A Win

There are days when I feel that I have tried to do many things, but none of them have really worked out great. That maybe I should stop stressing myself out and just have fun.

There was one particular moment this month when I was seriously questioning myself.

Why am I persisting with a blog that no one reads anymore?

Why am I slogging on weekends trying to learn writing fiction when it doesn’t come naturally?

Why was I painstakingly breaking my head and my shoulder trying to write stories for a competition when none of them had been good enough to be in the top ten of any month of this writing season?

Shouldn’t I accept the reality and my limitations and set goals that were more real, more achievable?

My phone rang. The number displayed looked like a call-center one, but since I was not doing anything else I answered. The lady confirmed my identity and then told me that I had been shortlisted for Upamanyu Chatterjee’s writing prompt and requested me to be online when they declared the winners on twitter and Facebook!

The timing made it seem like the universe hugging me!

I logged on right after 1.00 pm. Didn’t seem to look too eager even to myself.

The 10^th winner had already been announced. It was not me.

Last season, I had been at 9^th position for one month. No, I was not 9^th either.

I was sweating when I realized I wasn’t even at 8^th.

After they declared the 7^th position, I signed out.

I was not putting myself through this tension. It wasn’t like an exam I had to pass to get a degree and a job. 

Maybe, shortlisting didn’t mean top ten. Maybe that call was a mistake.

I started preparing lunch and then heard a beep. I had forgotten to sign out of twitter.

I was at Number 3!

It felt like something out there reached out and told me that the time and effort I had spent wasn’t all in vain. And that I needed to keep going, keep writing.

The Book Bank

In a series of posts last month, I had vented about the multiple issues I had experienced with our education system. It is a wonderful thing that now there are a large number of people attempting to do what they can to fix what they can. There are people who have started schools, volunteer their time to teach, develop apps, and work with teachers and the government to make whatever improvement possible.

I have been wanting to do my bit for a long time but don’t know how to find the time. I am so dead by the end of the day. And I still have so many pending items on my ‘should do’ and ‘have to do’ lists.

There are some things I have been particularly wanting to do.

One is to start a textbook bank-I know a lot of parents who unwillingly give away textbooks after each school year because there is no place and no further use for them. And then there are so many who struggle to afford them. I need someone who can help me think this through and implement it on a small scale to start with.

If anyone here has ideas, please share.

First love

No it's not about my daughters' but my own...

The heady, exhilaration..

The soft, mushy feeling..

A solace, a homecoming

An adventure, a discovery

Someone who was always there for me,

Setting my imagination free,

Letting my dreams soar

Bringing a smile on my face no matter how lousy the day was,

My best friend, my strength, my happiness,

My best memories

If that isn’t love, then what is?

My Amar Chitra Kathas,

The man who gave me some of the best moments of my life, who shaped my childhood, passed away early this month.

I had to log on to pay homage to this wonderful man,

And to thank him for leaving behind a wonderful legacy for my children too..

.

(This is my younger daughter’s typical afternoon read-unwinding after school, even during exam time. And I can’t blame her.)

So even though I am on an unplanned blog break,
even though I am running a backlog on my work, on kids' exam preparation, I had to write this one post.


Thank you, Uncle Pai! For making my childhood so much better.

The Best Birthday Gift Ever

That was what Elena said when we gave her the watch with its entire set of interchangeable straps, dial etc

That got outvoted when Mami sent both girls gift vouchers for the Oxford bookstore.

I too loved the idea because it meant we could delay buying the books till the exams were over.  (Well, I still can’t work/sleep with an unread book at hand so couldn’t expect that from them in any way.)

The exams done with, we finally made the trip and I could see optimization at its best:

Mom what is 65+65?

What if I take another book for Rs 65? How much is left over from 250?

Why don’t you take a St. Clares’ instead of all Secret Sevens?

Oh but I’ll be able to buy only two of them. And will not get anything for the remaining 30 bucks.

(Being Loverna-I obviously don’t offer to pay up the balance)

Oh where did Aurora go?

We found her tucked away between two bookshelves: I finished two fairy stories. I want to read another one.

Mamma, can you please select the books for me?

I shortlist some really fancy collections:

Mamma they are all tooo expensive...

(Can you believe that? So that’s what happens when they spend out of their own kitty!!)

Ok, if you are buying them for us we'll take these two, but they will not be counted. Ok?

Yeah. Ok.

So call me a weak Loverna, but I really couldn’t resist buying some non-counted books for them before I went around “just looking” for some good deals..

We spent just a little more than two hours: Selecting, rejecting, balancing, prioritizing…till we were all finally satisfied.

So what if I ended up spending four times what the vouchers were worth?

It was still the best gift, because it gave me a chance to spend an entire evening with them and with books. To watch them select what they wanted, give up what they could not get, take decisions, and learn a far more important lesson.

For them, it was the best because as Aurora said it, it gave them choice..

Born Bookworms

One of my favorite dreams as a kid was one in which I get locked up in a book shop.

On regular visits, I would specially get a thrill out of reading one at the shop, while selecting the ones to buy.

So what if I don’t have the time these days?

This is what a trip to a bookstore with my children looks like:

Gosh-I wonder what else gets stored and transferred through our DNA!

A Mills & Boon reading Mom

I’ve got mail

In fact I've got sixteen Mills and Boon ebooks painstakingly forwarded, one by one, at close to midnight.

Thanks Poonam. For the pile of cheesy romances which the wise scoff at, the lofty won’t even touch with a barge pole and the “educated” types would sniff at in disgust; you read those: those tacky, cheesy, paperbacks!!??

Oh yes, I do.

I love the templatized predictability of these sometimes simpering, sometimes steamy romances, the exotic locales, the cuisine, and the haute couture; the fluttering heroine who finally finds her vertebral column; the ill-mannered, arrogant, alpha hero coming down to his knees on page 186; the familiar twists and the gallons of shed and unshed tears; the lost and found themes; the escapism and the promises of eternal love.

I love them just as I loved the fairy stories of years ago.

So like a true MB reader, I forwarded the books immediately to some more women like me, who like reading so called "crap" and aren’t coy about saying so.

Why have I posted this on my Mom Blog? Because Moms also read crap, even the ones in their thrities and with two kids, Moms who should be knowing better than lapping up teenage-stuff...

Dedicated to alchemistpoonam