What a weekend

Before you get your hopes up and then crushed by the end of the post - let me warn you. Nothing phenomenal happened :| But I am a worshipper of the God of Small Things. And I also wanted to write something :) So here goes. 

Well Friday was not a typical end of week work day for me. Generally  the 6th day of the week work either gets too bothersome that I can't wait for it to get over. Or it is so slack that again I can't wait for it to get over. But this Friday it cruised along to destination 'logical conclusion'. Woo hoo! Shop closed @ 1600. Hit  the gym. I try to sneak in 20 mins of gymming every alternate day of the week. Its not possible all the time and it's definitely not enough. But then something is better than nothing. Lately K recommended that strength training is better for toning down rather than running like a hamster on a treadmill. I was always a cardio freak. I enjoyed it more cos I could catch up on some catchy music ;) Then the wise man of the house quoted that strength would give better effect in  lesser  time. Well.... Why not try. Try I did. And K felt it was working! So the really short gym sessions are adding up to something thanks to K's recommendation. 

After the exercise there is another exercise which I don't quite look forward to. Picking up Chiyaa. Don't get me wrong. I want her home. Its her mood that is the pro. The mood of the toddler every day is volatile - much like the weather around here. Some days she can be an angel, munching her snacks, chatting away, playing by herself and then drifting off to bed. Some days she can be a tantrum Queen with nothing distracting her from her bad state of mind. Friday was one of her latter days. She seemed fine in her room. The moment we got near the pram she started wailing! I man handled ( woman handled?) her into the push chair and started  the journey home. The 10 mins walk seemed like eternity! When lo and behold suddenly what do we see? No not daddy. :P An earthworm! She has been seeing a worm in a book which we keep calling 'the wriggly worm'. So seeing a real wriggly worm in the street was like me bumping into SRK!!!! Just like the mere mention of SRK can keep me chirpy for a while, the worm kept her happy till dinner time. God bless you, you little creature. You may be small but you are so important!

K came home and offered to make dinner. It  was simply amazing! What did he make you ask? Oh well he made Maggi ;) It was perfectly soft with still the right amount of sogginess and soupiness. I made scrambled eggs to go with it since Maggi with scrambled eggs is just the wow combination. Dinner done it was back to back episodes of modern family till it was time for night night :)

Hmm I have filled half a page and I am still on Friday! The rest of the weekend in the next post then :D

The Lowland

 Jhumpa Lahiri writes about displaced people. She writes about misplaced people. She writes about India, more specifically Calcutta. She writes about being a migrant in a developed nation. She writes about the quandaries at home. She writes about the freedom but rootless-ness abroad. A lot of her writing resonates with me. Maybe because I was in Cal for quite a while, maybe because I am a migrant at the moment. JL  writes about human bonds. Bonds that add meaning to existence, bonds that suffocate. This book starts as the story of 2 brothers 15 months apart. They are veritable dopplegangers. As they grow they evolve. Subhash is the composed, measured one while Udayan is the passionate, impulsive idealist. They branch and embrace other characters. Gauri the strong willed, cerebral lady is thus introduced. The changes she impacts are far reaching. Unprecedented. 

The characters are strong. As a reader I was at no point sitting on the fence. I knew who I was rooting for and who I to use a mild term 'did not like'. Apart from the characters and the peep into their psyche, the book was like time travel. Not jerky. But smooth. Fluid. It spanned 4 generations and when each was presented it was like a different view after the bend in a river. It was like seeing the same thing in a different perspective each time. It was like being in a carousel and the same thing seeming  different after a turn.

I loved the way she has expressed some very real and likely situations. The part where she narrates a character dealing with insomnia made me feel so frustrated and helpless. The bereavement felt by another  pulled my heart strings. Anger, reticence, despair - each page is drenched in a variety of emotions.

The book is a journey. The book is an emotional unfolding. The book is a sheer masterpiece.  

Numbers game

Numbers measure so much. Most importantly our passage on this earth. We have the customary milestone years. 3 - the start of preschool, 10 the first double digit, 13- start of the teenages, 18- officially adults (?), 30-the advent of middle age, 60- pensioner. After that it's more of a wait to meet the maker(?). Hmm that seemed a very melancholy stream  of thoughts. 

When I am the very opposite of melancholy now :D It is our seventh wedding anniversary today! As with most occasions if something was to go wrong it had to. The trio woke with a royal cold :( Being the typical us with romance having eluded us, rather than doing the customary candle lit dinner or romantic movie, we had decided to climb a rock. OK let me come out clean, not a real rock, an indoor one ;) The only thing between a corpulent couple and the heights of glory was an unwell kid. Chiyaa was down with a cough. We were in two minds whether to drop her at day care. But when she started feeling a bit better we asked her if she wanted to go and meet her friends. She said yes! Which prompted us to drop her for a short while. We were gonna rock \m/ ;)

After the adrenaline rush of climbing a rock had gone down we could not feel our arms and legs any longer. We thought of giving the movies a shot but nothing tickled our fancy. We instead gave sushi a shot. K loved it! Surprise of surprises since he was never one to like something wrapped in sea weed! Inspite of being the more adventurous one, I didn't like it so much. More for the lack of fork and knife. Only one new thing at a time :( Grub done we picked the Princess early and let the chaos begin :D

A day full of myriad experiences - just like my life with K.