be glad for the accident and God’s grand design which gave us this wonderful gift.