"The Best Friend"

One of the most awaited times during a "school working day" for me is the time to pick up Paavani from the school bus after her school gets over. As soon as she jumps off from the bus door, she is all bubbly to offload the latest information about her "best friend". 

Below is an excerpt of a "real conversation" on any typical week (days specified are fictional):

Monday:
She: "Pappa, Roshni is my best friend. I have so much fun with her in the bus!" 

Tuesday:
She: "Pappa, Madanika and I were playing bunnies today, and we were laughing so much!"
Me: "Who is Madanika? You have been going to school for almost 9 months and I haven't heard her name till today..."
She: "Oh she is my best friend!"

Wednesday:
She: "Pappa, I have decided I will take Charanashree with me on my birthday to distribute chocolates to all the teachers."
Me: "Why not Madanika?"
She: "Oh Charanashree is my best friend!"

Thursday:
She: "Pappa, today is Karnitha's birthday and she gave me chocolate even though we are now no longer classmates."
Me: "Oh that is so nice of her. She was your first friend in this school."
She: "Yes, she is my best friend."

Friday:
She: "Pappa, I miss Pragathi."
Me: "Last time you met her was about 4 years ago in your pre-school."
She: "Yes, she is my best friend."

And so it goes: Paavani & her long list of Best Friends...!

:-)

Rebirth as a House Fly?!

At times, there are a few house flies (commonly called in Kannada as NoNa) flying around in our house. These creatures don't really cause any nuisance like mosquitoes which bite and go ummmmm near our ears while we are sleeping - but they are annoying in their own way. It tends to make us shoo them away by waving our hands and legs and what-not whenever we see them.

My daughter has suddenly shown interest in these flies. This happened once when a fly sat on her finger for a long time. When a fly sits on your finger or toes, you wont even feel it - it is so light. So, she didn't really feel it but she saw this fly sitting on her finger. At that instant, she declared the fly to be her pet and she will play with it. [This could also be because she kept asking me for a pet (like a dog or a cat) and I kept refusing!] So she asked me not to shoo away any of the house flies from the house because they were her pets now! Boink!

Be that as it may. That alone is not the reason for me to blog this post. 

She had nicknamed the fly as NoNi and used to call them so until one day she changed it suddenly to 'Mahatma'! I asked her why she was calling the flies as 'Mahatma' and she replied that anyone who had achieved great success in life is called 'Mahatma', and who knows these flies might have achieved great success in their past life! A big BOINK!!

Now, this was good enough reason to blog!!

I had never thought about what she had said! What if our very own Mahatma Gandhi himself had turned into a fly in his next life?! I mean, can that even happen? You achieve great many successes in life only to turn into a fly the next life! Oh Jeez - that is so despairing to think about! After all those struggles, the sacrifices, the Satyagraha, the fasting and then sweet success of a Nation's Independence - only to be turned into a house fly in the subsequent life! Surely that cannot happen?! 

But then he should have been born again by now really. I have read great many philosophical theories now to firmly believe that there is definitely rebirth but no one has told me yet that the rebirth will be as humans only. What I have understood is that the rebirth is from animals to human beings but, to be honest, I have never thought that we might be reborn as animals in future. That is like going back in the Process & Fulfillment of Life as we know it, like getting demoted instead of promoted. What if it might just be true - that we might not be reborn as human beings?! Now thats a scary thought!! My mother always used to tell me when I was a boy that we will be born as lizards if we refuse water to folks who ask for it and I always used to think that it cannot be true - but what if it indeed is?!

But what if we are indeed reborn as human beings? Our generation has depleted this Mother Earth so much that when we are born again, there would be hardly anything for us to live upon. Men are cutting down generation-old trees in this life to make furniture and doors and houses and when these same men are reborn a century later, the Earth would be so much hard to live with soaring temperatures and depleted water due to all those fallen trees cut by the very same men! Men are throwing garbage and trash into oceans & rivers, illegally mining the sand off the river banks, and not worrying about now but when born again, they will see the impact it will have on the ecology which in turn comes back and affects the same men. But they would then just blame their fathers and forefathers for not taking care of Earth but in reality, due to rebirth, they are actually experiencing the results of their own actions in their own past life! Like right now - what if I am experiencing this era of 'no-water', 'rising-temperatures', 'polluted-air' because I used to cut down trees, burn up the fossil fuels, waste electricity, waste water, etc. in my own previous life?! What if people in Africa are suffering massive famine because they used to waste food in their own previous lives? This is what Karma is all about, right?

Even on the positive note - again, what if we are indeed reborn as human beings? All the achievements and successes achieved are forgotten by us when we are reborn. They would only be associated to that name and person of the yesteryears. So, amongst us, there could be Mahatma Gandhi, Einstein, Ramanujan, Newton, Mother Teresa and all those great folks but just that they wouldn't even know that they were those folks in their own previous life! Unless, of course, they had reached that state of Enlightenment which apparently takes them out of the lifecycle of Birth & Death but then again, who really knows?!

What if I myself was - in my previous life - a famous personality that I studied so much about in my History books in this life?! 

What if that fly indeed was Mahatma Gandhi?!

So many thoughts and questions just by a simple conversation with a seven-year-old on a house fly!!

Phew.

English & Me

As a child, English was a foreign language to me. I was never comfortable with it. I couldn't speak as well as I would have liked to nor could I get my hands around it. Not that I do now (!), but I am way better compared to, say, when I was in my 3rd standard! Any given day, I would resort to my mother tongue - Kannada.

But that didn't mean I was averse to it. In fact, I used to do crosswords and puzzles from a very early age and was quite adept at it. I remember my 2nd grade teacher asking me what 'Satan' meant and I was the only guy in a class of over 60 people to know it. But I was too shy to raise my hand and say the answer. My relationship with the language was more with the hands than with the mouth!

In fact, I remember when I was probably 8-9 years ago (around late 1980s) arguing with my mom - who was coercing me to speak in English so as to become comfortable & fluent with it - that one shouldn't speak in the language which belonged to our invaders. My point was - why should we speak the language of our erstwhile rulers after we got independence from them!

Gradually, I started getting the feel of it though. But it wasn't easy. One day, a cousin (elder brother) of mine had come to our house. This cousin was studying in a real English medium school - by that I mean not the one where people just study in English but also talk only in English with an accent that is hard to understand AND in the 1990s. I asked him about the visit and what prompted him to come, for it was not everyday that we get to see him. To this day, I remember his reply - "I was in the neighbourhood and I thought I will just drop by". I remember gaping at him, with my jaws dropped. I mean, I knew there was a word called neighbourhood and it meant something but I never knew till that very moment that it can be used in a sentence!

And on one another instance, me and my neighbour (another Bishop Cottonian or Baldwinian school) were talking about something, and he remarked - "It costed me forty bucks". I remember distinctly asking what bucks meant. He gave me that kindly paternal look which contained shock as well as amusement that I didn't know "the most commonly used" word.

And then there were some really embarrassing moments. During a visit to my cousin's (elder sister) house, I looked at the wordings she had scribbled on her room door and asked her with all innocence, a complete blank and neutral face, the face of the illiterate - "What does this thing that you have written mean? No Farting." I will leave it to you to imagine the look on my sister's face, the pregnant pause before she replied to me back with the same innocence in the language that I could understand. I will spare some adjectives and leave it to you to imagine the look on my face when I realized what I had asked and what I had made her answer.

Another one of those embarrassing moments was when my father's colleagues had come to our home. Most of them were known to me and we exchanged pleasantries after which one of them remarked "Sunday is longer than Monday." Now, how can a guy like me understand such a cryptic statement if I am not taught?! I tried to understand the statement literally and wondered why this person was telling me that Sunday was longer than Monday. With nothing else to reply, I said "Oh ok" and smiled back. Only then my father told me what it meant and I hurriedly corrected my attire. In fact the subsequent questioning by the same colleague also left me stupefied: "Are you studying for the exams hardly or very hard?" And thats when & how I learned the difference!

Added to this was this really great uncle of mine - the same one whom I mentioned in the driving post - who always asked me the English words for things I never thought had English words! Like the mirror-like reflection on the road when we are driving on a highway (mirage), the thing that joins the two coaches of trains (vestibule), the rectangular lace-like same-shaped same-sized horizontal pillars that form the bed for the parallel rails of the railway track (sleepers) and many more. 

Although my grasp of the language increased and improved when I started reading novels (which kind of happened suddenly in my high school) - not because my mom was forcing me to, but because I was enjoying it - I still wasn't in anyways great in talking. I could never get on the stage and talk in English. My English teacher forced me to do that for a debate (Pros and Cons of Television) and I was having all these butterflies in the stomach while I read out loud what I had written on the piece of paper. 

Me and my friends used to call all those who were talking only in English as Thames - that iconic river in England - metaphorically. It used to amuse me a lot - and sometimes even irk me - when I was seeing parents talking to children in English. By doing so, they were killing their own mother tongue and its associated heritage, culture, literature, poetry, etc. It was like the baton not being passed from parents to offsprings and thus triggering the possible extinction of a language!

At the same time, my English writing and speaking skills improved automatically, thanks to the novels and Star Plus & HBO channels that suddenly invaded the Indian Television during mid-to-late 1990s. I became a great fan of Pierce Brosnan, and his Remington Steele became my favorite. I got acquainted with the American accent. 

Slowly but gradually, even without my knowing, the English language was enveloping me and I never realized it. I was talking more and more in English than in Kannada now! I suddenly was more comfortable in English than in Kannada. All those events 2-3 decades ago - me fighting against my mom about not wanting to learn English - suddenly seemed so superfluous! 

Despite the knowledge and confidence of being English-friendly, there were some mild shocks during my initial days in the US (mid 2000). My first 'For Here to go' was an absolute blinder! And there is no such thing as 'Plastic Covers', we had to just ask for 'Bags' at the retail stores! And 'Overtake' meant nothing to the traffic cop, it was 'Pass'; and 'Indicator' didn't mean anything to the car repair guy, it was 'Directional', and the list goes on!

And then a decade later (late 2010), here I am with a 7-year-old daughter who is most comfortable talking English, thanks to the first 2.5 years of her schooling in US. I feel funny now - me and my wife talking in Kannada and our daughter talking & replying to us in English. This is just the kind of family-language-thingy I didn't like and didn't want about 2 decades ago looking at other such families, and here I am in the exact same situation! But, thanks to my wife and my daughter's new friends & new classmates, Tontu now talks in Kannada more than she used to talk when we left US for good - which is nice. It is amusing to hear her talk in Kannada just like how we all used to talk in our childhood. In fact, I am to be blamed more now since I resort to English words very often for the sake of convenience.

Suffice it to say that although I am trying to get back to "Kannada Days", the English language has become very much a part of my life. So much so that - 

This is my 600th blog-post in Kaleidoscope!!

:-)

The Missing Steps

About a decade ago, I had written a post about After Dinner Walk (ADW). 

This habit of ADW continued on even after the birth of my daughter.  And when my daughter was just about learning to walk, she started giving me company. Those were unforgettable times - she would trip over, fall down a couple of times thud on her bum, but again get up and carry on along with me. We used to live in a hotel-like accommodation in Woburn, MA, USA and the whole corridor was carpeted, so the falls were not affecting her much:

Couple more years later, she was my talking companion during ADW. She being a 3-year-old, whatever came to her mind used to come out unadulterated through the mouth! By this time, we were in a sizable apartment in Walnut Creek, CA, USA, and our ADW was within the confines of our living room. Below is an excerpt of one of our classic conversations:

She (looking at the digital clock display on the Comcast cable box): Time is one hundred and seven.
Me: It is not one hundred and seven. It is 10:07.

A pause.

She: I am still a teeny tiny baby. So maybe I dunno how to tell time.

I am silent, just listening to her talk and walking.

She: When I was a teeny tiny baby I was mumbling. But now I don't talk like that. When do you think that I grew up? At 3, I grew up?

I said yes and continued walking, wondering what she will talk next. Her eyes fell on the Dora pyjamas that she was wearing.

She: You know I am wearing Dora pants because of winter tonight. Tomorrow it will be summer. In summer, we will have swimming party. For swimming party, we should have that round, colored donuts kind of things.
Me: Tubes
She: Oh tubes. Yes.

And so on, the conversation used to go on and on - childishly beautiful. Unforgettable and always cherished!

But now, I don't walk so much after dinner. Over the course of years, I have realized that the ADW is only a necessity if I eat brimful. Eating brimful had become a necessity because of Mom's over-cooking and wanting to finish off stuff to not keep it for the next day. 

Now, with marriage came wife, with wife came new style of cooking and this new style of cooking was all per measurement with a CMM level 5 of continuous improvement & calibration! Thus, we have now reached the stage of cooking just how much is needed; hence there is no 'over-cooking', no 'brimful' and hence no real 'wantingness(!)' of ADW. Which is good - because I also read in many places that eating brimful is just not the right thing to do especially during dinner. Leads to overweight and obesity and bulging tummy and what-not. So alls good, I guess. 

But I miss the night walk & things that came along with it: the conversations, the flow of thoughts, the terrace, etc. 

The 100 steps are missing in my life and I miss the 100 steps!

If you want to spend the rest of your life in one city...

Much has happened in my life since I last blogged. My family and I have now moved back to India for good, as I have recorded in my travelogue. I guess my travel blog was more active over the last few years than Kaleidoscope! Me and my wife spent a lot of time discussing on whether we should go back. After almost 1-2 years of back and forth discussions, poring over R2I forums, jotting down pros and cons, we finally decided to head back. 

Next came the big question "When". There were positive and negative ramifications if we left too early or too late. I will spare the elaborate details of "why" but the timing had to be just perfect. Thankfully, I was assisted by the Hands of God, for giving me a project till end of Dec 2016, so that I could quite perfectly plan for departure in the second week of Jan 2017 - exactly as I wanted. Things fell right in place and the day of departure came nearer. 

While I had taken a big decision of moving back to India for good, I suddenly decided to take another huge decision of quitting my job, which was not really necessary, considering I was working for a company which very well had its roots in India as well as in Bangalore, and it was just a matter of asking him and her to get me a project, so that my work (and more importantly, payroll!) would continue. Yet. I decide to go out against all odds and put down my papers and decided to take a long break.

In some ways, it was a very clean exit. I was quitting after my project got done. I had notified my employer as well as my clients about two months in advance of my departure unlike the typical two-weeks notice which tends to get very messy. So it wasn't a shock to anyone. This also allowed me plenty of time to perform complete knowledge transition to my successors. I was in this account for over 3 years and I had achieved a lot. I was the single point of contact for a gazillion things and I had enough time to recollect and share with all the parties concerned. 

The farewell lunch given to me was heart-warming. I have already written a blog about my past farewells but this was extra special - it was a farewell from US and even from my regular day-to-day work/office: almost like VRS! Over 20 people attended - even those remotely associated with me on day-to-day activities. And this was from the client-side. Being a contractor, and getting a warm send-off from 20 of the best folks in the industry, that too on the Christmas Holiday week, was a great honor to me, on both professional and personal front. It is a moment I would cherish all my life, as I would the farewell card too.

So then. My 'Last Working Day' - quite literally, almost like my early retirement day! - was Dec 30th, 2016. I was quite tied up with a number of things and I ended up being the last person in my team to leave office - or at least my floor. It was 6 pm. The floor was deserted. It was, after all, the last working day of 2016 too for everyone and all were in a holiday mood. I took a selfie - which is so, so rare; ask my wife! - of me at my office desk. I wasn't sure when and if I will be sitting at an office desk again...

The next week went quickly and if I have to use one word to describe that week, it is 'Dispose'! The whole house with all its belongings had to be disposed off, including the car. It is just not the material things that got disposed, it was the emotional bag that was associated with each of those things that we lived with and loved so much. Like Tontu's scooter, her cycle, our mattress, sofa, dining table, TV with which we watched over 100 episodes of Vishnupuran, the beautiful living room Ikea lamps, and a million other things.  The 'disposal', however, was just one of the 70 odd items in the 'US' checklist. There was over 100 items in the 'India' checklist that I had to look into after I moved back to India!

Many thanks to our neighbours for helping us out. The last day was very crucial in many aspects - sleeping overnight, food, tranport to airport, etc. and they helped us in ways unimaginable. I guess I can never repay them.

Cometh Jan 11, 2017 and we were back in Bangalore. We had left on April 30th, 2011 with 6 suitcases and we came back with 6 suitcases. 

There are many reasons why we took this decision to head back home but I guess the thing that tipped the balance was the question that we asked ourselves - 

If you want to spend the rest of your life in one city, which city would that be?

Namma Bengaluru.

Enlightenment from Milk

Teenager, India

Early in the morning. Go to the milk store and get a liter of milk packet. Daily.

“This is the way of life.”

Mid-twenties, USA

Weekend. Get 2 gallons of milk from supermarket. Refrigerate and use daily for entire week.

“Wow, what a comfort. Why don’t they learn this ease of life in India?!”

Mid-thirties, USA

Knowledge about common diseases such as cancers, et al. Enlightenment: Fresh food = Best life & no diseases.

“India knows best! Why don’t US learn from India?!”

The Screen

I was standing at the grocery store payment line and there was a young mother ahead of me. Her daughter was sitting on the cart watching a video on the smart phone. The daughter was about 2-3 years old, no more. It was the mother’s turn now and the grocery store cashier greeted her. The mother greeted back in turn and the daughter continued to be engrossed on the phone.

While the mother kept all the items from the cart onto the conveyor belt, the daughter kept looking at the video on the phone. While the grocery store cashier billed each item, the daughter kept her eyes fixed on the phone. While the mother placed all the items back onto the cart and paid the cashier, the daughter continued to look at the phone. The cashier greeted the mother to have a good day and the mother greeted him back, and still the daughter continued to stare at the phone. Then the mother started pushing the cart out to the exit and the daughter still had her eyes fixed on the phone. Soon, she was out of the store wheeling away to the car in the parking lot and I could still see daughter looking at the phone.

I was aghast and literally my jaw dropped. Right in front of my eyes, in a matter of couple of minutes, I saw how the daughter was completely robbed off her favorite childhood game of ‘Pretend-play shopping’. I know this because I have seen how my daughter can pretend play grocery shopping for hours. In the house, my daughter acts as if she is shopping for me and my wife;  and sometimes she is the cashier, taking all the items and scanning the bar code, punching imaginary buttons, taking cash and returning change or using visiting cards in place of credit cards, greeting people, etc. Not only is this fun for her, she has also learnt about the real-world human interactions. In a few years, I am confident she can do the same things that anyone is expected to do in a grocery store.

And in this instance, the daughter of this mother completely missed the whole thing. It was as if she was inside a movie theater all through. She was so much into the video that never once she lifted her head. She totally, totally missed the environment - the transactions, the real-life scenario, the greetings that was happening all around her and was so lost in the digital world that she will have a hard time coping up with the true life in a few years if this is what she keeps doing!

Pretend play is one of the most important stages of childhood. It gives children a huge opportunity for imagination and the only way we can fuel the young mind’s imagination is by giving them the experience of real-world happenings. I have been to couple of really good Pretend Play museums such as the ones in Irvine and San Jose and these have miniature grocery stores amongst many things. Children like to play forever at such places – but only if they know what they are in the first place!! 

And here, it was as if a crime was happening right in front of my eyes and I was about to shout out to the mother! The child was robbed a little of an essential part of her childhood and the mother was the culprit! The child had to know what just happened and the parent totally denied this experience just for the sake of keeping the child quiet! Seriously, these children are our future and it is parents’ responsibility to raise the next generation the right way and this definitely was not the right way!

Of course, this is just an iota of an incident. The book ‘The Big Disconnect’ showcases an alarming amount of such experiences and a trend that is threatening the entire next generation due to the digital world. To quote from the book – apparently, youngsters are having challenges in attending interviews because it deals with hours of human interaction and the teenagers are so caught up with screens now that even a 30 minute continuous interaction with another human being itself is becoming increasingly difficult to deal with! I am like….'Wow, really?!!’

Sadly, the digital “screen” is actually screening away the real world from the next generation. For all the parents out there – go easy on the “screen” with your kids. It just isn’t worth it.

HVD 2015

A piece of hand-written poem given by me to wifey on 14th Feb 2015...

You have cough.
I have lumbago.

I give you cough syrup.
You massage my back.

I give you kashaya
You apply moov to me.

You have subconjunctival hemorrhage.
I have running nose.

I put eyedrops to you.
You give me tablets.

I apply small ice packs to your eyes.
You give me coffee.

No, we are not old.
We are in our early 30s

Celebrating our 7th Valentine's Day
The way we ought to celebrate our 70th!!

Happy Valentine's Day!!

:-)

Timing

About a few years back, I was staying in the city of Irvine, quite close to office. Hence the commute to office was in self car.

One fine day, just as I pulled out my car from the apartment parking lot and started heading towards the apartment exit, I noticed a car right in front of me. I did not bother to memorize it, since there didn’t seem any need to anyways.

However, in the evening, on my way back to apartment from office, just as I turned into the parking lot entrance, I noticed this same exact car right in front of me again, just like in the morning! That seemed like quite a coincidence (but still not blog-worthy…hehehe!)

Then, about a few months back, I was staying in the city of Walnut Creek, not-as-close to office as compared to Irvine. Hence, the commute to office was in public transportation, familiarly known as BART to those who live in the Bay Area.

One fine day, just as I was walking towards the apartment exit towards the BART station on my way to office, I noticed a man walking right in front of me, like hundreds of other office-goers on any work day. I did not bother to memorize his height or apparel or walking style or anything else, since there didn’t seem any need to anyways.

However, in the evening, on my way back from the BART station to the apartment, there was this same exact guy again! Walking right in front of me, just like in the morning!

Boink!! (read ‘blog-worthy’…hehehe!)

I was quite taken aback! Look at the coincidence and the sheer timing of it all. Out of thousands of cars in Irvine, out of thousands of folks living in Walnut Creek, out of thousands of minutes on a given day, I had that same exact car and this same exact man coming right in front of me – both morning and evening! And what are the chances of two such similar instances occurring in a man’s lifetime?! Wow!!

And, to top it all, I am the only one in this whole wide world, aware of this seemingly-ordinary-and-yet-quite-extraordinary moment! Because the person who was driving in front of me in Irvine and the person walking in front of me in Walnut Creek were not aware that I was the same person behind them at those precise moments!

It was like a show put on by Mother Nature only to me! Felt absolutely exhilarated!!

Unethical Vs Smart

Scenario 1: In the 1950s, the Irish Church in the name of cleansing this world, took in unmarried mothers, sold the fatherless children to willing American parents by forcefully making the mothers giving away their loved ones in exchange to hefty donations. The money was good for the Church, and a part of it went to the local Government as a bribe to ensure no law was ever constituted to stop this practice from continuing. So, the Church got the money, the Government got the money, the American parents adopted Irish children and all seemed fine, but the mothers lost their children unwillingly, the children felt abandoned by their own mothers not knowing why leaving them traumatized for the rest of their lives. [I got this by reading Philomena Lee]

Scenario 2: In the 1990s - I had this thought when I was in India - drivers caught speeding in their cars had a very easy way out. If the speeding fine was, say, Rs 200, one can get away by paying Rs 100 as a bribe to the cop. So the driver loses Rs 100 but its better than losing Rs 200. The cop gets richer by Rs 100. For the driver, Rs 100 didn’t matter much, so its ok. For the cop, Rs 100 mattered a lot, so it was a great way of making extra money on top of a meager salary. The only compromise was that the Government wasn’t getting its money due to speeding drivers. And, of course, the rich speeding drivers did not bother about getting caught anymore because they knew how to get around it by greasing their cop-captors and hence continued speeding. The biggest compromise was that speeding, at times, led to accidents.

Scenario 3: A software X made by Vendor A is perfect for the project that I am working on currently in USA. However, Vendor A is not competent enough to deliver a near-zero code quality and on time. Another software Y is being used by Vendor B, which is not actually fit for this project, yet can be tweaked to be used. So, the question was asked to the project technical lead: Which is the right software for this project and who should execute it? It just so happens that the technical lead for the project is from Vendor B. So, although he knows that software Y is not perfect for the project, he gives his recommendation to go with Vendor B due to faster time-to-market and good code quality. But the underlying essence of the recommendation is self propaganda and profit for Vendor B. More revenue and higher profit for Vendor B means better bonus and better paychecks for the technical lead himself. It’s a compromise to the project, yes, but it is a smart way of making own life better.

Foot note: In 1950s in Ireland inside a religious place, in 1990s in India with law-enforcers, in 2015 in US with elite high-grossing software companies. This small pattern shows that this feral human tendency of getting one’s own way at the cost of something (or someone) else has always existed and will always exist. It seems unethical, yet this is what motivational speakers refer to as ‘Being smart’, ‘Survival of the fittest’, etc.

Where to draw the line?

Excellent Shopping!

Once I went shopping in a well-known clothing retailer and selected many clothes for purchase. It was a long time since I had shopped clothes, so I didn't mind the massive shopping really. Finally, I reached the check-out counter and the agent scanned the price tags on all the clothes. The bill came up to almost $200. Customary to this shop, the agent highlighted the savings of almost $80 due to discounts, coupons, sale, etc. on the bill and said,

“Your bill is $194 and you have saved $78 today. Excellent shopping!”

As he said the last two words, he looked at me and genuinely smiled. I was amused at the hollowness of it all. “Excellent shopping” because I saved $78? Does he really think I am so dumb as to think I saved $78? Everyone knows that the prices are always bolstered sky high and then reduced by 50% with a big SALE board on it or CLEARANCE sign. So, for a dress costing $5, it could be very well tagged as $50, and then a “SALE 50% OFF” depicting price shot down to $25, which still gives the retailer an immense five-fold profit. I give absolutely no value to the ‘savings’ portion or ‘Today you have saved…’ portion in bills that almost all retailers now produce.

Anyways, I thanked him equally hollowly, and made my way out of the clothing retailer. I guess I would have been happier if he had called out and told me that he was kidding and, in reality, actually intended a befitting pun –

“You spent $194 on these worthless clothes?!! Really?! Wow, excellent shopping!! Clap-clap-clap!! Thank you for your patronage and for my salary!” 

Hilarious Innocence

Now it is “All day long, all day today!” Whatever that means! But more than incomprehensive phrases, Tontu has become a master at innocent-intelligent conversations!

One evening, during a stop-over on a long day of driving, she told me, “Papa, you are a good driver!” I was flummoxed. How did she know good driving and bad driving at such a tiny age! “Why do you say that, Tontu?!” I asked. “Because you drive us to so many places!” Boink!! Such innocence!!

These kind of incredible conversations are a commonality these days. But alas, it is so difficult to keep track of all these gems. There was this other day when we were walking and the sky was filled with orange streaks of setting sun, and she said “Wow! I can’t believe my eyes. It is like dream come true!!” The phrase “Dream come true” was something that I learnt in my middle school during an English class when there was a short story with the same phrase, and here is my daughter using complicated terminology such as, well, 'complicated', 'rocket-ship', 'astronaut', 'aurora borealis'.

She looks at the map and says 'New York', 'Boston!' She has grasped that there are cities like New York and Boston somewhere on the map. Come to think of it, I might have been in early teens when I even heard about a city called New York!! There was this one day when we were coming back from Alaska with a stop-over at Seattle, and she was jumping in the flight shouting "Seattle, Seattle, Seattle"! It made me remember a day in my childhood when all of us cousins were going to the small Indian town of Nagamangala in KSRTC bus and shouting “Nagamangala! Nagamangala! Nagamangala!” What a paradigm shift!!

Tontu’s reference to NY might have been due to her granma who just visited her recently and we were talking about her experience in her port-of-entry. These offline discussions which are not really with her, sets off some strange 'memory captures' and out it comes at some later point in time, thereby stunning us!

This 'mem capture' capability has also led her to remember some small prayers and some songs. But the improvisation of these songs to whatever comes to her mind at that point in time makes it all the more great. She being a great fan of “Where is pointer” rhyme, improvised it to “Where is KC” (KC being my pal) when we were searching for him one day at a picnic area. I mean, that is just brilliant!

And then, there are some hilarious instances. Like when we go to vacation, she is all excited. When asked why, she says “Because I love the hotel bed!” Apparently for her, 'Vacation' is synonymous to staying in hotel and the bed in the hotel is what she likes the most. What with it being bouncy, she can jump away to glory!

Then there is this time when she glances at the house-maid in our India house when we are Skyping, and says she is Cinderella (on days when she is wearing blue saree) or Tinkerbell (green saree) or Belle (yellow saree). She looks at my mom and says her dress is not matching. She spies her granma hiding behind a pillar (in the process of Peek-a-boo-ing) and says "Silly Dragon"! ROFL!

Now that she goes to pre-school on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, she tracks each day very closely. So, one day, she said-

“Is today Monday, papa?"

“Yes”

“Are you going to office?”

“Yes”

“But don’t’ go! I miss you!”

“I need to go to office to earn money, Tontu. With money, I can get new toys to you!”

With that consolation, she finally agreed and I was able to go to office. The next day –

“Is today Tuesday, papa?"

“Yes”

“Are you going to office?”

“Yes”

“Ok! Go to office, earn money and get me new toys!”

Huh!! “But I miss you, Tontu. I don’t want to go to office!”

“Its ok, papa. Don’t miss me. I will come to station in the evening to pick you up!” LOL!!!

And so it goes on, every day until it is weekend when she gets super excited because I will not be going to office for 2 full days! That is when I witness her playing all by herself with the umpteen toys that now occupies pretty much one quarter of our apartment home! All of a sudden, she is a teacher, imitating her own pre-school teacher, by sitting on a high chair and arranging and talking to all her toys as if they were her pupils! Another time she is a driver. All the dining table chairs are moved to the room and she has built an imaginary car and she is on the driver’s seat driving, asking all of us to do “Katchak” which means latching up our imaginary seat belts! And then she is sitting on her new tiny chair and working on her laptop just like her daddy! If she has been to a restaurant lately, she is a waitress taking our order. If we have been to the doctor’s, she has an earphone using a stethoscope and checking our heartbeat. It made me remember Salman’s Kabhi Tu song where one person dons so many roles! Using this same eagerness of kids wanting to be everything, someone came up with this brilliant idea of Pretend City and Tontu had a whale of a time being a doctor, a dentist, a waitress, a fire-fighter, a banker, a construction worker, a cop, a car-driver, a librarian, a painter, etc. etc.! Oh, I forgot about another of her favorite at-home activities - standing high on the sofa arm-rest and then pushing herself all-out into the cushy seat-buckets as if she is in a swimming pool, diving!

Speaking of swimming pool reminds me of the recent pool party that we had at our apt. Tontu had this nice tube around her waist and the tube gave her unprecedented freedom! She realized she no longer needed anyone to hold her. She could come out of the pool, fall into the pool, move around by kicking herself, and pretty much do everything without anyone so much as touching her. It is amazing how sweet the taste of freedom is, for she was outright asking us not to touch her or her tube in the pool. After all these years of taking her to the pool for her enjoyment and carefully watching over her, here she is asking us to keep us to ourselves! So much for parenthood!!

But it is good to see her enjoying her own freedom and expressing her individuality. At home, she has this tendency to keep changing her dresses every half hour. So whenever she asks us to change her dress, we keep saying no. So, now she gets into the room, closes the door, pulls up a chair to get herself some elevation and picks a dress of her choice and puts it on all by herself. Out she comes to living room, and says “Ta-da! Surprise!” We are like, “Here we go again!”

And then there was this one day when we were at the park and she was playing slide all by herself. It was almost time to go and another girl of her age came over to her and they both started playing – which was nothing but just climbing up the short few steps, sliding down the barrel, running back to the steps and doing it all over again. They did this for about ten times and we kept calling her. Tontu was having too much fun to leave her new found friend! So she kept following her friend despite many shout-outs. And then at one point, her friend realized that we were calling and so she took Tontu to a side (behind the steps) and spoke to her, perhaps convincing her to ignore her parents! It was like two tiny conspirators, and they looked so funny! It was so synonymous to what many children do to parents when they are adults – like girls who are being secretly convinced by their ‘boy-friends’ to leave her parents house in exchange of a world filled with love!! - and I was witnessing something close to it already!! It was downright hilarious.

These “Hilarious Innocence” instances are so many that it is hard to keep track, and many of them slip through our memory. One day, we asked her to write 1 to 10, and she wrote 1, 2 and 10! There was this other day when her mom was teaching her the meaning of her name “Paavani”. My wife told her it meant “Purifier” but my daughter recognized only part of the word. So she asked “My name means ‘Fire’?!” And remember that iPhone post?

Come to think of it, these episodes are true for any toddler or a pre-schooler, including ourselves in that age. It is just that no one logged it in any form and, just like that, it is lost forever. We recently saw a Kannada movie ‘Naanu…Nanna Kanasu’.  It can be considered as the prequel to the famous English movie ‘Father of a Bride’. While the latter covers only the wedding part, the former covers pretty much the entire life cycle from the birth of a daughter till she gets married – and, most importantly, the gamut of emotions that a Father of a Daughter goes through.

Although it is great to see her growing taller and taller, and learning more and more things that this world has to offer, it is quite heartening to see her distancing herself from us parents even though it is minuscule. It is as if we are missing doing things to her – making her asleep, feeding her breakfast, giving her bath, putting on her dress and shoes, buckling and unbuckling her car seat – the list goes on. Just like that she grew out of it all and became independent. It is a time for both pride and melancholy! A video that I saw reminds me of how a duck relies on its ducklings to “Just do it” despite all odds, without so much as teaching, and how fortunate most of us humans are, to talk and teach and generally “Be there’ for our children…

Well, here’s to ‘Being There’ and ‘Feeling Proud’! Tontu turned four last week, and this blog-post is another web-based (and hopefully immortal) gift from her dear daddy!!

Happy Birthday, Tontu!!

What's The Hurry?!

The time was 9:02 AM and I was rushing through the financial district streets of downtown San Francisco. I was already two minutes late to my 9 am meeting and it was still a good 5 minutes for me to reach my office cubicle on the 8^th floor of what was once the tallest building of San Francisco in 1922.

Come to think of it, I was rushing since morning. It was with haste that I got myself ready after forcing myself to wake up, it was the sprint from my apt to station that made me catch the train that at least ensured me of being able to attend the 9 am meeting albeit late, and here I was sprinting again to office.

Then I looked around me and saw something that I had missed looking all these days: Apparently everyone around me was rushing too! It dawned upon me that even when I was sprinting from apt to station, pretty much everyone was either running or briskly walking. The train itself was a super-fast ride that covered over 25 miles in 37 minutes (an impossibility to match this time on road when compared with peak hour traffic). And even here in the SFO financial district, people were whizzing past one another, dignified men in suits were skateboarding and cycling – all in the name of hurrying. And it was just not the young and dashing – even the oldies were trying to keep up with the running clock.

If I had to just stand still on the pavement, frozen solid, and record the movements around me – like one of those time warp videos – it would be almost dizzy! Everyone is rushing!! If I am standing still and focusing on the very necessity of this rush, I can’t help feeling – is it really needed?! It is one thing to work but it is another thing to work always under the pressure of a time-ticking guillotine. What is time after all? It is just a man-made instrument! Since when did time become so important! Since “time immemorial”, apparently! Anyways, I guess it is just the "lazy" me who gets these weird thoughts!

But is it really needed for the projects to have such tight deadlines that make every team member to rush, to skip breakfasts, skip lunch too, or go to fast food. The very phrase ‘fast food’ indicates the hurry. Of course, we all know the nutritional value of fast food and the effect it has on the body (and thereby life span) in the long run.

In essence, I guess, we are just rushing to our own graves!! 

Now, What's The Hurry?!!

Cough

I hate cough. I despise it in all its forms. Even its spelling! It sounds like cow-ugghh! I am just coming out of a terrible coughing bout and it was as bad as it always is whenever my body catches onto this virus or bacteria or whatever it is that causes cough. Bottom line is when I start coughing, I keep coughing. And I so want to get rid of it!

It all began with a mild sore throat which I knew was not really mild. I could sense its fury right then. So, to nip it in the bud, I started with salt water gargling. There are times when it does get nipped and the world is a happy place. But I was not so lucky this time around.

The next day, sure enough, the sore throat had led to mild cough accompanied by running nose. Sometimes, it runs its course through a common cold with dripping nose (no cough) and then the cold too goes away and again the world is a happy place. But this time, the cough persisted while the cold took control of my body. As always, with running nose comes irritation and fatigue – BECAUSE IT NEVER STOPS. It is like having a reservoir inside your nose!! I am sleeping, and at 3 am in the night, I can feel the watery leakage inside my nose. It right down tickles you out of your sleep. This happens despite the Vicks Vaporub rubbed generously over the throat, neck, chest, feet, back and wherever the population has applied and found it working wonders.  Even inhaled from steaming water. And despite all this, watery leakage continues. Whats more annoying is that this leakage accompanies a mild fever that kind of makes you lethargic.

Ok, so I now had to quickly get rid of this Tickly Leakage along with the ensuing Flu. From the nearby pharmacy store, I got hold of a Tylenol For Multi Symptom Cold. In fine print, it was written that it was effective for cough too! Wow, this seemed a wonder drug surely – killing flu, cold and cough all in one shot! I started with once-in-4 hours 20 ml dosage. There was surely some improvement. The leaking stopped and gave way to solid mucus that now started coming out in great chunks.

Solid mucus surely is the sign of The End being near! A few drops of Saline Solution and all will be well. Six drops in each nostril. But alas, it only led to some sniffing but nothing else. A colleague took one look at me sniffing away to glory and said I was short on Vitamin C. Apparently a body rich with Vitamin C will produce enough antibodies to kill whatever it is that causes common cold and cough. So she gave me a box of Berry-flavored Emergen-C powder pouches that had to be mixed with water. I kindly refused her offer, bought a bigger box of my own and from that day onwards started with one pouch a day in the morning. Now that wasn’t too hard.

Ok, so now this Mr Solid Snot started secreting by gazillions - thereby making me visit the restroom almost twice in an hour to blow out my nose completely – an activity that used to take almost 10 minutes each time - only to come back to cubicle finding it full again! I did some research to see why my body was producing so much snot. I was shocked to find two things. Apparently, almost a liter of mucus is produced daily – so I might as well forget about getting rid of all that snot by blowing my nose – and mucus was good for the body! Anyways, now it was blocking my nasal airways thereby forcing me to breathe through my throat.

Remember this throat itself is not that great in shape. There was this constant coughing. So my throat now had to take this additional responsibility of supplying oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide. Fallout of this is that the throat starts getting dried up very fast because there is lack of saliva movement and whatever is present for the general lubrication is getting evaporated fast. Outcome? More cough! For cough to be kept in bay, the throat has to be kept moist and wetty so that the dryness will not cause the cough reflex. Not only that, this solid snot was getting clogged in the airway too which was like adding fuel to cough. So I had to think of something else to destroy the new enemy Mr Solid Snot along with this cough that kept increasing by the day. As a temporary solution though, I got myself a flask of hot water which I started sipping regularly. Apparently, being hydrated is one of the first steps when having cold and cough. I even got a bag of Halls chewable tablets to keep the throat hydrated and reduce the cough reflex.

Then I did some more research to understand if I was taking the right syrup or if I should be taking something else. Apparently expectorants was what I needed since it had the exact task of draining mucus by thinning mucus and lubricating the respiratory tract. A key ingredient of an expectorant syrup is guaifenesin. The Tylenol syrup that I was taking did not have this ingredient. No wonder nothing was happening. Off I went to pharmacy store again and this time I got a Mucus Relief syrup which had 400 mg of guaifenesin. Surely this ought to drain out Mr Solid Snot!

A couple of shots of this new syrup and all hell broke loose, which I knew would happen anyways. Good thing about it was that I knew I was at the peak stage, and the only way now was to go down. Like being at Logan Pass on Going-to-the-Sun road! Mr Solid Snot got broken down to a million shrapnel and if the cough was one per one Solid, it was now one per shrapnel!

More colleagues came to help. Many gave advises but one gave a small box of cut ginger, and asked me to keep biting one at a time until I got better. I started doing that and boy, was it spicy!! Back at home, I smashed ginger, poured honey and put turmeric into boiling water and had it in huge gulps multiple times. My mother-in-law went a step further and mixed garlic and jaggery by hand and asked me to eat it raw. It was like eating fire!

Then my mom suggested boiling garlic in water. Alrighty! Here we go – drank that stinking “garlicized” water and ate that stinking garlic. All to no gain. It was as if I had not done anything. Cough continued like before and shrapnel continue with same frequency.

Tired of what “outside pharmacy stores” offered, I then looked into the home medicine cabinet. Well, there was this Kid’s Benadryl. Why not?! Two spoonfuls. Honey! Sure. Two spoonfuls every two hours! After all nothing can go wrong with more honey in the body. Remember reading so much goodness about honey!

Frantic searching in the tablet box led me to Cofday tablet which I had got from India – thinking then about the inevitable. Gulped one without even thinking twice. In a short span of time, I had about a dozen things acting against that virus or bacteria in my throat and nose. Come to think of it, it was like Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Surely there was no way that cough can hold up against so many guns shooting at it. I even had visions of going to that fantasy black man in The Green Mile who could just hold my throat, feel my pain and spit out all my evil worms from his mouth thereby relieving me from my troublesome cough!! Or, something as mechanically simple as replacing my throat and nose with brand new defect-free parts with warranty!

Although there seemed to be signs of relief, I was not convinced. This time, the cough was even more during night time. I lie down and I used to cough. So I stopped lying down. I was sitting upright till 2 am in the night just so that I didn’t have to cough. I knew that I had to take something with more of dextromethorphan since that would suppress the cough. Almost all syrups and cough tablets had this ingredient. I took the Tylenol syrup again which had a good amount of this suppressant. Then I messaged by cousin who is a doctor and she told me to take ibuprofen as a starter and an antibiotic if it persisted. Ibuprofen worked like a charm and I slept like a log. I followed the same steps as highlighted above for one more day and this time the coughing spell was reducing. However, this entire cough spell was now causing ache in the ribs and jaws! So I contemplated taking an antibiotic – Levobact, which I consider as a magic cough pill for me since it is very powerful and almost always works. But I only want to take it when it is too much to handle (like just before going to the doc) and this time, I felt it was almost nearing the end. So I saved it for the next time.

My wife hates cough too but she hates medicine even more. So she relies entirely on her own immune system to tackle and kill the evil aliens in her body. Usually she succeeds within a few days. But me on the other hand, rely entirely on allopathy, homeopathy, apathy, empathy, sympathy, whatever-pathy! It is more of a belief thing more than anything else. Like looking at a piece of paper bearing God’s photo and believing He is the Almighty. It is all in my mind that if I take something, it is going to solve the problem. And this medley of medicine-taking with its multitude of side-effects usually ends up in a battle one against the other and causes the ailment to prolong for over a week. I know that it is a brick wall but yet I keep going and banging my head against it.

Finally, after almost 10 days of non-stop medication, one fine day I stopped taking medicine and relied on the antibodies inside my body to get me back to normalcy. Couple more days of short bouts of cough and finally, lo and behold, there were Blue Skies all around.

Life like this, breathing with the nostrils effortlessly and mouth not barking like a dog incessantly, was unimaginable a week ago. Ah! What a joy it is! The joy of Simple Breathing…!!

The Addictions

It was a beautiful day. The time was about 7 in the evening. The breeze was soothing and gentle. The whiff of the air was relaxing. The Sun had not set still and there was sufficient light for us to see from our 3^rd floor apartment balcony the ducks and a dozen ducklings wading through the pleasant community stream. The ducks and ducklings gave tremendous joy each evening. It was now a family ritual to take in an eyeful of them each evening while we sat on the balcony for a few minutes. It was astonishing – and in a way disappointing - to see how fast the ducklings grew.

To enjoy this serene beauty, my wife and I called out to our 3 year-old daughter who was slumped on the couch with the iPad. I remembered that conversation I had overheard about someone’s grandson teaching his wife about how to use Kindle and how apprehensive I myself was then about Tontu not being able to do that because she didn't even have access to the gadgets. Well, she was now quite an expert with iPad and would have taught my mom quite a lot indeed! But alas, my call-out went unheeded. The game on that hand-held digital device was much more addictive to her than the natural beauty surrounding us in the balcony.

Now, who is to blame – if indeed someone needs to be blamed. Is it us parents, who have made these digital devices handy in the living room or is it her who has submitted her senses wholeheartedly to the digital world?

The iPad in our house is the most sought-after device. Sometimes I have felt like having 3 of them so that each of us in the house could use it at the same time! There was this one time when it fell down from about 3 feet and the screen went all black. It was like a full stop in the ease of access to the digital world! But when I googled, I came across this link and boy, were we grateful. A few pats on the back, and lo and behold, it was back in action. Then a few weeks later, on a hot day on our birthday we had visited a nearby attraction and kept the iPad inside the parked car and when we came back, it was all black again! I then read this article and was shocked to hear at the Genius Bar that I needed to spend $250 to get it replaced! I remember how we mourned for the loss of all those great pics still in the iPad gallery which were not backed up. The loss was unbearable. It just showed how attached we had become to it in less than 30 months. In 2012 we didn't even own it and life was still beautiful. So, just when we thought all was over, I came across this seemingly brilliant thread and again, lo and behold, after a few kneeling sessions on the iPad, it was back in action! So much for the “Genius Bar”!

Anyways. Back to our discussion in the balcony. It just got my thinking back to our own childhood lives and how we used to handle the outburst of technology. In the mid-90s, the Cable TV had started booming. I was in my High School and my brother was just getting into college. I must really appreciate my parents for being bold enough to go with the Cable TV plunge despite us just getting to the turning point of our academic life. I mean, it would have been a big decision for them at that point of time. Us being kids would not have thought much but now that I am a parent I am sure what must have gone through them then. They would have thought of spending that Rs 200 more every month and at the same time, it was more like a candy for the children than anything for themselves. After all, it was more Star TV with English soaps then than the regional ones that we have now. And at the same time, it was such an addiction that could have seriously hampered our education. And yet they went ahead and got it installed, with great confidence in us.

Even now I remember that day in April 1998 when SachinTendulkar was going ballistic against the Australians in Sharjah and I was sitting for my Board exams – an important turning point exam of my life. I could hardly concentrate on the studies when I knew such an important match was going right in the living room TV. And it was just not that instance. There were these Steffi Graf Tennis matches, umpteen just-released movies, MTV, WWF, Fashion TV and what not! My parents could have so easily got the Cable TV cut-off just so as to ensure I could not be distracted, just the way many of our relatives had done.

Many of our relatives had gone the off-air route for years now just so that their children can be rid off the TV addiction. What a great sacrifice from parents’ perspective! This was in mid-2000s and at this time there were great many really interesting regional episodes, something which used to make the then parents themselves addicted and yet, they had gone ahead and switched off the TV for good, for the sake of their children’s education.

So, which route is better?

As a parent, keep the ‘addictions’ near your kids and have enough confidence on your children so as to make them good judges themselves to know when to stop and when to use

OR

Keep the house completely devoid of ‘addictions’ whatsoever without even wanting to test if the children can exercise a good control on themselves.

I guess the answer becomes evident when the question is taken to the next level: When house is the world and ‘addictions’ are anything in this world to which a man can get addicted to…