Of Endless Guilt Trips

I now know the toughest part of motherhood and it is not taking care of the baby. It is ignoring unsolicited advice from all and sundry. Of course, there are people who mean well and leave it to you to take their advice are not. But I have a problem with the lot who advise you and should you care to overlook their advice, will take you on a endless guilt trip.

As a first time mother, I have had my share of anxieties and insecurities. Am I holding the baby correctly? Is my milk enough for him? Am I doing enough to reach his milestones? Why does he keep falling sick? I had a tough couple of months with Chickoo constantly down with cough, cold, fever and endless bouts of crying. It is heartbreaking to see your baby suffer and what is worse is that the poor thing is incapable of communicating the cause of his suffering.

I have tried to steer clear of the guilt trip but there are always people around who will remind you of all the wrong things you have done to make Chickoo suffer. I am going to list them out and just.. let it go. I have been carrying it around for too long so here goes :

• He is giving you a hard time because you gave birth during an inauspicious time

Chickoo was born under a nakshatra which is considered not so good. On arguing that I have no control over the delivery timings, I was reminded that I had a C-section and could have opted for better timings. It was an EMERGENCY C-section, for heaven's sake!

• He suffers from cold because you refuse to tie a scarf

I am well aware of the forty day restriction wherein you are supposed to follow a lot of things and one of them is tying a scarf ALL THE TIME so that you don't catch a cold. I skipped it sometimes because it was soooooo hot that I would have fallen sick from the heat! People even prophesied that he would forever be sick because of my stubbornness. How mean can you get, eh? 

• He has colic because of your eating habits

So I decided to have a bit of spicy food for a change. And all hell breaks loose

• You will go blind because you use the mobile too much

Not many know, but I needed the distraction to get over postpartum blues. My internet surfing actually saved my sanity.

• Baby has less milk because you don't cover while nursing

I love watching my baby nurse - we make eye contact and smile during our long nursing sessions. Surely, this cannot be achieved while I have covered him up like a crime scene? Owing to Chickoo's nasal block during cold, we had a few days of nursing strike. I was on the verge of tears and this statement opened the floodgates. I wept silently every single night until the situation got better. 

I could go on but I decided to list these ones since they came from persons whom I considered to be close enough to me. I am glad for motherhood because it made me aware of a different aspect of their personalities. No mother would ever do things which would harm the baby and yet, people will make you feel guilty. It only saddens me because I do not think I will share the same level of bonding with these people in the future but I am glad for the realization. Here's to detox post motherhood!

Literal Blues

The alarm going off at five in the morning.

The whistle of a pressure cooker. 

Water steadily being filled in the buckets.

The early sun streaming in through the grilled window.

Cooking smells accompanied by the jingling of bangles.

These were the scenes that constituted a typical day in the life of Anita. She would then wake up her kids, pack their meals and rush them off to school. Her husband, a watchman, would soon be arriving after his morning shift. She had not failed to notice the smell of alcohol on him and planned to take it up someday with him , but today will not be that day. 

In a few hours, the house was silent except for the light snoring coming from her husband. Excitement shone off Anita's eyes as she packed her things to leave for her job as a maid. Except that today, she arrived at an nondescript building with walls plastered with somewhat familiar charts. 

Someone was already waiting for her there. She opened a blank notebook and with trembling hands wrote her name. And silently said goodbye to the blue ink smeared on her thumb. 

‘This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.’

The Baby That Binds Us

They say having a baby means saying goodbye to romance in your life, and I can understand why. Taking care of a tiny, delicate being is hard work, not to mention the pain you have to go through post delivery. I used to be permanently exhausted by the clustered feeding sessions and handling the pain due to C section stitches required every ounce of my willpower.

Then there is the forty day restriction period wherein you are expected to lie down all the time, eat bland food and absolutely no screen time. For someone who is not used to sitting idle, this was a difficult phase for me. The hormonal swings were already messing up my brain and to top it all, I was not allowed to read books or even peek at my mobile.

I am usually not the sort to pour out my frustration to anyone but this time I really, really vented out to the BH. In hindsight, I think it was such a trivial thing when you compare it to the miracle that was cradled in my arms. I talked, cried, talked again, and he played the part well of being the patient listener.

Roughly around three weeks postpartum, there were endless nursing sessions that worsened my back pain. During those days, he used to massage my back or sympathetically pat me. Needless to say, I melted away at his gesture.

Then the other day we were at a birthday party and I had to hurry through dinner lest Chikoo wakes up. BH then sat next to me and fed me the food items that I had missed to have in the buffet. I was so hungry that I sent him back for seconds multiple times and every time he patiently did so.

If anything, Chikoo has managed to make our relationship stronger by making us go through the tests of patience and understanding regularly. Both of us are keen to nurture and love our little one and that has us talking or debating endlessly on the best way to do so. We have our differences, of course, but in the end, we have the common goal of raising a good human being. 

Mushy Mushy Love

Our little prince finally arrived on a rainy day in July. It was an emergency C section which was quite unexpected considering that my pregnancy was pretty smooth. It is too overwhelming for me to put my feelings in words and frankly, I think words would belittle the experience. Life has taken a turn for good :)

 

Why Raghuram Rajan's Exit Should Matter

So there have been numerous articles and enough analysis done over RBI Governor's exit. Sure, we are in a democracy and that entitles people to express their opinion, which might border on excessive criticism.

I always thought Raghuram Rajan's tenure in RBI similar to Mohan Bhargava's in the movie Swades. 
NRI arrives in India looking to improve the situation of a country, leaving behind the comforts of his adopted country. And this is where the similarity ends.

There are vultures who chose to swoop down on his mistakes and make a big deal about it. His methods were questioned but no one choose to highlight his achievements. He was written off by people who do not even have the qualifications to do so. And we, as a country looked on mutely as the drama unfolded. The occasional Facebook status, a series of retweets and we assumed we had done our part.

We finally managed to wear out a person's enthusiasm to stay back in the country. Congratulations, we just ensured that no NRI would choose to return to India to give back to his country. Good job done.

For The Small Joys of Life

Everyday routine is what tires me out. Ever since I have been back to India, my life has been following a set pattern which is typical of any Indian household. At the end of the day, I am too exhausted to talk to the BH and promptly   drift off to sleep (who said pregnancy was easy?). This lack of quality time was further adding to the drudgery of daily life. And just like that, life gives you a reason to smile again.

I was to appear for routine blood and urine tests early in the morning. The BH joined me a while later at the clinic post his driving classes. It was assumed that I would walk the way to home while he would leave by bike. Imagine my surprise when he chose to walk the way home with the motorcycle in tow! Anyone looking at it would think it to be a funny sight but that one incident really melted my heart. To this day, I still remember it with fondness and thank life for such tiny, memorable moments. 

Of Goodbyes And Farewells

The past couple of days have been a whirlwind of activities. Well, mostly packing as I try to squeeze in clothes, souvenirs and what-not into the bag (which is bursting at its seams). Summing away three years of your life in a bag is one of the hardest things to do. Not because you  have so many things to pack, but because you have to leave something behind which is equally dear to you.

Long story short, I am returning to India since my work assignment in Belgium has ended. I have been wanting this move for quite some time but the enormity of the decision strikes now, when there are just a few days left.

I am slow packer. The other day, I tried cleaning up the cupboard and out tumbled out some paintings which I had bought in Paris. And so I sat there, gazing fondly at them and going back in time to the spring evening when I walked (!) to the top of the Eiffel tower. Next, I saw an Austria 72 hour tourist travel card and I am reminiscing over the days in Vienna, Salzburg and Innsbruck with my closest pals. There are piles of printouts of maps, tourist information and hotel bookings - it is difficult to throw them away. I count off the countries which I visited - Belgium, France, Finland, Germany, Luxembourg, Italy, Spain, Holland, Switzerland; all of them leaving behind delightful imprints on my mind. Understandably, it took me quite some time to empty that cupboard.

I have spent the better part of today looking into shelves, drawers and cupboards to see if I can squeeze in some last bit of memory into the bag. For when I open it in India, I want the familiar smell to remind me of a time which was filled with laughter, travel, adventures and mostly love.

Of Cravings that Troubled the Better Half

So, out of the blue, I had an intense craving for dahi puri which I conveyed to the BH . Now if we were staying in India, we would have simply walked out to the nearest chat center and had dahi puri to our heart's delight. But staying in a country with limited presence of Indians and Indian products meant that satisfying this craving meant considerable amount of planning.

First stroke of luck was we got our hands on semi-ready puris ; they are a blessing. They are flat, little puris which get puffed up the moment we drop them in the oil. We had the foresight to request an Indian colleague to get it from India and what a great decision it turned out to be!!

Second stroke of luck? We had all the required ingredients at home. Now, being a weekend, all the stores were closed (and this is one of the reasons why I miss India sorely. Getting stuff in the middle of the night is a myth here.).

The better half dutifully chopped up the veggie stuffing and other ingredients required for dahi puri and voila! I must have had close to fifteen to twenty puris and quite shamelessly plundered BH's puri stash. And the poor thing meekly submitted to this loot. After all, he knows better than to face the hungry-angry version of me.


And here is a demonstration of the BH's superior culinary skills. Notice those veggies cut up in tiny pieces :)

The stuffing for dahi puri. Missing in action : Kacchi kairi