Adieu and hello

There are some who'd like to give me a hard kick in the backside for saying this (read all my friends and relatives who are Delhi-haters and would like nothing better than to move down south/west but are stuck in NCR for various reasons). I had tears in my eyes after I handed over our apartment keys to the landlord and was on my way home to our Gurgaon hotel. As the movers were packing away, quite efficiently and obviously needing little or no input from me, I indulged in some reminiscing and grew all mopey thinking of the wonderful times we had in the last 3 years. Sure, there have been some lows, and I'll be the first to admit that for a non-native to live in NCR can be incredibly challenging and frustrating.

But people make all the difference and we struck pay dirt in that department. So many friends, lovely helpful people who enriched our lives immeasurably. Ads was using my phone to text one of his school friends. They promised to keep in touch through fb and skype (Aside: He asked me when he could have  a fb account - I pretended not to hear him!).

The friend texted: Friends forever.

Ads texted back: Yes. Friends forever.

The exchange has been running in my mind like a repetitive track all through the last few days.  Friends forever? I don't think so. Not when you are 7 and will in all likelihood never meet each other again. And when I was driving to the hotel, the thought again brought tears to my eyes. Lost and broken friendships, the pattern of my life and it seems, the pattern of my kids' lives as well.

My ever-unflappable and practical husband asked me to be more positive, not realizing that I just needed a day or two to collect myself and miss the good times. Soon I will be able to collect them all and store them away in memory, to be relived and smiled over again and again in the future. 

To be so sad at leaving one home, yet so happy to be entering another - aren't I lucky?? :)

Movies, cheesecake and work

It's been a busy week or two. We had the happy entirely novel experience of having S working out of Gurgaon for the entire week, and of course we all made hay while the sun shone! The kids and I got to spend quality time with dad/husband. We watched movies, went on walks, played board games, ran errands jointly - it was so much fun to do the normal mundane things!

Talking of movies, Lincoln was a wonderful watch. Daniel Day-Lewis was brilliant - what an actor! I was left spellbound by the many shades he brought to the character of the great American President - his humor and wit, his gentleness, his oratory, his fits of depression, his political genius. I could not but help but notice the parallels between those stirring times and the present day American context - the rivalry and later, mutual respect and cooperation between Lincoln (the little-known lawyer from Illinois) and William H Seward, his Secretary of State and an illustrious NY Senator who was defeated by Lincoln to win the Republican nomination. The shenanigans and antics of the legislative process have been brought out beautifully - times have changed but politics has not!! No surprise that Day-Lewis has won the BAFTA Award for best actor and I have my money on him to bag his third Oscar as well.

Special Chhabis was another entertaining, crisp and edge-of-the-seat crime caper, witness to some fantastic acting especially by Anupam Kher and Manoj Bajpayee. Even Akshay Kumar (gasp!) put in quite a creditable and understated performance. We enjoyed the movie thoroughly while getting annoyed with the side love-track and couple of totally unnecessary songs.

There was a Valentine's Day party that my friends and I threw for ourselves :) We all dressed up in red and had a lovely potluck dinner, accompanied by tons of gossip and laughter. I'm so lucky that I managed to find such a good fun group of friends in Gurgaon. When we moved here 2 years ago, I did not know a soul. As you grow older it becomes more difficult to make friends, especially if one is, like me, not a natural extrovert. But with 2 young children, living in a cocoon is not an option and one is forced to socialise with other moms and force-fit oneself into some sort of loose network. Sometime you get lucky and meet people who you like and who like you back, and sometimes it's just a marriage of convenience. Fingers crossed for the new environment and new people in Bangalore - the bar has been raised!

My second time with making an Oreo cheesecake - a no-bake, no-egg affair this time - lip-smacking delicious! It was my contribution to the Valentine's Day potluck and the oreos on top are a feeble attempt to create a heart-shape :)

 

 

And oh yes, the most important update for the last! :) I quit my job! The small non-profit which I was a part of, has most of its work in Delhi and there was nothing I could have done out of Bangalore (except fundraise maybe, and I did not want to do that even if the option had been offered to me). The last year has been a lot of fun but there's also been a lot of stress. The overwhelming feeling now is one of relief. The sense of freedom is just wonderful. I have to wonder - what does that say about me and my approach to paid work? I would be less stressed if I was a SAHM, that's for sure. Would I be more fulfilled or less? Would I be happier? Having been on both sides of the fence now, its very disconcerting to discover that I still don't have the answer to those two critical questions. The most important learning I've had in the last year has been that flexible working hours aren't some kind of a holy grail. Sure, it's pretty cool to be at the door to receive your kids with a hug and a hot drink (and it makes you feel sooo saintly!!) but the craziness that precedes the rush back home and the physically-present, often-mentally-absent state that I am in even when I am with Ads and Y.........well....clearly, it's not ideal. Ok, there is no ideal, we all know that.

So, at this point, there are far more questions than answers. More than enough fodder for another long post! I'm spending the next month prepping for our move and hopefully all that clearing of junk from the house will go hand-in-hand with some clearing of mental cobwebs as well :)

Modern dentistry

I had to get a wisdom tooth extracted over the weekend. You know one always feel so nervous while heading to the dentist. I keep telling myself that I can do this...I've experienced and survived intense labour pangs and managed quite well (bar the yelling, as S reminds me, but that's a story for another day!!). Ads had to have a dental checkup too so I took him along.

Now this is one of those nice swanky places which charge you an arm and a leg. The upside is, courteous staff, coffee and tea on call, current magazines, piped music and those funky colourful chairs and equipment specially for kids. Ads was asked to lie down, given a pair of headphones and asked which channel he would like to watch while he was being examined. The LCD screen was stuck to a false ceiling a few feet above his head! He asked for Nat Geo. The doc said "Oh don't you want to watch cartoons?" Ads promptly replied "Cartoons don't give you any knowledge." Yeah that's his thing now. Knowledge. The lovely fiction books that I bought for him lie untouched since they are clearly for knowledge-unseeking folks!

I was forced asked to watch TV too. Unwisely, I gave in and agreed. The thing is, it all seems a little callous to me. It looks as though I couldn't care less about the state of my teeth if I'm watching Seinfeld while the dentist is busy drilling away. I mean, it's not like I'm getting a pedicure done! Half the time you can't see the screen anyway because the doc is bending over your mouth. You can't very well tell her "Hey doc, do you mind moving your hand, I'm missing all the punch lines here?" And then I dropped the remote every single time I moved forward to rinse and the doc had to bend and pick it up.

They did have some very advanced stuff to inject the local anaesthesia. Or maybe it's not advanced at all - it's been more than 7 years since I've been to a dentist for anything other than a routine check. I thought the injection would hurt, instead she used a vibrator on the gums while she injected and I felt nothing more than a teensy-weensy prick. The senior doc then came along and very casually wrested the tooth out. I felt a small tug and that was it.

Hail modern medicine! A 100% painless tooth extraction in the time it gets to watch an episode of Modern Family :)

Waiting for winter

I hate this transition period between seasons. Almost 6 months of huffing and puffing and labouring under the intense heat has left us all drained. The last mile is the hardest isn’t it? October with its promise of cooler weather is just around the corner, yet the thought of another few weeks of moisture and perspiration seems too much to be borne. Monsoons mean houseflies, all manner of strange insects, mosquitoes, Odomos and the ever-present parental anxiety over dengue and malaria. It means stomach infections, missing maids, throwing out leftovers without a thought, and, this year, praying for the rain that comes but infrequently.

Forgive the rant. I stayed silent all through the torrid summer, after all! I managed to get bitten by some insect and the resulting allergy has left me in agony with skin rashes. A visit to the dermatologist is urgently needed, it seems – have been putting it off for days out of sheer laziness.

Updates on the glorious weather in Bangalore by the husband are not helping! Ah well..just a few more weeks....just a few more...the early roses are already in bloom. Can't wait for my favourite seasons - autumn and winter!

New year, same old school

The nicest thing (for me) of the first day of school for Ads this year was just how uneventful it was. No drama, no tears flowing down both our faces and no stress. The only reason being, this is the first year in his short life that he has been to the same school two years running. The sense of relief that we both have due to this happy fact was unequivocal and immense.

He was excited about starting a new year, a little bashful about making new friends, a little sad about not having the same class teacher (whom he adored), very happy that this same teacher would still be teaching him English, a little anxious about the kids who would be in his class this year (they randomly shuffle the kids around every year into different sections, which sucks, but more about that in a future post). 

He insisted I drop him at school on the first day instead of taking the school bus. As I drove to school, I kept sneaking looks at him in the rear-view mirror and saw him looking thoughtful but cheerful. As for me, there was none of that deep dread which normally settles down in the pit of my stomach every new session, making me want to throw up! We parked, walked to the school grounds and found his class lined up. The new class teacher welcomed him, I hugged Ads and whispered "Good Luck!" in his ear, he waved me a cheery goodbye and that was it.

I find it hard to put into words the comfort I gained from watching him at ease in those surroundings. I came back and told S - "Ok. That's it. No more moving around for a few more years!"

Though - that's a hastily-proclaimed resolution we might both have a hard time sticking to.

Updates - Feb

There's been a lot going on here at Casa Mommyland. Work has picked up a good amount of steam and I have two new blogging assignments (both are paid - yay! And one is work-related). S and I have been trying to sort through a lot of admin and personal stuff. After the kids are asleep, we sit down on the dining table and  get going. That's how romantic we have become :)
The kids break for their first summer break in March (mid-march in Ads' case and end of March for Y) and they have 10-15 days off at that time. An SOS call has been sent out to Chennai for grandparental assistance. Initially, I just wanted someone to come over to watch the kids during their break, when I was at work. But soon, I had another, more pressing reason for help - we are moving again!!!
Yes, yes....we are being turned out of our lovely apartment. We have some time - a couple of months if we need it - but we have moved house 5 times in the last 5 years and this time, I just want to get it over with. We have started hunting for a place in the same complex, and hopefully something will come our way in the next few weeks. There aren't too many units like the one we live in, so fingers crossed!
Moves or no, the summer is here (well- almost) and I am in full vacation-planning mode. (Psssttt....not that I take account of the seasons while planning holidays...:)) Our vacation theme for this year is Exploring India through short and sasta holidays :). There are 2 long weekends coming up - Holi in March and Good Friday in April. We are going to Alwar (Rajasthan) in March, before the summer heat descends and in April, I was looking to go to the Kumaon region in Uttarakhand. I did all the research only to realize that neither train tickets nor hotel nights were available. Fully booked! Clearly there are many more freaky travel planners like me out there. We might still have managed to find the odd hotel or homestay someplace but the train waitlist was a real constraint since S does not want to drive there. Our Mussoorie (it took us 12 hours to navigate the 6-hour journey) and Jaipur road trips (7 and 4 hours respectively) last year have put us off long drives, completely.
So now, there is much discussion and argument in the household about where to go.
Not to forget that with all this happening, both the kids have been down and out with a nasty infection of the tonsils. If they absolutely had to fall ill, I would have preferred them to do it together instead of one by one, thereby making me take off more days than I can afford to. But who listens to me in this family???? No one! :(

I'm going to miss this

Spring is here. And a very short spring it will be, too. I'm going to miss the luxury of my daily afternoon walks. The beautiful flowers everywhere, and not just inside our apartment complex. The warm sun. The circle of drivers who bask in the afternoon sunshine everyday after lunch, sitting on the ground near their cars and playing cards. The huge bunch of aunties and uncles who seem to be a permanent fixture in the outdoor areas everyday. The kids cycling, playing tennis and running around the playground, even at 2 in the afternoon.

Sigh. If only the weather were like this all the time. Oh wait......then Delhi would be called Bangalore :)

That's a random snap, clicked as I walked :)

Flowers, flowers everywhere.

A puppet show and some food for thought

The Ishara International Puppet Festival has been coming to Delhi for a few years now. I wanted to take the kids last year but what with all the shows being in Delhi and starting at 7.30 pm in the evening, the logistics of getting everyone to the city from Noida, and back, seemed overwhelming. Add to that S's I-will-get-back-home-only-by-midnight-everyday work schedule, and it was truly a lost cause. I was so happy when they decided to perform in Gurgaon this year. Epicenter is a really nice cultural and convention center in the city. They have lots of live music (jazz, blues, rock), plays, concerts and other cultural programmes happening all the time, and their Sunday breakfast brunch rocks.

In any case, the puppet festival is here this month. Tickets were excitedly booked for 2 shows. The first one we went to, last Friday, was a production from Taiwan. The 'puppets' were just clothes - shirts, women's tops, dresses, trousers. They danced and they jumped, twirled and swayed to music, expertly handled not by the usual rods and strings, but by near-invisible puppeteers, clad in black and blending into the black background of the stage. 

I really liked the show. Given that Ads hasn't seen that many puppet shows and this one was new and innovative, I fully expected him to enjoy it too. But are kids today jaded or what? He was bored almost from the first few minutes. The thrill and pleasure that I was getting from the show, none of it was visible on his face. I was disappointed, not least because Ads has raised the bar so high for me. He obligingly accompanies me to art shows and galleries and places of historical interest, throws a thousand questions at me and comes up with his own interpretations. I tried hard to see what it was that he didn't like about the show, and came up with nothing. I asked him and he said "It's boring". That was it. 

What I thought would be a simple pleasure for us to take in on a cool winter's evening, an art form that's been around for centuries, something from another land and culture, left him cold. Thinking over it later, I felt I was being unfair to him. I was trying to experience childhood pleasures through him and was upset because his reaction did not match what I thought it should be. A typical case of unjust and unrealistic expectations!

My research sample was not representative enough however. A sample size of just one? No way. Unfortunately, I could not validate any assumptions I had made because the second puppet show we were to go to, never happened. I was a little unwell the day we were supposed to go, and I didn't think I could handle the kids by myself, so I chickened out. The expression on Ads' face when I told him we were not going, I am sorry to say, was one of pure relief! 

Busy busy week and Navarathri begins

The last week or so has been extremely full. Between Ads' various assignments at school, a niggling backache for me, the onset of growing pains for Y and her refusal to eat anything in school, Navarathri, planning for our short holiday to Amritsar later this week, and my maid going absent because of malaria AND typhoid (the poor thing!), I have been running around like a headless chicken all over the place.

The main event was Navarathri. Over the last couple of months, ever since getting back to Gurgaon after the summer holidays, I have managed to make quite a few friends in the complex. Friends, as opposed to casual Hi-and-bye neighbours/acquaintances. Most of us are around the same age, have kids of varying ages and it's something to look forward to every evening that we are able to meet at the park and chat while the kids play. In fact, some days ago, I had to urgently meet somebody for a prospective work assignment and S was unable to get home early and watch Y. One of my friends stepped in to watch her for the hour or so that I had to be away.

My large-ish Golu doll collection got decimated when we moved to the US since I had to give most of them away :( So I have to build up my collection again. This year, Ads insisted on his Ben10 action figures and jungle animals being included in our Golu. Here is what we ended up with. I did the bottom 2 padis (steps) and Ads dolled up the shelves (they are technically our 3rd padi!). Last night, we spoke to my in-laws and they had a good idea, that I should include some of Ads' drawings in the Golu. Their suggestion was duly incorporated this morning :)

Y has been "helping" me this morning, with preparing and labelling the gift bags for people who will attend our Golu tomorrow. It would have been a real help if she hadn't mixed up all the gifts/tags and appropriated some of the baubles for herself. I'm terribly confused now and will wait for her nap before redoing everything :)

Roundup- a third of a year in Gurgaon

A friend whom I met up for coffee the other day (a coffee shop in a mall, where else *rolls eyes*) asked me how I like Gurgaon, and have I become a Gurgaon-ite yet. Nope, I haven't, and I hope I never shall (in the context of the article and in terms of how the writer defines a Gurgaonite). I gave my friend a very honest answer. If you move around as much as we do, you tend not to be too fussy. Indeed, you simply cannot afford to be because then you'd just be miserable. Having said that, both S and I believe that when you move to a new place, you need to go in with a positive vibe and truly believing that it's a city/town/country that you will like, enjoy and explore. (Isn't that true of any new undertaking in life?). If you go in determined to be happy, chances are, you will be. Moving from the US to Noida wasn't easy for us and it wouldn't have been easy even if we had moved to UP from our last-but-one home, Bangalore. The gulf that separates a cosmopolitan city in South India from a city on the borderline of the Hindi heartland is very very large. On the surface, it all looks similar and familiar but people's attitudes and preferences are very different and one has to adjust accordingly. From that aspect, Gurgaon is a much more easier city to fit into. For example, English is much more widely spoken here than in Noida. The large number of MNCs have attracted a large pan-Indian crowd and in our complex, for instance, you hear snatches of every language -Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Haryanvi, Hindi, Punjabi, not to mention some Cantonese and Korean!

Where we live is very central to all the shops/malls, office complexes and we have 2 metro stations at a half-kilometre walking distance. Every couple of days, I end up with a long list of errands and to-dos and I enjoy walking to our local market, just a 7-8 min walk away. Our grocery store, stationery store, drycleaner, vegetable vendor and tailor are all there and I can't tell you how much I enjoy going into each and every shop. I love shopping local, in small businesses (have I said earlier how much I detest malls? :)))) so this gives me a huge thrill! In the US, S and I would often argue about where to shop. I preferred buying supplies at the weekend farmer's markets but S would always like to shop at Safeway or Target (economies of scale=lower prices). At Noida too, because of where we lived, I had to get groceries delivered home or else drive to the supermarket which just didn't give me that local flavour.
I have recently discovered a walking group, a running group and a drum circle in the city. None of which I have the least intention of joining but what it proves is, one needs to just look a little below the surface and any city can and does yield up pleasant surprises. Yes, Gurgaon is hot and humid and freezing in turns, traffic is chaotic, people are crazy (!!!) and the infrastructure -- I could talk about it if it existed! But well, it's our home for the next few years and all the complaining I'm going to do about it will pertain to the weather only. I reserve that one inalienable right!

PS: Am I blogging too much? I have so much to say. If a lot of it is drivel, ah well...it'll be fun to read it all after a couple of years :)

The graduate

We'd been practicing the kindergarten speech for so long without being totally certain that Ads was even going to attend his graduation that I once asked him directly if he would mind if he missed it. He didn't seem to care one way or the other. In hindsight, considering how awesome it turned out to be, I'm glad we didn't move to Gurgaon a week earlier, I'm glad that S attended it (even though I missed it), and I'm so very glad Ads got to be there, robe and all, and pick up his graduation scroll from the Principal :)

Now - a disclaimer. All this while, I've thought the whole fuss about KG graduation, elementary and middle-school graduation, which is part and parcel of school life in the US (perhaps in other western countries too, but I'm not sure) was all so much hogwash. Absurd, even. It seemed to be an excuse for promoting mediocrity. I mean - you're supposed to study hard and pass on from one grade to the next. That's your job as a student. Why make a big song and dance about it? And it also seemed to me to take away from the final high school graduation, which of course is a big deal; especially in countries where a lot of people don't go on to college. However I suppose I'm hypocrite enough to support songs-and-dances as long as my kid is involved ;-) Perhaps for little boys and girls, it's a nice way to transition them to 'big' school. And as S wryly observes, for all the money that we are shelling out for tuition and other extras, the school better put on a show for our benefit!
Ads spoke his rehearsed few lines very well, and thankfully, my camera-ignorant husband managed to get a good video of it. Father and son had a sumptuous lunch at school and clicked a few pictures including one with Ads very wonderful class teacher. Father in particular really lucked out that day because he left home just as the packers arrived and returned after they had left. The mayhem in between was unimaginable. 6 guys - all in different rooms - throwing our stuff randomly into cartons, no labelling being done on any of the boxes, mattresses being dragged all over the common areas in the dust and dirt without any packing, and Y whining incessantly. I was close to tears. I'd planned ahead and asked one of my maids to come in around 9 and take Y to the park so that I could focus on the packing. Guess what happened. The maid walked in two hours late. I couldn't even yell at S because I had insisted on him going to school. The last straw was when one of the guys managed to pack the pulao that I had cooked at 5 am that day, along with the raita that accompanied it!!!!!!! The imbecile apparently didn't notice the two fat ladles sticking out of the pans. This was the same fellow who also managed to tear the legs off from my computer table so he was both clumsy and not very bright.
Go ahead and call it plain stupidity on my part to have volunteered to do this by myself with Y around to provide backing vocals :) Sometimes I just think I'm so smart and capable and bite off more than I can chew. Finally, the moving guys left, we handed over the flat keys, stopped by for a quick goodbye to the folks at Y's school, and headed down the highway for Gurgaon. It was only when we were halfway there that I remembered to ask Ads how the graduation went. By which time he was fast asleep!
So that was our moving day. Pure nightmare from start to finish (for me). I'm not posting about how we worked round the clock to get the new house up and running in 2 days flat. What was the tearing hurry, you may ask? None whatsoever. We just wanted to be done with it. And to prove we could :) The A-type personality lurking within us comes to the fore every now and then ;-)

Two headaches less

Two major to-dos have been ticked off the relocation list. First, the apartment - check. A nice complex, a stone's throw from a metro station, and just off the main 'mall' road of Gurgaon. I haven't counted, but I think there are atleast 10 malls, all jostling for space next to each other, down that road. Definitely a mall-rat's Mecca, but for a mall-o-phobic like me, a plain disgusting sight. Oh well, atleast Haldiram's is a stone's throw away and visitors to our place can always go shopping if they're too bored. The complex has a tennis court, swimming pool, a (really nice) children's play area, a (tiny) gym, and is on a quiet residential street.

Second, the school - check. We interviewed at only one school, which is a new (international) school, only about 5-6 years old. People who have their kids there are happy and the online reviews that I read were also largely very positive. We took a school tour and it seemed very similar to the one Ads goes to currently, so we were hoping we would get in. And we did. We also toured another international school, which is an IGCSE school based on the Montessori method. While I really liked it, S had his own reservations regarding whether Montessori kids can cope with the mainstream system later in life. I couldn't convince him. Truth be told, I didn't try too hard since it was quite a bit more expensive than the first school, and we weren't willing to pay that much.

So. Coming back to the first school. Ads starts in the 1st week of April, in Grade I. The whole admission process was interesting. After the school tour, we met the 'Public Relations Officer' who gave us some gyan on the school. She asked both of us, individually, to fill out a long questionnaire, in order to understand our 'value systems' and 'parenting philosophy'. I don't remember all of the questions, but they ran something along these lines.

What is your life's motto?

What is your vision for yourself, and for your child?

What do you look for in a school for your child?

How do you enforce discipline in your home?

What are the 2 most important values you want to instill in your child?

How can schools and parents work together to create the best environment and opportunities for the child?

How do you define 'quality'? How do you create 'quality' in your child?

There was a father's questionnaire, and a mother's questionnaire. S and I kept comparing notes to see that we weren't writing in complete opposition to each other! I also told S that I was memorizing my answers so that I would remember what rubbish I wrote, in case the Principal asked me :)

A week later, we had an 'interaction' with the Principal. It was just a nice informal chat. She asked us some questions on our background and tried to see what kind of expectations we have from this school and the education system in general. I also think she was gauging whether we are the kind of parents she wants to have in her school, though she wouldn't admit it if we dragged her over hot coals. I'm pretty certain a lot of these new schools cater to, and actively solicit, a certain kind of student profile. In short, they want parents like us. Well-educated, articulate, in good jobs in the corporate sector. It may be unfair but it's true. It's also true that this is why parents like us prefer going to such schools, because we know we have a very good shot at getting in, unlike the better-known ones like DPS, Amity and Shriram, which have more applicants than they know what to do with. Every day, I see an article in the newspapers about parent's woes in getting admission for their kids in Delhi. Fortunately, Noida and Gurgaon have more supply than demand and the situation here isn't as crazy as in the city. 

I liked the low-pressure admission process in this school, and in other similar schools. At no point did we feel like supplicants begging for a seat. I know that as these schools become better-known, they also become more snooty in their attitude. A few years down the line, it might not be as easy getting a seat in this school. But for now, that's one headache off my list. Cheers.