What! Wait, please

Shall I start by telling you that Chickoo is going to two years old soon? Or shall I start with ranting about my weight gain that is nowhere close to being tame? Or shall I start with stories of domestic woe?

A LOT has happened since I last updated this blog. The effects of coming back to India has hit me hard and I had withdrawn into a shell to protect myself from all the hurt. When you are pregnant, you are showered with so much pampering, it is intoxicating. When you are a new mum, people around you acknowledge your challenges and support you.

But what happens when you are back to working full-time and the bub is growing up? The world suddenly unloads the expectations they have been holding back until now . It catches you unawares and you try to go with the flow, not realizing that would will soon drown.

 I let myself be thrown all over by the waves, let the water get into my mouth and choke me but no more. The more I flailed my arms around , gasping for air, the more I sank deeper in this mess. It is time to swim against the tide and tell the world that ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. It took me so long to get me back my self-respect ; I am not going to lose it over unimportant thing. Hear me roar. 

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.