Searching for Ghosts

A conversation among friends about ghosts and haunted places stirred an old fascination. They laughed at my eagerness to see a ghost for once and my deep regret that I had never seen one anywhere.

How do I explain that I have been searching for ghosts since I was five years old. 

My masi had died and there was no explanation that made sense for where she had gone after she was dead. She was a person. How could she just be nothing because she was dead?

She is a star now, someone said. 

I told all my friends that now there was a new star in the sky. Oh! then my dadi would be a star too because she too is dead, chimed another. Oh, then there should be so many new stars we realized. No, it didn’t make sense. Maybe only some became stars.

What of the others?

They became ghosts.

Wow. Then we would feel them around, wouldn’t we? They were there in stories, but then not all stories were real. So if ghosts too were not real, where did she go?

Maybe she was born again as a baby somewhere. We may never meet her or know her if we do. But she’ll be there living a new life again; and that was the balm to my grieving heart.

Over the years even this logic seemed to grow feeble and week. But I still don’t want to accept that she had one life and now she was just ‘gone’. Only a memory and nothing else.

Logically I had to accept, there is nothing more to life than a short time on the planet as this identity. Then we also become memories. And there is nothing we can do about it but ensure that we just become longer, stronger, and better memories for those who remain.

And yet, I can’t help searching for those who are gone-in the sky, in the shadows, or in the eyes of strangers. 

And hoping that maybe, just maybe there is more to life.

As they enter a new world

Kids grow up fast. I too had heard the cliché so many times. But sentences become clichés only because we use them so many times; live them so many times.

My daughters are in 8^th and 11^th grade now. Their world is so different from the one I used to blog about. It is beautiful in many ways, scary in many others.

Earlier I used to worry about day-care, maids, PTMs, sports days, birthday parties etc. etc.

Now I worry about the world outside, social media, their career decisions and higher education. In fact education is the biggest worry on my mind right now.

We were extremely lucky to find a school which imparts the kind of education we believed in. The girls grew up exploring, experiencing, and enjoying (well, most of the time) their education. But now the long tentacles of the formal education system, the ‘board exams’, the subject-package choices, and the college entrance systems are closing in.

I find it particularly scary because I remember what the system almost did to me.  It’s almost been a quarter of a century since then and it is still the same system— the one which we keep blaming the British for; the one which we haven’t done anything to change; the one which we ‘dealt with’ in our own ways; the one which now our children have to live through.

I wish I could do something to cause that change.

Since writing is what I can do, let me start with just that.

I, like many other students, did not get along with the system. I suffered and eventually 'dealt-with' it, but I still remember the pain. I’m trying to re-live and share those experiences here, in the hope that I can help my girls ‘deal with’ it in a better way. And maybe reach out to more parents, educators, students who can together create a new system—one which may not be perfect, but at least a lot better than our current one.

A New Story

Yes. I spent a whole year, maybe more, trying to come back, move ahead...

Just doesn't make sense why coming to this blog, my own story is so difficult. Maybe it is because the story has changed.

The two litlle babies are now on their own wings. One is an official teenager with all the accompanying drama. The other is a couple of years short of the milestome but is scripting all the more drama to make up for it. My husband and I have resigned from direction and are mere spectators now (maybe we always were-but have been forced to accept it finally).

And so I am no longer a HyperMom, just a wary, watchful one.

Oh Really!! I can hear Elena exclaim. We may have grown out of our roles, but can you stop being Loverna?

"Yes," says the younger one, who has moved on from Barbie movies to following Once Upon a Time. "She has become Cora."

More subtle, more dangerous.

Will I be more regular with writing also?

Really don't know. We'll have to keep watching.

A day in a life of Mom (with Computer savvy kids)

To anyone who finds the learning useful…

When the kids are not fighting over computer time and you know that something is very wrong, and you switch on the PC to find the screen looking like this…

One option is as Aurora suggested-just hang the monitor upside down and continue working.


For the ones who prefer more “in-the-box” solutions, just move the mouse left to right and top to bottom to figure out how exactly you need to move it to reach the right point when the screen is reversed (it’s quite easy one you get the hang of it).


Right click on the screen and scroll (with the mouse in reverse) till you get this menu.

And select the degree of rotation-depending on what your kid managed to do.

It’s simple isn’t it? Especially if you’ve had a couple of times to practice.


How on earth did they do it in the first place?


No point in asking unless you are prepared for an endless stream of:


But I did nothing…
She must have..
No I didn’t even go near it…
And I didn’t even look at it….
Oh! She is such a….


And if you are a mean Mom like me, you’d wait for one whole day before you let them know the screen is upright again!