Thanksgiving 2021

 

Thanksgiving, not that I have celebrated this as a child despite being a part of the convent school. My son who is seven is at home today, his school has two days holidays for thanksgiving. 

They were having a thanksgiving party in school and I had signed up for Hashbrowns. Parents were  welcome to join the party via google meet. So I decided to join in and for thirty minutes or so I traveled back in time to junior school days when we would said " Good Morning Mam" in a sing song voice, which mostly ran like " Goooooood Moooorning Maaaaam" 

One of the teachers came over and read a book. Quite charming, followed by a live demo by one of the parents on a craft, demonstrated online. They used paper plates to make turkey, I did not see Aryans turkey when he brought it home, it was missing everything. 

The only thing that surprised me in the story telling that you should not be eating a turkey for Thanksgiving. My pride of not knowing the holiday kind of stopped me from asking why because for long restaurants have been marketing Thanksgiving offers with Turkey roasts.

There was one time when I had accompanied a friend in Bangalore to hunt down places where they sold turkey. Infact, my friend was almost about to buy one but I guess somebody stopped her from buying it. She was a Christian and perhaps would done a good roast out of it, I would have messed it up, may be cooked Turkey Curry?

Uggg, as is turkey meat is so dry and the Curry would have tasted like crocodile meat. 

So this thanksgiving I am thankful for a few key things.

My friends and family who stood by me in the last one month. People who listened in to my frustration and impatience, at the end of the day all people want is to be heard, to matter, to make a difference. 

I am thankful for life, every normal boring day which I can spend with my family. Boring is actually good, trust me you do not want a happening life! 

Out of Isolation and first recovery milestone

 
I am mobile now, after 5 weeks of grueling cough and panicked look at the pulse oximeter  I managed to see a specialist who reoriented my treatment plan towards recovery. The boy had been pushing me to buy shoes for him as his have developed holes in them and embarrassingly his friend at school had discovered it. 

Poor chap, I can imagine the conversation be like .." look there is a hole in your shoe".   First time in a month all three of us along with the helper hopped into a cab and went to Vivocity, one of the largest shopping malls near us. This place is close to Sentosa Island and one can come out of the mall and walk along the Sentosa boardwalk and enjoy the sunset. So we did that after buying the boy his shoes, ice-cream in hand we came out and sat at the bay.

 

This is my first milestone to recovery, away from my isolation room, with the family. The boy scooted close to me and asked " Mama, does this mean you are well now? Can we go biking in the park later in the evening?"

My heart cracked a little. By nature I am the dominant parent, the boy goes with me everywhere and it is me who keeps chasing him to bike in the park and go for unplanned adventures with nature. He is still yet to reach pre-teen but till such time he reaches there and finds his own interests he is like a shadow to me.

We came back home by dinner time, I was quite exhausted with the outing. Freshly showered and settled down in front of the television I sighed thinking of what a child goes through when their parents fall ill. 

I had to test my limits and gain my confidence back, so I decided to stretch it over the weekend and went for a walk in the sun. Well I made it at times I did feel a bit dizzy, I carried my pulse oximeter just in case I went hypoxic I need to know my limits.

It had rained the previous evening and the Clementi woods park  was full of the mushrooms they looked so lovely, I was almost tempted to pick them. I thought a little bit of retail therapy at the Daiso store would be nice, so was it. 

I was happy I survived the 2 km walk under the sun without any support. I look forward to the day when I can pick up my bike and do a 20 km at the West Coast park , one can always keep up the faith. 

Tale of the Undies

 

Bringing up three kids is no joke, we were three and I remember my mother always having this rushed look on her face almost looking at us her expression implying " What did I forget?"

Now that I am a Mother I understand that for the first child, we always thrive to be perfect about everything in terms of parenting and support. Once the second comes its multi tasking and nobody knows who brought up the third kid.

I am the third kid.

I needed help wiping my ass when my siblings were independent , I needed help combing my hair with a neat parting which my father would do diligently every morning before he took us to school. I almost looked like a female version of Don Corleone with back brushed hair. 

It was one of those rushed early morning routine. As usual I was the last one to wake up, with a quick shower and school uniform, I remember I could not locate myself a fresh pair of panties. 

So its went like this " Ma I cant find any panties" my mom would holler from behind the pots and pans and while closing steaming lunch boxes " Its on the cloths line".

" Ma I cant find any Panties" 

" Finish your breakfast " 

" Why is your hair not combed, come here let me fix it",

" Ma I cant find panties" 

" She is getting us late, if we don't start now we will be late for assembly".

" Ma I cant ...." 

Now I can visualize how my mother would have settled down with a steaming cup of Assam team. Perhaps after dowsing the third cup and while handing over the laundry to the Helper she must have realized.

" Oh shit, panties"!!!

A few scenario must have played out in her mind....

Front office at the school " Excuse me, my daughter forgot to wear her undergarments today, here can you get this send this to her?' or may be the daughter can made do with the day with wearing some undergarments, there was no PE class that day yay!

Don't ask me how I had spent the first few hours of school. The reason I remember it, I have PTSD from it. Post lunch I get a call from the front office, perhaps my parents had found an excuse of getting me out of the school for the day and I could have a half day vacation ....yeppie. 

Low and behold. The lady at the school front office say " Oh hunny you forgot your lunch box at home, did you eat anything yet?' 

Picnic! I was going to have a feast with the extra lunch, perhaps it was a kind of a consolation from my mother for not helping me find a pair of underwear. I had thanked the lady at the reception and walked back to class with a spring in my step, guessing perhaps it was French toast. My mouth watered at the thought, I could not wait, a small peek, a small peak.

I stopped in the middle of the long deserted corridor and clicked open the locks of the lunch box and removed the cover. Instead of a french toast sat a neatly folded my pink underwear!

Are you kidding me? Seriously? My stomach growled in anticipation of the french toast. I rubbed my face in frustration and walked to the ladies. Twenty minutes later wearing a fresh crisp underpant I sighed deeply and settled at my desk. 

My class teacher asked me " Two lunch boxes? Is it your birthday today or you are having a picnic?

I gave her my sweetest smile and said " My mother forgot she gave me lunch already " followed by a wry laugh. Good old times....

The Underrated Flu

 

I tested positive. 

The world around me stilled when the results of the PCR test came from the Ministry of Health, Singapore. I was to isolate myself immediately in a room with a bath. 

Since the beginning of the pandemic  my husband and I would track the daily rise in numbers on infected cases globally. I remember the first time the government declared Disease Outbreak Response System ( DOSCON) rating Orange, there was a scramble at the grocery stores to hoard. The husbands disregard for the pandemic infuriated me every time referred to as the work of the Illuminati. 

From Feb 2019 till now over two years have gone in a haze, the haze of slathering our hands with sanitizers, skin going dry due to increased number of showers in a day. In fact the husband's friends visiting used to be petrified of me because I would make them sanitize their hands and wash their hands first even before I would say hello. 

And now I got Covid. How?

I haven't gone out of the house in the last fifteen to twenty days. Everyone that I spoke with thereafter such as close friends and coworkers had the same question, do you know how your got infected? 

At home ART Test everyday to monitor health of family

Angry, I was very angry.

All my hygiene protocols for me and my family, bulk buying groceries to save up the trip to the store for months and then somebody "home delivered" the virus to me!!!

I had been observing the world from the corner of my study battle the virus, people flouting safe distancing measures, breaking the law and I thought I was safe, I followed all the rules and still I got it. I had taken the screenshot of my test results and sent it to the husband smoking in the balcony. He had immediately come inside horror on his face. 

My symptoms? I had cough, it  did not let me sleep at night. I was eligible for home based recovery unless I had difficulty breathing or had heart palpitation or plunging oxygen saturation. I stood up, emptied the bedside drawer contents in a bag and removed blankets and pillows to be used by the rest of the family and isolated myself inside the bedroom. A while later the isolation order was served to me via a SMS.

The next twelve days I coughed, I coughed and I coughed. The days went by with breakfast served outside my door, medicine, shower, breathing exercise, lunch, movie, videocall with family, room cleaning, dinner and then staying awake all night with cough.

My displaced family, kicked out from the bedroom

I couldn't sleep, I had chills but no fever, my oxygen saturation stayed stable and I coughed up mucus of different colors and shapes. I coughed so much that I could see my abdomen shedding weight due to excessive coughing. Then one day I was told, twelve days are over and I was free to get out, I was no longer infectious. They said this was the delta variant and my symptoms were mild.

The apple of my eye  had been doing his homework with me though video chat using kids messenger. The first few days he had to be stopped multiple times to involuntarily knock on my door and then he understood that mommy had it. He spent one whole week dressing up in various costumes to for the spirit week at school. I shared his excitement through photographs sent to me via whatsapp. He had dressed up as Zoro followed by Hannibal Lecter and then Captain America. 

"The worst is over", the husband stood outside the door and watched me step out after my isolation.

Was I completely cured? I still coughed, so much so that I downloaded an app on my phone to track how may times I was coughing in a day. I needed to see quantitative data on my improvement, some said I was crazy, but the disease I guess is not just a flu.

It so much more dangerous than just a flu, a close friend recovered from the virus had given me a few tips, and one of them was to keep the mind positive, I have read that the this virus had a neurobiological impact. For some loss of smell and taste and for some insomnia and brain fog. 

Yesterday I followed up with my doctor my recovery journey is not over, but I firmly believe I will get there, one day at a time.

The Big Fat Tele

 

I keep coaxing my parents to read my posts, they mentioned at this age recipes do not excite them, rather stories from the past  helps them remember good old days and also figure out what used to go through that mind of mine when I was a kid, from what I had heard today is that I was not a very expressive child. 

We never felt the need for television as it was considered as a disruptive technology which would interfere with the balance of life, kids would watch tele instead of playing or studying, mums would binge watch family drama and our family dinner time catch up would be disrupted with World news. 

In 1983 India won world cup cricket and we watched it in bits and pieces at our neighbors house. Imagine watching the nail biting finish to the semi final and final at somebody else's house huffing and puffing in our proper clothes and lips zipped up, no jump, shout or scream escaped from our mouth. It was suffocating, plus imagine no snacks ! Our bellies would growl but we maintained a straight face, because we were well behaved children educated in a catholic convent. 

I remember there was this Doctor couple who lived behind us. They were a very serious lot, I barely made any eye contact with them because I would always be busy to watch out for the massive freakin Alsatian that would look at me with its predatory eyes. Dog lover? Yeah sure I am a dog lover but that dog was no dog, it was a monster, or perhaps I was small in size. No matter how hospitable the household was, watching a worldcup from their household did not workout well. 

Then there were the other Doc Uncle but they were almost two kilometers away and without a bicycle I kind of felt lazy walking to watch a cricket match and I was hardy five years old. I am not sure how my siblings felt about it about the whole experience, I am sure the discomfort was quite at large considering they were older and they actually understood cricket.

I think it was a year later that my father succumbed to buying a television. Those days there were different brands of tele's from Korea, Taiwan, Japan brands and having a colored television was a sign of prosperity in the early eighty's. One afternoon my father brought in a large box into our drawing room. I memorized the brand, it was a Sonodyne Magnus. I don't remember which country it was manufactured in, but I was damm well proud of the dapper sleek dark television which stood in one corner of the house. 

" Dada (Bro) , what happened to Neighbor's Envy Owners Pride? Why did you not buy a Onida?" I remember our neighbor asking. My father being a Physicist and stuff I expected a detailed explanation of some design flaw in the Cathode Ray tube ...bleh! 

" I don't like the Onida man with two horns, he is kind a scary" my father shrugged. Seriously? I may a expected a lot more than that in terms of explanation. 

Why was the tele so dark? I walked about the chaos in the house, without having any clue of what was happening. I am sure nobody needed a kid to figure out that stuff. Ahh.... the antenna needs to go up. I ran out of the main door and looked up, the antenna which kind a looked like a fish bone was being hauled up using a long metal pipe and a electrician of sorts was hammering things in on the wall to keep it upright.

The folks from the outhouse were not bothered about what was happening, they had occupied front row seats on the floor in front of the television. Down came long cables through the window, the television was now connected to the antenna. My mother with a half Monalisa smile sat on a bamboo chair at one corner of the room and sipped on a steaming cup of milk tea. Which made all the sense for me to occupy up my seat in front of the tele. 

The next sixty minutes was chaotic, the chap on the roof kept rotating the antenna slowly and my brother inside kept shouting a yes and no if there was a signal or not. I quickly rushed and dove in front of the tele, we all stared at the static transmission on the idiot box. Later that night I would have closed my eyes for sleep and I swear I could see static transmission under my closed eyelids. 

Somebody squealed when we saw faint shadows meaning, we were almost there. The excitement level hit the roof, everybody inside started shouting yes and no, left right , the dog outside started barking at the confusion. 

Voila! 

Picture Courtesy from Wikipedia 
 Antenna (radio) - Wikipedia 
I do not own the picture. 

The first picture frame came up, clear, crystal clarity in color! A dead body!

Frack!

My mother being the most religious amongst of all exclaimed  " Of all the things in the world that we had to see on television a dead body had to be the first thing", God Almighty had given us the sign. 

Who cares, we cheered. We had our own entertainment box, no more watching tele at the neighbors. The rest of the evening we had a lot of guests, who wanted to watch the Sunday evening movie. The front row seats still remained with the folks from the outhouse, unblinking eyes blood red with fatigue, eyes wide shut.

Over a period of time we all learnt that with every storm we would lose signal in the television and somebody had to climb up the roof to fix it. Sometimes the booster would blow off because of lightning or sometimes a few crows would lollygag on the antenna and disorient it.  

That is how Disney entered our childhood along with Marvel and DC. We were big fans of the Japanese manga series called Johnny Soko and his flying robot. The advent of cable television was another disruption which came in when I was at the end of highschool, cable brought in the West to our bedrooms, with different channels from Start Television, Sports channels, Discovery etc. 

My siblings had flown out of the nest pursuing their engineering degrees, I was left with supervised limited television time, so that it never interfered with my study time. However nobody could stop me from Buffy, Friends, X-Files and Baywatch I don't think my siblings could do that considering they stayed in hostel and there was only one television for the entire hostel in the entertainment room. 

A few decades down to now, I don't remember  when was the last time I had watched tele. My son hogs the television all the time because I limit his youtube time on his device he has his profile created on Netflix which shows age appropriate content for him. My parents still fight for the the tele, they prefer to continue to use a fat television with a CRT, as per them flat screen televisions distorts the aspect ratio of images and it looks like people have been pulled tall...you say?

I don't contest that, however sometimes I see them toggling between smartphones and televisions. Disruptive technology? Nah, I concur with somebody who said " Technology was best when it brings people together". 

Winter and Picnics

 

I miss winter. 

The season itself has so many great memories attached to it. As a child it was mostly cakes, picnics, farmers market and vacations. As an young adult it was new found love for winter fashion, eating, barbeque parties. Now mostly its the option to go out in the sun, curl up with a cup of coffee and a book. 

This was way back in December  of 1989 or 1988 the year may have slipped my mind but the experience is imprinted big and bold in a happy corner of my mind. Yeah, the happy corner is very useful these days, been accessing it quite frequently in this pandemic. 

Every December my cousin would visit us from the city to detox. We all were very fond of him, him being the single child would be quite enthusiastic about spending time with us. Every year we had to come up with something new to enrich his visit. 

That year it was surprisingly my elder sister spoke up at dinner table  " Tomorrow we will do an adventure".

My cousins eyes shone though his thick glasses, a mischievous smile cracked through his face " What kind of adventure?".

" Tomorrow we will camp in the wild" my sister smirked. 

" Are you serious?" I perked up, thinking she was faking it. 

" Yes, get up early tomorrow morning, we have a tent to pitch" I looked at the retreating behind of my sister, she walked away to build up the suspense.

I knew there were no camp grounds, the concept of camping is very limited to some limited touristy spots in India and our small town was not one of them. Finally I came to conclusion that we will be camping out in the open ground beside our quarters. 

I was up before my sister woke up, patiently waiting for our day to begin. Thick fog hung in the air till about seven a.m. By eight in the morning my mother was in the kitchen prepping breakfast for ten people in the house. A quick nod from my sister  and we slipped out from the kitchen door. The dew from the grass immediately dampened our shoes, we could see a hazy yellow bulb in the sky, which was the sun. I was holding a iron rod which was a part of our gardening tools and my sister had a machete in hand. With her instructions from the backyard we managed to chop some bamboo into six feet portions and a bag of broken bricks we walked towards the open fields where a decade back my parents had planted paddy in those fields. That's a story for another time. 

A clay stove

Within a hour we had planted those bamboo portions and tied one of Mum's saree to cover three sides and voila our camp was ready. Mum brought in a red clay charcoal stove, it was already lit and a large pan of water was boiling in it with a dozen eggs.

OMG! We were gonna cooking outside and it looked to be a whole day plan. Frankly we had never done such a thing all by ourselves without parental supervision. Utensils and bags of ration appeared from nowhere in our camp and we were set up for the whole day. 

Just as we finished toasting the last of the bread, my cousin arrived at the site, panting white remains of toothpaste around his lips indicating a rushed morning ritual. He got the first plate of buttered toast and egg with steaming warm milk. We were on!

Since there was only one stove, there was no parallel processing. After breakfast we stood around the warm stove and waited for some milk tea to come our way. While waiting for the tea, we brainstormed the menu. My sister was planning a feast for us. For lunch she had planned for Daal ( Lentils) , Egg curry, and fried potato wedges. For evening snack we were to eat eggplant fritters and tea. 

The day slowly heated up, layers of our jackets and sweater piled up on the picnic mat. My sister had many little helping hands to peel potato, peel eggs, pound ginger and garlic. Apart from my cousin and I, the girls Purnima and Anima from our outhouse where there as well, my brother was busy keeping the dogs away from the food, one of my school friends was also there to help and eat. 

Adults were not allowed to be there, but they were very interested to see what was happening. Only mother was allowed to come and see how the food was progressing. In between we stepped away for a game of garden cricket with Grandpa as a umpire. 

Lunch was ready by late afternoon, we lined up crossed legged plates on the ground. My sister picked up the large pans of food and served us steaming hot rice on our plates followed by the rest. Thanks to the hot rice as everything else was as cold as a block of ice.

I don't remember who but we had a unexpected visitor and the count of eggs in the curry went down by one. We all looked around not wanting to share our portions. It was the girls from the out house who were the kind ones to share half of their eggs with the visitor. God bless them.

The adults enjoyed a long lunch indoors without the screaming children and food fights. That day I became a big fan of my sister. She chaperoned approximately six children of different ages for the whole day, delegated work effectively and kept us in peace and harmony.....no food fights. With full bellies we rolled about the picnic mats with a mini contest of spitting Orange pipsqueaks farthest away and talking about the exciting meal. The eggplant fritters were fried while we watched the sun turn into a orang ball towards the horizon, tea time rolled in quick, I do remember the eggplant fritter was raw at many places but who cared. 

We gathered around the stove for the last round of tea and packed up. The day was over, how I wished it lasted forever. We never repeated that sort of a picnic till years after, may be that is why it remained etched in my mind for a long time. 

Lots of happy memories of grubby faces, bundles of colorful sweaters and jackets running about, expression of ahhh and ooooo when the food got served as if there were jewels on our plates. 

Good times. 

Clouds and Sky

I have always been the imaginative kind in my life. Usually the youngest of the kids are always eccentric and adapt to situations and very outspoken. I was not, when I think of childhood I was the quite type, I would spend hours alone without talking to anybody and the only friend I had with me was my imagination.  When I was lonely I imagined a jungle full of animals around me, when I needed love I would imagine my pillow as a large soft teddy and hug it. When I was happy I would sing to an entire audience of mongrels, the point I am getting to is, there was no dearth of entertainment in my 'loneliness'. However whenever I met fellow humans, I never figured out what to communicate. 

One of my favorite loneliness games was to stare the the sky and clouds. It still is, but Gurgaon is so polluted that I can never see a clear sky. But yesterday was different, its been raining for a few days and its bright and sunny at times. In the evening while I gave my designated mommy time to my son I noticed the sky was clear and there was a pleasant breeze in the air. There was nobody at the park, just us. We picked up heaps of Frangipani and scattered them around the green park. Aryan kept uttering Waa Flawwer a million times. I introduced him to black ants and explained him the concept of big and small.  

 

Once we came to the verandah to count the number of busses and trucks and tractors on the street I was in for a treat. I saw some amazing cloud formations. The next 3 hours went in a daze, kept looking at them and clicked pictures, hundreds of them, thinking the current one was better than the previous one, till was was dark outside. Never realized such simple things in life brings us so much of joy. My mind was refreshed and energized, I smiled at Ma and told her, the evening was good, I have got content for my next post. She muttered something but I was lost in my mind palace.

It started with two mini tornado like cloud over the concrete horizon and the wind blew it from the same direction.  The wind smelt of fresh green leaves, the kind of smell that you get if you mow your lawn. For me it reminded me of post monsoon days when Mr. Gardener would come in for consecutive two days and de-weed the entire garden and cut of the overgrown gross with a sickle.

I don't remember his face or if we spoke to him. I remember he would take off his kurta and wrap around his lungi tight and start chopping the overgrown grass from one corner of the garden with a million mosquitoes sitting on his back. I guess the inner compulsive person inside me was dying to slap his back and kill all of them, but I had immense self restrain. I would watch the skinny mosquitoes grow fat and obese over hours of overfeeding blood from the poor man. 

The key joy of my day would be to watch Mr. Gardener eat. Mum would give me the responsibility to help her with carrying lunch for him. His face would light up in delight at the mountain of rice and lentils, a portion of vegetables, fish curry and some yogurt on the side. I would linger around the mounds of freshly cut grass, and sneak glances to watch the man eat. 

It felt wrong, it felt as if I was encroaching on his private moment. I could imagine the amount of back breaking work he had put in for the whole day he must be crazy hungry and his expressions of satisfaction and delight digging into the food, its been almost three decades and I cannot forget it. 

I remember I would hum to myself and hop from one mound of grass to another almost tempted to kick and scatter them around till I would hear the gruff voice of the man to basically asking me to cut the crap and get back inside. I would ignore him till the word 'snake' would float in, that would be basically it.

To recall now, didn't I have anything else to do? School perhaps?  I would be back to cloud formations and imaginary drawings in the sky. 

I don't know why I never posted this, perhaps because of a lack of a better photograph. Considering I have taken time off from work, I decided to post this with a recent photograph of clouds and sky around me.