Much silliness about nothing

I have a knack of stating the obvious: when it comes to being pushy and demanding, no one is as glorious as immigrant Asian parents. And besides our daily prayers, we don’t sleep well at night if we haven’t cussed at the public school education system.

I try to look at the bright side and found something to really smile about recently. Aakash is in grade 1 and they have a writing activity called ‘silly sentences’. Its sentences you have to construct using key words - the only rule is the more fantastic and outlandish, the better. The point is to have a lot of fun while letting your creativity loose; and I find myself endorsing that approach, however silly:) and limited the activity may be. And I know, I know, a big apology to model parenthood that I’m even using silly and one’s son in the same paragraph – ha! But today, I really want to share some of Aakash’ writing – they’re laugh out funny, interesting, and I’d even say deep and nuanced, but that’d betray proud-dad bias.

Words go to classes to learn more about themselves

Papers swing on branches

I went swimming in a hot cup of chocolate with marshmallows

A person sketches someone who does not have clothes on

Advait crashes into a walking paper

 

The beyblade shines on the sun when it’s spinning

The glue is bleeding because someone stepped on the glue

I can slide down a stapler

I keep ghosts at my house

I drive my car inside restaurants

This is the end of silly sentence classics

Of writing and being mama's boy

Fair warning for this post is that I will sound like a vain dandy. And how will immodesty do for a TamBrahm boy with a good upbringing? But what use mother’s pride, if it is not acknowledged? If it can’t, at least, be used as homage.

Mom was the biggest fan of my writing. That is, if my limited and very sporadic output could be called writing.

Even the occasional articles in the college magazine, and some caption contests won, were a matter of great pride for her. There were my letters [handwritten in cursive style] to dad who worked overseas in Manila and then Jeddah for few years. Among the adolescent flavor of those letters [that I cringe about now], I used sports mainly tennis metaphors to tell him about my school rankings [“Becker did not do well at the Australian open (unit test) but he we will be back at Wimbledon (final semester exam)’]. Mom had him bring those letters back every year when he visited and those were neatly stored away in a box containing, oddly, bank check books and LIC receipts.

During days studying Engineering in Bombay, there was my self-righteous letter published in the editorial page of The Times of India, about a ragging incident at the VJTI hostel. With mom, that may have been the one that brought the house down. Our close relatives did not hear the last of that from her, and I could never live down the embarrassment from the extra attention.

Close family say I'm very laid-back to the point of being irresponsible sometimes. I’m sure if there’s one thing they could change about me, that’d be it.

When my mom was growing very sick, I had planned to step up my writing and blogging, if only because I wanted to print it all out, get it bound and present it to her. True to form, I never got to it and that will be one of my enduring regrets.  Your writing is so bad it can disturb the dead was one famous editor’s legendary critique of a submission, but I still hope that mom’s watching over, and reading, my current output. Like her, I’m not very religious but just the happy notion that she may be watching over something that filled her with pride, brings me a lot of warmth.    

It’s true, I’m mama’s boy and when Ammai [Usha’s mom] visits us later this summer, one of my plans to bond better [right now, we have what could be called a strong but silent relationship] is to pick her brain about obscure Tamil proverbs and sayings. Usha says Ammai drops those all the time and just some gems so far [“Adhikari kushu vitaal ananda kushu*”, “Valiya paarthal shingaram ulla paarthal okkalam**”] means I can hardly wait.

And when that happens, a blog post to share the joy of language I’m bound to experience will surely be on the cards.

{I’ve heard Tamil swear words are some of the most colorful around but sadly, I don’t think that’s something Ammai will encourage very much!}

* someone with authority are allowed mistakes that others are not
** decorative from outside, vomit inducing from inside [as in, a home]

Of teasing out toothpaste and Costco excess

Since political correctness is a malady for our times, let me say in defense of what I'm about to say next that I'm being ironic and not negative.

Doing more with less is a nice catchphrase the developed world uses; for those of us who grew up outside, that was in our DNA.

If you've lived in the US for some time, wander into your pantry or storage closet. Very likely, you will come across a 3-ring pack of Heinz ketchup or maybe a 4 can set of shower scrub or a 5 pack Gillette shaving gel. And you have a situation there not unlike the Chicago university motto: Where fun comes to die.

That pantry and closet situation is you stocking up for a rainy day [if you live in San Antonio] or a snowless winter month [if you’re in Chicago]. Sorry, not trying to be sarcastic. Actually, trying to be very sarcastic. To come to the point, that situation is a sure way to more acquisition because imagine staring at and using the same type of shampoo or scrub year after year. You're bound to lose it and when you do, just a single bottle of the new brand will not do. Because if you happen to like it, you’d rather save by buying mega and have it in stock too, correct?

Cut from a Costco lifestyle to the more austere one many of us have grown up in. If you were brought up in middle-class India, odds are your uncle used an idukki/ kitchen tong to eke the last dredge of life out of a toothpaste tube! If not your own family, the domestic help (‘baai’) who worked in multiple apartments {network of baiis were like the news feed of the real world before Facebook, weren’t they?} may have gossiped to you about which family beat the crap out of the poor tube. It’s not that we could not afford to stock up; it’s just how we chose to live.

Drinking filter coffee each morning began with the ritual of stepping outside to buy the milk. If you instead cared for a wake-up call in the morning, you signed up with the doodhwallah and the 5AM harsh ringing of the doorbell would be milk announcing itself [It could also be someone milked dry, as in my brother the Chartered Accountant returning home after pulling 24 hrs at his Tax firm].

More out of less. The mind easily wanders to some time spent in Gujarat – a three wheeler /rickshaw, rickety and almost tottering, yet carrying 8 passengers when the safe capacity is 4. And that’s not a melah act or performance I’m talking about but just the daily evening ritual of transporting  employees from remote textile units back to the train station and on to civilization.

Doing more with moru. 'Moru' in Tamil means buttermilk and no one embodied the doing more philosophy in the kitchen than my diminutive, darling granny. Making dahi or yoghurt at home would certainly ring a bell for many of us. What may not be as common is that after the first setting of the yoghurt, it was possible to magically transform that, in smaller batches, into different tastes and textures. And that’s exactly the kind of kitchen voodoo that paathi [granny] specialized in. I liked my thayru [yoghurt] a bit bitter and others at home could care less, slightly sweet was perfectly fine with them. In the hands of the moru magician, the different taste needs were no problem at all. She was slightly OCPD too, a neat freak and in her kitchen, food [especially dahi] could never go waste. It would be progressively whittled down into smaller and smaller containers in the fridge. If the ‘cling wrap’ had been invented then, I’m sure she would have used that to organize yoghurt in different spoons. In the hands of my granny, the master cook, that would indeed be the 'perfect bite'. As I picture her now, scurrying around in the kitchen at my uncle's home in Chennai, the sadness of outliving her beloved daughter weighing heavily on those little shoulders, I wish I could hug her every morning for all that she did for mom and our family.          

But we easily made exceptions to doing more with less, didn’t we? If you're a South Indian, you know your mom or aunt could easily get through 4 or 5 cups of filter coffee every morning. Each cup was from freshly made decoction concentrate. To call that excess, now that would be sacrilege. And then the sweets and savories during Diwali, talk about going overboard. Tins, no, drums of laddus and ‘mixtures’, enough not just for the family for Diwali but enough to supply even near-and-dear ones for a month. 

In conclusion, my point sadly is, I don’t have a point. And it’s into the weekend and I'm slacking, and so I’m not going to be forced into taking a position. But between the developing and developed world, between needing and wanting, between teasing out toothpaste and Costco-like excess, at least lucky for a life both simple and rich.

Of a Ram and Shyam life

I surprise even myself, that's how Facebook active I've been the last 6 months or so. For someone who speaks sparingly (you'd think good listener at least but no, generally distracted describes me best), the words come freely (IF and) when I sit to write.

I suspect others answer to that description too, where our online persona is more the life of the party than our real ones. Most of us don't lead lives as constantly exciting as our Facebook/ Twitter activity would have you believe. But that's precisely why its become so irresistible, and why social media  is here to stay.

That most middle aged men (and women) lead lives of quiet desperation may be too morbid to suggest. But clearly: we're never on a year long vacation, don't  produce impossibly cute babies every 9 months, we're not bumping into famous people every weekend, not acquiring a diamond trinket every month.

But the beauty of social media is that's exactly what it would have you believe we're doing all the time. Because its not just instant but prolonged gratification: a newly added FB friend gushes on the timeline pic of your wedding from a year back and its like a virtual reception all over again (if you're an Indian, your wedding guests likely outnumbered your FB friends, but I digress).

You can showcase your Facebook year in review and you may well be the most popular person that never lived. Time has stood still and you're still the most promising geek from b-school, the most outgoing girl in your college, never mind what the rest of your life suggests.

One can even be memorialized on Facebook or if an "ironic legacy" is more your style, there are social media services such as LivesOn that maintain your "personal digital afterlife" ("even after your heart stops beating, you'll keep tweeting").

To close (but not in conclusion), my personal homage to social media here.