Weekend crazy language

My children often complain that I am childish.  I always counter that I am child-like not childish.  I have innocence and simplicity and ……. GAAH I give up !  That sounds over sweet, which I most definitely am NOT!!!

Well, like they say, Growing old is mandatory, growing up is not!  Grown ups do not have any sense of fun, which makes life stressed, full of broken dreams, angst, bills and all the other curses of life on earth.  Tell ya Outer Space is much better.

Seems like none of us siblings grew up – ever.  When we get together, spouses get disgusted, children embarassed – and they try to ignore us – which is so difficult considering the loud guffaws and even louder repartee from our side of the living room!  Poor things, but not our fault!

Yeah some of us got together for a sibling pow wow.  As is the norm with us, sense and maturity flew out of the window and silliness prevailed.  Simply wunnerful

A few drinks down the line, the conversation got stuck on money. Now this can normally be a weep-fest or a whine whine kind of time.   It did start like that

COUSIN 1 : You know college kids are a pain in the butt!  Education, car, clothes, bills ……

COUSIN 2 : (Man after my heart!) Bill is a four letter word.  I love Uma Thurman because she did KILL BILL

ME : Hmmm, well she looked hot doing it too, almost made me Bi …..

COUSIN 1 : Pity “Money” is not a four letter word!

Me : Cash is …….

COUSIN 2 : ( I think booze had hit him by then) So is undy

We exchanged happy grins, since it reminded us of a game we used to play “Substitution” where we replaced one word with another for a day.  Used to drive the parents nuts, imagine calling a pencil “baingan bharta” for one whole day.

ME :  Apna Sapna Undy Undy

COUSIN 1 : Undy hai toh honey hai

COUSIN 2: For a Few Undies More

Me : Boo!  That was dollars not money!

Both cousins : Hey we can subsitute all Rupee Dollar Yen and such like with all undy type words!

Me (sensing a huge opportunity here) Put your undy where your mouth is!

Silence as they digested this one and acknowledged a winner!  I mean I am QUEEN of language aint I???? Smirk Smirk

Both looked at each other and grouped up against me! Dammit they always do that!  Been doing that for more than 40 years!

Both consulting with each other and saying : Sabsey bada UNDY!!!!!

The whole family, some 16 of them gathered around to check out what us old farts were up to …..  Bets were placed in the true tradition of the famiglia and sides taken …

The hourglass was set solemnly between the two warring parties, Them both together, me on my ownsome, drinks replenished  …….. rules set, every underwear synonym could be used and every money synonym too …

Me : Kaccha is the root of all evil

They : Kaccha talks

Me : Undy makes undy

OMG it went on and on!  I never knew money could be so much fun.  We keep getting so serious about the damn thing, mourning about the lack of it, grabbing at it, fighting for it!  Why not play?  Money really ought to be fun ….

We were getting drunk and sillier by the minute …..

Me : Chaddi is Power!  Long live the pink chaddi!!!

Them : Kaccha cant buy happiness, for that buy viagra !!!

Me : OMG! I am sooooo gonna blog about this!

Them : Yeah, like they say Jocks talks

Me : Yes it does!  But I’ll try to keep it “Brief”

People, I was declared the winner and got to eat the last dahi bhalla on the table!  

YAYYYYY

Examination Stories (Apni toh Paathshala, Masti Ki Paathshala)

Was going through Brown Phantom’s memories. Started a chain of memories for me

I grew up with siblings, all male, most of ‘em older than me. Which means I grew up as witness to wonderful capers all to be blamed on exams …..

One sibling was totally exam challenged. What aggravated the issue was that he was made much of by his Granny and Mom, the only male child followed by sisters. He fared badly in the exams and threatened to jump of the roof rather than show his report card. Needless to say the ladies panicked. My Ben Hur Uncle walked into the courtyard to see weeping Aunt and the boy on the ledge and got into the act. He pushed his bhabi into the room and locked the door. Then told the errant boy “Koodna hai, kood ley, main hoon na” {Wanna jump … go right ahead, I’m here to take care of you}
The boy stood for a minute, took stock of the situation, shrugged and replied “I wasn’t trying to scare you, I was just trying to scare them” and tamely climbed off the ledge ……..

My elder sibling had a friend who had flunked his boards umpteen number of times. He introduced me to the world of “pharras” or cheat papers. They were tiny, folded like Japanese fans and covered with minuscule writing. He hired my brothers to write his pharras for him. They subcontracted the chore to us young ‘uns for Ravalgaon toffees. We dutifully made the pharras copying all the answers from Kunjis (help books). Then the friend came, his coat lining was torn and the pharras tucked inside the lining at strategic points, while we kids watched with fascination. A soochi (key) was made of where each pharra was hidden. That was tucked into the seams of his tie. I kept thinking that if he lost that soochi or his tie, he was sunk!!!!

He barely made it, you know, just got 33%. We didn’t care. We got our toffees and the elder Bhais got their money

During our in-school exams our class was made to sit with students of higher classes. It was a nightmare for our school teachers! At one time 17 of us from the same family studied in various classes in the same school. They kept trying to shuffle us, but it never worked.

Once there was some theorem I could not memorize. I knew it would come in the exam and was almost in tears. The brothers tried to help me, but it did not work. At the last moment, one of my brothers slipped a pharra into my hand and said “Use this”.

I panicked, got this insane urge to pee, got hiccups …. u know the classic I wanna flee reaction …

Managed to walk and sit down at my desk. Sure enough that dratted theorem was in the question paper. Not being able to face up to the challenge of opening the pharra (he had shoved it under the dial of my watch) I attempted everything else. Once I had stopped trembling and my heart beat was some-what normal, I risked opening the pharra ……

In my terror I had worked myself into copious sweat (even though we lived in Imphal, Manipur) and the ink had run and blurred the entire pharra.

I did not know whether to laugh or cry …

That was a multiple choice question, and I easily attempted the other one …

My brothers were in splits when I told them what happened -

Ah well!!!

The mad world of childhood

This is inspired by the post Goofy stuff by Pal.  We were a bunch of hyper active, insanely imaginative kids.  School for us was tame ….. home was just base – you know to eat, visit the loo, change clothes.  Our life was spent in the garage+lawn/the roof/where ever there was scope for “interesting” activities.

• We had many childish demands to make of parents.  We had a mango tree in our lawn.  My father would point at the tree and say “When that tree starts bearing rupee notes, you’ll get it.  One day we dug the entire darn tree … very very deep, in our quest for money.  The roots got seriously injured.  The poor tree – a horticulturist had to be called to cure it.  Oh we did find a stash of marbles underground … wonder who buried that!
• We hated brinjals, and we had a huge crop growing.  So one fine night, we raided the kitchen garden, harvested the whole lot and threw it into the pond.  We woke up in the morning to find that the whole crop was floating in the pond.  Man!  The repurcussions were severe!  Really
• Mom and aunts went to the market one day and got lots of bottle gourd.  Every self respecting brat hates ridge gourd (Torai).  So we stole it and dug a deep hole in the ground and buried it.  The darn thing grew into hundreds of creepers!  We had so many torai to eat …. every darn summer! blech!
• We had an uncle who was a Ben Hur fan, who regularly organized fights between us to “help us get over our sibling fights” and he was a hot favorite.  I mean, we were such chamchas – since he was refree and he got to decide who won a particular fight.  Once the younger lot (four of us including me) felt that he had treated us unfairly.  He used an alum stone as after shave.  The stone mysteriously got some salt on it.  Ouch!  That really must have hurt him when he applied it in the morning.

Shucks I could write a book about stuff we did in childhood …..

 

May be I will!

Rites of Passage

I have got inspired.  I read two most hilarious blog posts on menstruation, one by a woman, and the other is a male view point on the subject.  Thanks Sue for pointing me in the right direction.  There is no doubt that men got lucky in this department.  The don’t have these rites of passage like menstruation, pregnancy, labour and menopause.  Well I also think that they don’t have our power, experience the joys of nursing an infant, and frankly we look good with or without clothes.  Also we have total black magic power on our men since our headaches, cramps, aneamia and hot flushes can make or break their lives.  I think the scales are tilted heavily in our favour.  Oh yeah, one more thing, we actually enjoy shopping.

My mother belonged to a generation that was taught to hide evidences of being a woman.  Even drying a bra was much cloak and dagger stuff, the darn thing had to be hidden under a saree or some other cloth on the clothesline.  I swear she must be dying a million deaths when she went to buy them.  When I reached puberty,  I was pretty clueless about what it all meant.  My social circle comprised of my male siblings.  I had no girlie person to share confidences with.  My mother dragged me into her room and locked the door.  Then she told me, in hushed whispers, while blushing deeply, that I was grown up now and would bleed for a week every month until I got pregnant.  I was not supposed to talk about this and from now on I would not play with the boys and would sleep with the babies.  I looked at her totally confused.  Far reaching changes were being made in my life, and it was scary.

Anyhow, after two years of this episode, I became friendly with another girl in my class.  We started sharing confidences and we got into an argument.  Both of us had Science in school and were aspiring to be doctors and engineers (was there any other profession?).  I insisted that we would have the period only until we got pregnant, after that – chutti.  My mother did not tell me that one got reprieve only for the duration of pregnancy you see.  She took unholy delight in correcting this misconception.  She had two elder sisters in medical college, and she hauled me by the collar and took me for an intense re-education programme conducted specially for me by her didis and their class mates.  Quite an enlightening experience.

Having lots of brothers to grow up with can either make you the shy feminine retiring sort, or it can make you an aggressive (fight back for survival) kind of a creature.  I became the latter and also developed a shocking sense of humour.  So when I read this blog about using human milk for ice-cream I simply loved it.  It has just the right amount of grossness for it to be side-splitting hilarious.  When Kid#1 was born, my elder cousins were scattered all around the globe in various colleges.  They all decided to come meet the “little man” at the same time.  Kid#1 was 6 months old when this happened.  They were fascinated by him, and also by me.  ”Oyyyyyeeee, you look like a little lady” they would remark.  They were most impressed by the way I carried him around and handled him and also the diaper duties, even though they made the most gross jokes about it.  Most of all, the fact that I was suckling the baby freaked them out.  I was discrete about it and would turn my back to them or go into an empty room and lock the door.  OMG,  the jokes they cracked!  Their entire stock of jokes was about milk booths and production factories.  Over the weekend, they decided to irritate me by asking me to make tea at every given hour – oh wow! the tomboy could make tea.  Uff, I finally had enough and stamped my foot down and threatened to make them tea with my milk, and insisted that they be brave enough to drink it.  What was good for my baby was good for them.  They backed off!  Phew!

Oh!  Now I am at the peri-menopausal stage …. or as my brothers quip MEANO – PAUSE.  They aught to know better, my sister in laws have been giving them hell I guess with hot flushes and mood swings.  Today one of them sent me a link to this delightful musical with the caption “I know you’re growing old, heh, Celebrate the Change”.  Thanks Kanav Bhaiyya, thanks a lot.  Do you remember the day you opened your drawer and found a dead frog stinking of formaldehyde?  It wasn’t Neeraj Bhaiyya who put the frog there, it was me…… just to let you know.  You were so nasty about not letting me play marbles with the rest of you that day – so I just evened the score.  So what if I waited 30 or 35 whole years before ‘fessing up ?

Happy memories my dear, and happy Diwali

Some school time memories

That tag I did yesterday stirred up some school time memories.  So here goes …..

I must have been about 12 or 13.  I had a whole lot of brothers, one real and about 9 cousins that I grew up with.  It was wonderful for me, when I was a kid, since I always had playmates, and the rough and tumble of boys’ games suited my tomboyish soul.  However, I grew up and started sprouting breasts.  I was unceremoniously dropped from the team and ordered to behave like a girl.  I hated it and also my stupid brothers.  I thought girls were sissy, and did not like them at all.  So to nurse my wounded pride and to get over their betrayal, I became an introvert and got into the world of books in a big way.  

There was this boy in my class who made my life a living hell.  He was tall for his age, and very very popular.  I was decidedly nowhere near his social status.  I was a geek and hurt many male egos with my over-achieving scholastic ways.  The girls thought I was a snob, and I could not stand their catty sissy ways.  I had too many brothers in the same damn school for any boy to even consider being friendly with me. All in all it made me pretty friendless.

Soumya was a likeable kid, the class clown. I think he had ADD decades before Tare Zameen Par made it fashionable.  He couldn’t sit still and drove all the teachers nuts with his constant wise-cracking and fidgeting.  So they did what any good teacher would do. They sat him beside me, the class swot, in hopes my goody two shoes behaviour would rub off on him.

It didn’t.

He took every opportunity to make fun of me, pull my proverbial pig-tails and make me the butt of his jokes. I was the angrezni, the chashmish (I did not have specs but since I was bookish …..) and the worse of them all, the girl who was flat as a board so he called me “Four-by-Four”.  The damn nickname stuck.

How I hated him. I would see him and cringe and pray every day he would fall ill to some mysterious disease and have to drop out of school thereby never having to sit beside me and needle me with his jabs through out the day.  I would be depressed, sorely tempted to get my elder brothers to bash him up – but I never did.  I was not speaking with them so I endured it.

I also endured it because sometimes,  when no one else was around, he was completely different. He was sweet to me and thoughtful and almost apologetic for his incessant public torture. It made him almost likeable. Almost.

For two years I was stuck with this boy, the boy who made me the laughing stock of our class on more times than I could ever keep count. Then thankfully, his father got transferred to another town.  On his last day in school he walked up to me and said “Hi”.  I just nodded, holding my breath wondering what verbal parting shot he would fire.  I cringed and reminded myself that this was the last class in which I would have to see him or hear his nasty voice.  Man, was I glad to be rid of Soumya, who would tell the class in a loud voice “Ritu does not wear a bra, she is so skinny” or “Ritu’s tiffin spilt on her skirt hahahha.  See there are haldi stains” and tell other girls in my class “No one wants Ritu as his girl friend”. I waited knowing that this was the end of the Soumya chapter.

“Ritu, I just want to apologize to you for all the teasing I did to you in school,” he said in his deepening man voice.

I just grunted.

“I want you to know, I really like you. I’ve enjoyed sitting next to you for the last two years. I wish we were better friends.” I looked at him like he had just grown horns out of his head and stood there tongue-tied. “I only teased you because I had a crush on you.”

Then he walked out of the door, turned around and smiled at me and said, “I teased you to get your attention.” Then he turned around, headed towards the school compound and out of my life.

At the time I was seriously annoyed. I could have thought of a dozen different ways he could have shown his affection for me, none of them which included drawing a plywood piece on the blackboard and naming it Ritu, snooping into my school satchel, peering at the back of my shirt to check whether I was wearing a bra or not.

But I’ve grown older and wiser and I look back on the memory of that smiley curly haired boy who loved his comic books and I see what I was blinded to in the midst of my youth.

Soumya  loved me. He was just a jackass about it.

As for me, life started improving after he left.  I had the desk to myself without having to be careful about it slamming down on my fingers.  Even tiffin would not spill so often which makes me suspect foul play.  I started filling out.  One thing remained the same – I never got along with the girls in my class.  Actually two things – I never got included in my family team of all boys.  These two changes happened in college where I met lovely chilled-out women who I am still friends with, and my cousins started behaving less like chowkidars and more like pals ……. possibly because they wanted to date my female friends.

For Dony, on Raksha Bandhan

He was exactly 361 days younger than me. He was the apple of my mother’s eye. He was the SON in our typically Punjabi family, the heir, the prince. He was the person on whom I practiced my skills of bossing over hapless males. When we were little kids, he was the one who would follow me around, and get blamed for most of the breakages in the house. I being a girl would not be suspected. He would pull the dog’s tail, but would also share his meal with the pet. He would sit for long hours on the steps of our home, telling fantastically wild tales to the dog, and the dog would look at him adoringly and swallow each one of them hook line and sinker. He also blinded my dolls and pulled out their eyelashes. Oh no, I did not mind it, I hated dolls and loved books. Once he threw my Enid Blyton into the pond, and I knocked him over and sat on him beating him up.

When we grew up, he hated all the boys who would befriend me, and would mimic them mercilessly. He grew stronger and larger, and it became harder to beat the hell out of him. He was the only one in my family who could carry a tune. He had an awesome sense of humour and a ready answer for anything. He was also someone who attracted trouble and accidents. That never seemed to quench his spirit. When he met with an accident and we weren’t sure that his eye would be okay, he put a patch over the eye, picked up a bottle of Old Monk and limped on his fractured foot and said he was the Pirate from Treasure Island. He would encourage us to make jokes about his being accident prone. He was my very handsome younger brother.

When he was 23 years old, the joke turned sour. That accident was his last one. They brought his body back, lifeless. My elder son kept nudging him and asking him to wake up. It was the first time I was faced with death, and was devastated. There would be more in the coming years – but this was the first, and it was something I took personally. I was angry with Death and with God. It took me a long time to recover. I think my mother never did. My father went from being a participant in the game of life to a spectator.

I have never talked about this, never written about it … but there is something about blogging – it makes one open up. So this Raksha Bandhan, I hope and pray for you, my sweet younger brother because I am sure that you are reincarnated somewhere. Where-ever you are – may you have the happy and long life that you were cheated of in the time you lived with us.

Sibling Rivalry Part 2

Parenthood sucks …. it is a big swindle and when I signed up, I did not get to read the small print. Remember the thrill one got when the infant in the tummy kicked? Well, that was the beginning, these sweet little people come into your world, make you fall totally in love with them and then, wham!!! They kick serious ass. Of course they have a lot of practise … they’ve been feuding against each other all their bloomin lives. We parents dont stand a chance … we got married and drifted away from our siblings and the war zone … we are flabby, out of shape and out of practise. Then they want us to be judge and hand out punishments to them. When they grow up – they complain that you were partial to the other sibling. Idiots – all I ever did was to ensure that you did not kill each other while in my care!!!

When I was a kid, fights with my brother were constant. We kicked, we teased, we shoved, we called each other names, and we rolled over and over on the ground punching each other as hard as we could. It is a wonder that we did not kill each other. Many of our fights started in our backyard. In my excitement to win, my yelling grew so loud that the whole neighborhood knew we were slugging it out. My mother wanted me to be a lady – poor thing, and she was so embarassed.

When Kid #2 arrived, Kid#1 was ecstatic. He wanted a puppy … but Kid#2 would do. He was the loving, doting elder brother, but could be a bully. Kid#2 knew instinctively that he could not match in size or strength so he became sly and whiney. One day, (when they were 9 and 1 years old respectively) Kid#1 came back from his Tae Kwon Do practise totally exhausted and passed out on the couch. Kid#2 crawled up to him and started punching him and trying to pull his hair, all the while gurgling and laughing away. He was in infant heaven. Yeah baby…. revenge is sweet

Ex left when Kid#2 was two years old. Kid#1 elected himself to be the Daddy figure and Kid#2’s total attitude was “WTF, he ain’t my Daddy and I am not going to listen to him” which led to total bloodshed. I never understood what the entire freak-out was about until recently when I saw similar dramas taking place between our two dogs. By the way the similarities between doggie sibling rivalries and young boy sibling rivalries can really be striking. I guess it stands to reason because we all, humans and dogs alike, want the same things—attention, praise, affection, tasty food … and we all get a little out of sorts when we don’t get those things or when we feel someone else is getting more than their fair share.

Kid#1 tried to pursuade me to drop Kid#2 on the floor when he was 10 days old – just to see what would happen. For one whole year, anything that broke in the house was because “Baby did it” even though junior could not walk. Calling each other useless,loser and a waste of space was kind of normal for them, and polite. The thing is that I got to be the good guy … until now. Now they gang up against me, and I dont even have any one to deflect the punches

Kid#2 : (Watching me play Spider Solitaire) Mom, you’re pretty good at this arent you?

Kid#1 : Yeah, she has all the time in the world at office – you know to look pretty and play Spider Solitaire, so plenty of practise

Kid#2 : (In pretend impressed tone) Nah, don’t you know our Mom is a blogger too

Kid#1 : What do you call it – working hard or hardly working?

Yeah whatever … why dont you guys go try to kill each other … and lemme play or blog?

Sibling Rivalry

Aaaah, it really brings back memories. My brother, a year younger to me, would blackmail me into doing his home work and then bash the shit out of me for coming first in class. I was no sissy either. Being female, there used to be a plot in the revenge I would extract. The funniest thing I ever did to him was waiting for the rain to cover this enormous pot hole (which he didn’t know about of course). One day my dream came true before the road repair dudes found it. Then I dared him to ride his bike as fast as he could through the puddle. He looked at me in distrust (I really don’t know why! ). So I called him a sissy and that did the trick. He hit that puddle full force, then found the pothole….his cycle stopped and he kept going with his arms splayed out!!! It was comical. I laughed so hard. He ran home before I could intercept him, and snitched. Got a good old fashioned butt whippin for that one!!!!! Ooooh the memories

Honestly he was such a sneaky pesky brat. He once found me in a not so nice situation (which he wouldn’t have if he weren’t snooping on me) and threatened to tell our parents. I totally lost it and the fight started in the back lawn ….. continued into the house and spilled into the front yard. The servants and the neighbour hosed us down with a pipe. He was like totally cowed down, covered with scratches, bite marks ….. I had a black eye, a bloody nose, my T Shirt was torn, and I was still bashing the shit out of him in jeans and a bra!!!!! To paraphrase one of my uncles who would routinely refree the fights we cousins had with each other —- he must’ve been a Conan and Ben Hur fan

“Attack the opponent, crush the enemy, kill them, make them flee, and hear the lamentations of their women A A A A K R A M A NNNNNNN!”

Sibling Rivalry ……… I spaced my own two sons – there is an 8 year gap between the two of them. I thought it would make the going easier. But it does kick in early. I really don’t know who has the advantage on whom. Kid #1 is fitter and stronger physically but simpler – Kid # 2 is larger, sly, and a snitch. So I guess it is evenly matched. Who needs TV when you have live entertainment like that to enjoy?

Kids now a days watch a whole lot of wrestling, know things like choke holds, arm locks and such like stuff, but good old fashioned dangal is beyond them after a certain point. I never had to rush them to the emergency ward. My two brats broke the bed, covered it up with the mattress, and “forgot” all about it. When I sat on it with my cup of tea in the evening after work, I sank into it and scalded myself with the tea. I yelped in pain and the Ba@#$!ds ran in, looked at me and laughed and laughed and laughed.

Of course now they are adults and content themselves by passing sarcastic comments on each other, or walling themselves up in stony silence. What do you know, soon they will end up respecting each other and actually calling each other Bhai Sahib instead of unprintable names.