When you drop your camera in the sea

Smitha’s post on cameras brought back another memory for me.

Of a trip where our digital camera fell into the sea at Kanyakumari and refused to get switched on

The next stop was Thiruvananthapuram.

The Service Centres said they would take a week to let us know if it could be repaired. Still hoping that it could be, we picked up a Kodak Camera which used a 'Roll' of film to print pictures.

I didn’t know they still existed.
My daughters thought it was weird. What you don’t get to see the picture? How do you click then? How do you know if a picture got clicked?

You don’t. You see and you click, and you wait till you click all the photos, and go back home, find the time to drop off the Roll for printing and pick it up again.

It sure is an exercise in patience. And you do not have the luxury of clicking away in haste, deleting in leisure. 

But you do get to treasure the moment.

Lost in languages

Why can’t these people speak in English? My friend fumed as a project discussion again lapsed into local lingo. Why don’t you learn the language, someone quipped back.

But what language was that?

When I had shifted from Delhi, I just knew that people in Karnataka spoke Kannada. Soon, I learnt, Bangalore was another world. 

First, you need to identify which of the 7-8 (leaving out the dialects) languages was being spoken.

Oh it's not that difficult, when most of the words end with “u” it’s Telegu, when they end with “aa” it’s Kannada, Malayalam sounds completely different, and Tamil you can make out from the tone….was the advice.  As for Tulu and Coorgi, they are somewhat similar to Malayalam.

Wooah! I stopped trying to figure out languages from then on.

In Germany, I was touched when people would look up words online to get the right English word to explain things to me.

Oh, but when an animated discussion starts everyone lapses back to fluent native German. And then they notice me, and apologize for leaving me out.

But I keep telling them, it’s is really not a problem for me.

It’s like being back in Bangalore

What do I say?

Loving someone means having never saying Thank you?

Ok, Eric Segal said something slightly different, but having spent a lifetime on mushy romances, I  do think that sometimes, it is such an inadequate think to say.

But then what do you say to the one who drops everything to stay back and make Palak tortillas with the kids while you fly away?

To the one who reads instructions off the carton, to bake a cake on my birthday?

To the one who believes in me even after knowing me so well?

To the one--ahem--who actually does not like me writing my thoughts on a blog..so I am not getting any mushier...

Just wanted to find a better way to say Thank You!

Mom Alone

Growing up is such a pain.

Especially when you have to do it when you think you are old enough not to do it anymore.

Leaving children at home and travelling for work is what Moms and Dads need to do all the time. And I had managed not to do all this time-it was a record.

Was-past tense

This one time-I am doing it. Not that I had run out of valid reasons, but this once I felt I could leave, knowing that they would be able to manage.

I am the one not able to ‘manage’.  Offering bubble-gum to a stranger as the flight takes off, not able to launch into my spiel about the history and geography of the place I am travelling to,  talking to my family only through the screen-not able to touch, feel, poke or tickle …………..it is a whole lot of growing up.

Being the one staying back with the kids, managing the home-work-kids-and everything else issues, this once I feel that the one going away has it worse.

Do I have so much more to learn?