Ra Ra 10...

My sunflowers Ria and Jia

Nope ive not seen Ra.One.  But i liked the expression when Ri shouted hey Ra Ra.10! Reminding me at once of Ra Ra Rasputin and Sharukh's latest international sci-fi RaOne.  Now that's not a bad exclamation at all! I must say quite creative!

Ri turned 10 on March 10. I had promised her many things to her choice once she crossed that milestone. For instance frying eggs on the stove, making tea and coffee and so forth... Of course she had the freedom to assist me in the processes involved in these great activities all along. But only in mixing the ingredients or fetching spoons and cups.

Freedom to cook on the fire blazing underneath requires quite a sense of responsibility, as my Amma says. And I guess I had to prepare Ria for that before I actually let her light the stove and actually cook. (Amma, I love you for those beautiful lessons.) I remember rolling the laddoos while she dipped them in the bubbling oil in the huge frying bowl! Mouth watering memories...

Ria is yet to make her official omellete all by herself... Right from buying the eggs and vegetables, tendering the right change at the grocers, bringing home the eggs without breaking them, placing the eggs and vegetables in their respective trays in the refrigerator, planning for the meal, cracking the eggs, slicing in the chillies and tomatoes, lighting the stove and frying it on the pan in butter or ghee (a choice she has to make), toppling it without breaking it, sprinkling corriander leaves on it, rolling it into a fine roll and placing it in the plate with the same spatula, slicing it into neat mouthable pieces and finally the salt and pepper! (Wish we had hens at home to train her how to fetch the eggs every morning like how we did in our village)

Now do we really have to do all this for an omellete? Well how else can one explain the essence of enjoying what we do? How else does one explain the beauty of the food that warms our appetite? And we women develop our multi-tasking skills basically from the kitchen. From the fire that we light each morning for the day's meal to the dishes we wash, wipe and set aside, there are ever so many opportunities to write pages on the health, safety and environmental concerns plus the organising skills that we should be aware of... Phew... im on fire!

And you know what Ri loves? One touch cooking... Microwaves! Not surprising at all given the fact that I do only half the kind of cooking my mother used to!

Ra Ra 10.... Many happy returns to my Ria and let me grab some for myself too for the exciting ten years of motherhood! I loved every day of it. Only wish time went a wee bit slower....

Bleep... Ten C's

Im no Saint. Neither a fool-proof sinner. Just an ordinary soul who believes in the Ten Commandments to a convenient extent. But life these days has been  like a question paper ... more like a rapid fire session where I've to pick my choices or loose.

Of all the tenets in the Ten Commandments, I often failed to understand why it was said never to use Thy Lord's name in Vain... It has perplexed me all my 36 years on this planet. Starting of as a Hindu and then being reborn to embrace Christianity, Ive taken the Lord's name whenever I was in trouble, when I was happy, when I was disturbed, when I couldn't see through the dark, when I lost my way home and found it too, when I wanted to thank someone, when somebody thanked me... That was one name that found a place in my heart and on my lips as easily as the breath that keeps me live... Yes, HE was never empty to me. Yes, it was not in vain...

Not so recently I reaffirmed my belief in the fact that The Lord is a very sincere power up there that is looked upon by everyone as the definite source of infintism. He is transcendent, the eternal, the continuously present, the ever generous....Hey but HE is up in the sky... At office and home, we have such sources of infinite powers too. Not totally Gods, but semi seats of power and authority.

Ten Commandments

Translating the tenets to the more palpable home and office scenarios, let's just take a count of how many times we use the Boss's name as a sponge, shield or weapon. The very use of their names at the wrong times and the right ones, could open shut doors wider, can finish projects in no time and even create a rainfall in winter... Let's quit exaggerating.. But its true my friends, using the Boss's name or anybody else's name to hasten things up or to save face is a rude rude strategy to meet targets... There are million other ways to do it. And the best one I feel, is by being honest about our need.

I was hurt that a dear friend of mine outwitted me recently with this crude strategy. I love him no less. But it has brought me closer to my belief, Thou shalt not take the name of  The Lord, thy God in vain.

Thanks dear Moses for the Ten Commandments. Especially this third one!

shtyle!

In less than 20 minutes of posting myself on shytle.fm I received 18 requests for friendships. I have not replied to any, cause its humanly impossible to reply to requests as they flow in by the minute. And I really don't think anyone really does reply either.

It's amazing to actually feel the speed at which we can connect. Definitely something unthinkable during our grandparent's age. Probably I should confess, I'm at snail pace in the present zapp age!

In the Malayalam movie, Achuvinte Amma, which I have to play for my Jia at any one of her meal times everyday, there is this character Muthumma. She is the grand old mother in a huge Muslim house where all the ladies eagerly wait for their husbands to call from the Gulf. Muthumma tells Vanaja, her neighbour, of how her husband left for the Gulf long long ago in a boat and had to swim to the shore. It took two long years to hear from him while she waited in fear and prayer. And look at two generations down! We can fly to our loved ones when we desire, call, mail and even see each other at the snap of a finger she shared with awe.

I agree completely with Muthumma. The earth sure is spinning and taking everything with it too. Im party to this new connect which lives by the phrase no distance too long, no time too short. Yes we are 3G ready! 

Incidentally my friend who send me the invite link to this site was totally unaware he invited me at all. It was just a site promo that reached my inbox. In any case, happy to be inshtyle just for this learning lesson of instant connect. I was actually stricken by surprise, amazement and slowly fear as the friendship requests kept ticking. But then it is our choice to respond or not.

A majority of the mails from a majority of the males had the same question : Hey babe, wanna chat with me?!

A..E..I..O...U

Im not an authority on emotional intelligence or anything to do about it yet. But I believe when we learn from life, its best shared in the right spirit. Let me see, how best can I put this across from the little that I know?

Yes, let's take it from the basics of language... English for instance....We cannot do without the vowels ....

A, E, I, O, U .... we need one or more of them in every word to form a word.

And in life we just cannot do without Attitude, Emotional Intelligence, Optimism and Understanding. These are the vowels, the a e i o u of  life, if I could put it that way. And all of these in the right measure, makes us near perfect!

And if we remember what our Holy Books tell us, life doesn't happen just once. The very letters that make the word LIFE remind us that Life Is For Ever. I strongly believe that we may make our exit from this world some day or the other, but we live through our children, in others' memories, in what we live for, what we die for and what we care for the most...

Im shaking up myself for a nice bit of change as Im absolutely in love with life.... Frankly with over three decades on this planet, its about time I got the abc's of my life straight. And I definitely know the letters that will come in handy are A E I O U.. Check it out!

Manha

Guess what colour we selected to paint our nails with? Manha! Yes a sparkling canary yellow. Seemed very funny while we saw it standing next to the different other similar colours. There was a nice apple green, a shocking electric blue and a rather strange colour neither purple nor violet. Im happy this store didn't have many of the glittering ones!

Our mission was to get a colour to paint our nails to break the boredom of clean fresh ones Ria had to stick to for lessons on cleanliness. Well she got bored stiff with my lectures and finally I had to get her a bottle of nail polish, because all her friends had remanants of some fancy colours on their nails.

I opted for green as it looked earthy. Ri preffered the yellow. Seems out of the world to me, a little Martian kind! But after three days with it, it seems pretty acceptable. Isn't that a cosmic law?

In any case it was not a bad buy at all. We painted first on Riz (please read that as reeeez) toe nails, which seemed quite OK and then her finger nails, which seemed "Hey, kinda coool!"

The best part of this buy was that Anna , my smaller one, learnt to say Manha, (Yellow, in Malayalam).(Pronounced : ma'nha - like the sound of 'ng' in orange) Energised with that revelation, we painted all her tiny nails and she went about saying manha, manha... Nice way to learn!!!

Show her a dry leaf now and she chweetly chirps Manha!

Sr Florentia says...

Having spent a lot of my growing up time in a Boarding House run by Sisters, we were introduced to Please and Thank you at a very young age. “Please and Thank you are very powerful words,” Sr Florentia used to say. “It will take you to God and all those to whom you say it will follow you to Him,” she used to say with her beautiful round eyes shining on her beautiful round face. I often remember her and how we laughed at her stories.

And, now as a mother, I say the same to my daughter, and she laughs like how I used to. Well, it might take her many years to understand the depth of what is being communicated. But I’m sure she will pass it on to her children.

From my training as a teacher, and my life as a daughter, I have realised that there are many things that we pass on to children knowingly and unknowingly. The most important of these, I feel, is how we talk. Children invariably take after us. That’s nature’s choice. But what we want them to learn from us is our choice.

So as providers of food, clothes, shelter, education, safety and security to children, we parents have a huge role. Topping that list is as providers of good communicating habits. As shared by child experts, parent-child communication is one of the most important protective factors against risky behavior in children and further, risky behaviour in adults. No matter how old they are,  talking with children is one of the most important things we can do to help them grow up as confident and secure individuals. Unless we communicate properly, we can’t get things done properly.

We can thus see that talking is a skill. "Something that classifies us as human beings," Sr Florentia used to say. Therefore shall we presume talking good is an art? Something that characterizes any person as a success!

Recently I grabbed an opportunity of sharing my views on Developing skills that can take us far on an invitation from a radio channel. My thanks to Mr PM Edwin Michael, the Programme Executive of All India Radio (Thrissur) for inviting me and for sharing the audio file.

Would now love to share this here, especially because, today is the International Family Day and there is a lot that we can give and take from one another in the family. Please click the green tab below to listen to my radio talk.

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Speechless? Then smile.

I love to see smiles. I like smiling a lot too. Laughing aloud that is. As kids we could cry and laugh so easily. With age, we don't know if we should cry first or smile or smile first and then cry at given situations. To make matters worse, we hardly smile.

Often Im maddened at the way my kids smile and laugh so happily. So easily. The way they hide their fear or guilt behind a sweet smile. And how sinfully stupid I am to shout at them just because I feel its not funny. But looking at things from their perspective, life would just be another episode from Alice in Wonderland when we demand respect, denounce trivialities and pronounce every possible restriction to every possible situation. And grown ups are grown ups when we say its all in the name of safety and security or shall we say taming the wild with etiquettes thats right?

I tell you we grown-ups have to take a walk down the childhood alley more often. I mean, there are so many things that we can smile off. So many worries that we need not even bother about. So many tales that are better left under the carpet than bragged about over breakfast, lunch or dinner, on the way to office, on the daily trip to the grocer or any possible moment of togetherness. What's wrong with us? Why can't we just leave the past behind with a smile?

I really really think a smile can save many things at once...

Recently I had attended a workshop ... An interplay workshop where we had the opportunity to laugh and laugh and laugh in the most hilarious way oblivious of the surroundings we were in and we really laughed and laughed and laughed till tears rolled out! Its amazing the way laughter can cleanse the soul and leave us feeling so light...I hadn't laughed all that much since ages. Honestly, I wonder if I ever laughed that much at all...

What I did realize that day was that, each of us have some kind of energy in us that is seeking every moment to find a way out to manifest into what I dare call God's Will. But what we do while this energy awaits freedom of expression is stiffle it off with ever so many irrelevant reasons that we call duties and priorities. We have the answers to most of our problems. But we hardly give ourselves the time to think about it.

My friend Ajith is a jolly good person with a famously loud laugh! Its as warm as his soul and as infectious as the mirth he spreads around during coffee-breaks at office. He loves travelling. I wonder what would be the answers to what he means from questions like do you like watching the drop of rain that knows it has to fall down from the leaf but still clings on to it only to let the morning sun shine through it ? Have you ever stopped to hear the sound of silence? Have you ever laughed out till you could laugh no more? And on days when salary days are yet a long wait away, the bloke hits a serious note with are the naked truths of life alive, glaring and grinning at you?!

Powerful images in every question. My answer, a smile.