I have been wanting to put up new posts for quite a while. Sheer laziness at the thought of typing is the main reason I haven't I think.
My husband & I were away in Chennai for a week, to spend time with our grandson. When I came back I wasn't too well and then schools (where I teach) reopened. Besides, as I said, I was just too lazy to type. Then I've been helping my mother update her blog.
I had a good time in Chennai. Us women (my 2 daughters-in-law, daughter, a cousin & I) went for a local production of 'Cats' . It was fun. It may not have been the greatest production, but some of the singing voices were really good and a great deal of effort had gone into the costumes and stage settings.
I also got to spend quality time with grandson. I wish I had got a bit more time to hang out with my son & wife, who live in Chennai too, but they were busy shifting offices. My husband & I got only one evening to spend some quality time with them. I think Steven Covey's idea (in his book for Effective Families)of making a date with just one child at a time is a good idea, but which I have been unable to execute properly till now. I often think about doing that. Sometimes I try to go for a drive with each of them alone. I find drives are very conducive in getting men especially to talk. Maybe I'll make a date with my older son on my next visit there.

Unexpected tears.

Today, a friend of my eldest son, who can be said to be physically challenged, told me how she had asked him to be the godfather for her daughter. Her little daughter is disabled too, having been a very premature baby. She said she told him, “One day when she is a teenager, she may feel that I, although her mother, will never quite understand how it is to grow up as a physically challenged person. Then I would like to know that she can come to her godfather who can tell her what it’s like and help her to become strong as he is.” She said this and I felt so touched and my eyes filled. Then came memories of how he has struggled over the years and the tears came in earnest. The tears were immediately controlled of course. But this remained in the back of my mind the whole day and so I wanted to do a post on it.

Bless you my son. I am so proud of you. Many times I have had to be tough, to never let even a doubt or a worry creep anywhere into my conscious mind, so that you would feel strong enough to do anything. I’m deeply sorry if I have seemed unsympathetic but it is a thin and difficult line, at any time, to walk between overprotecting a child and disciplining him, so that he can become a strong, positive human being and this becomes ever so much more difficult if your child ids physically challenged. Only the parent of another such child will understand that fully. But, as to living with the disability itself, only another disabled person will ever be able to empathize, because for us physically whole people, we can never quite know how it feels to be in that skin.

I love you and I love you too daughter-in-law dear, for the kind for wife you are to him.

Hurray for blogging

Every now and then I get this feeling that my blog is so borrrrringgg that maybe I shouldn’t blog anymore. Then I tell myself that it’s supposed to be mainly for myself that I’m blogging. Actually blogging and reading so many different types of blogs has really helped me. Technically I know that one should be interacting in the real world, but for me blogging has helped get over the last bits of my depression. I still have occasional downs, but now I realise they are only downs and not the depths of down that it used to be or the depths of self-loathing (because I used to feel I was the loser to end all losers) that I used to go to. Now I know I may still not be this great winner, but it doesn’t matter all that much at the present time and I’m also better able to choose not to get pulled down by negative statements or random criticisms.

Then the other blog I have, --For the family-- which is a family effort, has been a lot of fun.

So here’s to blogging!

Happy Independence Day!

Today is India's Independence Day. We celebrate both the day we became independent of British Rule (59 years today) and the day India actually became a republic, which was only in 1950 (2 ½ years later).

For most of us today Independence Day is just a holiday, the story of which we learnt in our history lessons. But, for people like my mother who were there then, to whom it was time of great excitement, it still means a great deal. In fact she called me this morning after watching the Independence Day Parade at Trivandrum on TV to complain: “Imagine, they were marching to ‘My Bonnie lies over the Ocean’. Even now, after 59 years, why do we have to march to ‘their’ songs? There are so many patriotic songs in our many languages which could be used as marching songs. I want to register a protest! I plan to write to the newspaper.” And I thought, to my husband and me, the idea of watching the parade hadn’t crossed our minds.

My mother has told me several times of what it was like at that time. My parents lived in Bombay then. My two elder brothers were there. She says on August 14^th 1947 the excitement was so high. She says my father and she got out with their two sons to join the throngs on the street as it neared midnight, when freedom would be officially declared. She says my father carried the younger of his two sons on his shoulder (who was 3 then) and the older one (6 at that time) walked along. She tells me of the joy and exhilaration in the air. She says they all walked and joined friends and stayed out till early morning. When she used to tell me about it her eyes used to light up, even so many years after.

For my mother and her generation the India they had hoped to build didn’t quite work out. But she does concede that a great many positive happenings have taken place and she is definitely proud to be an Indian citizen of Free India.

Jai Hind

Fruits I love

Mango season is almost over. Mangoes top the list of my favourite fruits. The other fruit which vies for top spot has to be mangosteen, pictured above. That’s in season now, here in Kerala. I can eat any number of them at one sitting. It has the most heavenly taste—to me anyway (my daughter doesn’t like it!). So I thought I’d make a list of my favourite fruit.

1.As I said mangoes and mangosteen (not from the same family at all) occupy top spot. 2. Then come pineapples, no doubt about it.

3. Then I guess come peaches & nectarines (which I ate fresh for the first time when I visited the US a long while ago).

4. Fourth are litchis, which we used to eat fresh in Calcutta, when I was growing up. Here I only get to eat tinned litchis.

After that I can’t really rank them—concord grapes, cherries, custard apples, papayas (with a squeeze of lime &a smattering of sugar), watermelons—try adding a bit of crushed mint, oranges especially loose jacket ones—I think they are called tangerines in the Western world,

William’s pears, apples especially those which are slightly tart & firm, guavas and of course the jackfruit. In fact I think I like almost every fruit I’ve tasted so far-both dried and fresh-except muskmelons maybe & something called tree tomatoes, which we used to get when I was in boarding school in the Nilgiri Hills.

So tell me all of you, what are your favourite fruits?

Allie

One of my dogs died on Monday morning. It was upsetting.

Allie was a Doberman and she was 4 years old. She was actually my daughter’s dog. But when my daughter moved to Madras and was unable to get a place where a dog was allowed, she asked me to keep one of her 2 dogs. So I took Allie, firstly because she was female. Besides, she had already been spayed & also because I felt she was very sensitive & would be very unhappy in a new situation, whereas she already knew me & this place. She came to me in 2003, when she was a pup of around 10 months. Allie very soon became my dog. My sons used to call her my tail. Although a Doberman, she loved to be petted and would wait for you to sit down to place her head strategically on your lap. She was very much my dog. But when my daughter or her husband came, she was ecstatic. After all it was they who had brought her up from the time she was 3 weeks old, till the time she was 10 months! So much so I think she was just a bit jealous of their baby.

This May Allie had turned 4. She had mellowed and was no longer the jumpy puppy she was when she came to us.

I really don’t know what exactly happened. She seemed a bit quiet, but I thought that was because she had finally quietened down. Suddenly she started throwing up. We took her to the hospital. One vet said it was distemper, but another said that she didn’t have enough signs. All I know is she was really ill, and seemed to have some internal bleeding. The doctor at the vet hospital treated her for distemper and gave her a dextrose drip for dehydration, as she had been throwing up a lot. But it was of no use. She had terrible convulsions in between, which was agony to watch. But the saddest was hearing her crying through her sedated sleep. Anyway, she was out of her misery early Monday morning. We buried out among the trees. It will take a while to stop missing her.

It's a lovely Sunday here today. It's one of those breezy, sunshiny days that come during the South-West Monsoon. I look out of the window and everywhere I look is lush, new-washed green. There is an abundance of butterflies of various hues and sizes. My rambutan tree is full of fruit, slowly ripening and it looks beautiful covered in red fruit as in the picture. I can hear the chittering of squirrels and the twittering of birds. I'm listening to Latin jazz on Internet Radio, with a background of the breeze in the trees.
Lovely, relaxing Sunday!