hi-five time!

In which we wish happy birthday to the daughter who turns 5 and the mother that was born with her.
Feels like i just blinked and the tiny baby with 2 red cucumber-seeds-like lips and 2 glazed-marbles-like eyes has turned into this big girl(as u say)

I am not sure of many things still but am very proud of how we have done so far. I have forgotten how it started ...From the time u were born when all that was there between us was disconnect because we dint know how to communicate with each other. When u cried, I would change nappy while u actually wanted me to carry u and many such mismatches :) and then slowly we started seeing each other eye-to-eye: strangers at first, acquaintances next, reliable time pass friends next and at some point disconnect changed to connect and has increased been increasing since. Today I miss you when u go to school and i am at home. The constant questioning and reasoning keeps me on my toes. For the good of both of us I have done many things since u came into my life. Things I barely imagined I was capable of. The word 'lazing around'  has been long gone from my dictionary. We fight, we laugh, we read, shop, play, color, cook , make a mess-clean up after all together. U love ur school and friends, I love my work and time with adults. U r a lot like me my mother tells me but I have my own thoughts. U r not like anyone I know my precious lil girl. Before i get all emotionally choked up i just wish you remember these times - our times of growing up together very fondly someday later.Happy birthday!

P.S: ur gem of the day
All 3 of us getting out of car at basement.
P: K can u pls get the elevator ?
K: Pachi what is an elevator?
P - busy carying all the 99 items out of the car seems to not hear ur question so i volunteer to answer
D: Elevator is another name for a lift. Elevate means move something up so an elevator helps us elevate/move up the floors to reach our house ( approx 2 min long winded speech + lot of hand gesturs and action to explain)
K (looking very confused): but we also use the lift to come down from 4th floor to G no? what do u call that?

On work

Very soon, its going be 10 years since my first job.
I have very vivid memories of my excitement to work and conquer the world.
Somehow work =freedom was my feeling back then.
Freedom financially, freedom to think and do creative stuff unlike studying for exams on subjects i cared 2 hoots about while in college. oh boy! how naive was I. I was very open about talking to seniors, asking for a mentor. I constantly and voluntarily looked to connect with mentors - Seniors in the organization who had been there, done that. And then, after a while reality stuck. Sadly i did not find my mentor. I moved cities, countries and of course place of work. The excitement toned down, approach more mature, expectations more real. I worked with a lot of interesting people. got a very different perspective on life and work. It was a wonderful thing. I had stopped looking for mentors by then. Concluded they dont exist.
Then i moved cities again. Took on roles that I had no prior hands on experience with.
But what  I had was a redefined approach to work. The reason why I worked had changed. I could quit anytime I wanted and was fearless in my approach because of it.  I went to work because i enjoyed it. I believed in common sense, feared no new technology, methodology, culture. I learnt a lot by being very open to failure but surprisingly did not fail. Then I joined here and I got to work with him. The Mentor i had stopped looking for at work places :). My 1 on 1 meetings with S over the last few months have taught me more about life than about work.  Its very nice that these meetings stop being about work goals and quickly shift to conversations and questions around life itself in the larger scheme of things. I dont want to forget some very interesting metaphors he brings up in our conversations.

Conversations with S:
Sometimes taking care of a team is like taking care of a baby with fever.
You can check the temperature and give medicine but cannot take the fever away and feel it urself.
If something is not going well, give feedback and step back. Go back and check again after a while. Fixing things for them will make both of u useless. They wont learn and you wont grow.

Tell me what are the memories that have pushed you to next level.(experience). Am sure you dont recollect much of the innumerable smooth releases that have happened. But the one, during weekend when no one else was around and the server dint start, program dint work and u did all you could to get help but couldn't. So you sat and then solved it urself, that is what you will remember, that is what shapes you. that is experience. So experience is what you get when you dont get what you want.

The best of the flora grows at the base of a volcano once it cools down. Dont give up when the circumstances are tough.

The taste of food is meaningless once it enters your stomach. What generates energy for your body is different. yet we focus soo much on taste and presentation . so much so that at times we forgo the nutrition. A well executed project is like a good meal. Looks good, feels good and IS actually good.

Doing everything at work is important. Just how much time you spend on what is crucial.
Its like this: for a yummy meal, one needs, rice. sambar, papad and pickle. if you add the same quantity of all of these can you eat your meal? its always nice when u have adequate amount of each of these on ur plate. (while discussing on my question around slicing time for various activities)

on Friends

The ones that surprise you always.
Like your  best-friend-from-college leaves without even a call to say bye. How weird is that.
As they say, expectation brings in disappointment.
oh well , what i wanted to note down is that most unlikely of all people I have met with in the last few months have ended up being one of the closest friends I have.
S from work place, C from Paris and a very distant cousin Sa. All these women have interests in life that are as different from mine as possible. One works for money, another because she does not know any other way, and Sa does not work and had left 1 child in a different country!
My first reaction to interacting with all 3 of them i remember was god i hope i dont have to deal with you on a regular basis. Somehow the honesty in their talk and work has changed things around.
So the lesson is to be less judgemental especially of strangers. Everyone has a reason to be who they are.
While on friends, I read random data somewhere from a random research that a child is most influenced by her friends. Parents, no matter how much effort they put in, have a meagre 10% or lesser influence on how the child will turn out to be.
I want my child to be very self aware. take responsibility for her decisions, good and bad both.Basically deal with her life and live without regret.
While thinking of an action plan for this, I came up with a list of things I could do so she would be influenced in that direction.
1. Find a group of like minded parents (am sure Prash and I are not the only ones who want this for their child? ya?) and let K hang out with them. Duh! deadend in first step. I find it so hard to find and connect with any other parent that the probability of this happening is not a convincing number.(this is also because its a time intensive exercise that needs one to go out and about with a lot of parents and filter out. Frankly neither of us has the time or patience to do that at the moment and when we will eventually, K will be a teenager probably living on her own!)

2. My new plan is to be her friend myself rather than a parent. This experiment is underway and feels a bit unnatural. Since my first reaction to things is that of a 30+ adult who is corrupted by knowledge and not that of a 4+ carefree kid. Prash might have a higher success rate I am guessing. Only time and K will tell.
On another note, my art skills and ability to think arty is increasing exponentially being with her. Like for example for Prash's bday we took a used tennis ball and glue so she could make it a gift for him by sticking happy birthday on it (using a tennis ball was my idea, gluing letters was hers). I told her lets bake a cake and wish him at midnight. As usual that opened a series of what is, why is questions starting with what is midnight. To which i said its when his birthday will start.
K: if its at midnight why are you calling it birthday. bubby is funny!
It took me more than a couple of seconds to realise what she was saying actually.
Talking to 4 year olds can lead to so many existential questions these days really!
I am liking being friends with her more than being her mother. At least momentarily I let go of everything.

Meh-arashtra

Another month another trip.

Where : Maharashtra

Why:We chose Maharashtra for we wanted to see Ajanta,Ellora, Mahabaleshwar and visit Prash's friend in Pune + its closer to Karnataka

When : February 14 to 22 (2014)

Blore- Pune, uneventful flight. Loved the new terminal at KIA. The new resaurant based on Malgudi theme that served some tasty veg rolls. It was the last day of working at the previous company and somehow i wasnt as emotional as either of us expected I would be. I think one hangs on to things badly upto a point and after that it does not matter as much. Oh well, the surprising part was the lack of taxis at Pune airport. So much for ignoring Amod's advise to pre-book online cab.

It was soo late in the night when we reached Amod+Sayli+Shambhavi's house , i was hardly able to keep my eyes open and khushi was coughing so badly that i just wanted to come back. She coughed through the night and none of us slept for half an hour at a stretch.

Next morning, by the time i woke up, Prash and Khush had visited the doctor and got some codeine based medicine. I was soo desperate to get her to stop coughing frankly was ok to give her codeine ( Sometimes i cant believe we dont worry about such things and assume she is grown up enough to handle all the bad medicines .it scares me. But i guess there is only much as a choice in such matters. It is at such times that i wish i were a doctor ...a paediatrician) Khushi stopped coughing, got some sleep and was back in her elements by noon. She was so happy to be playing with Shambhavi. Children are soo weird when it comes to playing with other children.

She is comfortable talking to anyone and saying lets play. But then they start fighting in no time over a toy that neither of them really cares of about. At this point its upto the patience and experience of the adult in charge to shape how things go.

 Option 1: abandon play and take ur child home. This is the easiest option and i do this when i am tired and have no patience

 Option 2: Praise the other child for how wonderfully she/he shares. I exploit the all prevelant jealousy feature in humans here

 Option 3: Encourage ur child by saying how mature and big girl she is and how she can understand what others dont. I use the praise before performance tactic here. Hanumantha behaviour i call ;). the more u praise, the more/better she does ;)

Anyways after some dosas for children and poori bhaji for us we left to see Lavasa city. It reminded us soo much of wellington. The waterfront and houses dotting all over the hills and people riding cycles. K and Sh played to their heart's content at the nice play area while we caught a very beautiful sunset over the lavasa lake. Hated the sub-standard , overly priced lunch at Indo-american restaurant . In general, the food throughout our trip was quite disappointing. Normally the local flavour is a highlight in all our trips but by the end of this trip i could not wait to eat mosranna with pickle. Steaming rice, cold masru and spicy lemon pickle. Yummy!

On Sunday we were to leave for Aurangabad early but in view of K's cough and how little catch up was actually done, decided to leave after lunch. Met another family prash knew from before. The marati thali lunch was quite heavy and we all slept through the way from Pune to Aurangabad.

Roads in all states except Karnataka seem to be way better. I was for once happy with the taxi and pleasant driver. Or may be the expectations have stooped down sooo much that anything better than abysmal makes me happy.really.

Aurangabad is surprisingly a big city. So much army presence and historically important. Couldn't hav been more different to my imagination of it as a non-descript petty town.

We managed to see bibi-ka-mukabra which is a mini-taj mahal. Not to mention badly maintained and soo non-tourist friendly. I have a hard time explaining things to K these days. She comes up with very basic questions. What is death? When will mummy die ? Why doesn't Prashanth's mum come down from being a star. Did she go in a rocket to the sky. Soemtimes i crack up and laugh , sometimes i struggle. The other day she asked us what is radio and how does it play songs. Prash and I struggled for half an hour and I think we failed in the end and gave up ;) after going over frequency , radio jockey, channels, broadcasting, antenna blah blah. I said songs are in the air. She looked surprised and said silly mummy she says songs go to my nose.Anyway at bibi-ka-mukbara she was worried that Aurangazeb's mother's body is still below the green blanket; which was quite creepy when she told me. I just changed the topic to the more easy flowers, gardens and fountains. I remember the chinese bhel we ate at dinner. Was the first time we had it and we both liked it.

We checked out and drove to Ellora. On the way was the Daulatabad fort. Muhamad bin tuglaq was oscillating between this fort and delhi. It is for real. All of history feels relevant and i can place things and finish parts of the puzzle. I am glad to have seen this fort and wish I had seen it while i mugged up for exams... who was alaudin khilji... how tuglaq shifted capital from delhi to daulatabad and back with all his subjects in tow. The highlight was the bhulbhulaiya/ serpentine dark maze. Such a brilliant piece of construction/architecture. K recognised the smell of bats and we only ventured for a minute into it and got out.

Ellora: all excavated caves. 3 eras and 3 religions, hinduism,jainism and buddhism. Caves had a number each. We were most impressed by cave no.16. Climbed up to get a better/different view. I was done seeing the cave temples and sculptures after 4 of them ;) they looked the same.

By night we reached Ajanta. The hotel or rather the shack we stayed that night has got to be the worst place we have stayed in anywhere so far. Trust me, in the last 8 years we have stayed in countless hotels, B&Bs, tents , motels and even caravans. But the worst one has to be the one at Ajanta. What was baffling was its a UNESCO recognised heritage site and there is no decent hotel to camp anywhere near by. Aurangabad is ur best bet. The dinner is best forgotten. We had to drink a bottle of soda each and keep K on fruit diet. Oh how could i forget the fried parantha for breakfast next morning. The cook at the dhaba poured out 1 litre of oil into a pan. I had no idea he would without a second thought drop the parantha into it. The look of horror on my face mus have been obvious because he started to explain that it tastes best if deep fried. What? Ya? Ok whatever... get me more bananas and soda please;) The drive to Ajanta caves is by a maharashtra state transport bus only. I dint understand why but Prash reasoned that there might not be enough space to park all pvt vehicles near the caves. Again ya? Whatever... somethings are best not rationalised. The caves at Ajanta were striking . Horse shoe shaped 32 caves . We bought a book and read through instead of getting a guide like we normally do. Ask y.. coz they charge a whopping 1000 Rs. And yes we are like that only.penny wise pound foolish. but 1000 rs for a guide felt exhorbitant. Oh and the security guards at the entrance of each cave offered to explain and show the highlights for 30 Rs each. This is what i dislike about India. The fact that u can always get a sub-standard one for much cheaper quick fix, adjust maadi and cheat maadi. Anyway, it was hot and triring to walk up and down sometimes carrying K. She walked quite a distance . Throughout the trip, we trekked and walked up and down everyday and she has easily walked upto 2 Kms without complaining after which Prash carried her while i morally supported them both. ;)

That night we had booked to stay at a hotel in Ahmednagar , half way between Ajanta and lonavla.

Not finding the hotel at Ahmednagar is also going down as one of the firsts. There has never been a case, even in the remotest parts of where we have been to that we couldn't trace a hotel. What that meant for us is travel back to Pune another 2 hours of journey. We reached Amod and Sayli's place close to midnight and K was fast asleep.

The next morning we drove to Lonavla. My idea of lonavla was that it was hill station and though the city is at an elevation, it hardly felt like a hill station. The drive, hotel, pool and lunch were all nice. I slept like a log all afternoon while the other 2 played to their heart's content in the pool. Finally it felt like a holiday. After all the RnR went to see the highlights of lonavla nad khandala. The monkey point and sunset at lion's point. Yet another beautiful sunset. There is something soo calming about sunsets, always try and catch one evry time we are out of the city. The chocolate fudge at lonavla was yummy. We left to Murud the next day morning. The drive was what I was looking for all the while. Away from the highways, through the several villages , rivers , schools and shops. There is something exciting about watching life go by. I enjoy imagining how their lives would be. Always feel they have fewer things to worry/think about.The whole route was along the coast and reminded us a lot of Goa. The coconut trees and small serpentine roads. After stopping at a few view points we finally reached Murud. From the hill to the sea. The beach facing room was comforting. I have developed a new sense of liking towards jeera rice and dal tadka (all meals in Murud were the same:)). The evening trip to Janjira and the police station was something i had not even remotely anticipated. Ok the story: Went to the jetty to catch a ferry to the Janjira fort . A guy asks us to pay 400 bucks saying its going to be a shared boat. I am surprised at the cost and ask him where is the Govt operated ferry. He laughs off and says this is the one and I could go if i wanted. We did agree to pay him 400 after mr wordly wise prash reminded me how much i have spent on flights, hotels and taxi to get to this point and how silly it would be not to see the fort now for 400 Rs. There was a rope from the boat that got entangled with the anchor and a subedar after struggling for half an hour, freed it. Now when we were about to get into the boat, it takes off and pff goes away. We fight with the ticket guy and argue and call names but it does not affect hgim. I am literally fuming and ready to slap anyone who comes my way. We decide to go to the police station and ask the driver to take us there. He laughs and says it makes no difference but I dont care, i want to file a complaint. So we barge into the police station and the officer is quite surprised to have visitors. For a change, he patiently listens to the whole story while prash and I narrate in agony and at the end , he asks which jetty did we go to? What?? which jetty u ask, u mean there is more than 1 ? duh! Blame the driver and the locals for guiding us to a private jetty. We went to the right one where a govt trust operated jetty was functional. OF course he asked us to pay 600 Rs is another story. But a big gang of tourists came in and off we went from Murud to Janjira fort . We hired an unofficial guide who told us fascinating stories about the place. The fort is incredible actually. With a fresh water lake inside a sea fort . Imagine that. The sun setting over the sea, coloring the waves golden orange was magnifique. A dolphin chose to show us its fins a couple of times and in the end the hassle of going to police station was all worth it. As we called it a day, we talked about how small a town this was and yet so beautiful and fascinating. How many such places remain to see and how many we will see :)

Mahabaleshwar was a long drive from Murud and thanks to GPS since i trusted the locals so well now;) we reached by 3 PM. The last stretch of the drive that actually took us up to the hill station was stunning to say the least. The driver went crazy and rode up in speed and scared us. The hills mountains leading up to Mahabaleshwar were huge and changing landscape at every turn. The hotel had an amazing view and a private strawberry garden. In the evening we went to Elephant point and the famous weekend market where I bought 6 pairs of shoes for 1000Rs. I have recovered the ROI on these over the last 1.5 months ;) K loves shoes too.Its in the genes Prash thinks. We shopped like tourists for strawberries, shoes, souvenirs and came back dead tired. The next day we went to lingmala falls which despite the sidey name turned out to be spectacular. Falling in 3 long steps at the head of a valley. Mahabaleshwar was the best part of the entire trip. So natural, so green and so majestic. Saw a few more view points and took off to Pune. Stopped at Mapro (short for mahabaleshwar produce we thought) and gorged on strawberry desserts. The view point at panchgani was soo NZ-ique. We met Lucky Ali at a dhaba eating sabudana vada and he is quite a charming humble guy. Finally made it to Pune airport intime to be back at home by midnight to strike off another state from the see-India list.

tangled thoughts

Why does one have to make choices always?
It beats me why simple decisions which everyone else seems to make in a jiffy are so hard for me.
Where do one's profession and person merge?
How will i know if i dont try ?
why is it an all or none prospect ?
god! why cant have the best of both worlds?
Confusion induced insomnia is probably worse than a hangover