Somewhere along the line in this life, I seem to have given everyone the impression that I am too cheerful a person.  May be that is because the default expression on my face is a smile.  Well, that is because I find frowning takes too much energy.

But on a boring dull Saturday like this I want to be a grouch!

Sigh!

But that is so hard!

I walk into the house just wanting to go into my room and sulk …

DIL : (With a smile) Hellow!  How was office?

Me : Grmph!

Kid#1 : (Cheerily) Aur moti! Kee haal chaal?

Me : Creeping into my room : Mmmmph

Kid#2 : (Settled on my bed, watching TV) Yo Momma! ‘Sup? Ready for the weekend?

Me : (Giving up) Just wanna lie down a bit.  Can you turn off the TV and the light?

Kid#2 : Rubbish! Its Saturday night and you’re still young!  Partay!!!!

Me : Throwing myself on the bed with a frown …

All three galvanized into action

DIL : Boss given you a hard time?  Poor Ma! Shall we order take away?

Kid#1 : Here’s a vodka and orange juice.  I’ll make some chicken momos.  Just the kind you love.

Sigh!

I really wanted to sulk, groan and bitch ….

But its so hard to do that with a glass of vodka and a plateful of chicken momos made with so much love.

I know, I know

I’m spoilt

But before I can preen or count myself as blessed, I must remind myself …

They are probably congratulating themselves on the awesome bit of strategy they played on averting a huge “Poor tired and miserable Ma” sort of drama that I can stage.

Damn!

Indian Home Maker posted a blog post on a conversation she heard at a beauty parlour.  The ladies were talking about a man beating up his pregnant wife while the wife’s brother stood out in the balcony.

It really disturbed me.  No not because the man was behaving like a beast and a coward, and the brother opted out of the fight and stood outside – which means he kind of condoned the behaviour.  It is cheap I agree – but is there all there is to it?

It points at a deeper malaise in the entire scenario.  

It points at society sanctioned violence

It points at women being conditioned to accept this violence

It also shows that women are not respecting theselves and being confident or desperate enough to walk out of this situation.

It disturbs me because I was there some years ago.  When relationships break up, it leads to hatred, and it degenerates into violence, it I can understand how helpless the woman who is carrying the child from that relationship must be feeling.

People will stand by.  They will want you to compromise, so that all is right with their world, and you dont destroy their pretty picture of a perfect happy family.  People will even bully you so that you stay put in that violent atmosphere, and they can keep sympathising with you and let it continue.

I think it is up to the woman to make a decision.  I have a friend who is in one such relationship.  She is a PhD and lives in a small town where every one knows her and her husband.  He locks her up and goes out to work.  He sets her children to spy on her.  Now the kids tell tales on her to her husband, and watch her getting beaten up.  It is how they have been brought up.

She did not respect herself …. she did not value her own worth, and now she lives among her own people who have become the enemy.   She did not walk out when she could have taken the kids and moulded them to be better.

Now she does not know any better, neither do her three children.  This is the home they have built.  Its ugly and sick.

She rings up often asking for sympathy.  

Strangely (and I am sorry but not ashamed to say this) I do not have any sympathy for her.

Even God helps those who help themselves.

I am just a flawed human being.

One  Uno Ek

Me … The lady of the house, currently the cook, maid, dog-sitter, freelance writer, blogger, office worker

Two, Dos, Do

Sons, one vacationing in land far away, another giving is first year mech engg exam, and spending most of his spare time trying to hide work from me, and trying to build the wierdest combo sandwiches to help me

Three, Tres, Teen

Our dogs, who keep bringing muddy paws into the house and generally adding to the work.  They actively discourage any maid from considering our home a “safe” career option

Four, Cuarto, Chaar

The days I have spent without maid and live in help

Five, Cinko, Paanch

The number of bosses I currently have.  One is Mogambo, and there are four agents I regularly write for.  All of them are currently baying for my blood!!!

Six, Seis, Chay

Deadlines that I have right now, out of which some I have requested extension on

Seven, Sieta, Saat

Days till Kid#1 comes home and takes the dogs off my hands

Eight, Ocho, Aath

The shape of my body when this crisis happened.  Now it is …….

what do you think?

Still Eight.  Get real, there are no miracles on earth!  Bones ache, fatigue is a fact, but fat cells are stubborn beings.

Nine, Nueve, Nine

The figure of some of the cine stars which makes me go sour enough to curdle milk.  Yeah I know, them babies are implants, and that butt is liposucted, but even so!

Ten, Diez, Dus

They could be Bahane or Kahaniyan as per the movies.  But actually they are thousand.  Yup, a live in help I interviewed today demanded 10K as salary!  Said he could do Chinese and continental food.  I had to refuse, so I asked him to make sushi, he could not do that, thank God, so rejected him on those grounds!

10K?!  

Darn!

This is in response to Itchy’s tag, the number game!

Monday dawned bright … and in my view, insanely early

I stumbled into the kitchen, quickly chopped and threw some veggies, rice, masalas etc into a pan for a casserole and set some ready to eat chicken tikkas to thaw for Kid #2

Was gearing up for dusting and leaving for office when maid’s husband came with the news that she broke her leg

For one insane moment I nearly waylaid him to do my jharu poncha!  Nah!  Even I am not that insane, but I admit, I was soooo tempted.

I looked at the dogs and nearly wrung Kid#1′s neck (in absentia) for adopting T H R E E of them.  Big effin deal one or three, its all the same.  We are stuck!  Fed the fishes, washed the terrace, and the outer verandah’s while it was still cool. 

Then I fixed some sandwiches for Kid#2 to take to college

11 a.m.

Boss aka Mogambo rings up

Mogambo : You are on leave?!

Me : (looking at the poncha and my wet dirty pajamas, and wondering why folks have to state the obvious) Haanji

Mogambo: Why?

Me: Ji, I have no help at home.  So I am cashing my earned leave

Mogambo:  This is not done

Me: (considering that I have SIX whole months of E.L. un-encashed) I know boss, but I cant help it.

Mogambo: (Jadhoing bossgiri) Madam, when you join duty we must have a meeting about this!

Me (mentally taking deep breaths and reminding self that there is an economic slump, so I should not shove the cellphone even in imagination into certain regions) Jee Sir

He slammed the phone down and I attacked the floor with renewed ferocity

Here I admit I got carried away.  I was totally angrily enthusiastic and cleaned the whole darn place.  Kid#2 came back from college and faced a sweaty scruffy Mom scrubbing away to glory, and a squeaky clean home.

Mom you are insane

Me : Yeah?  Tell me something new

Kid#2 : What did you tell office

Me: That I cant come because the dogs have no one at home

Kid#2 OMG!! You did not!!!

Me: Yup

He shook his head and walked into his room looking at the watch and muttering, “She had a surgery and is still weak. I wish Bhai was here”

I walked into the bath muttering “Bhai is in Bahrain and we have a house and fishes and dogs.  The house can go stew, but dammit, the dogs need care”

I came out and he thrust a vodka (large, extremely large, neat on the rocks) into my hands and I gulped it down

He thrust a plateful of casserole into my hands, I ate and crashed.  Swear I did and I surfaced at 8 p.m. with Kid#2 checking if I was still breathing.  Yup he was poking a finger up my nose!

I got up, did dishes, cooked dinner, did (groan) dishes, cleaned kitchen and slept.

THIS WOULD NOT DO!!!!

I had to do JUGAAD

So Tuesday found me up at 6 am on the stairs desperately looking at any ‘kaamwali” looking female.  Yesss I was on the prowl.  This tigress had had enough in one damn day.  I accosted every likely candidate and finally got one woman to clean up for me.  She even (here I thank heavens!) DUSTED!!!!  It was an effin relief.  But I missed my office and its a/c and the fact that I would not have to move my tired butt.

I remembered one likely candidate …………

Someone who worked as a peon in some forgotten corner of the office

I pulled strings and got him to agree to baby sit the dogs for me.

Here I unashamedly admit I called in the favors I had done for him when he nearly lost his baby to kaala khansi.  In brief, I paid, and his baby lived.  Poor chap, even though he is scared of dogs, he agreed.

And Wednesday I went to work!!!!

Ahhhh blisss!

But Wednesday is another story …..

Tune in for the update

Same place …. Same saga …… Another day

I still havent got a live in

Ufff

How did you spend Dussehra?

I got up and did the laundry …….. manually.  Yes it means that I woke up at seven and was washing clothes till 12 noon.  My laundry list consisted of 5 double bed sheets, 2 double bed covers, 7 towels apart from small itsy bitsy stuff.

About 3 weeks ago my machine went kaput.  I have an AMC for the machine.  So I did not panic and just rang up the call centre.  They were efficient and sent me the complaint number by sms.  I was cool and thought they would come within 48 hours.  After a couple of days I again rang up.  They told me they have no record.  Huh, then how did they sms me a complaint number?  The person had no idea.  So I was given another complaint number and assured that they would attend to the complaint within 24 hours.  Well that did not happen either.  I again rang up and they kept assuring me that this would be attended the very next day.

One interesting thing I noticed was that every call centre guy or woman I talked to had a South Indian accent.  Do they have a North Indian call centre for South Indian complaints?  After much persuasion I was given the cell number of their Manager in Delhi – who never picks up his phone.  Three days ago one of their service engineers rang me up and told me he would be at my residence by 5 p.m.  I believed him – yes I do have blonde bimbette moments.

I am aching all over and looking like death warmed up.  Guess what, I should have taken the IFB service centre, call centre, Area Manager and who-ever else I could bundle up, stood them up instead of Ravan effigies and burnt them down.

This is not the first time this has happened.  My sons are telling me to take them to Consumer Court.  I would much prefer burning the bastards alive.  Needless to say I will never ever buy a fully automatic washing machine from IFB

I have a history with ditches … the bad kind.  When I was a kid, one of our neighbours grew a whole lot of baingan in her kitchen garden, and then distributed to harvest to all the families unlucky enough to live near her house (rather generously I might add!)  It did not go down well with us kids – who wants to eat baingan in various forms every single day.  So the entire tribe of kids got together one sleepy afternoon and we plucked all the damn brinjals and threw them into a small pond a largish ditch full of water and ran off to our various homes.  Of course our crime did not go unpunished.  The damn brinjals floated to the surface, and we got royally spanked.  Yeah, I hate ditches.

Recently, while I was getting our home constructed, I made a habit of driving early in the morning to the site and bullying the contractor and the builder.  Soon both of them made a point of disappearing as soon as they spotted my car.  The poor labourers did not have that option, and had to bear the brunt of my anger.  Soon they had their revenge.  Right in the front, where now we have our front lawn, they had dug a huge area, which was full of wet soil.  To avoid the muddy water, they had placed planks and bricks.  I walked into the house, and blew my top.  Those idiots had used cracked floor tiles and it looked ugly!  I raved and I ranted and walked out in a queenly huff…. ….. Yeah you guessed it, ……….. right into the muddy ditch – fully clothed, with my mobile phone, etc etc.  The labourers hauled me out, and while I was spluttering and trying to recover, they picked up a pipe and hosed me down.  Somehow, while blushing with embarassment, I stuttered my thanks and slunked off to my car, desperately hoping to avoid notice.  But there was no escape. The contractor, who I had not seen on the site for the entire week, suddenly materialised,  followed me to the car with a huge bundle of old newspapers, and said in (I am sure totally false sympathy) Madamji, the seat will get dirty, please sit on these papers!  Speechless, I just accepted the darn newspapers, dumped them on the seat, parked my ass on them and fled.  Damn ditches!!

The ditches have struck once more.  My office net is not working.  The authorities have woken up to the fact that we do not have adequate stormwater drainage – so the roads are all dug up, and somewhere in the damn ditches is my office internet connection.  I am suffering major withdrawal symptoms and its all because of the ditches!

I think I should get a pooja organised, to appease the Lord of the Ditches.  Some divine intervention is desperately needed

As a family, we have a full house. Moi, yours truly, the Lady of the House (also nicknamed Tantrum by her ungrateful spawn), the elder boy nicknamed Changez Khan by his younger sibling whom he bullies constantly , and who in turn has nicknamed the younger one Dustbin (since he is always hungry and can eat just about anything. There is The DIL (also nicknamed Jhansi Ki Rani) for the strength of her tantrums by her loving husband and mother in law. If this wasn’t full house, we have our pet brats/fur babies, two dogs, Jeannie, the German Shepherd aged 1 year and Piper, the dachshund, just 5 months old. Well, you get the picture? It is insanity 101. Added to this very interesting mix is our full time domestic help, a Nepali boy, who speaks Hindi with a generous dose of Punjabi, and insists that he does not know Punjabi. He assures us that he can only speak Hindi

In the background are DIL and the Nepali househelp

The dogs are wonderful. I was not much of a dog person until my sons started bringing home strays. I was quite a cat person. My ex once said in a nasty mood … “that is because you are catty!” … Oh big deal, he hated animals. I have a theory, people who cant relate to animals are incapable of love …. but I digress. There is no animal as selfless and loving as a dog. I can remember a time when my boys were clingy and wanted to feed me their half eaten soggy biscuits and candy. Dogs are born like that and they never outgrow that stage. Jeannie was about four months old when Kid#1 got Piper home. They took to each other at first sight. I think Piper thought Jeannie was his mother or something. Jeannie was amazingly patient with him.  Now its changed somewhat.  Jeannie is quite possessive and doesn’t like the competition, and since she is huge in comparision, she intercepts your petting. When any of us bend down to pet the dogs, she stands on top of Piper so that she gets all the caresses, and if he whines, she growls at him. That is true vintage sibling rivalry. Reminds me of my days as bratty elder sister as I described here.

They are a handful, and thank heavens our live in Nepali-who-speaks-Punjabi loves them to bits. Otherwise it would have been difficult.

Yes it is Kid#2's bed, and no I dont allow that, but who listens?

The most priceless thing Jeannie did was … no not her lovely gift to me of a half chewed body part of some indetermined animal … but her desperate attempts at not letting us go out of home on Diwali with an expression which said “You Loons, the world outside is going crazy. Just stay home and safe!!” while she kept pulling at our new grand diwali clothes.

Doggie bonding

Something has totally happened to me. I distinctly remember a few years ago that I would recoil at the mere mention of buying and owning a home for myself. I thought that once you owned one of these things, you really could not have a life. Every thing you earned went into repairs, renovations, furniture, broken plumbing, and paint jobs. My god, the commitment!. Any way, owning a house was what stodgy regular staid sane people did. I could not be tied down. That was then and this is now …

Well, I took a plunge and did the unthinkable (it must have been right when I was zoned out and thinking about what kind of legacy I would leave the kids … hmmm … too much marijuana in my smokes, what?) Needless to say I took the plunge and got myself a home in the rural pastures wonderful suburbia. It is spacious, away from the urban mess, but most importantly, it is a rite of passage into growing roots. I am one of the crazy people who can work for the same company for the last twenty years and live in the same town for the last 30 and still think of myself as a free bird who could pack and move out if things became unpleasant. Now I don’t have that option. I have committed the next 10 years of my life to living in this town and also to working my tail off to pay the loan. Now I will be thinking in terms of growing curry patta, tulsi and nimbu in my pocket kerchief garden. Hello domesticity ….

The point is that I have this image of myself as the global gypsy …. Wandering from place to place, free …. Unencumbered by baggage or kids. Me with a backyard and plants??? Oh wow!!! Funny how age changes a person ……