the aftermath of celebrations

diwali was this year quite a blast....literally.... i had as much fun as hardwork...making up those tonnes of chocolates was thrilling and tiring at the same go.... those of you who have been reading this blog know that i went through an emotional roller coaster with amma being sick in the last few weeks... but once she recovered and was ok again, i was able to plunge headlong into all the stuff that i needed to do, guiltfree..... last tuesday, i went headed off to the coffee shop of a mall to wait for a freind who was to meet me there and i'd also to deliver some chocolate she'd ordered....so i waited and waited and as always ( i should know, i worked for the same company) the meeting she was in overshot by a good two hours...so i decided to forget the coffee, drop the chocolates over enroute and go home...it was already dark and i was hungry and needed to get home so i could get on with the other work lying waiting.... i never take the lift if i can help it and began to climb down the 4 flights of stairs.... on the third floor, there was an elderly lady climbing up so i moved to my left to make way for her....big mistake... the stairs are winding and tapered, and my foot being longer than the width of the stair...needless to say, i tripped and went hurtling down the entire flight of stairs...i was only aware of the fact that my precious ( and expensive) cell phone was flying to my right and my handbag to my left..... and the bag i carried in another direction... plus that i wasn't able to break my fall...trying to do that was vain....i think i blanked out at this point... went all the way down trying to avoid falling on my face and breaking my teeth.....i got up when i realized that there were no more steps to fall over…and that atleast 50pairs of diwali shopping eyes were on me…..dusted myself and as bravely as I could I began to look for the stuff that had flown off me….it took three very chivalrous men to gather my stuff and ask me if I was ok before giving it to me…I looked up smiled and said yeah I am fine…just totally embarrassed, but I will be ok…thanks very much…checked my precious cell phone which had weathered the fall with none of the embarrassment I was going thru….i could imagine people pointing at my “as dignified as I can after a full flight tumble exiting back” andsaying…”whoa some tumble she took!!”.... the next two days I walked around like a chicken from the deep freezer!! Thankfully no broken bones and I live to tell the tale!!

The day before diwali I was overwhelmed with wanting to join the festivities….i’d already bought these awesome diyas from shilparamam…so I did some festive cooking and we had a blast…. Lit up as best as we could…. The house looked lovely with the lamps….K and I are both house proud and it’s the only thing he likes doing…helping me doing up the house….for the both of us, festivals are a cultural thing and for the first time in years we bought some firecrackers…. All stuff that went into the air and bursts into a zillion stars….we doubled our celebrations by teaming up with a couple from next door and their little son, dinner too albeit at 2.30am was together…..weekend saw us spend it with some more friends…. Food and fellowship is such a lovely thing…. needs to be indulged in at the right time and surely with the right people…..i think this is the best holiday that we’ve had….i think I’ll take a while to recover from all of this……

scared as hell

its amazing how easily life gets derailed....the last few weeks have been so hectic, tension ridden and sometimes lunatic that i have craved a "normal job, with normal work hours and a normal life" mom's been unwell and that has driven me up the wall...i have fluctuated nauseatingly between guilt, anger and helplessness...... guilt for i wondered if i was'nt sensitive to amma's low back pain for the two days before the full blown urinary infection hit her.....guilt because i wondered if somehow i had caused her to fall sick, because she wasnt in bangalore close to where her doc could see her and guilt that i had somehow not taken care of her....... anger because i didnt know which doctor, hospital and diagnostic centre to trust...didnt know if the reports had been fudged so we would be compelled to admit her to hospital as they had recommended.....anger because i was scared shit....and at my wits end..... helpless because i had so much work and deadlines that i was feeling dead at the end of each day, that i could get a full night's sleep cos i would get up to check on her several times a night...and helpless because its the only was i feel watching a parent be sick.... i mean they are the ones who look after us when we're sick as kids, they're the ones who know how to right every wrong...we believe they can make anything work, no matter how unrealistic the expectation is (rational thinking is something that age and wisdom gave me and i hate it.... i want to go back to thinking that my mom can make everything allright and fix anything...from a science project to a broken heart)

so when i was suddenly incharge of her and her health and well being, it was a responsibility that freaked me out....was i doing the right thing...was i taking care of her...was there something i had forgotten...is she getting better.,..why can't the phone stop ringing....why cant people get off my back and give me a rest...why cant amma get better and give me some respite!!

she got better...she had to....she's been singing my praises to anyone with half an ear...but i am just so glad that she's recovered...infact she's back in her element and her usual self...i am just to glad that she's well enough to resume her nagging!! hurrah!! just so grateful for the health she's been blessed with and so aware more than anything of these delicately intricate things called out bodies that we take so much for granted....love you amma....

Considering i took such a long time to respond to the tag by nags, i am surprised myself that i picked this one in all consciousness to do........i found it on roshan's blog...i stumbled on it today and quite liked what he wrote....i also liked the tag...since he said its open to anyone who wants to do it.....i'm tagging myself...

1. Pick out a scar you have, and explain how you got it?
I have a scar on my right wrist, towards the base of my thumb…at 12, in a cousins house, I was asked to retrieve a bottle of beer from the freezer…. The sudden change in temp broke the bottle while I held it and I ended up with a godawful cut……I was scared I’d be yelled at for breaking a precious bottle of beer, than that my hand was bleeding like hell!!

2. What does your phone look like?

It’s a Nokia N70, got it this year as a bday gift from K, because he couldn’t deal with not knowing where I was when I was out of the house and on my own...totally freaks him out. It’s the first phone I have owned personally cos all the rest I’ve had have been given to me by my employers

3. What is on the walls of your bedroom?

Nothing…I have bare walls in every room of the house…have’nt been able to get a carpenter to put some pictures on the wall.

4. What is your current desktop picture?

I have a standard blue ms office desktop

5. Do you believe in gay marriage?

I believe in love………and in this world where we hate each other so much, if it takes the same sex to spread love (sic) then so be it………so I guess yes….. but I think it is unnatural

6. What do you want more than anything right now?

To have a bath and comb my unruly hair…..really…..more seriously, for the business plan I have up my sleeve to work out…..

7. What time were you born?

3.45 p.m in the afternoon

8. Are your parents still together?

No, I lost my dad a couple of years ago

9. Last person who made you cry?

K, I hate it when I am not the center of his attention….actually he is the only one who can make me cry…out of happiness and otherwise…….

10. What is your favorite perfume/cologne?

Calvin Klein’s Eternity, Tommy Hilfiger’s Tommy Girl and Coty Vitacare’s Body mist in Moonshine musk

11. What kind of hair/eye color do you like in the opposite sex?

Black…for hair and eyes…anything lighter makes me feel creepy

12. What are you listening to?

Right now?? To the hacking of the trees in the plot next to my apartment….currently a 60 year old eucalyptus tree is being done to death

13. Do you get scared of the dark?

Yes…….i am terrified of the dark…and of being alone in a house..even my own….i have spoken on the phone for hours with family and friends with the TV on waiting for K to get back home…and when I leave a room after switching off the lights at night, I always walk much quicker than I usually do.

14. Do you like pain killers?

No, but I take them when its unavoidable

15. Are you too shy to ask someone out?

Yeah I guess romantically I have never asked anyone out…but socially I am not shy to ask someone over

16. If you could eat anything right now, what would it be?

Sitaphal….i have a dozen waiting in the fruit bowl…but they’re too raw to be eaten just yet…..waiting for them to ripen is more frustrating than getting the seeds out

17. Who was the last person you made mad?

My neighbour’s one year old grandson who insists on plucking the leaves from my plants that are outside my door….i feel like wringing his neck..and his parents too…I wonder how they’d feel if a bunch of their hair was pulled out……….

18. Is anyone in love with you?

Yes………K ….totally and hopelessly ……

i loved doing this......leaving it open to anyone who feels like doing this......

tagged!!

i’m not the most happy person when I know I have left something undone…..the nagging feeling that I have something I haven’t taken care of is just too overwhelming sometimes…..so its been difficult to live with this tag….for more than a respectable period of time…..but oh nags!! Believe me when I say that it has been on my mind all the time!! Plus the shame of having waited this long and not had anything spectacular to say…..i always wonder why I cant be as witty or interesting or even sarcastic sometimes…when I read other’s blogs…but then hey…this is me….. so here goes the me me….it comes with a set of rules…. Which I have just copied and pasted from Nags post….

Here are the rules:
* Players, you must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of their middle name. If you don’t have a middle name, use the middle name you would have liked to have had.
* When you are tagged you need to write your own blog-post containing your own middle name game facts.
* At the end of your blog-post, you need to choose one person for each letter of your middle name to tag.
* Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged.

i don’t have a first / middle name…I just have one name…somehow two names sounded so much more exotic…till people told me my own name was pretty exotic too….so for want of another option, I choose Beulah, which is my mother’s maiden name……but i am choosing BEULAH - my mother's first name.....

B: believer – lets make that “blind believer” in love, in the good in people and in the wings that are spread over me…yeah go on…laugh all you agnostics….i believe in the hand that protects and provides…

E: Enthusiastic – err, that I was called Enthu Cutlet during college should account for something…. Excite able also quite closely fits as a description for me….. infact K tells me that I should show more restraint….the high pitched voice, twinkling eyes and barely concealed smile is a dead give away…but what the hell!!

U: underrated – am a big fan of underrated stuff….sort of put in my two cents and spread the word….from a book to an actor I love to follow things that receive less attention than they deserve….i revel in their talent and rejoice in their successes…they’re so much more than they are made out to be….more power to them

L: Laugh – there are few things that I like better than a good laugh…..i can do it alone with a book that sends me into raptures or a FRIENDS rerun….i can do it in small groups and part of a melee …at movies and otherwise….sometimes quietly reminiscing over the past …its easy to laugh…now that it has passed….

A: avoidables – anger ….. this one I used to easily fall prey to….now I am older and hopefully wiser….aggressive / arrogant – I know I can come on as both….used to bother me more than I liked…now I take it in my stride…cant please everyone at all times…and I am not going to bleed myself by attempting to do it….but confidence most of the times is mistaken as arrogance and to hell with all those who make that error…..

H: Happy: that’s what I feel most of the times…. And I am thankful for all the things that happen to make me feel this way…..for the good times and the bad and all the times in between….. I just sometimes can’t deal with people who grudge other’s happiness…. Make them feel they are undeserving of it and hope that their life looks better through another mans misery…..also homesick…somehow….memories always take me back…to the home I grew up in…the family that was…and without things like attached bathrooms and marbled floors and modular kitchens…we still had the best times….sometimes I feel homesick for the home of my childhood and youth….thats where I became most of what I am today….

And now I tag………umm…no one actually…. This is open to anyone who wants to do this…. Whew!! Thank god I’ve done this finally!!

My classes got on TV

i've had mind numbing internet issues the past two weeks..... my computer refuses to have anything to do with the remote server after about 30 minutes and i have to reboot...sometimes lose all my work...cos i am working without the powercord which is in the guest room, where i have my home office and now i dont use it cos amma is here and having her nap...then tata indicom my internet service provider cuts my connection...this is done without ensuring i have received my bill....also i dont understand why i have to be disconnected if i have an outstanding of Rs. 446 against a credit limit of Rs 1000 and a security deposit of rs. 2000......just beats me...... if all of this wasnt enough....two posts i typed on a friends computer got lost thanks to YSR and the power failure....so all in all i have had one lousy fortnight....

added to which i have just recovered from a nasty flu but am still coughing like the TB patients in movies.....but i am glad that this time i got better with just paracetamol and home grown remedies of ginger juice with honey and another concoction MIL II gave me and i'd rather not know what it contained!!

i had my 5 minutes of fame on TV...the telecast happened on 3rd of oct..... it was a 5 minute capsule on chocolate making and a Q&A session......K missed it both on telecast and on the repeat...amma was terribly excited and got atleast 10 of her friends to watch...a friend has kindly recorded it and i will get the cd in a couple of days......i didnt know how excited people would be for me.... the circulating library guy was thrilled and mentioned it to me shyly a few days later..... the guy at the shop from where i buy my chocolate supplies also asked "how was the response after TV prog??" ..... so that was that.....

the classes are going well.... my writing could do with some dedication..... i am a little antsy about the upcoming festive season.....its going to take a lot of planning if i want things to go as planned from now till new years....... i'm nervous cos i know i am not the sort to keep the best laid plans....throws up possibilities for so much excitement, work and fraught nerves!! mine and others!!