End of the month

Its almost the end of the month and I was so sure I would end it on a high note. It has been a good month. I had a tonne of work, did something new - did a few episodes for a TV channel, and went out with friends in one of those agenda less leisurely ways.

Yesterday while I was in one of my weekend sessions, Sage had a seizure at home. Usually we are able to tell, he is restless and we can predict one coming on. Its called pre ectal behaviour and K and I can comfortably see the signs. This time, there was no warning. Thankfully K was at home and he managed to sedate him. I was quite scattered by the time I rushed home and it brought tears to my eyes that despite the heavy sedation, Sage recognised the reversing music from my car and came to the door with the customary pillow to welcome me.

We spent the rest of the day by his side, comforting him and telling him it was ok. I slept on the floor next to him with my arm around him. I dont know if it comforts him or me more. I guess I will never know.

For 8 months now he has been seizure free and this makes for a very strange state to be in. On the one hand, we felt he had fought it well these past months. But after a 4 month period (which was his frequency) both of us begin to get edgy. There is always a nervousness to leave him locked in the house. I didn't think I would feel it after all these years, but when I step out of the lift into the corridor that leads to our door, I feel my hands shake. I don't know what will meet me when I unlock that door. Thankfully till now I haven't come face to face with my worst fear. But the shaking doesn't stop.

I've postponed my monday and tuesday class by a day. K will take off and spend time at home when I am at work this once. He is going to be travelling for a week when I have 4 day long sessions. I hope everything will be back to normal as we know it by then.

The rest of the month was so good that I really wonder if it was evil eyes and not his genetic condition that triggered the seizure.

I shot for a TV channel. Demonstrated 6 baking recipes in telugu for a woman centric channel. I've had offers before but somehow nothing worked out. I've always been asked to do it for free and if I had agreed I would probably have had more than 300 episodes to my name. I am not sure if I want to continue this. I definitely wanted to try it out and experience the whole thing.

We shot at my studio on a wednesday. The shoot started late, around 12.45 PM and I was really beginning to lose it. Everything that you imagine TV shooting to be, it is not! The crew, tho very friendly gives 'zero' inputs. The brief was to 'do my stuff' so I went into full on teaching mode. I was not too unhappy with what we got, but not super happy either. Was happy to go with the flow and enjoy the experience. Its good to cringe at yourself once in a while. I am also very aware of the fact that I sound quite gruff and appear to be grumpy. I am not, I can assure you!

Since the last two years I have been very open to opportunities that have come my way and not shied away from exploring them. One lives and learns and I think for me the big shift mentally has been not to say no at the first instance.

I am not sure where blogging is leading me. Especially with the food blog. So much more 'engagement' on social media is happening and it leaves me quite fatigued even at times.

update: today is tuesday. I have a full day ahead and I just remembered this post was still in drafts. Need to get going now. Sage has had a restful day and he will hopefully be well while I am away for half the day. Talk soon <3 p="">

December Grace

Its been a hectic month. After a couple of months of taking it easy with the studio, December is a month I was determined to go full throttle at work. Festive season is here which means that the baking classes pick up. I also had a friend come over and bake with me. She was to donate some goodies to charity and I offered moral and logistical support. Had a fun day baking, was a different experience for me. 

The planning with work and managing the home has helped immensely to take the pressure off me. I have begun to do laundry just twice a week instead of everyday. I even got my recipe guides printed way ahead of time this month and I cannot tell you how much that has helped. 

Sage has started to understand now that he will spend periods of time without me. He keenly and sulkily watches me as I dress to go out or for work. He doesn't like it, and if I have stayed out too long I do get the odd bite on my wrist, but he has settled (touch wood).  I have also begun to tell him he has to sit in the car without panicking when I stop on errands, I leave the window 1 inch open and dash back in less than 10 minutes and he's been fine. It eases a lot of pressure now that he has this down as a practice. Otherwise it was one made run around of dropping him home, settling him down and heading out again for small errands. It's not ideal to leave a dog in a locked car, but this will have to do for situations I cannot help. 

K has been busy as always. On one occasion he had to be part of a conference call with colleagues from the car itself as we were returning from somewhere together, what began at 12 pm went on till 7:30 PM. The guy ate his lunch, took loo breaks and tea breaks all while the call droned on and on. I cannot explain how bad I felt for him. It was draining and utterly boring to say the least. And he tells me this is how it is at least a couple of times a week. As for me, after a few hours, I did feel like I was locked in a room with a TV channel I couldn't change. Mind numbingly boring and to hear voices droning on and on is terrible!

The devastating floods in Chennai was a large part of my month. My Mom and brother's family fortunately were safe and they almost felt guilty. I saw the frenzy and wished I could do more than just RT calls for help and relay information. There were groups of people organising help and relief materials and very spontaneously I asked a group in Hyd how I could help. Due to the presence of a large number of ladies in the relief camps, there was a dire need for sanitary pads and underwear for them. I decided that food and water was coming in plenty and raised money specifically for this. In less than 48 hours, I was able to raise one lakh from friends and donated the material that was needed. I felt so blessed to be able to help in this small way and realised I have a tremendous amount of goodwill. 

Not everything was calm and composed though. After 5 days of not being able to make any contact with K's dad's youngest brother, I sent out an SOS on twitter. The area the 60+ couple live in was one of the worst affected and online updates spoke of 9-10 feet of flooding. I sent out an SOS on twitter and a good Samaritan waded through neck deep water to check on them. The couple had 4 feet of water in their first floor apartment and my uncle fractured his foot after a fall wading through water, but were otherwise OK. Some really tense moments for all of us there. 

With this kind of busy, I am largely focusing on the important. Yet at the end of a long day when I lay my head on the pillow, I am unable to shut out a few thoughts, that are haunting me. I can't seem to make sense of some things that have happened.  For now I have just decided to let things beyond my control just be.

My dearest friend B turned a day older and she flew down from Bangalore to be in town just for dinner (Pretty Woman style). We went out for a suitably celebratory dinner and I even dressed up!

I finally saw Bahubali and actually liked it. We've been going out quite a bit since the last few months.

My friend U decided to turn producer for a short film she's producing, it's going to be online content, and I sent her a token amount because I told her I would like to be a part of everything she does. She sent me kisses!

December has been all about the things most important ~ family and friends who are like family, work and the love of Sage. 

The state of affairs

Waking up, going through the motions of the day and sleeping at the end of a relentlessly tiring day has been the new normal in my life for the past few months. 

There has always been a flurry of activity, some that happens, some self created which keeps me on my toes. I have always been the one day batsman. Try as I want, I can plan, but the doing mostly comes in the last minute. I have always been like that and I now accept that things will fall into place without a compromise on quality only on the last leg of anything. The acceptance has made me calmer and a better person. I do not remain in an agitated state and do not keep constantly comparing the current state of affairs with a supposed set of ideal timelines and accomplishments.

That doesn't mean I don't panic, I do. Sometimes the panic is because I have lost track of time and date (yes, happens all the time) or the panic is induced because someone else is panicking and this has happened several times over the last few weeks. 

The IFBM as we are calling it is a first ever Indian Food Bloggers Meet, which is happening in Bangalore on the 1-2 of August, could not have come at a time when I was busier! When we planned it in March, I thought it would be one of those soirees that will include a few other like minded people and it would be hectic, but pleasurable and I would come away from it, getting to know a few bloggers well. Turned out to be one circus, and it could not have come at any other time in my life!

I have been unable to sleep, because of a Damocles sword hanging over my head, I have woken up with heart palpitations because I imagined  we were already on a Friday when it was just a Tuesday. At other times, I have been unable to prep for my classes till the morning of the class because I have been busy with something to do with the IFBM or that Sage has had another seizure episode and I have spent all my time with him. 

When I embarked on this IFBM journey, the first naysayer was K. He told me it will completely take over my life and I cannot afford that because I have just started the studio. Either I put it down to his general naysayer nature, or I really didn't estimate the cluster chaos that  I was to encounter. If I am honest, it is the second one. 

Not one day did I think that this would take every ounce of my energy, my mental bandwidth and my spirit. This has been one of the most stressful projects that I have undertaken. Not just because of the nature of the work itself, which is demanding, but the people I am working with. Passive aggression is no good, it accomplishes nothing positive, but drains you physically, mentally and emotionally and that is just something I could have done without. 

There are lists and things to do and deadlines to meet. This whole event, which started as a meeting of a few like minded bloggers has snowballed into an event much larger than any of us expected. With the organic growth came the list of things to do for the sponsors and partners and participants came work and lots of it. Some of it got sorted, some of it didn't. I've tried as best as I possibly could to get stuff organised and done. Working from different cities has also meant that we need to rely completely on what everyone else is doing. Coordinating schedules, fitting in sessions, dealing with multiple sponsors and 

For my bit there are days when I feel exhausted with just the talking and somedays when I am so energized that I dont care if I haven't eaten, slept or bathed either. 

Things are falling into place slowly.While I've never doubted that I could pull this off, I didn't honestly think it would grow this big. I started off with the least clout and contacts in this group and I am happy that I didn't give up and pulled my weight and brains behind stuff that mattered. 

A few days ago, we had on hand what I can only term as a 'cluster#uck' some quick consultations with a partner later, I pulled off something that I have been too afraid to do - sell an idea to someone.

All my life I have been so afraid of sales. Many times in my career in a 'regular job' I shied away from any people facing work because I felt I didn't have the skill or the temperament to do it. Life is a full circle. I am realising that more and more. It comes back to tell you that nothing that is impossible is actually that and every belief you held close to heart like the gospel truth will be shattered.

Firstly in my training career and later as a teacher of cooking and baking, there are only people I meet everyday. And I figured that the success of my venture has been only because people are buying a part of me over and over again, which means I don't suck at sales!

With the IFBM, every ounce of my skill set is being used and I am glad it is getting aired out and sharpened. This has been as much a humbling exercise as it has been confidence building.

I have been writing this posts over a week. and each day it gets better and bigger. I currently just want friday to be here and see what's in store....

Taking off the safety net

Early this year, I set myself a target. This is a departure from how I usually function. I have never been ambitious. That has been my virtue and my vice. Virtue because it allows me to do things and enjoy the moment with nothing else but the experience. My vice because I do not push harder, much to the chagrin of all of my superiors in any job that I have had. My feedback was always "Can do way better" and that used to break my heart. 

I felt sad for the girl who always took up a task wholeheartedly, not aggressively, with the utmost sincerity and yet no one seemed to notice. No one seemed to notice the honest effort or the earnestness or that the job was well done. All everyone saw was that it could have been better. I was always a work in progress. A person who's potential was not utilised. Every appraisal, I hoped my bosses would see my sincerity, every appraisal I was given a list of 4 names who had done better. 

My clients loved me, my trainees adored me, I always had feedback averaging at 9/10. But that was never a reflection of how my superiors saw me. 

I have attention span deficit. An activity does not hold my attention for longer than a few months and that has been my weakness. I have started several things and they fizzle out within a few months. Hobbies and interests are sacrificed at the altar of 'real work' or schedule or family. So when last August, I decided to give my cooking classes a fresh lease of life, I decided to focus on targets. This was to test if I really had it in me to run with an idea. To test if what I had in mind was viable, and above all to see if I had the sustenance to see it through. 

By the end of the year, I was to decide if I really wanted to continue with the cooking classes. I had them running for about 6 years. The breaks both big and small that I had taken were largely unnoticed by everyone except that I felt guilty that I was under performing as usual . I wanted to make a decision based on some numbers - and not on a (not so) baseless "I don't feel like doing this now"

December came and went. 2013 was a tumultuous year in every way and I drew a lot of strength and courage from teaching in my class. It lifted my spirit and gave me the confidence to face another day. So by December I knew, that I was capable of sticking with something as long as it was interesting. I told myself that it was upto me to make my classes interesting, I needed to evolve as much as I wanted my classes to.

For the next quarter, I set myself another target. I was to make a decision on moving the classes out of the house. This meant I had to set a target for enrollments and objectively look at recovering overheads and other costs. By the end of March, I was convinced this was the next step - to move out of the house.

Not just the scaling up, there were several personal reasons to make the move. My home was used as headquarters. While it has served me faithfully and well for all these years, the sheer logistics of managing all the material and groceries meant for the classes was boggling. Every inch of storage space was being used and as a result, material scattered over the house. The kitchen and pantry was the worst hit. No demarcation between supplies for home and supplies for my classes meant that my monthly grocery bills had skyrocketed and I am not that great at keeping accounts! The family was deeply affected. While they didn't mind it and were extremely supportive, the stress of class day was becoming taxing. K and Sage were under house arrest for the time that people were at home. Sometimes classes extend and students tend to hang around, lunch times would get inordinately delayed. Sage is epileptic and on strict medication for it. He needed to be leashed for the duration of the sessions and that would also induce stress in him. It took me an hour after the class wound up to pacify him on most days. I couldn't have more frequent classes because it was too much to ask of the family and home. I was uncomfortable with my very personal space was now open to strangers. For as long as I could think of it, I told myself that I would be better off with the classes at home.

After all the discomfort I mentioned, it also had manifold advantages. Since the home and workplace merged together, it was easy for me to monitor and take care of both. To be able to be at home and still work is a blessing that we seldom give thanks for. The fact that the kitchen doubled up as my back office meant that I could always dip into the supplies of the pantry or my stash of stuff for personal use whether it was a ribbon or sprinkles. I could work when I wanted or not at will. Managing the logistics of a home based enterprise is gentler tho in no way easier, one can set up for a session at 5 AM without even batting an eyelid (or brushing my teeth!) or work well into the night without the anxiety of reaching home safely or keeping an eye on a sleeping drugged epileptic dog.

I began looking for a space towards the end of April. I needed the place to be close enough for me to rush home in an emergency. I needed a large and airy space with a functional kitchen. I found an apartment a week later on my morning walks with Sage. It is close to where I live, in the adjacent lane. It took the owner a week to decide if he wanted to give it to me because I said I would use it for classes. We haggled over the rent a bit, convinced that I was desperate and because I wanted it for my classes, he charged me a rate higher than what he had earlier quoted.

Once I had the keys and my heart beat came back to normal, I realised that this was 'it'. The safety nets were off. The freebies had run dry and this  really was the time to put my faith where my heart and my skill is. For the first time, I felt elated and scared as hell.

I've spent an unproductive month, without being able to use the new space. Firstly because it was bare and had no furniture, secondly because I had sprained my back and Sage was ill and between everything else, I just found it easier to do the last few classes at home.

It took me about a month to get everything sorted. Carpenters, electricians, painters and the like to fix things and set them up. Through all the angst, I felt empowered. This has been my decision, my vision and its failure or success depends wholly and solely on me. Every decision has been a lesson in patience, planning and management. I drew again and again from my inner self. Talking to myself as I waded through. Not because I didn't have the unstinting support of my family. But simply because this is a journey I needed to make alone. I felt happy and peaceful and hopeful and all things good with each step that inched closer to getting the studio ready. I have always been confident, but I have been an approval seeker. I have always wanted my choices to be validated. Sometimes I seek it from people with no expertise in the matter, only because of the proximity of the relationship and then agonise over what they have said.

I don't know why, I didn't seek anyone's approval this time. I did my research, prepared myself and made decisions. When one thing failed, I looked for another solution. I didn't go running like a damsel in distress to anyone expecting them to fix it. I am feeling incredibly good about this.

Yesterday was the inaugural class at the new place. I cannot even begin to describe how I felt. I should write another post. There was one overwhelming moment when I suddenly felt "OMG, this is really happening"

So that's my big story. This is my big move. Here are some pictures of the new place. Wish me luck... I need all that I can get.

mind numbed......

40 hours and counting…. Warzone Mumbai ….Mumbai carnaged…ravaged Mumbai…….Exclusive television footage has brought the terror right into our homes…exclusive coverage that served us blood for breakfast…..I sit glued to the TV for hours….watching as people are trying to make sense of it all….i cannot believe that this is all happening….in front of our eyes….people desperate to be safe….waving from their rooms in the Taj and Oberoi….holed up…not knowing what would happen next….the scores of security personnel…..policemen, firefighters, Army men, NSG commandos and Marcos…..the last two groups of men said to be among the best in the business……all of them doing what they can to “flush out the militants”, “minimize civilian casualities” and make us feel safe again….At least 125 have been killed in the Mumbai encounter, including 14 policemen and six foreigners and 327 people have been injured.  And this is the official estimate………

Some thoughts going through my mind right now

Chef Banja, who shared our church bench for 4 yrs, has died. He was an Executive Chef at the Taj and was shot at in the kitchen……I can’t believe this….it somehow brings all of it closer….

When will we realize that this is a real time war situation and this is urban warfare? That it needs to be dealt with the severity and seriousness….much more than we are doing right now?

How many more people should lose their lives and how many more attacks like this should happen before we appear to take measures to send a clear message that we are not a soft target anymore? When will be associate a little more value to the life of a citizen that has been lost?

Why was there such a time lag in bringing in our top trained commandos? Were they stuck in bureaucratic red tape?

Why am I paying taxes for the bills of politicians and bureaucrats instead of buying better equipment and training for cops and soldiers?

How did the guys just jump into a speedboat and land up at the gateway……isn’t this checked at any point of time? Where are the intelligence reports?

Why are the reporters and journalists the ones asking questions on policy and a way forward? Isn’t this the job of the people who govern us to do this?

Isn’t it the duty of the government to provide a secure place for its citizens?

I’ve just refreshed my newsfeed, and as of 11.48 a.m there is fresh gunbattle going on at the Taj, earlier this morning, this was supposed to be secure and handed over to the police….what is happening? Gag orders have been given to the media as it is believed the terrorists are getting access to the movements of the commandos….WTF!!

I am quite numbed by all of this….i don’t wish to conclude….i don’t know what to conclude with…. Hope maybe a good place to start…..and my prayers are for all the warriors who are helping us tackle this as best as they can.