Python to the rescue

An Introduction to the cast :

K (the 2 yr with spindly legs and a ready tongue )
Mr H alias “Hari”(the 65 yr old grandfather)

The Scene :
K : This is my room. I will sleep here with Amma
Mr H : No No ! Amma will sleep with us and you will sleep alone!
After having repeated his argument 3 times, with increasing intensity our lil man decides enough is enough !
he turns around picks up the imaginary phone and tearfully says :
Allo ! is it Python ?
Python please come and swallow Hari !

Mirrors dont lie !

Well ! it was one of those rare evenings , when the sun had mercifully decided that Chennaities had borne enough of the sweltering heat and decided to let the city enjoy a cool evening breeze . I decided to walk down to the chic casual store that I often visit on my way back from office .

It is one of those small stores that boast of big brands at small prices ! The tommy hilfigers , Marks and Spencers and Banana Republic T Shirts beg to be taken with their nominal price tags !.I was well acquainted with the pretty north indian gal who ran the shop as we both were about the same age and I loved practising my rusted Hindi on her and she relished the few moments of chit chat in her mother tongue. So I eagerly entered the shop , dreaming of the figure hugging outfits that I had conjured up with my vivid and (not so practical ) imagination . My friend was busy chatting with another customer and I gave her a wide smile and went over to the Tshirts section.

As I was happily selecting and rejecting Tshirts, I heard somebody behind me say ” Oh hi ! you have put on so much weight ! ” . The T Shirts forgotten I turned around and saw my friend standing and looking me over with narrowed eyes and she said the dreadful words again ” you have put on weight ! ” as if  I was deaf when I had my back turned to her.

I cursed the sandwiches, dripping with butter, the parathas laced with ghee that I had devoured greedily. The long forgotten exercises that i had managed to grump, grunt, grit , hrump and frump through once a week , were no match for the calories that I gulped through the week.

The T Shirts suddenly lost their charm and I walked out of the shop dazed.  Thankfully I was saved from further sorrow and grief by another “slim and fit customer ” who came by ! . ..I eyed her enviously wondering how fat deposits could be forced to settle down at the right places ! .

Well ! the signs have been there for the past few months and I have been watching those love handles that seem to make me look like Donald Duck waddling around , sans the tail. Everytime I looked at my mirror image and wondered if i was “becoming fat “.. I kept thinking back about some flawed concept of convex and concave mirriors that I had learnt when I was a wisp of a girl . Well , its not the teachers I blame for this flawed logic that I have developed over the years ! …:-). The logic goes like this :

The concave mirrors make you look bigger or fatter ! and needless to say everytime I looked and saw I consoled myself saying “Ah ! but thats a concave mirror ! no wonder I look fat ! “…

I promised to myself I would trash all logic of concave mirrors and get down to burning the calories that had kind of decided to sleep in all the unwanted crevices of my body ! .

Power yoga and Ram Baba !  here I come …and the lesson of the day was “Mirrors dont lie… “

The Woman behind “The man”

On a usual humid day in chennai , I picked up an issue of the TIME magazine, which caught my eye because Michelle Obama was adorning the cover and the main article was titled “The meaning of Michelle”. Being an ardent fan of  Barack Obama and having closely followed his presidential campaign, I was intrigued by the fact that I had not bothered to read much about his wife Michelle Obama the First Lady of United States.

I read the intresting article and the story that unravelled was about a Harvard Law Graduate , who had an impressive academic credentials and a challenging career. As I read, I envisioned the transition of Michelle Obama from the agressive career woman to the quiet calm face behind Obama’s victory.As the article rightly put it  she was drawn into a role that she had not opted for and stumble a few times she did ,especially the much publicised speech about”proud of being an American for the first time in my adult life” where she was immediately caricatured as the gun totting revolutinary who was dissatisfied and disgruntled about America. But unfazed by the negative publicity , she trudged on revealing and silencing the critics with glimpses of the loving wife , and mother whose dreams had turned into a reality because of the opportunities that the magic land of America had handed out to her.

I saw two interesting clips on the web that caught my attention, one about Michelle Obama , the  girl from South Side who had made the long and challenging journey from Chicago to the White House seem simple. Thanks to Michelle, the dream has now become a reality for many.

The much publicised “[proud of America for the first time in my adult life speech]“

It has been a sojourn that has tested the strength of  her spirit , her passion, her faith and her values. From the not so popular wife of the winsome Obama, she has become one of the most admired First Ladies that the White House has seen in a long time. ( “The first First Lady to make it to Maxims hottest women in the world’s list “). She has been the “rock “  that Obama refers to and the resilience that she has shown stands testimony to the fact that the word Obama coined for her is apt.  Three cheers to Michelle !

The Tornado ! The Terminator here I come

As the eve of the weekend was just within grasp , I was super excited to receive my friend who was coming from Delhi to meet us after so many years.  I had heard stories of her daughter who was a tornado in the making. When she visited our city 4 months back with her daughter who had not yet completed a year, she had inspired terror in the hearts of the much older kids who had a year or two more of earthly wisdom compared to her.

Undeterred by her inability to walk without kissing the ground after 2 steps , she fought and made it known to all that she was indeed the queen among the beleaguered  kings. Having missed her adventures in the previous visit , I made it a point to make it up this time by picking her up on Friday night and bringing her home.

My first impression was that of  a wisp of a child nestling in her mothers arms, refusing to get down and even look at us. Where was the self proclaimed queen whose tales I had heard ardently ? My friend assured me that I would not be dissappointed. How true. The next morning , she awoke with a sweet smile at me (whom she was seeing for the first time in her little life ) . Her eyes begged me to let her down the mammoth bed that she was sharing with me and her mother, I moved my bulk a little in an attempt to help her down, and lo behold!  before I could reach her, she had managed to get off the huge bed and raan away all excited and pleased to be in a new place filled with things that were begging for her to touch and caress and hold and destroy.

The tornado had unleashed itself..I could not keep myself in bed a moment longer as I could see her running from room to room pulling things down. I woke up fearful of  the beautiful antiques and Swaroski figurettes that were the pride of the house . I hastened to remove anything and everthing that could be broken by her little hands.

The hours just vanished as we were busy trying to keep pace with her . When our backs had turned for a split second , she had managed to drink some of the cough syrup stored in the dressing table and was experimenting on the usage of Vicks as a facial powder. Thankfully we got to her before she managed to get it into her eyes. She then proceeded to play throwball with my mother’s precious kumkum from various temples, we rescued it just in the nick of time and by the time we had managed to replace the kumkum she had taken a big lamp from the table and was prepared to throw it from the balcony on to the heads of the unsuspecting people taking their brisk early morning walk downstairs. Oh ! Well do I need to say more?

When it was time for her to leave, my thoughts were about her proud father whom she had never set eyes on (he had been a brave major in the army and had given up his life fighting terrorists 3 months before this beautiful child of his opened her eyes to this world). It pained me to see her, thinking of how proud he would have been to watch this beautiful daughter of his laughing , walking , the epitome of mischeif and cheer. He would have loved to see the world through her , to watch the warmth and trust with which she met people and befriended them immediately.She resembled him so much, the tears that I held in check threatened to spill out when I bid good bye to her smiling self. I bade goodbye to the duo.. praying to the Almighty to watch over this little angel and her mother, always.. they always are a part of my prayer to God, hoping that there are good times to come for them to mellow down the sorrow they have endured…

Barber Art thou Pazhani

I peer into curly long locks to look into the naughty eyes of my cousin’s kid. A boy he is , but the long curly locks adorning his head deceive many an eye into believing otherwise.

The one and only hair cut he had tearfully endured was the one in the “Pazhani temple” down south.

Having decided to give him a new look , we decided to shorn off his locks, relieving him a bit from the scorching Chennai sun. Ever enthusiastic about getting a drive in the car he eagerly accompanies us , rambling on about the various cars that we passed on the way .The baak Pord car, the Marooti, the shift , cololla and Pord Pusion being his favourites. Needlessly to say he is blissfully unaware of our motive of trying to rid him of his cumbersome (in our view) locks.

Enter the barber shop, and we seat him in a high chair, which ideally would have pleased any child of that age .But not him, a loud laugh would scare him and make him run to his mother, the sound of a pressure cooker is wreaks havoc in his little soul, and a revolving chair that squeaked was something akin to a torture for him. Finally he is seated on the table and though not very happy with the alternative, he sits there tentatively, holding on to his mother… oh well actually clutching her with a look of desperation. The barber enters with the scissors and the razor and our dear boy breaks into

heartbreaking sobs crying out “Amma Pazhani No no amma Pazhani no no “.

We stand there bewildered trying to grasp the meaning of his lucent words, which he kept repeating with increasing intensity as if he did not understand why we were so dumb. And then enlightenment dawns, the kid had experienced his only haircut in Pazhani and he had assumed that since he was being prepared for a hair cut in this strange place again, this must be “Pazhani “ and he was definitely unhappy about being bought to “Pazhani” to shorn off his crowning glory.His little mind had dutifully linked “Pazhani” to haircut and since he saw all the ongoing preparation for a haircut he had assumed that haircut and Pazhani were synonymous . The haircut never happened , we left with the screaming child whose metamorphosis into a beaming one went unnoticed by me as I was lost in deep thought.

Like a sponge children tend to imbibe everything that goes on around them, assimilating information and storing it unknown to us. Though knowledge tends to slowly eat away at their innocence, each and every waking moment is a learning experience for them. The good the bad and the ugly are all taken in to be recollected and recounted in the future. So be- aware of what the child sees, hears and perceives…