While we rebuild…

Dearest Aryav,

I write this while Kerala is recovering. It has witnessed the worst flooding since decades, and people have lost almost everything they built in their entire life.

But you wouldn’t know much of this now. You might hear and read about this someday but not today. For you, Kerala is Ammamma and Achacha’s home. It’s the place where we take the train in the night and by morning, you see your Achacha in the train station. It’s the place you take your walks with Apoopa. And it’s the place where you open the house door and run outdoors to just play in the open space and cycle.

But it’s not about Kerala I want to tell you about. It will survive. It’s broken, but it will get fixed, with some scars and some memories which will be itched in its existence but it will survive.

It’s not about Kerala I want to tell you about. It’s about the other things that worry me. More than these floods.

I want to tell you about this world where there are a lot of people who believe that the people deserved it because people there enjoy eating beef. I want to tell you about people who feel that because women are allowed in Sabarimala, this is Ayyapa’s way of punishing them. I want to tell you about people who think it’s because of the Muslim and Christian population in the state.

They are more dangerous, more than that water which entered thousands of homes. The water has receded, but these thoughts? We might do our best to raise you with basic values and respect for humanity but you might be surrounded by some of these people.

So what can you do if people say the very same things in the future?

Here is my advice. Don’t keep quiet. Listen to them, calm down and answer back.

Answer back with your sense of truth.

Answer back with all the courage you can muster.

And answer back with the knowledge that calamity doesn’t strike you with a tally note.

It’s high time that some idiots deserved to know where they belong.

Love,

Amma

PS: To all those, who believe that all this happened because of one of the above mentioned reasons – I don’t know how and why we are friends. But let’s be clear – we are not anymore.

Memories. Stories. History.

What happened within half hour?  Svati said the moment she opened our hotel door and looked towards the sky. From sunny, it had became cloudy and grey now.  May be we cursed the sun a lot yesterday Vand , she said picking up the black …

I am being extremely grateful for a calm day (today) after a week that has been nothing short of a nightmare. While the little man finally decides to not hold on to my skin, and play by himself, I realise that just being up and functioning every single day of this week in itself has been quite an effort.

This last week also made me realise the lengths we go for our loved ones. People who have met my mother-in-law know that as open she is to a lot of things, she is also quite conservative about many things. From making sure that the lamp is lit everyday in her Pooja room, to being okay with me being out late at nights, she’s been a person who possibly has all shades of pantone,many of which I am yet to discover. She’s also been one of the main reasons why I headed back to work with so much of conviction when Aryav wasn’t even a year old. This week, I discovered a new shade which left me amazed.

While aryav battled fever and diarrhoea, we tried all forms of medicines on him just to keep him functioning. On an evening when vomitting joined the symptoms, my mother-in-law​ called me and asked if I could come home quickly from work cause she wanted to take Aryav somewhere. 

With aryav sitting in the front of my bike, and my MIL at the back with an immensely huge helmet, I asked her where we were headed to.

The place you hear that sound from in the evenings. The one on that road. Take the next left, I will show you. 

I decided to follow her lead and took the next left. Curiosity didn’t leave me though and I asked her again to explain the place so that I can navigate better. 

The place of Allah. That masjid which is there on that road. We have to go there. 

A little perplexed, I went ahead and before I knew it my MIL directed me to the parking place just next to a Masjid. Like a pro, she got down, held the helmet and asked me to carry Aryav. I simply obliged because I knew this is going to be an experience I will remember. 

She goes around enquiring like she knows the place well and comes back to me in a hurry.

We need to go ahead in that direction. They don’t do this anymore here. We need to follow that man on the bike, she says pointing at someone who looks like a maulawi (though I am not entirely sure). On the bike again, she tells me that for all her four kids (including my husband), she came to this Masjid and this very same man tied them a thread which helped them heal better. 

He has a healing hand. All the children get cured once he meets them.

We park what seems to be in front of his house and he calls us in. He ties a thread (with a taveez) and puts his hand on Aryav’s head and prays. I watch this in amazement cause Aryav is NOT good with strangers at all and here he is standing calmly just looking at this 70+ old man. We wait for him to finish and he looks at me and tells me Sab theek ho jayega. Fikr Matt karo.

I left that place, with Aryav and my mother-in-law and a memory which will last a lifetime and realisation that there’s always a possibility to find a bond with anyone!

The year of discoveries!

You see something strange and I can see that you are finding it difficult to understand. I decide to let you be, cause I am excited myself to see how this turns out. You just started walking, so in the quest to understand what’s happening, I see you tumbling, close to 10 times. You crawl sometimes, or stand up and try to walk. But I don’t see you giving up, and I don’t see you upset. I see the wonder in your eyes.

You lift your left hand, look at the floor. You repeat the same with your right hand.

I can see that you are thoroughly amused. You look up to check if I am still sitting on the staircase and now, you put up a show for me! It’s your right leg this time which goes up but since your capacity to balance on two legs is equivalent to what I have and we are now talking just one leg, you fumble, and are back on the floor. I decide to watch you because I realise that it’s been a while something amazed me so much. I feel alien to the emotion you are so engulfed in.

You sit up and I see you staring at your fingers placing them on the ground. You look up at me and smile. A smile of sheer excitement.

It’s been a year that you realised you have shadows. It’s been a year of discoveries for you and us (J included).

We have had our share of sleeplessness, anger, patience, joy, frustration. And I am sure you have had your share of tantrums, vaccinations, laughter, irritation at these first-time parents but I think we did well. This last year – all three of us – We did good! Between work, travel, somewhat vacations, I think we found our rhythm.

So now that you have turned two (2.1 as of today), here’s hoping that we do justice to you and raise you well! Belated Happy Birthday Aryav!

 

#stopgrowingupsofast

The laptop tells me that its 20:33 on August 28^th, a Sunday. It’s half an hour past your usual bed time but since both of us had the luxury of a good afternoon nap, I feel it’s alright.

Tonight after I put you to bed I realise that it’s already been a year and a half since the cradle/crib entered our purple room. Time flies, and just like the hashtag I added to the picture I posted today on Instagram  #stopgrowingupsofast.

You are a cuddler, a quality I feel proud of, since you have acquired that from me. Your crib is next to my side of the bed, at the same level. I might put you there, but by morning, I know that you are somewhere so close to me that I can’t even stretch my left hand. It’s either your head, your curled up legs or your stretched arms – one of them is always on my tummy.

I put you into your crib and it took you less than 2 minutes to get up, and then come back and lie on my tummy, with your head just under my neck. It’s a position both of us have to come to love by now. I remember sleeping like that the entire night after your second vaccination. You love stretching your legs and every time you did, you cried and screamed in pain and every time I heard you scream, I wondered if that vaccination was worth all that pain. So I remember putting three pillows for support, and then leaning in making a 75 degree angle and holding you close to me so that you can fall asleep. To tell you the truth, I sleep well as well. So the feeling is mutual.

I remember the moment you wake up in the middle of the night. You don’t cry, you just make a sound, loud enough for me to hear (and not your father), and then I pick you up. I put you on my lap with your head on my right knee and I wait to see you yawn. You do it every single time and I smile watching you do that every single time. The zero watt bulb is always on, so I can see that your eyes are closed. You have a tinge of a smile when you yawn and then you fall back asleep.

Tonight after I put you to bed I realise how small you were the first time I held you – scared to even burp you. You were so tiny that when I held you and slept in that 75 degree angle, your feet never touched the bed. But you are not so tiny anymore.

So tonight after I put you to bed, I just want to say  #stopgrowingupsofast.

The world underneath.

She walked in tanned. That’s the first thing most of us noticed and said it out loud. The photographs which she has been posting on our whatsapp group has been leaving most of us spell bound, and above all, envious. May be jealous is the right word.

R went diving in Maldives, and by the sound of it, it doesn’t get better than this. Not just by sound, by what we have seen, it doesn’t look better than this as well. From sharks to stingrays to living beings I don’t even know the name of, R narrated her story of six dives in two days. We were like kids listening eagerly, catching on to every word that came out of her mouth.

Her night dive with almost 100  sharks circling on the top is a visual  I cannot take out of my mind, even though I haven’t seen a picture of the same.

“So could you see in the dark?” I ask like a curious child.

“Visibilty was better in the dark but with torches. There were very powerful torches.”

“Did it bother the fishes?”

“It did. That’s why those sharks decided to go above us and circle round and round and round.” She says circling her hand over her head.

A dive lasted 45 minutes and she told us that she didn’t know how the time went by.

“I felt like I just got in and in a few minutes they told me that the time was up. I had to be dragged out on occasions because I wanted to just stay there.”

She has been sharing few videos as well taken by one person of the crew and they look nothing less than spectacular, and for me, not-from-this world.

I can’t take huge amounts of water, and I never really figured out why. Even the kulam in my achamma’s house in Kerala was never a place I enjoyed. I remember seeing my cousins jump into it while I sat outside and spoke to them. I never knew swimming and even now when J and me take our yearly vacation to Goa, I sit by the beach and read. I have enjoyed that. I didn’t think I missed out on anything. May be till today.

“Do we need to know how to swim?”

“Just basic swimming.”

To think of it, she has been very patient with the questions we (set of four) have been bombarding her with.

I wonder if I would be able to do something like this, sometime in my life. When I think today, it’s not with the lens of expenditure. I wonder if I ever will have the courage to sink into that ocean, many feet under, and feel that world.

A world which terrifies me even now but somehow feels mesmerizing enough to take that dive!

 

This Independence Day.

I have been at my sister-in-law’s place for the past three days. It means few more hands and legs to run behind my one and a half year old toddler, talking about relatives I don’t quite know about and most importantly, pampered with some amazing food.

I decide to head to work to catch up on some readings. Über would have been my first choice till I realise that this place is close to a metro station. I quickly get ready and ask my nephew to drop me to the metro station. I say a bye to the little man who doesn’t seem to like the fact that I am leaving. There is a little hiding behind the door refusing to wave bye and a lot of crying but J manages him.

“You know where the metro station is right?” I ask my nephew.

“Yes Athe. It’s not too far.” He replies starting the bike.

“It’s open? You sure?” “Yes Athe. It’s open. Now sit on the bike else you will be late.”

It takes less than 15 minutes to reach the station. I get my token and board the train. And for the first time after many years I open a book to read while commuting avoiding my headsets. It’s Eat, Pray, Love. A book gifted by a colleague just last week. I open the first page and start reading the reviews given to the book starting with Julia Roberts.

I look up after three stops to see a lot of blue sky, tree tops and rooftops of buildings unlike the number plates of auto rickshaws, cars and fellow bikers which I am used to by now. I remember how listening to my favourite podcasts, Wait Wait Don’t tell me, The Moth Podcast, This American Life and Storycorps has become my commuting ritual. But not today. I go back to my book.

I reach my transit stop. Transit because I have to change trains. But for that I need to take an auto and go the next connecting stop.  I realise that I have no hesitation to take this detour and head out of the station and catch a auto to the next stop.

I am second in queue. The man in front of me is taking token for 11 people. I wait for my turn. At the entry, I wait again for the anxious women and the over excited kids to put their token over the machine so that the light turns green and they officially enter the train station. I wait for my final train and  see it crowded with people standing everywhere. I didn’t expect it that, I think to myself. I stand for two stops looking out of this underground metro. A seat becomes vacant on my right and I happily settle pulling out my book again.

It’s a 10th anniversary special edition, so there is a forward by the author. I somehow feel that the book is just apt for this morning. It’s just a right amount of whatever I need at this very moment.

Before I want this journey to end, I realise it’s my stop. I get down and decide to treat myself for a coffee. It’s a coffee kinda morning!

I decide to call A who is already in the office.

“I am picking a coffee. Do you want one?”

“I already have mine”

“Okay. See you in five.”

I keep my phone back in my bag realising that it has been there since I left in the morning, not looking at it once.

I grab my coffee and do the final leg of the journey.

Today I feel free. For sure of the traffic, at least.