Living every minute

Having baby's been life-changing, of course. But beyond that, I've come to cherish every moment. Nope, that's not a cliche. I literally live minute to minute. So a spare half hour of quiet is soul-nourishing. A chance to enjoy just being by myself. A little window of self-reflection. A walk is not just a stroll, it's my time to cleanse my body and mind of bad thoughts and ill will and sloth.

A hug is affirmation that a little person finds me lovable, warts and all.

Watching baby say hullo to stray dogs, kambli poochies (blanket worms, ugh!!), and even, dead cockroaches, makes me realise children really are pure beings. There's no malice in baby. Yup, there are tantrums and bouts of bad temper but that, to my eternal regret, he's probably learnt watching me being angry and mad.

Every day, I see the world anew. Every day, I learn I can be good and yet, in a flash, be very very bad as well. It's humbling, enriching and a learning process. Every single day.

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Wasteland

Something happened over the past two days. Our next door neighbours, or rather one particular family (like all metrizens in this cramped city, we live within literally, touching distance of the others in our neighbourhood), have decided to demolish their home. Fine, so what, you ask. They see how valuable land now is. Who can blame them? But along with their home, they have also decided to kill off the two trees -- a mango tree and a coconut tree -- in their compound. I used to look at those trees from my kitchen window. The mango tree, in particular, was a welcome sight. Bunches of ripe green fruit used to hang heavily from it. Looking at it, I'd think of my home in Kerala -- of the time when I was a little girl in a white petticoat helping my father pluck mangoes as they slowly changed from parrot green to a golden reddish-yellow-orange shade. That was our annual summer ritual, you see. My father plucked mangoes using a long stick with a hook or a 'kokka' (in my collo...

On seeing millions walking home...

We saw them on our way to work In those makeshift tarpaulin shacks Naked children playing with roadside trash Near piles of their own excreta As skeletally thin mothers tried to cook gruel in pots, We looked but didn’t really see. Every morning, we saw them from our cars Shrunken bodies in tattered clothes, in a huddle Waiting for an ‘agent’ to get them work. What did we do then? We cranked up the AC, we plugged into podcasts “How long before this signal changes, damn it!” We drank the bytwo coffee they served us in darshinis We looked but didn’t really care to see. We were too preoccupied with ‘personal milestones’ That we just had to share on our Insta Stories #Ran5Kms #FeelingStrong #LifeIsGood #FeelingBlessed We passed under-construction sites In our localities and our neighbourhoods. We saw them and... we quickened our steps. We held handkerchiefs (no masks then, you see!) to our noses Oh, the smell! These people are so filthy! We saw them. We all did. How could we poss...

Feel like a pickle?

I am not Nigella. I do not pout sexily on the few occasions I do enter my kitchen. Nope, I have a cook. Okay, update. I don't have a cook any more. She upped and left. So now I cook for my family and I mostly enjoy it. But no I still don't look like Nigella. Or cook as sexily as her! But I do love to experiment. I love to bake pies, biscuits and my fondest wish is to someday bake cakes that will come out soft and "incredibly moist" as all the food blogs I sometimes drool over, tell me. No, cooking is not therapeutic for me. It's supremely stressful--all that cutting, chopping, slicing and at the end of it all, cleaning. What I do love is the end product, specially if it's come out nice. It's a double-edged sword though. If my cake is lumpy and hasn't risen well, I sink into gloom much like my unrisen dough. But I'm determined to try, try and try till I become a dab hand at cooking and baking. Anyway, for me, food has to have a little zest, a ...

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