It's been so long since I gave a din charya post

Yea there used to be times when my posts in succession would be about what happened during a day. Now the days are so filled in running after a toddler, work, studying for work and home chores that I feel I miss to put the moments in blank and white. But today let's change the pattern. 

Talking of pattern K and I have made a routine . We step out every Sunday with the Kabooki and have a lunch outside and get some shopping or window shopping done as the case may be and get back home . It gives Amma the much needed respite from the kid. She enjoys some alone time when she can catch up on her friends and family without chiyaa trying to snatch the phone from her. She does not quite enjoy eating the food available in restaurants here and prefers having a low key meal. We both have some time to ourselves. The kid is now big enough to participate in the meals and it's very exciting to try different cuisines every week and see her reaction to them :)

Today we hit on Nandos - the place that converted my die hard egg - eterian husband into chicken -eterian :) now he eats eggs and it s mommy mwahaha. Chiyaa loved the garlic bread there and munched upon it. Encouraged by her response we ordered the sinfully delicious chocolate cheesecake which ended up being quite appreciated by her. Nandos you are a family fav!!!!!

We had a longish walk to another shopping venue. We started off by searching  some Halloween costume for Chiyaa . At K's work place they are organising a Halloween party for kids. The costumes off kids were adorable. At the end we settled for a satan costume with the cutestttttt tail for her ;). Since amma would be returning to India in December we also purchased some clothes for our niece. It's such fun to shop for kids ! 

Next it was the turn of the adults. We had not got anything for Diwali yet. K started off by getting some really funky t shirts. I was not to be left far behind . Though I was dead tired , I found great joy in trying out some of the clothes and finally matched up  K's  funk (I think ) by picking a leopard print dress ;) 

As the grey clouds started hovering we made the long trek home. Amma had made the most scrumptious bitter gourd fry and curd rice. We decided to put shudh desi romance for time pass which is what it was precisely. Movie done we were so exhausted we just wished to hit the bed . And that we were able to since the lil one drifted off soon . Hurrrrrrayyyy!!!

Summertime

As I started reading this book I googled J.M.Coetzee. He came up as one of the most celebrated author in Anglosphere. I was living under a rock to have never ever heard of this two times booker winner and Nobel laureate . 

This book is supposed to be a fictional autobiography . That seems like an oxymoron does nt it? Well that is just the beginning of the interesting part. The author has written his story as interviews by his biographer with important people in his life. So what he has written are perceptions of other people of him. If you think it at the next level it is what the author perceives other people perceive of him. Tricky right? I found it very interesting , very unique. 

The biographer meets up with a Julia with whom he had an affair, Margot - a cousin, Adraina -a woman who he had a crush on, Sophie an old flame and Martin, a colleague. Since it is a fictional autobiography you tend to wonder how much of the characters are fact. 

The book takes us through his years in South Africa . He divulges bits of his relationship with his father, portions of his political affiliations and facets of his personality . The book is a very enjoyable and gripping read and the most engaging way of writing an autobiography ever. 

As usual I cannot do without putting forth the most appealing lines :-

As it is the fate of some generations to be destroyed by war, so it see,s the fate of the present one to be ground down by politics. --This is mentioned as bits from the diary of the author which the biographer records. 

If Jesus has stooped to play politics he might have become a key man in Roman Judea, a  big operator. It was because he was indifferent to politics, and made his indifference clear, that he was liquidated. How to live one's life outside politics , and one's death too:that was the example he set for his followers. 

So David Truscott who did not understand x and y, is a flourishing marketer or marketeer, while he , who had no trouble understanding x and y and much else besides ,  is an unemployed intellectual.What does that suggest about the workings of the world?What it seems most obviously to suggest is that the path that leads through Latin and algebra is not the path to material success.But it may suggest more: that understanding things is a waste of time;that if you want to succeed in the world and have a happy family and a nice home and a BMW you should not try to understand things but just add up the numbers or press the buttons or do whatever else it is that marketers are so richly rewarded for doing.

Did John love his father, do you think? Boys love their mothers,not their fathers. Don't you know you Freud? Boys hate their fathers and want to supplant them in their mother's affections. No,of course John did not love his father,he did not love anybody, he was not built for love. But he did feel guilty about his father.He felt guilty and therefore he behaved dutifully. With certain lapses.

For instance, white South Africans in those days liked to think of themselves as the Jews of Africa, or at least the Israelis of Africa: cunning,unscrupulous, resilient,running close   to the ground, hated and envied by the tribes they ruled over. All false.All nonsense. It takes a  Jew to know a Jew,as it takes a woman to know a man. Those people were not tough, they were not even cunning,or cunning enough. And they were certainly not Jews. In fact they were babes in the wood.That is how I think of them now:a tribe of babies looked after by slaves.

Their mutual grandfather had his finger in all too many pies. He was - the English word occurs to her - a go-getter in a land with few go-getters,a man with plenty of -another English word - spunk,more spunk probably than all his children put together. But perhaps that is the fate of the children of strong fathers: to be left with less than a full share of spunk.

I remember, in the days when I was a student, existentialism was the fashion, we all had to be existentialists. But to be accepted as an existentialist you had first to prove you were a libertine ,an extremist. Obey no restraints! Be free! -that was  what we were told.But how can I be free,I asked myself, if I am obeying someone else's order  to be free?

Students in my experience, soon work out whether what you are teaching matters to you. If it does, then they are prepared to consider letting it matter to them too.But if they conclude, rightly or wrongly, that it does'nt then, curtains, you may as well go home.

In Coetzee's eyes, we human beings will never abandon politics, because politics is too convenient and too attractive as a theatre in which to give play to our baser emotions. Baser emotions meaning hatred and rancour and spite and jealousy and bloodlust and so forth. In other words, politics is a symptom of our fallen state and expresses that fallen state.

Was he at ease with his black students - with black people in general? Was he at ease with anyone? He was not at-ease person(can you say that in English? ) He never relaxed. I witnesses that with my own eyes.So:Was he at ease with black people? No. He was not at ease among people who were at ease. The ease of others made him ill at ease. 

In the back pages of his diary he makes lists. Oneof them is headed Ways of Doing Away with Oneself.In the left-hand column he lists Methods, in the right-hand column Drawbacks . Of the ways of doing away with oneself he has listed , the one he favours on mature consideration is   drowning, that is to say, driving to Fish Hoek at night, parking near the deserted end of the beach,undressing in the car, putting on swimming trunks(why?) crossing the sand and entering the water(it will have to be a moonlit night), breasting the waves, striking out into the dark,swimming to the limit of physical endurance, then letting fate take its course.

Make some noise

 I  was waiting on finishing a book to post its review. But then the blog was getting a bit monotonous. So though the work week has whooshed past I thought it was about time I picked up  the gauntlet . 

I shall write something and shall put my readers through some misery . Humility they say is a strange thing - the moment you think you have it you have lost it :) well I would love to think of myself as a humble person but then let me share a small joy . After 9 years and 4 firms I finally tasted a promotion. :) slurp! It tasted yum :) Let's pop some imaginary champagne :D Don't type cast me as vain now :( 

But that has meant a new not so cool boss :( lots of burning the midnight oil studying *groans* Once I am back from work I just want to plop on the bed and snooze. Barely the thought crosses my mind and I have Chiyaa poking my nose , pulling my hair and jumping on my tummy! ( wanna be parents this should not scar you from the untold joys of parenting :P ) 

Talking of Chiyaa she's picking up on actions of rhymes now. When she does pitter patter raindrops from 'i hear thunder ' the whole house goes awwww. ;) My mom keeps singing it all the while during the video calls. Chiyaa amuses her by doing the action for sometime but then my mom drags it in and the kid scampers off :D

Hmmm moms. They have such a calming effect don't they. I sometimes so miss her. When she says take care or get some rest sweetie I want to literally buzz away to her and let her give me her awesome neck massages :( I hope I am even close to what she is! 

If wishes were horses :( Anyhoo let's talk of the good things the weekend brought along. Like an impromptu movie The Adjustment Bureau(an old flop but it was free on the channel so who cares) . Like some delish food ( jeera rice , matar paneer and pakode  - the old classics) . Like being able to read some more pages of the book. Like being able to write this post while crunching some chips. 

Huh well I thought I would come up with a pretty elaborate one but then my words dried up . As I wait for another week to zip past here is my entry to the Write Over the Weekend initiative by blog adda :) which is about a post with sounds(This weekend your post must contain at least five sound words!For e.g. splash, crash, vroom, poof, etc.Are we all set? This week we go creative, phonetically! ) . 

There are supposed to be at least  five. How many did I manage? :)

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda