You don't scare me no more big city

Maine blog mata se mannat maangi thi, agar London se sahi salamat laut ayi to ek post likhoongi. Hence this post.

Ok let's start from the beginning :) I joined this new place. They recently started doing induction programs for new starters. The firm is biggish and located all over the UK the events are held in the capital London . I had joined weeks prior to getting the invite to attend the induction event I was not sure how to respond . There is always the option to decline an invite of course. I checked with my manager. The irony was he was new to the firm as well having joined a couple of weeks before me and at the point I went to ask him he was booking his tickets to the induction he has been invited for. He told me to go ahead . I went ahead and booked. Later I learnt from a colleague how she had kept declining the invites and ultimately needed to take just a 2 hr video learning . She recommended the path to me. But you know Murphy? The fellow who said if something can go wrong it will? In my case it is 100% assured it will and to top it, it will snowball into a more ginormous problem. I have lots and lots of examples which warrant a separate post I guess.

Now a little information about me. I am a typical small town girl. Big fast cities scare me. Might be the reason why I have never ventured to Mumbai . I am not into quaint idyllic rustic places either. They bore me till I am suicidal. A place like Hyderabad or BBSR works brilliant for me- just the right mix of modern and tradition, pace and rest. London is big, fast, busy busy busy. The best means of commute is the underground called the tube which requires some map reading skills. I do not have my left and right correct. Imagine reading maps! K loves maps and the tube and London . I asked him to find the detailed itinerary for me. He hovered on the laptop for some time and came up with his commandments. His directions:- come out of the train station, take the steps going downwards they will lead to the underground , see your station , take appropriate train, get down , follow people in suits! I swear that is exactly what he said . Talk about being helpful. 

Anyways I did my research . As best as I could. Haggled some co- workers about any details, prayed and set off. On D-day I reached Leeds station on time and train set off. Read 10% of my book. Reached London , checked with help desk for direction to the tube and got there straight. Huh. Pretty straight forward . I went on and started reading the map. Really intently. It was a bit difficult but I had a fair idea of what to do next. There were no crowds of pulling jostling, pushing or pulling me. It was utter calm. Further down the road there was an abridged map for my area which gave me a chance to verify my earlier inferences( which were miraculously correct). Boarded the tube, emerged in the station close to the event. Remarkable. I was lost in the biggish station. Well they are called help desk for a reason and I got my answers straight up. I emerged on my street but as per K's advice there were not a lot of people in suits. Its summer you see. My Google maps was also acting up. Then I saw a group of confused people checking their phones and heading  in one direction . I followed them , they were going somewhere else but I could see my destination. Hurray. Boo ya London . You don't scare me. 

The day was strange with lots of strangers I was forced to interact with. We were supposed to network but if I was into networking what was I doing in IT? Duh! The event finished before time, I could avoid the office rush hour, take the return tube and get home. Finishing this trip has been like finishing an exam. Boy!

(Z)ebra

Of course :P 
And I am done you freaking alphabets :D 

(Y)earning

Does your heart desire something really badly? You used to have something readily available at your disposal and now it seems unattainable. The urge for that   can gnaw your psyche. 

For me parwal tops the chart. It had been 6 years since I ate the vegetable. Back during my working career at Kol when I was dependent on the cafeteria at work for my meals, parwal ruled the roost. It was the ONLY vegetable cooked during summers along with cauliflower being the only one cooked during winters. I used to be sick of parwal. Like how much of one vegetable can you have? There are so many other summer vegetables - but no the chef had a love affair with parwal. I used to hate it so much, that when I  used to come home, I would bar mom from cooking that. It is one of the vegetables which is to my dad's liking. He does not like many of them, but this cheeky veggie made it to his good books. So when I abolished it, he was not a very happy man. But his elder daughter came only for so many days and he gave up. Hence I never consumed the vegetable anywhere else but my office cafeteria. My next stint was at Hyderabad and I saw some glimpses of the vegetable - though not much. I was surely happier.

After marriage I moved to Chennai. But something insidious happened before marriage. During one of the festivities organised as part of the marriage rituals, there was a feast at home. One of the items on the menu was potolo rasa. I am not sure if this is the authentic recipe, I have no idea of cooking parwal at all, because by the time I got into cooking I was kinda into a full blown hateful relationship with it. Coming back to the point, the dish that was cooked at home, was oh! I don't have words. It was something that could convert a meat-eater to be forever vegetarian. I was in love. Madly in love. I vowed to cook that vegetable every week in my soon to be new home. Luck strike 1. Chennai and parwal had not met each other! Interesting. I was not sure how come this green thing had not made its foray into a vegetarian heartland. I started missing the it. Now when I went home, I demanded to have the vegetable. Stroke of luck 2, for some reason or other, it would not be available. The entire time I was in Chennai, I never got to eat it, be it at home or away.

After coming to the UK, we started getting our Indian vegetables from a local store that stocks international foods. As is the theme of my life, the only veggie that was missing was - yea - parwal. (Strike 3)  Boo hoo! Recently we even chanced upon a site that delivers vegetables straight from India. We hunted the elusive one and it said that there is a ban on it till August 2014. Seriously?! (I have stopped keeping count of the knock out punches I am being given in my Pursuit of Parwal.)  Not all was lost. Mummy was coming here. Definitely she could smuggle some of those greenies.  Not a lot, just a kilo. She was all set. Had even purchased the consignment. Now she had to take a domestic flight till Delhi and then the international one. A day before her travel, a well meaning acquaintance made us aware that the baggage limit had been reduced to 15 kilos (or something like that). So, though she had an international allowance of 30 kgs, she had half of it for her domestic flight. A lot of vital stuff were ditched and my precious was also one of them!!!! 

It has been 6 years since I have been clean of the vegetable. Someday little green one, you and I shall be one. Till then the heart yearns for thee.

(X)Y

The chromosomes that make a man. I do not know many men closely except papa and K. There are many aspects that I admire about the other sex of our species. 

The first and foremost bring their ability to be single minded. I like the way they can switch off from the entire world and concentrate in the task at hand. It does not matter if the task is filing a report, completing a piece of code, watching the final over of a match, installing a new app or completing a level in a game. They give nothing but their 100%. They may pretend to hear a colleague  crib about office politics or the missus complain about the prices of onions. Their heart, mind and soul is into what they are doing. Duniya jaaye tel lene. They have no pretensions about being able to multi task. They can't multi task and they don't multi task. Once at my previous work place, the men were talking about how much their wives needed sleep. They kept swapping stories about how their wives could not function without 'n' hours of sleep. I was the only girl in the group, and I totally agreed that women needed their sleep. That's when one of them honestly  said, 'That's because women do so much more.' I think that is the first ever and maybe only admission by a man that women do so much more ;). I agree that a woman does lots more, many a times at the cost of her health and well being. I am seeing now, how the relentless work by my moms and aunts, is resulting in depreciating health when they are reaching their 50s. A little bit of nature in the form of hormones and what not is to be blamed. They still have to pack in a lot of work in the form of care of grandkids and aging parents. I feel, they need to take much better care of themselves in their middle age.

Oops, I was supposed to go gaga over men. Ok next point. They keep personal and professional totally separate. Heaven hath no fury like a woman scorned . It applies to women in all areas of life. Criticising a woman's work might the easiest path to get into her bad books. Decimation is around the corner :P With a man maybe not.  There are some who are quite touchy about their professional work, but I reckon they are a bit more chilled out than women. Men are totally detached from anything that mildly relates to home. They may not budge from their seats even if the house is on fire, a little credit is due to their attitude of giving everything their full attention. A woman will be guilty of thinking about the menu for dinner, the sale in the local boutique or a French manicure right in the middle of work. If there are kids, the more disjointed the thoughts.

Have you seen a man with a remote? Its the picture of perfect happiness. I find men's love affair with the television annoyingly cute. If you want to drive a man crazy, hide the remote. A man's love for the tv remote is the stuff of true emotional attachment. When it comes to the remote, it's a man's world :)  

Well, most of these observations are from what I noticed about my dad and K, so they might be a bit stereo typical. So what do you think about the (XY)s in your life? 

(W)hoa!

I succumbed to mom-pressure and got my first. It has been a very different experience. I feel conscious. I feel different too. I hope I am not walking in a funny way which would make the change more obvious. I am more of the conventional girl who prefers comfort over style. I was persuaded by the plea that some styles suit better when we are young(ish). 

It is not 100% comfortable but I definitely feel taller - taller by 4 inches. Why you ask? Cos I got my very first pair of stilettos. :D  

(V)aibhavi

What else did you think I was going to write about? Who's Vaibhavi? Well that’s my kid. She is called lots of other things like Vibha(which I thought would be pronounced Veebha but has ended up being pronounced like Viva in her nursery :(  ) , Chumki, Chiyaa, Tubi and many more. Naming her Vaibhavi was not easy to start with.

 

When I was expecting, we used to have name-brain-storming sessions. K, mil and I would fling names at each other. No name calling though :P If it was going to be a boy, the name was decided. K and I had  unanimous vote on it. Mil, my parents too gave their go ahead. But what if it was a girl? Our mythology and history abounds in strong male characters. Hence getting our hands on a boy's name was a cake walk. But for a girl, it was such a challenge. We also had this wish of K to accommodate. K's name begins and ends with the same character (K), my name also begins and ends with the same character (A). My mil and sil's names also begin and end with an A. Hmm.. who would have thought that. So K kinda wanted the girl's name to begin and end with an A. We kept looking and looking and looking. We browsed friends' names in Fb and our phone book. Some we considered, but then eliminated for some reason or other – for instance, some names did go with the surname the kid was going to have (The surname being the first name of K as is tradition in Tamil households) Some names did not have a neutral feel, we did not want the name to be type cast into either being from Tam-land or Oddu-land. We wanted a degree of neutrality there. Once we had given up these sources, we started swimming through names, whatever we could think of. Most of the names that came up as a part of this exercise, were rejected because we knew someone mean who was bearer of the same name! The horror of horrors. That led to the death of the initial requirement of the name being from A to A.

 

We gave up A. We tried any name with the regular expression {characterx}{Some characters}{characterx}. Many characters were eliminated, actually most characters were eliminated. We were left with E and I. Huh. Brick wall. What next? Ditch the whole starting and ending with same character funda. Lets break the rules, take off the shackles and go free flow. Hurray. Easy peasy. In fact easier said than done. It was nearly the same scenario with a gazillion restrictions. Mil started saying the 1000 names of Goddess Durga (I guess) and suggesting the name. We kept rejecting. K went old school (very old school ) and started digging names of great grandmas. Hmm.. well I did not want my girl named something which rather be a password. Though I was fighting K's retro theme, I suggested the name Vishalakshi. It is the name of one of my friends's mom and I kinda like that name. K and mil loveddddddd it. Weird. I somehow get a bit fazed by out right approval. I like a bit of a fight instead. The name was good. Mil loved it because it was some Goddess's name. Went with the 70s feel, but there was one little problem. You know how these 2000 kids are? Even OK is K for them and words like TTYL and IMHO are used with abandon (I have to look up wiktionary to find the meaning of these abbreviations). So Vishalakshi was certainly going to be Visha. Now Visha is not a very nice sounding word – in Hindi the word means poison. It also had the risk of becoming Visa(not that Viva is any better now, but who knew what the world might throw). So I raised an alarm. Mil and K agreed, apparently the Tamil word for poison sounded similar. Hah -  a country united by poison :P Thus was the retirement of the very nice sounding name. But the fascination of the letter V caught on. If you have a name with V you can have a jazzy signature-now the kid could thank her parents for something in the future (if she was creative enough). I like letters with strokes – Z, V, K (remember Mask of Zorro? The Z he makes with the sword? ) They give much better signature scope than say and I, J or O. So I started racking my brain. And I stumbled upon the name Vaibhavi.

 

K loved it. Mil liked it. Mom and dad liked it too. My granny thanks to watching all those dance shows on tv was reminded of Vaibhavi Merchant! If you chose to go that route, I quite like Vaibhavi Merchant :P Now with all these people liking it, I started getting my reservations again. But a tired and battle weary K had no stamina to carry on. He put his foot down and stated – If it’s a girl her name is going to be Vaibhavi. The man of the house had spoken, and thus was named the kid of the house.

 

Sorry kiddo, nothing as interesting as Gogol for you :D :P

 

(U)phill Task

Don't worry people I ain't  no polar bear to go into hibernation. I was very hard pressed for time yesterday. The kid had fever, I had a certification exam today (I cleared it, thank you very much :D) and being Sunday there was the whole preparation for the week to be done. But I had to post something, anything. Again I cheated my way out :P Ah and one well meaning reader who did not take the quiz had the audacity to ask me of the results! So here you go - 

There was exactly 1 reader who answered. (S)he (I think I can hazard that pronoun ) reads my blog every day, because she kinda likes it (see no coercion there!) and finds the blog funny. She enjoys reading yet another detail about me (in spite of knowing me so well already). The family posts are her favourite and she does recommend this space to everyone she meets (Is'nt that chweet). Some socio politico posts would be appreciated and I come across as extremely talented (Ahem ahem).

Anyhoo apart from this 1 reader, there is I guess no one who cares a bit about Cherrie (sob sob) Since I do not have a wide clientele of readers, I am going to write about a pretty graphic and morbid topic. I was supposed to write about it yesterday. Then as I stated the time just slipped away and I was left with a one liner. So whats it going to be about today? Any mom with a toddler struggles with this aspect I guess. You guessed it potty training. Now all you happy singletons can look away and go back to whatever fun stuff you were doing. Hah thinking clearly I do not have such a wide variety of readers, so who am I kidding?

Coming back to my case, my m and mil were both very zealous about potty training. Since the young age of 6 months, there have been attempts to get the little one to 'eliminate' outside. Technically they are too young to ask for a loo and hence the term elimination. I read up all sorts of articles - lesser use of diapers, lesser pressure on mother earth to churn through all the plastic;  as a con making the young ones eliminate outside might result in them feeling pressurised. From experience I can say, kids know how to avoid pressure mighty well. They are fully qualified to give parents the royal ignore. So I tried to get her to wee and poo outside. Boy  it was messy business. Keeping an eye on her moods and moves, keeping a tab on time and taking her every hour or so, the disappointment of not hearing the sweet tinkle and the agony of wetting herself minutes later (ARGH!) Slowly the kid did start getting used to whatever mom was trying to do.  Sometimes to humour me, she would use the toilet very adeptly. Other times, I feel to smite me, she would deliberately run away and grace the carpet. I had totally gotten rid of diapers at home. Only during nights and when we stepped outside would I  use it. Daycare brought in a whole different arrangement. Since she was in one of the younger rooms, where there were kids from the age of 12 months, they were all diapered. This helped her unlearn all the good stuff her mom had taught over a year or so. (Darn!) Making her use the loo at the home was starting from scratch all over again.  I  felt as if I was repeating a year in some course :( Boo hoo.

Thankfully, in 4 months time she moved to a room with bigger kids. In the first meeting, when her key person asked  if there was anything I would want them to concentrate on I jumped and screamed POTTY TRAINING. The key person was aghast and seeing my frightening enthusiasm had to acquiesce *Mwahahahaha* She started taking real small teeny tiny itsy bitsy baby steps. She asked me to get pull ups. Now from all the well meaning journals I had read, they all agreed that pull ups are no different from diapers and they did not help in any progress. But who was I to argue with the Key  Person? So next day I got my truck load of pull ups. Allegedly the pull ups make it easier for the kids to get to the toilet and sit by themselves and come back because of the way they are structured (they do not have those Velcro tabs . Hmm  ok. Point taken. One day the KP came and told me that she had used the toilet and done a wee there. After some days, she was keen to proceed to keep the kitten without pull ups as well. We stocked up on pants and kept our fingers crossed on accidents. There are days which are accident free then there are others. Encouraged by all this, I have started keeping her off the diaper during night as well. In the span of a week, I would say my success rate has been 40%. Not good, but not too bad either.

This has some how been the most challenging aspect of the little birdie's upbringing. There were aspects like weaning, self feeding, self sleeping, separation anxiety and what not, which have settled down.  She has shown her pattern with respect to these aspects. It  has been proved that I was worrying unnecessarily. But this elusive potty training has been beating me since August 2012. I know, she wont be 13 and still in diapers. But what if?! Eieeekssss!