Dear Godji....

Is it even possible to wipe this expression off his face? Yeah...he is at his expressive best during meal times!! Godji up in the sky!!!! Are you listening?? When will meal times cease to resemble a battle field? :(



Yours,
A very tired mother of kutu.

Musings at the study table

Scene: Homework time in the kutu household. Amma and kutu at the study table.

Subject under study: Hindi. ka,kaa,ki,kee....ch,chaa,chi,chee.... and more such profoundly interesting things to be written out by the highly unwilling brat!

Amma: Kutu....idhanu "ee" ki maatra. "Cha" inde aduthu oru standing line pinne oru half circle varachu renduneyum join cheyanam. (draw standing line near cha and join the two with a half circle). Appo adhu "cheeeee". ok? now repeat!

No reaction from the said kutu. He is deep in thought while he doodles random designs in the homework notebook. Amma slowly goes into the hyperventilating stage.

Amma: Kuttuuuu.....

Kutu: Amma....next time appoopande veetil pogumbo namakku ammedae schoolil povaam ok?.( we will go to see your school when we go to appoopan's(grandfather's) house next. ok??)

Its an "eh??!!" moment for amma. Now what has that got to do with the darn "eeee" ki maatra!! Nevertheless, amma is very happy. Any thought\talk about her beloved alma mater makes her all nostalgic. and the "eh??!!" moment slowly transforms into a "How sweet!!" moment. Amma is slowly levitating in an imaginary bubble. Pictures of the big play ground and her school building materialise in her mind. A trip down the memory lane it would be!! wow!!! But reality strikes her at the right moment as the issue at hand is conveniently forgotten. so....

Amma: kutu...."eeee ki maatra..." standing line near....

Kutu: amma...avide nammal ammade friends ellareyum kaanam ok? (We will meet all your friends ok?)

Amma is literally floating in the air now...in that imaginary bubble of course. He even wants to meet my friends!! wow! :) :) But....the said friends are all in the amreeka land and in far away places now. Aaaahhh....more nostalgia.

Amma: sigh...sigh...and more sigh..... ammade friends aarum avide illa kutu. Ellarum doore doore poyi. (None of amma's friends are in the school anymore. They are all far far away from here)

Kutu: isssok....nammal ammade miss ine kaanam povaam. ( its ok. we will meet your teachers)

Flashes of all the favourite teachers cross amma's mind. Some of them are not even alive now. :( More sigh moments.... and the bubble floats higher up in the air.

Amma: ok kutu. Miss ine kaanam.

Kutu (with a grin that would put even a cheshire cat to shame): ammade miss endhu parayum ariyaamo??? "hey sunitha....nee ippo oru aunty aayalo" ennu parayum. (your miss will say "sunitha you are now an aunty!")

and....thud!!! The bubble bursts and brings amma back to the ground with a bang! "Aunty??" and me??? :( :( :(

So there....this was how amma officially made an entry into the "sisterhood of aunties". The kith and kin around her kept complimenting her on how young she looks even at the ripe old age of....(well...she is not really going to reveal her age here...come on....three decades in this world has obviously made her wiser...). The spawn of her womb shook her out of her denial. :) Anyways...he thinks this is the biggest compliment he could have given his mom. Well...if that is the case then "aunty" be it. :)

But wait...its not the end of the story yet.

Amma (now trying hard to keep a straight face): ok kutu.

Kutu: Pinne miss parayum "children....see...sunitha good girl aayitu irunnu adhukondu ippo office pogunnu. So ellarum good children aayitu irikkanam ok?". (Sunitha was a good girl so she now goes to an office. So you should be good ok?)

Yeah right!!!What an idea kutu ji!! :) :)

A round of hugging and tickling and cuddling and laughing follows where in the hindi homework notebook and the "eeeee" and "oooooo" and "yaaay" ki maatras get crushed.

The End.

P.S: Have I just been taken for a ride by that son of mine??!! Maybe yes. How on earth am I going to get him to learn his "eee" ki maatras now?

P.P.S: And here goes a picture of our little scholar!

Off to Nagala

Had gone on an amazing trekking trip a couple of weeks ago. For the first time I had left home even before my brat woke up from the slumberland. Even after having prepared him before he went to bed the previous night saying "amma will have to leave for office very very early the next day. Be a good boy ok?", I was ill at ease. The mother hen in me not wanting to let go of her little one. But then I did. Mamma Bird flew off the nest for one whole day away from her littlest one! The pappa Bird stayed back did the babysitting. :)

Where women are concerned even a trekking trip will\has to involve shopping. Obviously!! so there I went shopping for shoes and track pants and t-shirts and what not! and then came the task of packing! Oh my god!! I was so reminded of the packing episode in the book "Three men in a boat". I so so love this book and have read it some gadzillion times. But what do I say. Some people are slow learners and I never did learn the valuble lesson that the wise George sermonises in there! He says the golden rule about packing for any trip is this "We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can’t do without." So true....so true!! But again learnt it the hard way. We loaded our bags with a hundred differnt things of which not even 1% came handy while trekking. A couple of water bottles is all that one would need while trekking in the wilderness.

Anyways packed we were by midnight. And in all this excitement....I just could not manage a wink of sleep for the rest of the night. In anticipation of what the next day holds...will I pass out in the middle of the forest? Will I get lost? What if my old limbs refuse to budge? And the mother of all "What ifs"...What if Kutu throws a right royal tantrum asking for his amma? what if he falls sick? How will anyone even contact me? There will not be any signal in the middle of the forest! Sadly...the answer to all this was the same... "Whatever will be will be". siggghhh...yeah right. Jo hoga so dekha jayega. Enjoy your day out girl!! Having said this to myself I woke up at the unearthly hours...3:30 AM on a sunday morning.



Got ready and went to kiss my sleeping baby goodbye! :( There is something about sleeping babies that melts your heart. Yes it just melts all the steely resolve that you have made. Everyone said that he will be ok without you. But noone knew that the problem is not with him but me! About me being able to keep him in the back burner for a day. Noone knew that I would be taking two parallel trips. Along with the trekking trip, I would also be sub-consciously going on a guilt trip. Yeah right!! I am a self-proclaimed drama queen.

Finally pulled my heavy self and my even heavier baggage and rushed out of the house to pickup point alloted to us. Once inside the bus, I felt relaxed. So....nagalapuram here I come!

As you sow so shall you reap....

You know how they say life goes round and round in circles? Well this profound law of nature just dawned on me! And how!!! I had to learn this the hard way and believe you me, it hurts when life moves one full circle to come back and bite you sharp on the backside.

Remember that phase of life when you used to irritate everyone around by repeating each and every word that they said?? Generally being a pesky parrot and invoking the wrath of your near and dear ones. The immense sense of satisfaction and amusement that this provided needs to be experienced to be believed. So yeah...I am experiencing it right now. Only this time its from the other side of the table. My darling son has got into the habit of repeating all that I say! Especially when I go into that hyperventilating mode in the early morning rush to get ready for school! I shout "Kutu!!!!late aagum...vaaa" and there he goes "Kutu!!!!!late aagum...vaaa..." in the same tone and with the same facial expressions!!

And yeah...remember when you used to get away with all the mischief you did by conveniently throwing the "It was not me" arguement? Beat up your little brother black and blue and say "hey its not me...it was my hand!! I am not responsible for that now!!". Throw some random thing on your sibling and say "its not me!! it was that thing which went flying towards him!". Well...this too has backfired on me. The other day Kutu took his toy helicopter and came crashing on me. His entire weight(which is not much anyway) fell on me and the drama queen that I am, I gave a scream and shouted at him(what else is there in life to do nowadays??!!siggghhhh....). And the little brat very nonchalantly says "njaan allaa amma...helicopter". eh? what?

I was left gaping with my mouth wide open and a misplaced sense of Déjà vu. They start really young these days...don't they??

Here I leave you with a very rare photograph. How often would you come across a "Little Monster Meditating".





In case you are wondering what he is trying to accomplish...his teacher is chanting "om shanti shanti shanti.." at the end of the Yoga Presentation by the kids and each one of them is trying hard to look enlightened and calm and peaceful. :)