Growing up is never easy....

"All my friends think you look very young and cute, not your age at all!" said Toshali, in her now famous grumpy look. It was a regular post-school-hour afternoon and I was folding clothes. I turned and smiled. She shrugged and said, "You don't, I dunno why they say that? You have wrinkles around your eyes and laugh lines and quite a few of your hair has turned grey." My grin turned from happy to amused as I turned back to folding clothes.

You all must have gathered that I am speaking of my daughter who is a teenager now and conscious of every detail that she was just a few months back oblivious to. Topping her chart of annoyance is 'Moi'. It used to be her brother but now I reign supreme. "You behave like a teen Maa and that is why you are so popular!!" She was not done yet, I realised. Usually I just let her speak till she has said it all and then I say my part, if there is scope to say anything in my defense. Today I was stumped.

I sat down on the bed and looked at her. "What is it that has put you off?" I asked. "I don't like the fact that people think we are sisters. You must look your age Maa. The other mums all look their age." I seriously did not like the way this conversation was going. I explained to her that most of the 'other mums' that she was referring to had older children and hence were years older than me. She refused to listen. Turning her head away resentfully she said, "When we walk into a room together people want to talk to you, not me." My fuse started to tick. A dull throbbing ache starts at the back of my head and spreads willfully towards a full blown out migraine. There is a sense of helplessness. I know what she is feeling, I can empathise on one level. Yet I feel ill-equipped to cope with her.

The words that want to spring out of my mouth are reactive. They hang on the tip of my tongue begging to be let loose. She wants a fight, I will give her one, my reflex churns choppy signals to my brain. It takes immense will to keep a reign on my words. The migraine will go away, but the words once uttered will not return unscathed. I suddenly wish there were more clothes to fold. But the pile is done. All sorted, nothing left for me to do apart from facing her, talking to her and dealing with my fuse.

I tell her then of my adolescence, "I grew up in the presence of a woman whose beauty is admired even today. I grew up hearing people say, 'You have nothing of your mum's looks.' It must have hurt then. I was your age, my face was full of acne, I was not slim, neither fair compared to the friends I had. I had to smile. I have never confronted my mother about this. I don't remember holding a grudge against her, maybe I did sub consciously, but those times were different and parents were 'parents', not 'friends' with whom you could pick a fight." Toshali gets restless and I know it is time to change my track as it must sound 'preachy' to her. So I change gears and start again, "To begin with I am happy that you are honest and vocal about your feelings. I think that is praiseworthy." She looks stumped now. But she says that I am digressing from the subject and I allow myself a hint of a smile that promises ultimately to alleviate my migraine. So I let the smile linger.

I tell her that what she perceives as young is actually agelessness. It is a period in a woman's life when she is sure of herself, knows her strengths and accepts her weaknesses. When she has travelled equally, inwards than outwards. Her experiences glints from her eyes and smile through her lips. "What you call beauty is actually maturity, a face that is calm in its understanding of the world and poised in its knowledge.", I tell her also, "The only way to reach this ageless quality is to live life. Enrich yourself with as many experiences as possible. Even this talk that we are having today will reflect from your face tomorrow and give it a desirable quality." A part of me tells me she is too young to understand all this, and the other part says,"Try her." I speak as she continues to listen.

"I have to wait it out, you mean?", she finally asks. My smile widens. She did get the jist of it. "You can say wait it out, I would say live it, feel the joy, the pain, the love and the bitterness and one day when you are on your own, your face will be transformed. What is a face, but a mirror of your experiences!! What is it that holds a gaze and makes people want to talk to you... it is nothing but your willingness to talk back. I do look my age, it is age alone that transforms a precocious girl to an ageless woman." She smiles, plucks a grey hair from my temple and laughs. "You are old.", she says and winks as she leaves the room. Well well... what can I say? I let her have the last laugh.

My migraine didn't bother me. That was good enough for the day.

Brimming with...

I peep inwards
Doodle with  a child's crayon
Make pictures of times gone by
No oil, no canvas
No painter am I
Yet the pictures come out fine

I peep again
travel a few more years
lifting the sepia shrouds of
misty, foggy days
A conversation here
A little note there
A smile, a cuddle
Chuckles et al;
Soars my spirit today
As I lay on my bed
Parched today with a brimming past.

Memories revived,
I walk down the stairs
To my daily grind
Have to pack tiffins,
Ready breakfast.
Sudden flurry, a ball of fur
A forceful stop
A hug and banter
Endless licks and eyes! Those liquid pools..
There is someone
Today, with endless love
I am not alone
In the chores of a middle aged wife.
I am with Max

Yeah Balan, why didnt I have him before? But maybe this is the right time for me... :):)

I am drenched again

Max after his weekly shampoo

Filled to the brim
With a love
Unlike any other
 

Max is home

There is no rush like that of being in love. And all of us are in love with the six month old  pup we brought home last Thursday. It has been a week of wide grins and 'Awwwws' and cuddles and poop cleaning. Its like having a baby again.

Reactions...
Son: I really hope he likes me.
Daughter: I cannot believe I used to be scared of dogs
Me: Men are definitely not dogs! or rather Dogs are definitely not men. Can a man love like this? Ever?
Hubby: the family expands again.

And yes, with our first pup it does feel that after a gap of ten years our family is expanded with a gooey, warm feeling of love and being loved hundred times more. This is Max unwilling to move away from my bathroom door as I take my shower. Man? Really?? :)

Drench me

A woman of divine beauty
Hair, the colour of ravens
Eyes, an ocean blue
Showering on me like a tempest
Rain - is that you?

Beloved of the mountains
Mourning of the clouds
Lullaby of a young mother
Ringing through the house
Rain - of course that is you

Bathing the villages
Gleaming through the paddy
Adorning your lover
In hues of green
Rain - in the laugh of the farmer do I see you?

In the joyous rapture of children
In the puddles on the street
In the hurried steps
Of a beguiling teen
A shared umbrella
and a cup of tea
Yes indeed Rain that is you!

Update on the pet post

We have finally decided to bring home a Labrador Retriever pup from a breeder here. The pup is one of six delivered a week back. We will have to wait another six weeks before the pup can call our home its own.

The kids have decided to call it Bolt. Shadow as suggested by my son was vetoed by my girl. My husband  probably would have been happier with an Indian name, I am okay with Bolt.

Please write in tips for training and making the pup feel at home without over doing it. This will be my first time living with any other species than a human (apart from fish who live in tanks).

At times I still feel a bit scared of living in the same house with a pet dog and not knowing what it is trying to communicate. Any suggestions are welcome. Balan please help. I have time till August.

The pet-shop story

My son loves animals. His love does not discriminate between species. Equally fond of birds, cats, fishes and dogs, he attracts the stray ones like a magnet and they follow him around till it is time for him to come home.

He always nagged me about buying a dog for him, I resisted not only because I am scared of dogs and so is my daughter, but also because so far we lived in an apartment and I did not want to share that space with a pet. I see raised eyebrows don't I? Especially Balan!

Finally when we moved to this villa and had space enough inside and outside to have the much desired dog, there was no stopping my son. Kids can be quite tenacious as we all know. So is my son...

He: "Mom, so are we buying the dog today?"
Me offhandedly: "Soon"
He comes around and stands in front of me: "How soon?"
Me: "Are you sure you can take care of a dog? I really do not know anything about dogs."
He: "Of course I can, I know everything, I have to take him for a walk twice and play with him and give him his food and clean his poop and pee. I will also teach him to do his 'business' outside the house, but that might take some time and of course you must be accepting of accidents once in a while."
Me thinking 'wow where did he get all that stuff from, and why can't he get his school project information from the same source that he got this stuff from?': "Hmm, seems you did your homework on pets. So what breed do you want?"
He: "A Golden Retriever not older than four months."
Me: "Okay so we have to find out how to go about getting a dog here, it might not be easy."
He: "I know all the pet-shops in Muscat, let us go and check them out."
Me: "We will and now please go and do your homework."
He: "I have thought of a name, I will call him Shadow"
Me: " Do you want a male dog?"
He: "Yes of course, a she-dog won't play with me. She will always sit and watch TV like didi. It has to be a male dog."
Me: "Hmm. Homework"

Conversations like this happen more than twice in my house, always initiated by my son and contradicted by my daughter. Amidst this, I started to shed my inhibition to dogs. Probably it was the mother winning over the woman. My husband who likes animals as well but has never had a pet except fishes in a tank was roped in. He looked at my daughter incredulously.

She: "I don't want a dog, He will bite me."
He: "It does not hurt that much, I was bitten once by a stray dog and had to take quite a few injections. A pet dog will be vaccinated so you do not have to worry about needles poking you."
She: "You gotta be kidding me! Why do we have to buy a dog, why cant we just have plants and fishes?"
He: "We have to get a dog so that you get rid of your fear, now that is a good reason, if any."
She: "Will it be a big dog? I am ok with a tiny pup, by the time he grows up he will know me and won't bite me."
He: "Lets see."
She: "I will not clean up after him, I am making it very clear right now."

Finally after a somewhat mixed consensus on the issue the research started. Research for anything is my husband's forte. He got in touch with expats leaving and wanting to re-home their dogs, with breeders, with pet-shops and pet-clinics. Responses were quick to come and as quickly discarded by him much to my son's angst.

Son: "This way we will never be able to have a dog."
Dad: "For you buying the dog is the end but for me buying the dog is the beginning."
Son: "I don't care, beginning or end or anything in between I want my dog."
Dad opens a link and shows him a site: "Read this and tell me what you feel?"

This is the link that we visited,

Take a look 

If you have trouble opening the link from here please copy paste

http://muscatconfidential.blogspot.com/2010/04/dont-buy-dog-in-oman-another-example-of.html 

on your browser to read


An eye-opener to people like me and my children, but not so to many others who own and love their dogs in this country. The pet-shop mentioned in the above link is a very reputed shop here. However, this is not just the case with this pet-shop. This seems to be true for most such outfits in Muscat. Now that the research has crossed the ornamental stage of cleaning the poop and naming the dog, my son has realised that a dog up for adoption is a much better choice than ordering a pup from a fancy pet-shop. However much scared my daughter maybe of dogs, she has also realised that if we finally own a dog, it will be very hard to see it suffer and die.

We are still looking for a young pup who wants a loving home. When matters get serious, it's funny how prejudices melt away.

Charity is funded

The right balance

I have not vanished again, just been busy and therefore away.

We moved house. There was the whole gamut of packing, sorting, discarding followed by unpacking, sorting and hmmmmphs saying, " Shit, I shudn't have thrown all those dusters aways, they could have been handy here. What was I thinking?" 

Well thats one thing that happened and then I fell ill which was the other thing that happened. Probably because the kids have never seen me lying down during the day with a grimace, my son thought I was going to die and he made a bunch of promises to me about doing his chores, homework and stuff on time everyday. he also said that he would not fight with his sister. On being told that I am just a bit ill and will be up and about in a couple of days his reaction was, " Oh,so its not cancer huh?" The C-word scare has passed on from me to him, not that I am free of it, but he has it too, the all pervasive fear of C-strike.

Then there was the job that I loved and was so happy doing for the first two years and in the last year it had become progressively hard to digest. I finally convinced myself to leave. I chose to be happy and bored over being agitated and argumentative over issues that could not be resolved. here is the low down.

My last three months working for the company I joined when it was just conceived was a whirlwind of desperation, trying in vain to get my passion back. I was and always will be passionate about writing and hence about my readers. I joined a company that focussed on readers and left the company that had turned into an advert-based catalouge churner. Every company needs money, and in publishing, advertisement brings in the dough, there is no denying that, technically I suppose the company has always been an advertising company, but for the better part of the last three years, it didn’t feel like one. It was an ad company only in the sense that a good TV show is an ad company: having great content attracts advertisers. But then the focus shifted. I could not accept editorial being sold. Fights ensued and we stopped seeing eye to eye.

In one of the bitter fights with my GM he said a line that will stay with me. The fight was actually between me and the AGM - Sales, and we had to rope in the GM as neither of us was budging. It was the usual war between a piece that I felt we needed to carry and the sales team head wanted dropped and replaced by an interview of the CEO of an advertising company. After an hour of heated words my GM said, " Sujata don't be naive, I think it is high time you realise that even charity is funded. Nothing comes free." Well, I agreed to that line but could not accept to live with that ideology and hence decided to leave.

It is more than 15 days now that I have left my job as Head - Editorial. It feels good so far and I am happy to be writing what I want rather than writing what the advertiser wants. Charity is definitely funded and I am lucky to have a husband who is paying my bills unconditionally. :):)

Please write in your comments on how far we should allow advertisers to rule publishing.