Dust falls like words, whose

shadows, shadowy images

distend the dawn

You do not know how

our life is claimed

by my memories

that you cannot see

My small self crouches there

in a wet, shrunken 

world

Burning like litanies

to firedrakes

tending volcanoes

bridging basalt

Beyond the imagined fire

is hurt, sharp

as cold

My father told me stories

of courage and justice

that I remembered 

long after he forgot

Stories you never knew

now you can never color

in your own childhood

with brave human love

Volcano mouths close

easy as eyes, memory

makes of us a midden

_

Actually, intellect

Last night I dreamt I was at a party with Tom Stoppard. 

Um. Actually, I was married to him and he was alternately showing me off, arm-candy style, while also patronizing me in an arch, I-can-only-describe-it-as-British way. I, correspondingly, alternated between blase indifference and intense irritation leavened with the odd moments of begrudging astonishment at his always breathtaking wit.

At some point in our private conversation (albeit conducted in the presence of a highly interested audience), he told me that theater was sometimes "converse prose," and I woke up clutching that strange phrase like a talisman rubbed raw.

When I told Big A, he said, 

Well, you've always been good at crushing on elderly intellectuals.

I wonder how intellectual I look when my mouth is hanging open.

__

TO, FROM

Morning’s journey through the smoke of birds,

the flat sheets of faded sky, is mine alone

but my small companions also wake early

to be fed and bundled for the day

the scent, strength, and reach of their arms

tucked into my head. We move ahead.

 

And though I may seem to—

No. Do forget to chart or care

about them under the stern pace

of university windows and computer screens

like differently uniformed, shutter-eyed guards,

I captain this journey too, alone. Too alone.

 

But the mornings, getting to there--

It might as well be that it is

her dimpled fists that grasp the wheel 

his bejewelled eyes that watch the road.

their voices and breaths that map me

as I make my way. Make my way away.

_

NIGHT TRIPPING

Threads like

nerves like roads

like pathways

 

stars like

chinks like holes

like winks

 

children like

dolls like bodies

like souls

 

journeys like

hope like ends

like tension

 

Like like

click like love

like how

(About FB)

OVERHEARD (YSWC Day 2)

 

 

It’s different here she asserts

it’s cold in here he insists

 

have you eaten? (she)

I had to turn the heat on in the house today (he)

 

I’m going out of town this week (he)

See, I—(she)

 

I’m visiting my son in Cincinatti (h)

Yes, you said so this morning (s)

 

I like travelling (h)

I do too. (s) (I do too.)

 

Where is the-- (mumble)

You could look in the-- (something)

 

Don’t worry about it.

_

YSWC (Day One)

exciting

lightning

 

like flash

like forward

 

like brilliance

and burn.

 

torque

makes of torture

talk

like revolutions. 

_

Zizek describes the Israeli occupation as Kafkaesque

He misspells Saree Makdisi. But nevermind that, he says this: 

On Israel’s end, what goes on is the incessant slow work of taking the land from the Palestinians in the West Bank: the gradual strangling of the Palestinian economy, the parcelling of their land, the building of new settlements, the pressure on farmers to make them abandon their land—all supported by a Kafkaesque network of legal regulations.

I'm still puzzling out this sign-off statement which has the ambitious glaze of greatness about it: 

And, to avoid any kind of misunderstanding, taking all this into account in no way implies an “understanding” for inexcusable terrorist acts. On the contrary, it provides the only ground from which one can condemn the terrorist attacks without hypocrisy.

The "only" ground? Is he sure? There appears to be plenty of other "grounds" for condemnation.

_

Explaining 9/11 to a Muslim Child

Over at NYT's Motherlode parenting blog, regular Lisa Belkin turns the climacteric responsibility of explaining 9/11 to a Muslim child over to a Muslim mother bringing up her child as a Muslim. 

Belkin's well-intentioned side-step aside, the article itself is quite unsatisfactory. Moina Noor, the guest blogger, merely gives her child and her readers an unsatisfactory recitation, "bad guys attack, buildings collapse. Don’t worry, I assured him, we’ll get the bad guys so they won’t do it again." 

The child is eight, that he is only now curious about this phrase so rife in the public imagination, is indicative of the protective bubble that Noor considers necessary to Muslim parenting. That she describes it in such cartoonish terms gives him no respect. Or protection; it does not prepare the child for either playground taunts or religious school misinformation.

The hermeneutic guilt, media-assigned and Muslim-internalized and the resultant contrition, extraneous and so unnecessary,  is writ so large in the Muslim consciousness, and in Noor's, that she fails. She is so busy explaining her Muslim upbringing ("devout but weren’t necessarily interested in teaching their neighbors about Islam."), Defensively interpreting her Muslim faith, ("We are like you. Islam is peaceful."), Vigilantly establishing her motherhood ("how do I, as a parent, explain the slaughter of innocent people in the name of a religion that I am trying to pass on to my boy?"), that there is little time or space left to formulate any real argument. Yes, the article lacks value, but it is because American society has decided not to value its Muslim citizens to such a dimension that this woman is unable to speak directly to her projected readers or honestly with her child.

_

 

I think he's ready for his man-card

At begging us to let him change the baby’s diaper:

C’mon guys, I can do it,  I want to be a man!!

 

On hearing why I didn’t want to go to the pool:

Really? You have your period? But you’re not at all grumpy or anything.

_

Show us yer tits

Nope this is not about posting an FB profile picture of me that Li’l A took in which, what I took to be a long strand of hair was actually considerable cleavage. Nope.

 

It’s Baby A’s language. She needs someone better than her current giggly family to teach her that it’s just not okay to yell “TIT!”

 

Although to be fair, “tit” functions as a sort of suffix in her vocabulary right now.

Blantit = blanket (you can see how anyone could make this mistake.)

Naptit = napkin (it’s a bit of a listening comprehension fail here.)

Motit = monkey (and yes, it is pronounced “more tits.”)

Waltit = Walter, the protagonist of this book (how I knew she had a problem.)

 

__

In which the family’s ethnic affiliations are laid bare

A few weeks ago, just as we were getting used to the summery warmth, just as we were getting used to waking in the mornings knowing that we wouldn’t need our winter jackets, the days where we lay newly awakened with half smiles, exulting that perhaps we could pack winter jackets away, we were visited. By ants. Big, jet-black ones—the kind we used to call “bully ants” in the home country.

And while I’m prone to getting a bit mommy tiger when they get too close to chubby (yet such delicate) baby extremities, I nevertheless wanted to be somewhat Mother Earth about finding a non-chemical way of warding them off. And after a week in which I did nothing, Big A showed up with ant traps. And then gave us a lecture on the proper usage of said traps.

“Do not kill any more ants,” he said. Hmm, I was thinking—may be these traps have shrill, high-frequency beeps to send the ants as far as possible from where we live with kids who wear as few clothes on as possible. No.

“You can’t kill the ants, because the way this works is that one ant is tempted by the bait and becomes covered in it. Then he has to go back to the ant colony so that the other ants can get poisoned too. That’s how the colony dies off.”

Li’l A and I are shocked:

This doesn’t feel wrong to you? It’s like giving them small-pox blankets.

Yeah, dad—it’s a genocide.

_

QUARRELS

Eyebrows held like knitting needles
mouths braided with angusish
clouds bulbed like brains
drawn fleeced with thoughts
like water whipped by wind
rent like lightning
the ripped shelter of skies

so that in their rooms
children lie wakened
in fact, the children had been jumping in ther beds
in fact, the children slept throught the storm
in fact, the children had not yet been born

_

THE MEETING

Upon their faces
marks of worry
of weather
a simpering parsimony of words

In her face
the confidence of sexual power
(or only a mirage of
sexual power—

for there is too much
coy questioning about it
do you like me
my clothes, my hair?)

And this
still within
the formality of marriage,
the rude intimacy of it.

__

DROWNING

Drowning.
The logic of it,

its tranquility.
Sent to look

in the mirror
when

there’s no one there

To acknowledge

the water,
the water’s depth

to see it,
to die

Well, fancy seeing you here

Yes, I have some cheek showing up here after months and months and imagining i'm welcome.

But wait—we moved to a new house! I took up a new job! Li’l A had surgery! Baby A runs around talking up a storm! We’re in the mad midst of sudden Summer sociality! There’s too much fun to be had on Facebook—I just took a test to see which Hindu goddess I am! There’s been no time!

But I really want to come back here at the end of the day and blab blog, so here’s a start.

the stillness of
photos
their pause
then peace

his hair always
waves welcome
her walk is like laughter,
all over the place

See--even the sun
beams
as though
those two

are the sweet, buttery
heart,
where the universe
should start


_

Display only--not for consumption

I love to cook, and my favorite fantasy is about competing on Top Chef (I’m not at all that good; this is a fantasy). But I’ve never been successful at baking. I guess because baking is so precise, in measurements of ingredients and time, unlike cooking where I tweak and improvise to my heart’s content.

Still, there must be something of a pastry chef manqué inside me, because every time I change Baby A’s diaper, dusting her bottom with cornstarch makes me feel like I’m giving a cake a final dusting of powdered sugar and when I draw a precise line of diaper cream in her diaper, I feel as though I’m frosting some impossibly dainty patisserie.

_

KARMA

in this room lit only by far off planets
bleak as a poorly attended meeting
now imagine a poem, and nurture it
while downstairs the vendors cry

downstairs the baby cries and
downstairs the mother cries too
flies sibilate happiness
or staticky radio messages

my body is out on the street
bright as light bulbs, falling
inwards, charred on a log fire
an eternal series, persistent

as the flash of television's reality
chronicling tiny, enduring details
food for the gods though not fit for them
speckled skies, four kinds of dogfights

_

Wait, Wait--don't tell me

So i finally watched Waitress--Adrienne Shelley's posthumously released film about a pregnant, pie-baking waitress. I saw the previews when i was at the cinema to watch The Namesake and wanted to see it but never got around to it because no one would see it with me. I watched it by myself last night; it was free on HBO.

Like Juno--that other movie that seems to have been built around a prosthetic belly--i liked Waitress for the most part, and Keri Russell is radiant, while the guy who played her husband is suitably smarmy and disgusting. But there were too many out of character slips in the screenplay. The protagonist, for instance sneaks in hiply, ironic repartee that seems more in tune with her hip, ironic creator rather than herself. And though i'm a sucker for they-just-can't-help-themselves type passionate encounters, the disaffection and deceit engendered by *two* adulterous spouses seems rather heavy-handed.

And i won't tell you the end in case you've waited to see this film too. But i have to record my disaffection for two overly neat resolutions, such as (don't click if you'd rather not know) this and this, which tie the dangly ends of the film into a big, stylized bow.

Stay tuned. At this rate, i should have a Slumdog review in 2011.

ANNIVERSARY

in your sweet swallow
a grand chord of operatic importance

in my proud voice
a thrusting interjection of breasts

between worn sheets
a satisfaction of promised seduction

i'd seen it all in my head
two days after we'd met

_

The 25 things meme

Today's post was easy, lifted straight from my Facebook exercise of yesterday. Try it; it's interesting to see what comes up when you let your mind wander...

1. Culturally, I've always been something of an outsider/diasporan all my life. Even when i was an Indian living in India, i was of the Telegu diaspora in a Tamizh state.

2. I've been engaged twice as many times as i've been married. And i've been married more than once.

3. I used to be terrified of the paranormal. Then one night (which in my melodramatic, adolescent state i no doubt termed "a dark night of my soul") i faced my terrors down in the dark with a stray wolf for company, and some unexpected, nearly drunk college kids in the parking lot at the bottom of the hill.

4. Before anorexia was widely diagnosed in India, i was anorexic for three years out of a sense of exacerbated solidarity with the human condition in general and famine in Africa in particular. I started to put on weight again out of vanity. This is counter to most anorectic case histories and incredibly bathetic.

5. I don't think i really understand that i can control my monetary status. When i have it, i spend it; when i don't have it, i don't. I have been well to do and i have been fairly poor. I cannot imagine being wealthy.

6. My sister is my rock. We share a shorthand of memory and linguistics. And unconditional love.

7. My parents claim that they never find any but their own kids (that's me and my sister) cute, sweet, virtuous, etc. On the contrary, I haven't met a kid i didn't find fascinating.

8. I have memories of my dad helping my mom wax off her underarm hair, but my parents deny this. But i remember the horrible chemical smell.

9. My earliest recurrent dream since i was around three involves me running down a flight of stairs holding in my hand a spindle that grows as it rolls around in my hand. I'm not frightened by this dream, mostly repulsed. I began wondering recently given the phallic nature of the dream symbols if some adult male had exposed himself to me when i was a child.

10. I used to have really thick hair and a maid used to help me wash it twice a week. My husband thinks this is hilariously privileged.

11. My mother told me once that even if God himself told her so, she wouldn't believe that my dad could have an affair. I was so impressed by the trust she had in my dad. Until she added, "He really hates to spend money."

12. My father claims that the most beautiful women he has ever seen are his wife and daughters. He's not right, of course; but he's not fibbing about how he really believes it.

13. I want to be able to raise my kids to be happy, loving, confident people who will make a difference in the world.

14. When i was little, unsolicited soothsayers told me that (a) my son would be as beautiful as the young Lord Murugan [true] (b) that he would change the world. [i hope.] They didn't say anything about my daughter. But i know she's beautiful and hope she changes the world too.

15. I would be happy if my daughter chose to be lesbian. I think that heterosexual unions come with embedded hierarchical differences that are difficult to negotiate and impossible to overcome.

16. I used to be a near omnivore. I've eaten goat's hooves and tongue and i *enjoyed* eating goat's brains (egh!!) as a kid. Now i'm on the road to veganism. (O chocolate, why must you have dairy in it?) (And while we are at it, why is there no good soy cheese?)

17. I worry at any putative (or imaginary) harm that may befall my babies. If i had one superpower, it would be to make it so all the kids in the world were fed, healthy, and happy.

19. I can listen to my parents' stories all day and all night. And i can argue with their politics all day and all night too. When i visit my parents i like to climb into the space between them and listen to stories of their childhood.

20. The level of marital discourse between me and A is infinitely infantile. I cannot imagine either of us living without the other. I can cry thinking about how much *he* would cry if something were to happen to me.

21. I seem to have incredible good fortune in landing awesome mothers-in-law.

22. I went through two or three paperbacks a day as a kid. I read de Sade, Joe Orton, and a lot of Martin Amis when i was thirteen. It was in hardback and my parents didn't investigate. Now, thoroughly grown up, I sometimes still read Enid Blytons.

23. I'm confused by why it is "thoroughfare" and not "through-fare" when clearly it refers to passing through and not to being thorough.

24. Are we there yet?

25. When i yell, "family conference" it usually involves everyone piling into bed to snuggle.

Tweenager

Me to Li'l A while making his breakfast and he's puttering around starting the Suprabhatam, punching out the date on the calendar, and grumping around:

Hey, did you know that today's the day Mahatma Gandhi was shot and assassinated?

Li'l A super mopey from having been refused another snow-related stay-at-home day.

No, but yeah. That's exactly what i needed to hear to make my day all bright and cheery.

_

A new name for an age-old job

I think we’ve found Baby A’s new nanny. Her name is Carol. Guess what our old nanny’s name was? Carol. Neat huh? And we didn’t even deign or design it that way.

Years and years ago when my sister and I were little kids and we lived in Vizag, my dad worked for a British company—I gather the pay wasn’t as much as it ought to have been (vide my parents), but because it was a socially prominent position the job came with a huge house on five acres, and a household of servants, including a butler and a cook. At some point the offices of the butler and the cook conflated into the same person—albeit still with differently accessorized personae. When we moved in, an aproned and hatted Raju would cook in the kitchen and wear a poly-silk vest to wait on us at the table as a butler.

But Raju had another persona too—a secret one that kept him absent while he got drunk off company liquor. Consequently he was fired. His family who’d lived in one of the outhouses on the property had to leave too. And I remember being sad about that because I used to play with his kids a fair bit when my mom was too busy to catch me.

I’ll say this here: My mother is mellower now. Kinder, more generous, more charitable, very humanitarian. Back then she was a fresh twenty-something who suddenly had to learn to socialize with the extremely wealthy and big name royalty and foreign visitors. In old-fashioned middle-class families like that of both my grandmothers’ the domestic help were addressed with relationship tags like “bai,” or “akka,” or “amma.” But details like that must have been difficult to remember in a new milieu where no one lived with their in laws and everyone seemed impossibly sophisticated. So my sister and I were taught to call the domestic help by name. “Baldly” as some of the older ones would complain to us when we were older.

But that week, I was still five, my sister still two, and my parents were interviewing other candidates for Raju’s job—it was openly just one slash job by now. And they liked this man whose name happened to be something rather long. Something like Panduranga or Pentalayya. And their final question to him was this: Would he be willing to have us call him Raju? Because, you understand, the kids are used to calling for Raju and your name is so long?

The new "Raju" took the job. But he was quite bitter. Whether because of the mandated name change or for more secret reasons, I don’t know. He taught me a couple of snide things to say to my parents when I was six (I remember telling them that money comes and goes at God’s will—a lesson we sure learned later if not right then) and tutored me to pretend that I was having a past-life memory (I had to pretend that my doll was a baby I had lost in a previous life—the scenario came from a Telugu movie). My parents breezed by both of those incidents without paying them any attention. I was relieved about the snide thing but quite crushed about the possession thing--I was kind of looking forward to seeing them shocked and scared. But I guess my line delivery and acting skills have always been consistent: abysmal.

Anyway… hopefully, we won’t have to deal with all of that with the new Carol. For one, her parents already had named her Carol. And for another, she's way more propertied than we are :).

___

HD Resolutions

Work with my new advisor towards the earliest completion of my dissertation and defense. And in the meantime write more and send out more submissions.

Take a multivitamin and eat an apple a day.

Meditate more, do yoga more.

Make the kids giggle more.

Stretch before running. Run longer distances.

Go outside more. Even when it’s cold outside.

Grow more plants—may be non tropical ones for a change.

Give more. Monthly instead of occasionally for starters.

Choose to cook new rather than tried dishes; feed more people.

Help Big A with the laundry.

Get more kids in the house. Hurry the adoptions; take in exchange students, something.

_

Goodbye to all that

There's too much i've been holding on to from the past year. Too many fears, too many unhappinesses, too much imbalance, too much holding back.

And though we had a wonderful time at new year's road tripping and partying all day and all night (with me quaffing halfsies of champagne at lunchtime), i didn't get a chance to say goodbye to 2008.

We got home and it was same old Baby A daycare where she has been getting sick every week since we put her there, same old Li'l A school where he's in all the gifted programs but trying to drink Ensure instead of eating real food, same old me wondering where all the daytime goes and why i haven't published more.

Thankfully, being South Indian, i get another chance at a new start for 2009. Tomorrow is Pongal, the start of Thai, the most auspicious month in the Tamizh calendar. And today is Bhogi, the pre-Pongal bonfire of the the past year's dross. So i've made a metaphorical little bonfire of my fears and my regrets and let them go. I'll post my resolutions here tomorrow. But in the meantime, we're saying goodbye to daycare and have started interviewing nannies, we've made an appointment for the poor eater to get food counseling/therapy at the Children's Hospital and i'm going to write and submit more.

_

Happy Stuff Day

(Offering me something wrapped in bathroom tissue as he exits his elementary school building.)

Li’l A:This is for you! It’s a present.

Me: (cautiously)

Oh, nice. What is it?

Li’l A: It’s a piece of ice! It has two ants and a worm frozen in it!

Me: Uhm. Really, you keep it, you’ll like it better.

Li’l A: You don’t want it?!? But why? Why don't you want it?

Anyone?
Anyone?

____

What seems to be the problem, Officer?

First thing today, I was face to face with a suspicious policeman with a flashlight in the freezing darkness. Also, hopping from foot to foot because I was still in the tee and chuddies I’d worn to bed. The saving grace: I only had the top half of the Dutch door open, so hopefully he didn’t see the superman logo on my undies--my superhero identity is safe.

A few minutes earlier, the security alarm had gone off and I hadn’t responded promptly enough because I thought it was just Big A letting himself in after work.

A few months earlier, Big A started grumbling about how installing a security system in a college town where crime is non-existent “is a waste of resources.” He still occasionally grumbles. But little A’s bedroom is on the floor below us and the baby’s room has a large window, and I’m paranoid.

And the policeman--he was so disappointed when I told him it was a false alarm. A few minutes earlier, he'd looked as eager as Li’l A at three, who would describe how he would “pachack” the bad guys as i put him to bed.*

____
* This was in Oxford, in the tiny little two-story flat the college had given the two of us. The sad, cold, cell-like, lonely flat that for some reason I just made myself really nostalgic about.

My daughter is a fighter not a lover

The first day, before i realized Baby A was sick, i was congratulating myself on having changed a squirmy baby most likely to push you away before you even got to the beginning of a satisfying hug into a champion snuggler. Because all she wanted to do that first day she was sick was collapse on my chest and sleep there like she hasn't done since she was a mewling infant a whole year ago.

And then the next day when Tylenol couldn't tamp down her fever of 105 and i rushed her to the Urgent Care Clinic, she still clung to me, but she was all, "I'll cut you, beyotch" to any nurse or doctor who even dared to look at her. And she fought them on everything. Not just intrusive stuff like droppers of medicine, or the temperature thing they stick in your ear, but everything. Even the stethoscope. I really never thought anyone would object to that. 

It took two nurses plus me to hold her down while another nurse... checked her ears. At the end of which, my daughter was still yelling curses in toddlerese and i was crying snottily, and the nurse said: Well, it's a good thing she's a fighter.

And i think i was crying not not just because my baby was sick and i had to hold her down while strangers did something she didn't want. It was also because my head is sick with the things i read and hear, and holding her scared, fighting body reminded me of all the terrible things that happen to babies and children and girls, because you can get three other people and hold them down.

_

I thought i would dream about the dead bird

I didn't dream about the dead bird. 

But i kept on and on thinking about it. Because although i try not to believe in signs and portents, my attempts at rationality disappear when there's a very sick baby in the house. 

Long ago, before i had--or even thought about kids of my own--i knew a Tamizh teacher who told me that she got pregnant after/because a house sparrow built a nest inside her house. And a couple of years ago, i even blogged about how house sparrows were trying to nest in our home, but i didn't think about any connection until i was well and truly pregnant with Baby A. 

So now we are at the point where i have a very sick baby lying face down on my chest and a dead house sparrow lying on the window sill with its legs curling upwards pathetically. And i keep on returning to that equation and assuming the worst. Later on, my mother part coaxes, part bullies me past this image. 

My mom: Did Big A dispose of the bird?

Yes.

Oracle Mom: I think that means you've just rid yourself of any danger stalking Baby. 

I'll take it.

FTW Mom: Also, remember that your first house sparrow didn't actually nest or hatch in the house. It wanted to, you chased it away, and you still had a baby.

I love her. And i have to admire the way she can turn anything on its head with the best contemporary theorists.

_

It's my party

I'm a sick puppy. No, really--i'm sick. And  i haven't been sick in what seems like years now, so this flu-like discomfort makes me want to cower with my head under the sheets and cry. But i can't because it's the weekend and the kids are home from school but Big A--my crucial partner parent-- is off working a late night shift. And my phone is dead so nobody knows or can come around with soup. Or hug the kids. Because my babies didn't get hugged very much as i spent a lot of time trying not to hold them and breathe my germs on them too much. 

But i think Baby A is sick anyway. I've put her to bed five times this evening and each time she's woken up having barfed on herself from coughing. So that's five times i've changed the sheets. Although, i gave up on giving her a bath after the second time and instead merely sponge her down, change her jammies, pat her all over with hand-sanitizer and call it clean. She's upstairs now coughing in her sleep and whimpering without waking up because she's frustrated that she can't fully fall asleep. That in itself is enough to make a person cry. 

Li'l A is in bed after what's got to be the lamest weekend ever--one where he tried to wait on me: Do you want Vicks? When your throat lozenges are gone JUST tell ME, I'LL get them for you! And played with "his baby" for hours on end while i mostly sat limp and dizzy on the floor. He also entertained the low appetite baby while i spoon-fed her mashed up fruit --in retrospect, i really wish we hadn't done that.

But all the baby barfing gave me a guilt-free pass to hold her all i want. And while i'm ready to cry from exhaustion, it also makes me laugh when i get to her room and sure enough, she's sitting there in barfbarfybarf--but when she sees me come in, turn on the lights, and pick her up: she's ready to party. 

I want my Amma too.

_

TODAY

Li'l one

we're the first ones awake and we

walk to school in feathery snow

you glance up at me all twinkly eyes

and warm, knitted hat: "My feet have a beat

and now so do my teeth."

Baby

I scramble you some eggs and cheese

and sing you, "There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly"

I really wish i knew what you think that song is really about

because you bop along to it, yelling periodically,

with most approving enthusiasm: "Eat CAT!!"

Love

you drive yourself to the doctor

i've turned uncharacteristically quiet

so you run your palm over my hair, my shoulders

the knife is minutes away from you. But it's me you ask:

"Baby, are you alright?"

_

He dreams of lesbians

I woke up extra early this morning to call college admin in England and intuiting my absence in our bed, Big A's subconscious threw up this dream:

For some undeterminable reason* i was mad at him so i invited all the lesbians i knew over for a huge party and served vegan tomato-spinach soup. So that when Big A turned up wanting to eat some Honey Bunches (HB being his favorite cereal) there were no bowls to be had! The lesbians had taken all the bowls! It made him feel very unloved! Waa!

This kept me giggling all day because i would keep flashing back to this woebegone look on his face when he was telling me that "but there were no bowls!" 

And i really don't want to get into the gritty analysis of what "Honey Bunches" and "bowls" imply in the context of the much feared "lesbians." And if you're thinking this has something to do with this--Just. Don't. Even go there.

_

* And of course i resourcefully (and ever so usefully) asked him *what* he had done in his dream to make me so mad at him. Because i'm so much more rational these days and don't get mad at him anymore for stuff he did in *my* dreams. 

_

Illusions. O Bummer.

My cousin N sent me the article titled, "Obamania: The factory of illusions," in an attempt to temper my Obama euphoria. It makes a fair enough request, although much of it (and this could simply be the the effect of translation) seemed unconvincingly and ploddingly argued and is frequently fallacious. The gist of the essay being that this recent election is not "the most relevant single event in 2 (sic) million years of human existence."

I take the view from my sometimes favorite philosopher, who incisively argues that 

[the] reason Obama's victory generated such enthusiasm is not only that, against all odds, it really happened: it demonstrated the possibility of such a  thing happening. The same goes for all great historical ruptures--think of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Although we all knew about the rotten inefficiency of the Communist regimes, we didn't really believe that they would disintegrate--like Kissinger, we were all victims of cynical pragmatism. Obama's victory was clearly predictable for at least two weeks before the election, but it was still experienced as a surprise.

Full text from LRB here. Arguably, there is a translation lag in the latter quote as well, but it's one that is swept away by the sheer energetic conviction of SZ.

_

I love my husband.

Just really, really, really love, love, love.

Because most people think i dote on our kids, i surprise myself when i admit that in a non Ayelet Waldman sense, i love him more than i love our kids even. In a fire, i'd, obv, grab the tots first because they're so small and helpless and sleep so soundly and Big A jolly well save his own butt and a few others besides. And yes, my kids are delicious and funny, and so squeezy as to seem boneless, and their eyes are the shiniest orbs in the universe and their laughter is the trippiest ever...

But the best days are the ones when Big A is off from work and the kids are off at (baby or elementary) school and we get to go back to bed and hang out and get brunch and nap some more and lie in bed dreaming of big plans and undertaking huge house projects before the monkeys return at three.

The only thing ruining our "naptimes" is our proclivity to make babies if we so much as look at each other. Knowing how much i dislike hormonal contraception, Big A is getting a vasectomy this week. The "little snip-snip" as our friends call it. And the best part: I didn't make any suggestions, throw out any hints. He came up with it calmly, lovingly, by himself. No talk of sacrifice, just how very much he loves me, how my happiness is the most important thing in his life.

We do make exceedingly cute babies though, and there's an irrational part of me that's sad that i will never be pregnant again. But hopefully, there will be more babies--when our adoption papers come through.

_

Cached up

Where I’ve been in the last couple of months:

*Knocking on doors for the Obama campaign.

* Reading e-mails from the Obama campaign. (And consequently, developing a bit of a crush on David Plouffe.)

*Attending Obama Rallies.

*Hosting Presidential debate parties (okay just one, no--two).

*Donating money to the Obama campaign.

*Making phone calls for the Obama campaign.

*Facebooking for the Obama campaign.

*Giving my internet time to the Obama campaign. (This was different from donating my time. No one asked me to do this and it benefited no one. It mostly involved me refreshing fivethirtyeight.com, and fuming every time another Palin story broke.)

*Attending an election-night dinner. 

*Watching the actual results with an impromptu bunch.

* Celebrating the election victory.

* Watching several self-congratulatory episodes of Bill Maher.

*Giving more internet time and leaving comments on a bunch of blogs.

Read a bunch of books when the election sent me too close to the brink of insanity. But everything else just had to wait. Including stuff like writing to the admin secretary at the university to figure out remaining paperwork, and unpacking my clothes. We moved here in August? That’s right.

_

THREE WEEKS TO GO

Showing eyes phosphorescent

in fear, muddied with

dread lie our

heavy heads

our throats

are thunderclouds

for fear breaks

off—

flakes. And this October

is shrill silence

as bats cringe

inches from the skin.

_

a new nickname

In the process of moving and packing I found of bunch of stuff I’d forgotten about. One of them is this greenish kuffiyeh that I‘d gotten a while ago and stopped wearing when kuffiyehs became less about supporting Palestine and more of a hipster badge. I’m wearing it now to keep the hair out of my eyes while I unpack our boxes and Big A likes to ask if it’s from my Baby Arafat line. Get it? Pretend it’s spelled with a “ph.” :)

__

Sushila Atha

Sushila Atha, I think of you frequently. I wanted to name my daughter with your name. I would be thinking of you all the time if I had.

You’re not my atha, of course, you are my Amma’s. Her father’s only sister. Her mother has a sister named Sushila too, so I think I was nearly ten before I realized that mentions of you were different from conversations about Sushila Pinni.

You were the first girl in the family to attend college, but Amma was the first to graduate, a whole generation later. Because you were married before you could. Were married off. And then one day, Amma says, you returned to your parents’ house. Pregnant. Refused to return to your in-laws. Married women aren’t welcome at their birth houses without their husbands, you were told. You ran into the backyard, past the cows bellowing at the camphor flames, and jumped into the well. You were dead before they found a servant who could swim, who could save you. Amma says you were very beautiful. Hair past your knees. Accomplished. There are needlepoint pillowcases somewhere to prove it. Amma has never actually seen you either.

I’m sorry I wasn’t there. We could have gone to classes together, graduated, found jobs, brought our babies up together. (We’d do needlepoint or grow our hair only if we felt like it.) It’s not very difficult, they’ll let you bring your babies to class even, most of the time. They say your mother wanted to intervene but she was too afraid of her Gadadoss husband to do so. Gadadoss husbands still have that reputation. The Gadadoss women are, most of them, subversively feminist because of it.

Amma was horrified that I’d give my daughter your name. But it wasn’t to revisit your history upon her. It was the dream of reworking it, a chance to do your life differently. To let you roam the house raucously, gurgly, never expecting you to be demure. To let you be confident, independent. To keep you happy. To remember you always; you who are usually so secret, from tumbling further away from memory.


_

Baby Immunity

Baby A is fascinated by kids, so instead of looking for a nanny here in our new town, we found her a place in a great group care for children under three. She seems to like it there. There‘re lots more people to boss, plus--extra walks, new toys, cheerios anytime she feels like it--the perks are great. But after three days there, she came home on Wednesday with a runny nose and has been running a temperature with a hacking cough and full-blown cold since.

And because she’s been trailing a toxic river of snot, her brother and father are sick too. And their coughing has led to some quality kneeling time at the commode, so the boys are barf-brothers now.

Me? I’m hearty as a gundu-rayi (the proverbial grinding stone). Despite frequently rubbing noses with the original and subsequent rivers of snot. Big A says: Not every one can be lucky enough to grow up in the “third world.”

_

Baby Talk 2: The too tasty

Talking about baby talk with T reminded me of this.

Li’l A used to eat a kichri that I used to make him (with rice, and lentils and garlic and peppercorns and chicken and veggies, almonds, and olive oil, pressure cooked and mashed) every day for lunch. When I left him with my mom in Bangalore while I finished up a few things in Oxford, my mother made him this kichri (under my urgent request because this was the only thing in the whole world that would meet all his nutritional needs). Ammama probably futzed around with my rather no-frills recipe a bit. Because after the first spoonful, Li’l A smacked his lips and told her: Ammama, too tasty! Too tasty!

My mother took this as endorsement of her superior cooking skills. Whereas in fact as she found out when he refused to eat any further, he meant it literally. It was too tasty--there were too many tastes in it.

_

Baby talk 1: The boom-boom

Baby A is nine months old. She’s not talking yet, but there are plenty of words she seems to recognize. Her name for instance. And “no;” at which she’ll pause, acknowledge our stuffy parental opinion with an indulgent yet rebellious smile, and resume business. And (this is SO cute!) “pet,” upon which she’ll pet-pet-pet your hair, “dance” upon which she‘ll bop on her butt, and “clean” to which she‘ll use whatever‘s handy to wipe a nearby surface clean.

And she has words too. To be precise, she has a very versatile, “boom-boom.” I think she likes the way it feels in her mouth, so she uses it for everything. Even when she’s feeling lonely in the back seat of the car all by herself and goes boom-boom, waaah-waaah, boom-boom, wah-WAH! We’ll have to talk to her about that; it’s completely unconvincing as a heartrending cry for help. Boom-boom.

_

The Veggie Update

I received far too much praise for the post I wrote about how my family and I were going to go vegan/ovo-lactarian vegetarians. Uhm… now I have to come back and divulge that it wasn’t the great and lasting success that I anticipated it would be when I wrote about it a week or so into the experiment. The Big and Li’l As have decamped to meat in many forms. Baby A enjoys the taste of all things including veggie burritos, earthworms, and garden dirt. As of today, I still ate cheese. As of last month, I still took one last sushi trip.

Lets detail. Cheese: We were temporarily living with my MIL, who is the sweetest and makes sure that there’s some form of vegetarian protein for me on the table come dinner time. It seems kinda mean to tell her that I don’t eat cheese. Also cheese, it‘s kinda nice; the soy version just doesn’t compare. Sushi: We were moving to what JOAT once called “Holy Middle Earth” which means not very many Sushi restaurants, very few good ones, and no sushi places that would deliver at all--so I had sushi before it got taken away from me. I’ve resisted sushi the last three or four times opportunity has presented itself though. Also, I eat chocolate, but unless it’s made from the eyeballs of wailing baby lambkins, don’t even talk to me about giving it up.

How the family did. Let’s just leave Baby A out of this. She’s into cannibalistically biting everyone lately and just wouldn’t understand about sparing other species. Big A was enthusiastic about the venture; Li’l A was always unhappy about it. But the food that I cooked just didn’t taste right after I removed meat from it. Commenter Amit suggested that meat could be replaced with TVP, but there weren’t too many fans of that at home. I also keep getting asked if I miss meat. I don’t. I used to, back when I used to give it up as a penance or vrath. But this time around, I have zero cravings and actually get a little cranky with all the recipe suggestions for fake meat and substitution.

So at the end of it we have one vegetarian who went vegan (except for cheese and milk chocolate), we have two gusty meaty eaters who tried vegetarianism and one baby who’s demonstrating a growing keenness for animal-based food. Our farm share veggies, which I was depending on to introduce us to an abundance of new veggie experiences are ‘orrible and mealy, but we live in a liberal college town where there are plenty of veggie and vegan choices on every menu.

Being vegan does make it a little difficult to go out for pizza or icecream as a family. And I’ve been opting out of such excursions because it feels weird, but it also feels weird to have them go without me. Much as Big A supports my decision, when I refuse a certain food, there is an unaware split-second, a flash of surprise and then resignation. I hate telling people that I’m vegan, because it sounds pious and as though I am going to sit at the table with them and disapprove of their food choices. So Big A is under strict instructions not to introduce me to anyone as a veggie. When we’re invited to dinner, I’d rather pick food that I am happy to eat without explanation.

I don’t see myself ever going back to animal products. My family eats less meat (esp. at home). It’s not what I’d call a revolutionary transformation, but a modification is blowing in the wind.

_

Mahmoud Darwish 1942-2008

I didn't always agree with Darwish's philosophy and have sometimes quibbled about his craft. But his death is a too sudden loss. And i find myself recalling his charm, his insistence that conflict is absurd when all the possibilities for life--for love--exist.

From his 2002 poem A State of Siege: (You can hear Darwish read it here.)

[To a killer:] If you reflected upon the face
of the victim you slew, you would have remembered your mother in the room
full of gas. You would have freed yourself
of the bullet’s wisdom,
and changed your mind: ‘I will never find myself thus.’

[To another killer:] If you left the foetus thirty days
in its mother’s womb, things would have been different.
The occupation would be over and this suckling infant
would forget the time of the siege
and grow up a healthy child
reading at school, with one of your daughters
the ancient history of Asia.
They might even fall in love
and give birth to a daughter [she would be Jewish by birth].
What, then, have you done now?
Your daughter is now a widow
and your granddaughter an orphan.
What have you done with your scattered family?
And how have you slain three doves in one story?

...

_

Someone at CNN is snickering sophomoronically

CNN report:

Shanteau, 24, of Lilburn, Georgia, was diagnosed with testicular cancer June 19, a week before he left for the U.S. swim trials.

[down a few paragraphs]

….his girlfriend, Jeri Moss, who played the key role in discovering the cancer...

_

Spam trek

Hot on the heels of having several of my online accounts (evite, netflix, gmail, blogger etc.,) hacked, I’m being hit with spam from every where. Even on Flickr.

Ever since I started as poetry editor at _i’m keeping it secret for now_, most of the trash in my trusty gmail spam folder is prefixed with the word “poetry.” Although there’s nothing particularly poetic about it.

You be the judge:

Alfonse Quinlan: For: poetry Britney Spears Shaves Head At Request Of Zombie Overlord
claiborn venkat? For: poetry Britney Spears To Be Adopted By African Child

Umm. Okay?

_

Browser gender

I haven't been keeping up with the internets lately, so I don’t know if y'all have already done this test that guesses your gender (although it is expressed in sex rather than gender terms) based on your web browsing history.


Ha! Turns out that I’m well rounded and leap stereotypes at a single bound.

My result:
Likelihood of you being FEMALE is 50%
Likelihood of you being MALE is 50%

Sweet. Treats.

At the antique mall in front of a case of old toothpaste tubes.

Me to my MIL: I used to suck the toothpaste out of discarded tubes on my grandmother’s terrace roof.

MIL to me: Oh. So you wouldn’t eat your lunch (referring to my notorious eating habits), but you would eat toothpaste. Shakes her head at me despairingly.

Me: You don’t understand, my grandmother’s toothpaste was *minty*. My parents made us brush with Forhans--it came in an orange tube and was chalky and horrible. That's why i loved sucking on Colgate.

MIL: Good choice. Did you get all the flouride you wanted?

__

Stalkin: I iz doin it

I pass slowly along the extreme side of the road staring hungrily at the house. Then I loop around the block and do it again. Some days I repeat this as many as four times. Sometimes to be discreet, I’ll split it up into two separate visits.

No, not Dave Chappelle’s house--him I’ve gotten used to seeing outside the coffee shop all day and all evening as he hangs with the other townies like a charming porrukki.

It’s the house itself I’m stalking. It won’t be ours until Aug 1. And clearly, I have trouble waiting.

_

Bang-Bangalore

I didn't realize that there had been multiple blasts in Bangalore today, until i retrieved a text (nine hours after it was originally sent) that read: Akka, all family in Bangalore are safe and fine."

I started fussing with google searching the news rightaway. Li'l A thought it was just a quaint way of saying "hi." Innocence must be bliss.

_

(After)Life

Big A and I, we’re mean parents. We tease the kid (you figured that one out from the last post). But wait, it gets worse. We tease the baby.

Sudden loud noises freak Baby A out. Cute. Funny, actually. She’ll look startled, then the corners of her mouth dip down into a perfect curve, then her lower lip starts wobbling, and then she’ll cry. At this point, we’ll usually scoop her up into our arms and make her smile again, but that lower-lip-downcurl is precious. And rare, since our girl is a usually a tough cookie.

Here’s the really bad thing. Sometimes we yell something: “OMG!” or “The New Yorker!” just to startle her. (And see that lower lip do that thing). We do this sparingly. So far may be a couple of times. (OK, like 16 times).

The number of times I’ve single-handedly instigated Big A into startling the baby is roughly half. But I know I’m the one going to hell for this. Big A won’t because he saves lives and all and God will be all: Aw, he’s such a good person despite everything; heaven. But me with my books-food-fabric-music-artifact-pleasure loving, self-centered life? H-E-double the toothpicks.

__

The Patriarchy

The most embarrassing part of this post is going to be admitting that I have Air on my ipod. You know “Alpha Beta Gaga?” That Air. Most of it is inarticulate, furrin croonin,’ and I had it out on the sound dock the other day. And then "Sexy Boy" comes on. Li’l A needs another chat with me about what “sexy” means. Mostly I think because it’s an excuse to say the word ;). So I do some explaining.

And then he’s all: Promise me one thing. Promise me JUST one thing!
I have no idea what’s happening. Not a clue. But his big eyes are full of earnest intensity, so I promise.
Promise me you’ll never call anyone but dad sexy boy. Promise me.

I laughed until my stomach cramped. And then I laughed about it some more when Big A got home. And the next day, in the car, my hands free because Big A was driving, I pointed out anyone remotely attractive to Li’l A: Sexy Boy, Sexy Boy, Sexy Boy, Sexy Boy.

It’s not like it’s a bad thing.

_

No kidding

Guitar Hero has a lot to answer for. It’s pretty sweet when there is an interview with Rivers Cuomo on the radio and Li’l A tells me earnestly (because I didn’t just recently live through the nineties or anything) that Weezer is a band.

And oh, that avatar? Slash? He’s a real person.

_

Neighbor

I don’t know Eliza. Haven’t even met her, actually; but already, I love her.

She’s Big A’s mom’s friend’s granddaughter (who was adopted from China). She and Li’l A might be classmates in the new school year so Big A’s mom was telling her about Li’l A and that I (his mom) came from India.

Eliza reportedly got all excited: “From India? Really? Did you know... Did you know that I’m from China?”

_

I have an Obama dream

I woke up when Big A leaned over me to say Good Morning to the baby (who, btw, who stares at me every morning silently, with cannibal-level passion.)

I had a dream about Obama, says I.

Big A pounces: was it a sex dream?

Kind of--I didn’t have sex with him, but my friend T was trying to get him to have sex with her younger sister N. Oh, and also, we were all at the big seaside hotel and no one seemed to recognize him as the presidential candidate at all, except for politically savvy me. What I really liked was that he had two balconies: reportedly one reserved for looking at the sea and the other one for drying his towels--very bright man that. Vote!

_

A BLUE MOHAWK

In her family
they call it
the call from Colorado

the time she called from Boulder
to speak to her mother,
to say, amongst other things,

It’s just so hard to find work
when you have a blue
mohawk

It makes the mother want to
laugh, to cry
you stupid, stupid

idiot, idiot.
Instead she imagines
the daughter

walking to and fro
in the snow
looking for work

looking everywhere
for work
and being turned away.

her head twisted
a bird naked
in crested profile

Yes, she sighs,
it must be difficult
people can’t understand.

_

OUR OLD HOUSE

On empty walls
light crenellates
happy scrawls

In vacant rooms
breezes waft
light laughter

_

One happy camper

Li’l A is away (for the first time) at sleep-away camp.

I can’t fall asleep.


_

There’s no place like home

We’re in the process of relocating and spent the beginning of July packing (check), the middle of July moving (check), and the rest of July in-between homes--living with Big A’s mom and storing a bunch of stuff at my cousin Ninni’s apartment while she‘s away in India.

In the meantime I’ve seen the place I hope we can move into Aug 1. I fell in love with the house on Davis Street even before I walked in through the door because out front in the shady, vine-sheltered garden, there was a cast iron birdbath trimmed with the--umm--excremental satisfaction of many birds.

You totally know this is going to be on Oprah… or Jerry Springer

My feminist friends have been teeth-gnashing, hand-wringing, and dabbling in all kinds of Freudian self-psychoanalyses since Rebecca Walker’s article, about her mother Alice Walker, broke in UK’s Daily Mail:

Now keep in mind that The Daily Mail is a very conservative turkey and it might make better sense why Rebecca W’s article seems backlash-y, undermine-y, and badly researched. I feel no insecurity that the Walker acrimony exposes the non monolithic aspects of feminism to non feminist scrutiny and criticism. And i doubt if it’s a third-wave feminist against the second-wave kind of thing as Phyllis Chesler makes it appear in her Salon.com article. It just seems to be a rather cheerless reality that the children of artists and leaders often appear to be disturbed/damaged and alienated (see: Gandhi, M.K; Marx, Karl, or even Blyton, Enid etc.).

While I’m not an outright fan of Alice Walker’s, I have to say that Rebecca W’s work appears to be lacking in nuance. I remember Rebecca Walker’s 1990’s sex-positive essay “Lusting for Freedom” as appealing, but in this here article, she alleges that her mother pushed her towards early sexual experimentation. So, umm—all I can see is how an opportunity to form a strong historical and theoretical center for her resentment has been wasted.

Still there is a lot of psychic pain here. And I can identify with the feeling of disappointing your feminist mother by marrying, having kids. Much as my mom adores her grandkids, it made her anxious knowing that i would no longer be able to put my ambitions first. And sometimes, she’ll still look at me all i-told-you-so and quote Sanskrit: Vivaham vidya nashanam (marriage exterminates scholarship).

So, so far, no solutions--just sentiment :). And oh, Blue pointed me to Rebecca Walker’s blog, which has a very different voice from the article in question. I skimmed; i kinda liked.

How a family of four turned veg(etari)an

I have always loved food. Even more than the eating of it, I love the process of making something that nourishes the ones I love. I love the way it looks, feels, tastes. I love the enthusiastic “click” sounds my baby makes as she nurses, I love Big A’s post-prandial cough, li’l A’s too infrequent scraping of an empty plate, I love hearing my sister say she lost ten pounds she wanted to lose, I love the pediatrician slotting my babies above the 90^th percentile on the growth chart. I love making big, healthy colorful presentations of food, I like taking pictures of it; my collection of cook books almost rivals my collection of South Asian fiction (and I’m paid to work on only one of those).

Somewhere around the time I acquired a household to run, meals became about (an animal) protein volumized by sides of veggies, grains, and beans. This wasn’t the way I ate growing up, although, I’d grown up in a meat-eating household and even at my most anorexic, I’d still happily eat a little bowl of my mother’s chicken kurma (hold the rice) once a week. It was safe to say I thought of meat as necessary to a well balanced meal and that I enjoyed it. As recently as last year, when Chai embarked upon a month-long vegan challenge—I found it frighteningly austere and extreme. I thought I could never do without sushi, without a cup of morning milk, without a nibble of cheese now and then.

I thought that even if I made the shift, I would crave animal products. I did make the shift about four months ago. Can’t say I’ve craved any kind of meat.

I don’t intend to be a vegan vigilante, so skip this paragraph if you don’t want to give up animal derived products. All I had to do was read about factory farmed animals. That’s it. Even as I read that hens cluck to their unhatched chicks to teach them different calls, I knew my scrambled eggs were, in a manner of speaking, toast.

I’ve continued to cook meat for the family since then—it seemed like the caring, Buddhist thing to do. But Big A has been unhappy about the unfairness of the situation and yesterday we decided that he and the babies would join me. I’m glad; lately I’ve had doubts about the health benefits of meat/milk/eggs and have felt that I’m putting unhealthy, unhappy products into my children’s vulnerable bodies. So for now we’re keeping a bag of microwaveable chicken nuggets for Li’l A because that’s the only food he really pines for and otherwise eating more veggies, whole grains, and beans. The babies and Big A will still use eggs and a minimum of cow’s milk. I’m looking forward to the rest of the summer—our farm share has the exciting job of fully filling our bellies.

_

"This is not a food baby, alright?"

Just to say that we finally watched Juno. After all the hype and the Oscars and the buzz and the Fox Searchlight release. And it was good. And giggly.

I won’t give anything away. Can‘t. There are no surprises--nothing happens at the end that hasn’t already been established right at the beginning. Nothing happens that you don’t think is the absolute best thing that could happen given the circumstances. But by the end of the movie you’ve let yourself debate so many options and viabilities that you’re damp from tears and the effort of choice. Choice is tough. Not just reproductive choice--any choice at all…

The female actors--best choices. Ellen Page is preternaturally gamine and self-assured despite the prosthetic pregnancy. And I enjoyed watching yuppie dunderheads jockeying for her approval--not just in the way dunderheads always seem to be courting the approval of those younger (= hipper) than themselves, but because it allowed Jennifer Garner‘s interpretation of “sterility” to scale additional semantic and existential planes.

After the non surprising end, Big A and I surprisingly discussed a topic we rarely discuss: Abortions. We partially disagree about nuance, although i have the feeling Big A is increasingly drifting towards me. From as far back as he can remember, Big A has been pro-choice. Or at least that’s what his google-able student profile on Medical Students for Choice indicates. From as far as I can remember, while I’ve assumed a woman’s right to an abortion, I’ve also always disagreed with the PSAs and billboards in India, where I grew up, promoting it as a method of family planning.

This is where I get to sound reactionary and backward--there is something miraculous about conception, about pregnancy, something utterly, incredibly, phenomenal about new life. I know that as a feminist and a liberal, ideology prompts me to say, “clump of cells” or “the fetus,” or "the embryo" instead of the more emotionally loaded word “the baby.” But you do know that whatever you call it, and however inconvenient, it is the enigmatic start of life and will soon recognizably become a baby, right? A baby. And then a person and then a whole new world of limitless possibility. And while I would never, ever wish for a de-legalization of abortion or third-party sanction or biblical-style punishment pregnancies, I do wish for aggressively promoted, infallible, inexpensive birth control systems. I’m going to do exactly as my mother did and assure my (putative) daughters that should they get pregnant by accident, I will arrange and accompany them to an abortion. But I would want them to be conscious that it is a solemn decision, not a rite of passage.

_

THE CAN CAN

That sweatshirt my son had

when he was a year old

that said,

“Future President of the United States of America,”

that tee-shirt my daughter has now

that says, “Future President (of the USA)”

they were always funny

because

the chests so slogan-

emblazoned

were so

insignificant

over hearts so

insensible

of the race

beyond

themselves,

beyond me.

Blatant slant,

sartorial snark

about them being

small.

Children.

Not about them

being the children of an immigrant

the child of a single mother

about being a female child

and now it never will

because: they can.

they can can.

Can

Can

Can.

-

Surprise Birthday (list)

Since he’s growing up (see birthday ref. above) and getting too cool for Spidey toys and stuff his family assiduously picks out of specially ordered catalogues, Li’l A gave me a handwritten list of stuff he wanted for his birthday. It gave me a case of the “awww-s” because it was so simple and innocent: Can we walk along the abandoned railroad and picnic there? Can I download some songs I heard on guitar hero? Can we order Terminator on Netflix? And then this:

Can I have my own laptop? Mac, please.

The precision of his punctuation still kills me :).

_

In Defense of Sex and the Twitty

Friday:
Saw a movie about four splendid women, shared their sense of sisterhood, their adventures, their struggles with adulthood. Peeked into their shopping, their acquisition of property, mates, and a place in the world. It wasn’t called Sex and the City, it was called Little Women.

***

This morning:
Me (mock embarrassed): OK, you can’t tell anyone this. Promise you won’t! I’m going to go see the The Sex and the City movie. If you tell anyone I’ll… I’ll

Big A (mock exasperated): Relax, Pups. I won’t tell any one. You think I want anyone to know that you went to see it?

***

About the movie:
What happened to the original writers? What happened to the two-puns-a-minute rule? How did those women get so old so fast? Remember all the trite but really useful terminolgy that SATC used to churn out? ## The only thing close to that nifty shorthand in the movie was “emotional cutter.”

After the movie:
It reminded me of that that lonely first year in the US when I watched a couple of episodes alone, of those homesick years in Oxford when I had to book the common-room at college to watch the show with J and S and W on Channel Four.

It reminded me that pre-SATC I’d never really had girlfriends. My sister was my best gal pal and the rest of my friends were guys. SATC made being girlfriends seem fun and important. (Not girlfriend—that part I seemed to have a natural prolific knack for—the part about having female friends.)

And it was a nod to my time in New York City. A city in which I had the Chrysler Building dissected for me by SP, in which I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and back in the snow on my first real date with Big A, in which a self-assured sisterhood gives you a secret-handshake smile when you pull off a witty outfit. A city that comes close to being like India without being in India.

What I resent:
All the unnecessary noise about SATC’s product placements, its materialistic triteness, its lack of an intellectual component, its caricatured commodified milieu, and its narrative deficiencies. It’s not like you're pointing out anything new. Anything we don't already know. Yes, its excess mocks our imminent recession—and perhaps that’s exactly what is so fun about it. It is a female world—an empty, unlikely, twitty, unrealistic world, yes—but if women want to watch it, let ‘em. It’s their minds, their wallets, their time. It’s not as if the summer’s cache of multi-million-dollar dick flicks are intellectually intense, eschew product placement, or yield narrative gold. So stop preaching and prescribing propah female behavior and cultural taste. A world where cosmopolitans are contemptible but “a martini; shaken not stirred” is an epicurean touchstone just doesn’t make sense. Equal opportunity mind-farting twittiness, yo! Seriously, come on now.

________________________

## Eg. Modelizers: men who only date models

_

SIGN

Sunlight.

arrogance

sees, sleeps

Now i understand:

every thing

you say.

In the dark.

heartbeat

deepens, deafens

Now I see:

even things

you do not say.

Flicked.

only eye contact

--no smiles yet—

Songs.

you and i—hum

hush fire

_

Tagged for a six

Zen-Denizen tagged me to blog about six unspectacular quirks. Here’s what I think they are:

1. This may quite possibly turn out to be a medical condition: I laugh, goosebump, headlight, climax, and sometimes cry, too easily.

*** Although—while I tear up oh-so-easy (at the news, movies, songs, conversations), I’m not doing enough. In fact, my life, right now, is too much about being a bourgie dilettante. I comfort myself with the thought that when my kids are independent, I’ll go to an ashram or refugee camp or anywhere where they could use me.***

2. Most old people love me; kids frequently crush. My peers—I can never tell how they feel. Still, some of the people who love me (best friends, my sister, my husband, and an erstwhile fiancé) arrived at their pet-name for me independently. They all call me “puppy.”

*** So—I tell them female puppies grow up to be bitches.***

3. I’ve mostly been (washing and) wearing the same two bras for the last 14 months. They’re the pregnancy/nursing variety. I got them when I sprouted pregnant boobage and i’ve since been nursing (just the baby mind, not the sick and the dying) and they’re super convenient.

*** Also—re. those bras: there’s a special Pilates machine in hell reserved for me because I think they look sort of bondage-y.***

4. I love my babies. They’re perfect for snuggling, surprise me, make me giggle, break my heart, do me proud, and take my breath away. Every single day.

*** Still—the time I most look forward to is when they’re asleep and I can snuggle uninterrupted with their dad. Even better, I look forward to the day they’ll be off at college and I can snuggle up with their dad all day.***

5. I’m a freak. I grew taller after all my peers had hit their adult height. That was probably because I was severely anorexic between the ages of 16 and 19 and my body didn’t have the fuel to grow. Now when I’m turned down for a job because I’m not tall enough, I mentally beat myself up.

*** And then—I think how much more my boobs would have grown and stop beating myself up.***

6. I’m a total procrastinator and can procrastinate for months on projects that have a defined deadline.

*** Wait—you already knew that :).***

I’m going to (alphabetically) tag Anna, Blue, Kit&Kumari, Mary Anne Mohanraj, SupaRupa, and Tamasha.

The rules are as follows:

-Link the person who tagged you.
-Mention the rules in your blog.
-Tell us about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours.
-Tag 6 following bloggers by linking them.
-Leave a comment on each of the tagged blogger’s blogs letting them know they’ve been tagged.

THE NIGHT I TUCK THE CHILDREN IN

I fix bars across the windows

so Elizabeth Smart and Stephanie Covey

Jessica Lunsford and Christopher Barrios

Would fear the dark less

I showed the children who fetched water

every day from miles away

water rushing out the bathroom taps

The look of wonder in their eyes meant

that not one child left the taps running

as they brushed their teeth that night

Sean Bell’s babies leave happily

when their mother returns from court

Most other children soothed with news

that their parents would come for them tomorrow

To Jon Benet and Nix Marie

i said nothing

like the orphans, they seemed

happy to play and prepare

different families once more

Clay who’d escaped with a safety pin

showed them magic safety tricks

Erica raced to bed quicker than everyone else

Amber read the younger kids three stories

the children who worked two jobs

were showing off their facts

of factories, bosses, money--

I let them be

I was afraid that the children who’d owned guns

And the children who’d been made to turn tricks

would disturb, distort the rest

But their eyes were so wise with the happiness

of being counted amongst the children

that i felt that this one night at least

things would be alright

My own boy always begging for sleepovers

actually smiles

as I turn out the light

As I pull the door close

I notice Warren Jeff’s lost boys

talking to Shawn who was found

Laci’s baby has fine hair—mine

feels it with her fingers, rolls towards him

_

Wrap Up: Poetry prompts

Ok—please stop asking me how the poem-a-day is going. I are retarded and I should have never said anything. Because you know, my writing is often doodling—which is why there is so much of it as marginalia in my textbooks. I’m not particular about what I put up here, because I don’t know most of you :) (Although I’m sure you’re lovely folks I’d obviously love to know etc., etc.).

The people important to me tell me

(a) that I’m the next greatest thing to Shakespeare (sadly, they typically haven’t read “literature” since college and love to compare me to old Will only because he is the go-to litterateur they remember);

(b) that my stuff is “interesting” which is code for they haven’t read it/HATE it/can’t commit to liking it;

(c) that if I’m interested in seeing it published, they’ll help me rework and revise. (Ok this last was just Big A and I hop from love to sorrow and back about this. Help me pick a stance or a fight or something.) (And Sara, if you’re reading this, he’d like you to know that he’s embarrassed.)

Anyway, I wrote most days, but that isn’t unusual for me. The quality was quite execrable (which in my head ^excreta, therefore shitty). But I mean to start posting daily so I may resort to posting them on days I feel silent. Guess you’re in for a treat :P

PRANK

Short Hills

high heels

Small sheep

tall ship

Soft sheets

counterfeit

You

a-

muse

_

The Painted Veil, Atonement

Back when I was twelve, Maugham’s The Painted Veil seemed to me to be the most romantic thing ever. Or the most romantic thing I had ever read. Same thing. Yes, I had already read Wuthering Heights, so clearly my top choice was somewhat cynical.

But I guess that even at that age and even in a family such as mine, the specter of “choosing” a marriage partner “guided” by family pressures was a possible destiny. And so, the romance of two strangers voyaging inwards, discovering themselves, and truly loving appealed to me for its positivist prospects.

I saw the movie last night. By myself. Which isn’t strange at all; the strange part is that I go to the movies by myself all the time but can’t watch them at home by myself--I fall asleep or get bored. Same thing, I guess.

But I watched this by myself at home. And yes, some of the intensity was bodice-ripping (she lets her wrap slide off her shoulders, he takes two purposeful steps to reach her side, they kiss like the antidote is hidden at the back of their throats and only their tongues can scope and reach it. Gross.). Yup, like I said, highly satisfactory. Although the older, wiser me did think that most of their squabbles were like PSAs on how not to communicate with your partner. But I stayed awake till the end. (May be because Edward Norton was in it. And someone told me that they once played pool with him.) (Look, I never claimed this post was going to make sense.)

Emboldened by my initial success, I thought I’d watch Atonement tonight. Why two movies in as many days? Because I have an article due on Friday is why. So anyway, I ordered Atonement because it was another book I greatly loved. And I fell asleep.

_

MORNING

Branches crisscross the wet
And catch their breath.

In their maze
No monster waits
In their gaze
No slur, no praise

Branches crisscross the air
I, too, watch them there.

Don’t know why i love him

Me: Know something sobering? Rushdie--death threat, divorces, age and all--has turned out yet another book in the time I’ve spent writing this one dissertation.

Big A: Bet you he’s also been to a lot more trendy parties that you have.

Me: Now that’s just being cruel!

_

National Poetry Month and daily poetry prompts

In the days when I could jabber on the phone for hours, one of my favorite things to do was ask my friend Deesh to read me a poem. He’d have me pick a date from a year or two or three years ago, and then he‘d look up his old notebooks and read me the poem he had written on that date. Since I was listening from a distance, I didn’t always “understand” it, but the mood it created was definite, roughly tangible.

When I started life on a different continent, I started doing it myself. And most of the time these are pieces that cannot stand alone--but re-reading them, they hint, rather than remind me, of laughter or disappointment or scrutiny that happened long ago. They’re typically unvarnished (unless I went back to tinker) but I like the way they process experience into a dappled utterance.

This month, in honor of National Poetry Month, Robert Lee Brewer will post prompts to encourage his wordsmith-audience to write every day. I may post there, but mostly may not--I’m not a particularly group activity type--but I’ll save some back here.

WORD-PICKING

Perhaps perfect words
fall like leaves, relief
not thoughts, stones
prodded, turned over

My son motions
at the fruit bowl
the bananas, he says
have gone Dalmatian

At the first, gleeful
lift of storm wind*
Baby pauses, parses
AaaAAAAAAngaa

___________________________________
*“Breeze” was too tame, but I paused before I used “wind” because of its ambiguity--anyone who’s been around Baby A knows that she is a gassy little monkey : ).

_

P-a-r-a-d-o-x (100 points on bingo)

If Big A and I seem all honeymoony and get called on it, I have to smile because, actually, we had a big fight while we were *on* our honeymoon. There we were playing Scrabble at the airport (and I was, typically, getting beaten) and then I found the following letters on my rack: p-a-y-m-e-e-t. There was an open “s” on the board and I could make bingo with “payment” if only I had an “n” instead of an “e.” Not that I was at all concerned. It was our honeymoon and Big A loves me. So, so, SO much. He’d let me sneak into the bag, no problem, right? Wrong.


Me said: But I’d let you if it were that important to you!

He said: (all preachy) “I love you, but I’m not going to let you cheat.” (Please note the charming way he insists on using the word “cheat” that I’m trying to gloss over.) Aww! This was his sweet, caring way of saying, Baby, I love winning this unrecorded game more than I love you.

So when we found Scrabulous on Facebook, I thought it was perfect—for him because I couldn’t try to wheedle him into letting me replenish my rack, for me because I could consult the OSPD any damn time I wanted. Except that in the intervening years, something miraculous happened. (Either that or residency has really worn him out.) Big A is the only Scrabulous partner I’ve beaten. Thrice. He didn’t even challenge a couple of my shoddily constructed double plays when we switched to “Challenge mode.”

Back then, popular counsel was that if he didn’t let me scam at Scrabble on our honeymoon, it ain’t ever happening. Man, were they wrong :). Hope floats; love grows.

________________

* Yes, okay, alright; keep moving. There really is no paradox here; just my attempt to warp a la Morissette.

_

Hard Times

These last couple of months, things have been pretty sucky money-wise. I wait for pay-day the way I used to wait for pocket money. It seems like it’s that way for everyone and shoddier for a lot more.

One of my dear friends showed up a few weeks ago to say hello to the baby with his grandson and a small gift. Both his grown daughter and son live with him, so I wound up asking about everyone under his roof--plus a couple of foster kids. Remember I said both his grown children live with him? It’s so that they can make the payments on the house. This wave of foreclosures you’ve been hearing about in the news? Happening to them.

When foreclosure looms (if ever there was a threat that deserves the use of looms, it is this), over someone you know, you can’t easily console them. Not with platitudes, not with small loan offers, not with brainstormed ideas. It still looms. I could tell that both of us wished that the topic hadn’t come up, because we were tip-toeing around that elephant for the rest of the visit.

And then another moment of love happened. He works a 9-5 blue-collar job, but he’s also a lay preacher and had been urging me to christen Baby A “properly in a church.” Now I don’t know what Baby A is--perhaps Unitarian Universalist (which is evidently another way of saying I don’t know what we are)—but not “properly" anything at all. Since it’s important mostly to him, I say we’ll do it at his store-front church and we spend the next half-hour comfortably talking about dates, who to invite etc. And I think we’re past it and to indulge him further, I propose that he be the baby’s godparent, as well and he accepts delightedly.

But a few minutes later, he returns to that moment. I think you should choose someone else, he says. I’m surprised. Why? I keep asking him, Why?

I’m stupid, that’s why. Choose someone with money, he says. In case something happens to you, I can look after the baby, but someone with money can send her to college too.

_

WTF??

Happy women have up to a third less sex than unhappy ones.

_

The continuing vilification of Taslima Nasreen

I’ve heard from at least a couple of prominent Indian litterateurs (a poet and a novelist) that Taslima Nasreen tends to avoid the South Asian tables at conferences to sit with the firangs. I remember that the poet seemed to see it as a personal affront and an indication of Nasreen’s lack of respect and affection for her South Asian brethren. The novelist, whom I knew much better, said it with a lack of judgment and perhaps just the smallest glimmer of a smile—no wonder I love him still.

So now that Nasreen has decided to live in France or Germany for lack of cardiological care in India—it’s caused a big upset among those who read (and watch) South Asian literature: What? Like there aren’t any good cardiologists in India? Does she know that people come to India for heart treatments from all over the world?

Before everyone jumps on her case, however, I think it makes sense to read her statement, which sounds like a reasonable response to Indian bureaucracy and its botched rescue attempt.

_

Because there should be Truth in esteem-building

That evening when they were working on cheering me up.

Big A: You are a sweet, kind person. You are considerate. You are an excellent driver.

Li’l A: [Probably taken aback by the uncharacteristic overstatement—esp. of my driving skills]

Even though you’re not a very good navigator…

_

Messing with Mud

I’m picking up Big A from the train station (like a good little suburban frau--but I’ll rant about that in another post). There’s a line of cars idling at the curb (as usual) and I pull up to the curb (as usual too), except this time there’s insistent, loud honking. There’s a black Infiniti behind me and after another bout of enraged honking, it pulls up alongside me and the irate guy inside tells me that he’s been waiting “ten FUCKING minutes” for the parking space way ahead of me (and, really, too far away from him).

I wasn’t planning to park, but I can see why he is indignant so I’m ready to ignore the cussing; the easy apology is on my lips-although I haven’t been able to say anything yet, except may be look confused and then apologetic. Which, clearly, is the proper cue for him to yell--YOU! GET OUT of here NOW. And for his elderly father sitting next to him to shake his fist at me. The apology withers on my lips. And then the parking space that they so clearly want and I have no interest in clears.

I pull into it.

I know it was a cheap move. But here’s the thing--I’m brown, female, weigh 115 lbs, have two kids in the back seat, and no matter how much Deborah Tannen I read, I can’t seem to kick the smiley face and the head bobbing. It’s safe to say I’m non threatening. And here’s another thing--I was already beginning to pull out of their spot when they began yelling at me.

Of course they pull up alongside again, madder than ever. But I think I know what to say. I tell them that they were unnecessarily rude and that if they had asked me nicely instead of yelling, I would have been happy to give them the parking space. (I’m going HA! at myself now--what was I thinking?!? :) But clearly they didn’t have the same kindergarten teacher I had. The father in the other car says, You are a dirty woman! TRAMP, you get out of here! A woman walking on the sidewalk overhears him and says, "Hey, what’s all this “dirty woman,” “tramp?” *You* get out of here before I call the cops." I register the funny-sounding old-timey-ness of the insults, but my hands are shaking nevertheless from the implied hostility and I can only say, “No. If you talk to me that way I won’t move.”

The driver-guy smiles at me rather benignly and says, “You can suck my cock.” For one brief, blinding moment I wish that I hadn’t pulled into his space. I feel filthy. And ashamed. I have kids back there--my daughter is pre-verbal, and my son has never heard that precise string, but knows what each of those words mean. The very ineffective words, “You’re such an idiot” are bubbling out of me, but the other people have already gone. My kids and I sit in perfect silence for the twenty seconds it takes Big A to get to the car. I haven’t spotted him as I usually do, so he decides to walk over to my window and pulls a scary face as I turn towards him. That’s when I start crying.

My husband begins to apologize. (Long after I’m over this, I think this is the part that will continue to shame me--that he thinks I’m such a ninny that something like that can set me off.) Then there’s the blessed relief of hearing his livid anger and then I’m trying to give my anger words.

I see the Infiniti driver in my head, but I can’t repeat his words back--obviously I want the idiot nowhere near me or my vagina. So I think to reuse insults. Pimply fat slob, I think. Loser with a tiny dick. But it’s unsatisfactory. I have nothing against fat or bad skin or laziness or tiny penises or a lack of success. I’m not so much angry as disquieted because I think what happened to me was unfair.*

My father would say (my mother is fiery and might have egged me on) that it’s best not to engage with psychotic idiots because whether you mess with mud or mud messes with you, *you* are the one who ends up messy. But I’m glad I stood up for myself. Glad my son saw. My children, more than most, will have to find a way to deal with prejudice--something usually lacking in my small world of nice people.

I have a hunch that the people in the other car have already forgotten about this--that this would be an ordinary occurrence to them--just another incident that reinforced their prejudices against my gender and may be my ethnicity too. But I know I will keep returning to this embarrassing nidus in my head: How should I have reacted? Retorted? Was I standing up for myself in a Gandhian way or was I just being super fucking annoying? Did I even thank the woman who tried to defend me?

_________________________________________________
* The people in the Infiniti probably think that it was unfair to them too. But just before they pull away, the father gets out and goes into the train station. No luggage, no nothing. As far as I can tell, it wasn’t that important for them to grab the parking space either.

_

A Sappy Scene [just don’t read the parenthetical statements]

So… Road Trip!! Our first with our cuddly little, sweet-smelling [when she hasn’t spit up and has a clean diaper] baby. We’re so excited [also terrified].

It was so much fun [except that two hours into it, Baby A had had ENOUGH]. Li’l A and I were singing “Ten Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed” to the baby [to distract her]. Big A was all big Daddy-O and driving us home and trying to listen [to Nas on the stereo at whisper-volume]. After the ninth monkey fell out of bed [for the fourth time], Big A sang along [except he sang: Jesus CHRIST! Is she retarded? The doctor said NO MORE MONKEYS jumping on the bed!!].

We fell about laughing like maniacs [we were on the cusp of a communal nervous meltdown]!!!

_

(Action replay) Hipsters re-jump the couch

There’s yet another proclamation of the death of the hipster in the current issue of The New Yorker. Hari Kunzru’s story, “Raj, Bohemian” is so unempathetic and superficial that it’s so ironic, so meta… Man! You know?

There’s a veritable parade of transplants, trust-fund babies, and all the minimalist, alt, indie, eclectic creeds. It doesn’t help that all of this list has rapidly become assimilated by the mainstream and, actually, is already so infiltrated by it, that it’s positively putrid with ennui. [Can you tell I’ve been reading Zizek again?]

There is, obv, no Kunzru hate for hipsters. But his disdain [zing] actually cuts more. That may be somewhat deserved by the post-hipster, perennially unhappy sellout Misshapen species. But what about the fuzzy, farm-share ascetics and Etsy aesthetic types we actually know? I thought it was a good read but a flawed story. Or vice versa. May be *you* can tell.

_

SNORKELING

Everyday for breakfast
She had spoonfuls of sky
Nothing close or nearby
Ever seemed same again.

So in another land,
In some softly alien sea
They consent to band
In lithe experimental ties

With elongated limbs,
And buckled lungs,
Talking of walking water
Minus primness or miracle

Finding the sea suddenly
Small as a lapping pet,
Animated in assault,
Circling them for treats.

Then too soon, in ten or so days,
Their rules and goodbyes unsaid,
They fly; the red of an airline blanket
Flowers, in her lap, like a miscarriage.

_

Life with vagina

If you’re female and have ever wondered what your letters of wreck recommendation looked like, take at look at this article:

Letters written for female applicants were found to differ systematically from those written for male applicants in the extremes of length, in the percentages lacking in basic features, in the percentages with doubt raisers (an extended category of negative language, often associated with apparent commendation), and in frequency of mention of status terms. Further, the most common semantically grouped possessive phrases referring to female and male applicants (‘her teaching,’ ‘his research’) reinforce gender schema that tend to portray women as teachers and students, and men as researchers and professionals.

GULP!

And if you ever wondered how you’d fare if you ran for high office—president say--read this:

For decades, researchers have been probing bias -- how it arises, how it changes, how it fades away. Their work suggests that bias plays a more powerful role in shaping opinions than most people are aware of. And they suggest that the American mind treats race and gender quite differently. Race can evoke more visceral, negative associations, the studies show, but attitudes toward women are more inflexible and -- to judge by the current dynamics of the presidential race -- ultimately more limiting.

Gendered minority certainly runs deep :/.

_

Hanif Kureishi: White departments, ethnic doors

Alastair McKay (I know him. How? When? Where?) interviews a voluble Hanif Kureishi in The Sunday Herald. Interesting all over, especially this bit about the start of multiculturalism in 1980's England.

They thought because you were writing about Asians that the only people who would watch it would be other Asians. The TV companies then began to have ethnic departments, which I refused to go in.

"I said: I'm not going in the ethnic door, it's like apartheid to me. I'm staying in the white department, f*** you. I'm not going in that door with the Pakis.'"

The publication of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children in 1981 was a turning point: "One of our blokes had done it. Salman Rushdie was living in Britain, he was a British-Asian writer. That was a big moment."

Uhh. Funny how that bit about Rushdie crept in :).

_

ANANYA LALITA

(Sahasranamam)

NuNu LaLa,
Nu-nu Noodles,
Nooner, Noonster, Noony--
Oops you’re a girl--
NoonIE (Boonie),

Uppity, Appuchi,
Ammachi, Chapuchi,
Chippie, Chweeky, Chinaari,
Chinna Kukka, Chinnamma,
Chinna Rani,

Kung-Fu Cash Money,
Slobber monkey,
Amma bujji,
Aacha paapa,
Amma Kanna,

Stinky Pants,
Squeaky Butt,
Spittles and Giggles,
Your Tiny-ness,
You Big, Rowdy Mess

(If only you got
As much respect
As you get love.)


_

COEXIST

Yellow plate,

Black beans

On brown rice,

And browned

Whitefish.

And just to

Confuse

You--

Green peppers

And tomatoes...

_

GALLANT

(for Li’l A)

Vibrant silence
in temple bells,
innocent spaces
breaking laughter,
calm____openings
between words,

Are
sudden
hidden
altars too,
to happiness.
Like you,


the devotion
of abundant
jabber,
the conviction
of fervent
hugs.

_

Guardian headline edumacates

So... this is the headline: Best of the Booker pits Rushdie against 40 pretenders.

And I’m thinking, despite my painfully patently obvious Rushdie lurvve, that to call other winners of the Booker--writers of the caliber of Gordimer, Atwood, Ishiguro, Okri, McEwan, etc. etc. “pretenders” is a bit much.* Because in my head, it sounds derogatory--pretension, being pretentious, ergo pretenders. Turns out that of the three meanings to “pretender” one implies no derogation at all. (Although I always thought a pretender to the throne was a claimant with no bona fide right to it.)

Ok.

Also, I’m wondering: Decided by the public? How? Pop-Idol-style voteoffs?

___________________

*Although I’ll happily agree that Yann Martel of the unduly celebrated Life of Pi is is is a pretender.

_

WE SPY

(for Baby A)

Moon is swallowed in the sky
Something ends everyday
That we desire to cry,
Spend sad, in delay.

Moon is swallowed in the sky
Plenty can begin today
Like you and I (and I),
Satisfied to say:

Moon is swallowed in the sky
My love, yet survives alive--
And bright while we sigh,
Goodnight, bye-bye.

__________________________

Links:
We Spy

Moon is swallowed in the sky


_

LITTLE POET

You twist
words.
Don’t.
They said.

Her eyes edge
sideways
then mutiny.
She likes

the sounds of
words bullied,
teased into
torture,

banged
twisted
Chinese-
bangled.

She likes
Lying--sorry--
lAying them
on the floor

pretzeled
giggling
twining
Twister-ed

and coiling
twirling
them
in lassos,

like garlands
(see that?)
ensnaring
tangles.

Likes screwing
truth, so tight
it parts in
ecstatic rupture

into sighs
further words
that shoot
quake and carom

and she calls,
collects them
all
to balance

like showy beads
showing
her lip,
on tip of tongue.

Blowing
spit bubbles?
Don’t.
They said.

(Perhaps)

_

Jodhaa Akbar

Yes, there’s a movie of that name that’s just been released, but more imp-ly there’s new short fiction by Rushdie in the New Yorker.

The movie trailer is full of beautiful people, sumptuous jewelery,* spectacular scenes and still feels insipid as recycled paper. (And I’m aware that director Gowariker is highly regarded for Lagaan—but apart from a few playful scenes, most of that movie’s chest-thumping didn’t impress either.)

Now Rushdie’s story, on the other hand, brimming with trademark impishness and characteristically diagrammatic characters reminds me of why I used to lurve him so much. Here’s a nibble:

The mud city loved its Emperor, it insisted that it did, insisted without words, for words were made of that forbidden fabric, sound. When the Emperor set forth once more on his campaigns—his never-ending (though always victorious) battles against the armies of Gujarat and Rajasthan, of Kabul and Kashmir—then the prison of silence was unlocked, and trumpets burst out, and cheers, and people were finally able to tell one another everything they had been obliged to keep unsaid for months on end: I love you. My mother is dead. Your soup tastes good. If you do not pay me the money you owe me, I will break your arms at the elbows. My darling, I love you, too. Everything.

________________

* I could really spend all day looking at the jewelery. Also in related news, my birthday’s coming.

_

Adventures in breastfeeding (III)

Baby A is strangely big for a breastfed baby. Actually she’s practically falling off the height and weight charts and I guess that makes her big for her age whether bottle or breast fed. But she’s so tiny compared to us and not particularly chubby cheeked (she carries most of her weight in what her pediatrician calls her “meaty thighs” ) that it's easy to forget. So far she’s been exclusively breastfed--exclusively i.e. other than the daily vitamin drops we remember to give her once every fifteen-or-so days and the splashes of bathwater that she slurps up at bath time and the night that Big A and I were fighting so hard that my body seemed to forget that there was a baby I was supposed to be making milk for.

If you can’t tell, I really enjoyed breastfeeding Baby A--she has an awesome latch, is an eager nurser, and got progressively snugglier. Also, I’m proud of how baby and I did a good job. Especially since much of what the lactation consultant suggested at the hospital didn’t seem right to me. Use a Boppy pillow to nurse? No, thank you, we like snuggling. Football hold? Uhh, I want a natural embrace.

So now that she’s four months old and has significant spit-up, the pediatrician would like us to introduce solids. And it’s so strange because I loved, loved, enjoyed, loved breastfeeding her, but I’m so relieved not to be her only source of sustenance any longer.

_

Write Green Right

A six-word memoir contest from Smith Magazine and Treehugger.com:

Got a swell philosophy? Traveled a strange path? Fall off the eco-wagon often? Lay your tiny tale on us…

I like these:

· Future grandchildren, I'm so sorry.

· Take only one napkin not ten

_

Valentines: Still nice!

Yesterday Li’l A and I made chocolate and almond V-Day cookies. They looked perfectly heart-shaped pre baking… and came out quite round. Li’l A says, “Well circles are hugs aren’t they? Like XOXO? That’s still nice!” That ought to be our theme.

This year, Big A and I have put ourselves through some super stressors--new baby! trying to sell our house on the crappy market! our first grown-up job searches! less income because I’m not modeling—so yes, some of them are super *sweet* stressors, but… nevertheless… yet… I think that’s why this year we’re almost acknowledging (celebrating is going too far) Valentine’s Day for the first time ever—because these last couple of months have been quite difficult—and pedestrian, trumped-up fest or not, a day for love sounds—nice.

If you're reading this, i'd like you to know that i send you love and wish you much joyous love.
(Now forward this post to 15 friends if you want to meet your true love today... Just kidding!! :)

_

QUALIFIED

Thunder seizes
fist to throat.
Falling leaves,
tapping fingers
street noises, rain--
all remind me of tears,
our pain--and that
only you get me.
Only you can get me
so crazy with anger
so hungry for peace.

_

Smells like fish, tastes like salvation

I have a cold. What kept me going today (other than my family calling me, “snotface,” and making me beam, shiny nose and all) was bowlfuls of “Robust Winter Fish Stew.”

It’s a recipe that I saw in The Whole Foods Bible, although typically for me, the recipe provided an improvisational entry point rather than a inflexible plan of action. I added julienned ginger, slivered garlic, snips of fresh tarragon and oregano, plus hearty red potatoes to the called-for crushed tomato base with onions and cannellini. I used freshwater fish, but in retrospect should have used something fattier and brinier--salmon may be.

_

Duper

Tonight (Super Tuesday), at the risk of being instantaneously divorced, I timidly admitted to Big A that despite the biblical imagery and craptacular agenda, I found Mike Huckabee “very likeable.” This was the very first time I actually *saw* him speak. I’ve read about him and continue to disagree with many of his opinions--but there it is: I saw him; he looked human; ergo, I like him. To me, he seems like an underdog, a reasonable person, resembles my friend Kevin, has a charming cheekbone dimple. Of course I don’t want Huckabee to be the next U.S. president--but some mushy part of my brain roots for him anyway.

I think of this inability to dislike as a key failure--it interferes with my aesthetic as well as ethical judgment. And then… then I let people who depend on my judgment--for their next read, for their safety, for the integrity of their next deadline--I let them down... Because I am incapable of vetting people correctly. Because the philosophy geek in me can argue either side of every problem, but my decisions bend to emotion.

_

FAITH

A priest
builds
my release

and my prison--
a promise
of skin.

My body
saves its
sad audits

for arguments,
tongues duel
dissent.

_

JUST

They know this place
pale and high
as three-four moons

Fingers punctuate
words graze
gaze speaks

Toes feral
curl
to climb

_

DECISIONS, DECISIONS

When points tumble,
the world goes flat,
reach over the edge,
flip me back

Mirror mouth me kisses
still you can’t tell me, me
The answers are after all
Yes/no; A/B; may be.

_

HERE...

Fear separates
reconstituting
as threats
making you hoarse
your voice shake.
Separates
into segments
like oranges,
reconstitutes
like dropped
mercury
(things quite bad for you)
I would chew them them out
for you


_

COME HOME

(for A.D.D-L)

Sugared gaze

your tongue a key
then you
forget yourself

and implore me

or a oh god
you don’t even
believe in.

My heart pounds

Further down
(for now)
with the pulse

Of the universe

_

Such As

Yesterday my mom and Big A both took planes. Big A for job interviews; my mom to go home. I started crying at the airport and didn’t stop till I went to bed early with the babies.

So yes, I missed and moped for my man and my ma, but despite the leaden, weepy way the day (and the weather) started out today--I felt less and less child bride/teen mom with each passing hour. (Needless to say, I’m neither child nor teen, but I think the two who took planes are sometimes guilty of treating me thus. Such as.)


Also, in seriously funny stuff--I’m going to see the Russell Peters show at MSG on Fri. YES! Big A got me stage-side tix and I’m going with P who is a childhood friend or cousin (yeah, only like about 26 times removed), but actually feels like my sister. (cough) Such as (cough). Man, I tell you--somebody gonna get a hurt real bad.

_

AMMA

From across the oceans
and many days away
I can call your name
(Like this.)

_

Sex with squeaky clean hair

There’s a book (not new translation) on the KamaSutra by James McConnachie called The Book of Love: In Search of the Kamasutra. I currently own five copies of the KamaSutra, my first being the Richard Burton translation. Actually, that was a bad beginning since Burton confused rather than edified me. And it wasn’t the Victorian English--it was because all the sage advice regarding seduction, usually began with “shampooing” various body parts. All the impromptu (and extensive) shampooing fairly boggled my mind until I got my first year of college Sanskrit and realized that “shampoo” was probably “champu” i.e. massage. So much for my impression that those lusty ancient Indians had squeaky clean hair.

According to The Guardian review, McConnachie’s book depicts the KamaSutra as an anti-feminist male fantasy--I wonder if he’s seen the Wendy Doniger translation, which attempts a decidedly feminist take on sexual pleasure in the KamaSutra.

_

Rights and wrongs

In the dialogue between asserting universal human rights and assertive identity politics, it usually boils down to a tussle about FGM--how far are you willing to compromise your beliefs about human rights to endure an ethnic minority’s systematic injuries to its female young? Here’s yet another illustration on those similar lines: Women Lose in Mexico Indian Rights Gain.

_

CRUSH

You say:

It really does happen
when
you’re not looking

Swept Away
Blindsided
By Accident

I wonder:

Why
you keep thinking
it’s a bad thing

_

Labor, Love

I’m looking for a part-day nanny for Baby A. More like a parent helper, really--the plan is that I’ll stay home and write while they entertain baby for three to four hours. But I die a little bit each time a woman says she’s able to watch my baby since her baby goes to daycare.

_

Fried Eyeball

A splash of boiling oil to the right eye. Excruciating. Pain.
Big A gave me some Erythromycin goop that helped immediately and thanks to percocets I’ve been having dreams with incredible parades of long-ago, long-lost friends.

Friday Update: Saw the doctor who says I’m ok, won’t go blind, and don’t even need glasses yet. (sigh on that last one : / )

Friday night update: Awesome how the body heals--the burn mark on my eyeball has completely disappeared! Still *bleeping* hurts everywhere else though.

_

(Whisper) Hallelujah!

Baby A has begun to grudgingly acknowledge that there is such a thing as bedtime. I used the genius Pantley no-cry sleep solution (mostly, anyhow--I nixed the journal, for instance). So now she’s quite reliably asleep by eight or nine in her crib and stays that way (with a couple of half-asleep feedings around 1 a.m. and 5 a.m). Niiiiice!

Up until a couple of weeks ago, she’d wake up at 2 a.m. and be all, “Dude! Party @ my crib!!!” and I’d be wincing/thinking/saying, “Babe, please just go to sleep, already!” Now I have cuddle time with Li’l A at his nine p.m. bedtime and cuddle time with Big A at… I don’t know--let’s say, 3 a.m., which is when he’s been getting home this past week.


_

A Dark and Stormy Night

L’il A’s writing a book. It’s called “Out Grown.” Chapter 1 is called “The Thing in the Sky.” The first lines:
Blue and Red and Purple lights flashed 8 times, thunder 16.
(Sorry if you thought me counting was geeky.) It wasn’t a normal
night.

Last night as he climbed into his loft bed, he shot me a smile over his shoulder and said, “I want you to be my editor.”
Ohhh!
Awww!

STFU, Bulwer-Lytton Contest Organizers--sometimes there really are dark and stormy nights.

_

JULIET (II)

White-bellied moths
throw themselves
on the wall

I have the lamp on

You’re out like a light
as they say--
the father says

Meanwhile I keep the lamp burning
burning

Light like a wave
in my chest
pulse like touch
palms burning
radiate
desire

_

Adventures in Breastfeeding (II)

We’re pretty certain that Baby A is a fledgling butch dyke, so we’re eager to have her learn, at least before she starts dating, that she ought to look at women’s eyes when they talk to her--not their boobs. I was trying to tell her yesterday, but all she did was lunge at me. It would’ve been scary if she wasn‘t ten times smaller than I am.

*******

Baby A’s pretty versatile in the looks dept. When she wears gold ornaments and belly-button-baring cholis and pavadais, she’s a tote tewt princess. But put her in the determinedly-gender-neutral clothes we favor, and she mostly looks like (the older) Mark Wahlberg (see fledgling butch dyke ref above). And since I have no special fondness for said Wahlberg, it’s quite disconcerting when I’m feeding her half asleep, first thing in the morning, and look down to see his face at my breast.

*******

Also, it’s probably what I get for watching the telly while preg, but just before she latches on, Baby A makes this “heh-heh” sound that sounds like George W. Or rather, Jon Stewart doing an imitation of the W., which makes it pretty giggly.


_

ANNIVERSARY

I noticed things
about you
those

first few moments.
Afterwards
there was never

again
a
time

when I could
judge you
dispassionately

or even
see you
objectively.

I believe in you now
not knowing if its true
not caring if I’m wrong

Just knowing.
Caring.

__

SU-PRABHATAM

It’s early I’m up today
watching the sun’s reflection
rising in the warmed
window pane

So it’s morning
Birds try to say
not yet.
You snore

Not yet.
Na iti.
Not this.
Yes.


_

ANATOMY

I've let dreams
lead me
into the night,

rinse and repeat
sadnesses that
the heart recognizes.

People are
strangers,
their worlds stranger

I always go away too far,
it’s a good thing you did
waking me up

Saying, it‘s the bad air
that makes nightmares--
I call it breath.

_

JULIET

It’s morning already
cogs turning clear
annoyingly bright

If I were sensible
I would start the long road
to my parents’ home now

You huddle me under the sheets
your joints locked
into corners around me
hunger and the scent
of love close
enclose me

I’m wrestling you
for the freedom to breathe,
laughter choking my lungs

You exert your lover’s rights
to drip saltily on me
I reach to wipe your brow
but o, my love, my heart--
your eyes…


_

For the Love of Mike

As a precocious high-schooler, I used to review Madras (now Chennai) theater for the now defunct (what did you expect, they hired me as a stringer) Sunday Mail. Which meant that in every production i reviewed, i was treated to Michael Muthu in various roles for two years straight--and that as a result of such constant exposure, my friends and I developed a collective low-grade crush on him.

One morning, sitting in on a rehearsal with MM and his girlfriend, whose name I’ve conveniently forgotten, he asked me if I had seen Scarface because it was his favorite ‘film’.

I’ve never been able to watch more than two scenes from Scarface,* not even for the love of Mike. But my mom was watching Al Pacino in And Justice for All last night, and it occurred to me that (a) It was precisely the kind of role that Ol’ Mike loved to perform (b) He really, kinda, maybe looked like Al Pacino.

That Narcissist :)!

_________________________________
* I think mostly because of the OTT nouveau mob home decor.

_

O.P.I.nion

I usually groom meself.

But my mom’s here and sent me off for some pampering and that’s how I came to be at the salon face-to-face with a poster for the new O.P.I. India Collection.

It must be that my head’s still grappling with all the writing I really ought to be doing because I end up obsessively (and needlessly) parsing the names of the shades. Surely Royal Rajah Ruby is tautological? (Rajahs are by definition royal, no?) And surely Lunch at the Delhi is inauthentic? (It falls short of actually eating in Delhi, it‘s at best a restaurant called “The Delhi,” perhaps with cutesy pun on “deli.“)



_

ARGUMENT

The afternoon fails;
Calls out for dreams.
Comes to at two.


As you probably know;
I’m poor at keeping score.
Smile. Why. Smile.

__

Adventures in Breastfeeding

It’s a good thing that I’ve been paying such close attention to Baby A as she nurses.
I dreamt last week that a giantess with ginormous boobs was my only source of sustenance.

***

According to the breastfeeding manual, babies need to empty one breast before moving to the other one because the hind-milk that emerges at the end is the fatty stuff that chubbies da babies up while the foremilk tends to be thin and watery. I was reading this out aloud to my mom, when she deadpanned--perhaps it would be simpler to shake well before use. Ha!

***

It may or may not be true that everybody needs a bosom for a pillow, but Baby A totally believes that shit.

***

To me, my boobs seem little more than milk bottles right now. Still, when some concerned gentleman at the supermarket suggests that I should probably zip up my down vest since it’s so cold outside, I think (no matter how sleep-deprived I am) it’s a bit much to tell him that my boobs are now so huge that that’s impossible.



__

YOUR BROTHER

Both grandmothers
Are horrified when
Your father and I
Say you look like
A pretty orangutan.

Cousins and friends
Outraged when we
Show off your fuzzy,
mad-scientist, male-
pattern-baldness hair.

***

Of course we only say these things
Around other people. Alone with you,
We are reduced to unclever,
childish annotation: Sooo cute!
Awesomest baby in the world!

Clearly, we just aren’t as well
Adjusted as your big brother,
Who is so proud of you
And so full of fond wonder
And doesn’t care who knows it.


___

THAT THING

Speaks like kisses
And stealthy looks
Draw your moist
Clothes closer.

Crosshatched by heat,
Slow moans signal
Limbs unhinging
And speak in yeses.


__

Coloring outside the lines

Li’l A (watching assorted colored puppies frolic):

They remind me of you and dad.

Why?

Some of my friends ask me, you know—you’re brown, your mom’s brown, but your dad’s white?!?!!

(I’m stumped. I always meant to talk to him about this *someday* but haven’t said much beyond the traditional palliatives about how it doesn’t matter what color someone’s skin is—it could be green for all we care—all that matters is what kind of person they are, etc.)

So what did you say?

Yeah, my dad’s white. So?????

Perfect. I wish I had thought of that comeback first. Not that anything will stop me from using it, anyway.

New Parent Fantasy (sadly, so not prontastic)

We’re getting, at the most, three hours of sleep a night. And on the nights that we do get those two+ hours, we’re so *grateful* for it. (The baby totally has us on some lovely variation of Stockholm Syndrome.) Recently, one night (I honestly can’t recall which one—it’s all a can’t-even-pee-in-peace blur) Big A and I were up together and caught The Amazing Race on the telly.

And decided that we’d be awesome at it.

And that we should go.

And--since Big A already had his i-book open—we should apply online at CBS.com

RIGHTAWAY.

And then we realized that they begin filming in March and that the baby would still be only six months old and that--really--we can’t go.

So we’ve decided to go in two years. We'd be so in form. We’d leave the kids at my parents'. And we’d make it all the way to the end and win. After all, if we lost it would mean that we’d have no choice but to return at once and reclaim the kids :).

_

Da newborn truth

I thought Baby A was smiling spontaneously this morning, but her smile faded slowly into a resoundingly satisfying burp… Sometimes it *is* just gas.

_

DAUGHTER

You have your brother’s ears

Folded over in origami

Except where his is

A leaf beginning its unfurl

You little girl, have flower buds

Planted at the sides of your head.

Your eyes, nose, mouth so wide

Your cheeks, long fingers, toes,

Your rage, and an almost smile,

All exactly, like your father’s—

So he asserts. Frequently. Fondly.

And sadly (smile), quite wrongly.

You’ve been here three weeks

Only I’ve yet to make my claim

And play the same-same game.

Although in secret still, your rings

Of softness, your new heft, make

The sting of my milk's let-down thrill:

All of you. My flesh. My blood.

__

At 39 Weeks

These days

are tied down

mostly

by print and paper

or they stay

asleep

firm, ripe plum,

plump.

Still your hands

seem webs or nests

--places

that are home

And i miss twisting

around you like flame,

making you disappear

inch by inch,

sweetly, in sweat:

while your touch

like twilight, smudges

me purple-tinged.

_

Deliver Me

I am terrified.

I finally read the sections on labor and delivery in the baby books. It sounds (understatement follows) uncomfortable. C-sections sound scarier. In case you weren’t already aware, the baby comes out through the vagina and in a c-section, the surgeon cuts through three layers of your body. Why don’t we deliver babies through our nostrils, I wonder. Female anatomical design totally sucks.

There’s guaranteed to be an abundance of pain and gore before we actually meet baby. Unfortunately, I think I have a body that can only handle pleasure. I’ve never complained about being pampered. Ever. (You can check this out independently if you like.)

To make matters worse, I started reading an article by Atul Gawande in an anthology of science writing because I thought it was about Apgar testing (and because he said Virginia Apgar grew up in the next town over) and then it turned out to be about some poor woman who was in labor for 30+ hours and then had to have a c-section.

Now I have nightmares about how my sweet, cooing baby is trapped inside of me. And I’m convinced that the reason I haven’t gone into labor yet is because I’m terrified by the idea. I already suck at being a mom.

_

BUT

If you tucked me in

tucked my head

under your chin,

if you breathed

my dreams and

whispered them

back to me as if

you've seen them too.

If on our lips

new devotions

sucked at sound

and my tangled hair,

then my mouth could be

more than a metaphor,

and I could confess

to you that

even from

three cities away,

your touch

shadows me.

Like your name

screamed aloud

then chased by my

need to whisper it again.

__

We’re Not Expecting Some Delicate Flower

Big A left for work at some unearthly hour before 6 this am; Li’l A promptly showed up in my bed for a pre-breakfast snuggle.

So here we are, my nose aligned with his baby-shampooed hairline, his butt backed into my belly. It’s perfect. Until he abruptly (and indignantly) scoots upright.

The baby! She kicked my butt!

_

CALLING

Pilot

I ask for directions

Bent over me,

Breath plays

As you explain

Now I’m really

Lost.

Rockstar

I rock on

The heft

Of your hand

It would be shallow

To love you

Just for this.

(But I could.)

General

Mouth pulsing

You start a war

Your words are

Works in progress

And bite like ice

Shock like sheet lightning

Like sunstroke

Like revelation.

You started a war

But your entreaty

Hides here, in touch.

Media Bumps

Friends have been sending me all sorts of pregnancy-related links lately. Here are two that popped yesterday.

First is Christine Coppa’s blog at Glamour magazine. She’s being touted as the original Knocked Up girl (if you haven’t seen Judd Apatow’s side-splitting movie yet, go already!). Like the Knocked Up protagonist, Christine is single, she is pregnant, and she is having the baby.

While all the name dropping (Bugaboo strollers, Seven Prego jeans) makes me wonder if there’s a product placement tie-in, I also have to admire her courage in going for the baby she wants. Although I do wonder why a seemingly smart 26-year-old would have had unprotected sex with a casual sex partner. Whatever—none of my business anyway. And I’ll wish her luck—with all the haters out there and a baby on the way that’s something she’ll need plenty of.

Second is this picture of Natalia Vodianova, the supermodel, with her bump. No—I do NOT look like her now—I was never that fabulous to begin with : ). She's wearing magenta, has really skinny limbs, and looks radiant. A N D the only way you can even tell she has a bump at all is by the uneven hang of the hem.

As for me, I did fit into one of my size 0 pre-preg dresses this morning, but only because it’s cut roomy in a very giving jersey blend. And then Big A sat on the floor to inspect and massage my gams because he’s wary of them sneaky thromboses. Nope, not fabulous at all. But awfully nice nevertheless.

__

Salman: The Musical (When Life Goes Bad and Art Grows Worse.)

Yup. I know you don’t want to look (but you will anyway).

Fragments from Ben Greenman’s portrait of Rushdie après Padma Lakshmi breakup here.

_

Our House (in the middle of the street)

A long-time Baltimore resident’s verdict on our new ‘hood: “It’s quite safe there; you could get mugged, but you won’t get shot.”

Nice to know :).

_

Look-See

Sunday’s shoot went well. As far as I can tell :).

Li’l A got in on the action towards the end with a shot where his dimpled, baby hands are on either side of my belly and his mouth is all scrunched up to kiss my belly-button. Big A was working and wasn’t there :/.

On Monday, I went into the city for a look-see and had to explain to Li’l A what that meant. He was incredulous: “You mean, they’ll look at you and say whether they want you or not?” Exactly.

_

Be More

And incidentally, we’re in Baltimore this month.

Big A is honing his Shock and Trauma skillz here. Li’l A and I are along for the crabcakes and ghetto cred and because, despite the lack of back-up evidence, I’m convinced that I’m very handy at fighting crime and that my presence is crucial to Big A’s safety.

And also because we have nothing better to do!! Summer vacation—remember that biotechs :)?

_

Fake a Pose

Because of the pregnancy, there’s been no modeling. The first photog I e-mailed with news of my impending and inevitable weight gain wrote me back: "Well that just kills it [the project]. But congratulations anyway.” The unreserved rejection implicit in every word and—the independent cruelty of the words “kills” and “anyway”--made my eyes prickle with tears.

But don’t go and feel too sorry for me :). Everything made my eyes prickle with tears back then and I’ve since been too busy with nausea or schoolwork and alternating between anxiety and euphoria about the baby to miss modeling too much. Although I must say that I missed (and do miss miss miss) the easy money.

But lately I’ve learnt to appreciate the touchingly comical and vulnerable way my belly triumphantly leads the way. And think that it might be nice to have a few pictures from this time.

So I’ve let my agency hook me up with a few projects. I’ll record how it goes. My first shoot is this Sunday; if you’re reading, please wish me luck!

_

Assumptions About the Parrot in the Office

One week when I was five, I became aware that my parents were animatedly conferring about someone called Tilak.

Since he’d been dispatched by corporate HQ to visit my father‘s outpost, my mother assumed that having the perfect dinner party and the right kind of evenings at the club were crucial to ensure a favorable report.

My always-so-earnest father assumed the worst and found himself entirely unable to relax. So much so that when Tilak asked him, during one of those evenings my mother had planned, what “numbers” (colloquial in those times for songs, I’m told) he liked--my father, perhaps still thinking of ledgers and requisitions, blanked and then replied ever so judiciously that he didn’t discriminate.

Most of the time, I played under the dining table or was being sent off to bed while my parents had these urgent discussions. But i in turn assumed, given the proximity of Tilak’s name to the Telugu word for parrot--chilaka--that he perched on a swing beside my father’s giant desk at the office, pecking away at a green chilli, and chirping his numbers in a most annoying way.

__

Corporations that got harder to hate

Walmart is a middle-America-morality mongering, child-labor leeching monstrosity that strives to care about the environment.

Disney is an inauthentic pap-producing, culture annihilating enterprise that happily welcomes LGBTs.


__

BBW

I’m 5.6” and weighed in at the doctor’s last week at 128 lbs. It’s a lot. Five months ago--unpregnant--I weighed 108 lbs.

Still and all--and no matter how adoringly he does it--I don’t think Big A has any business calling me a big, beautiful woman.

Yeah, I told him off :).

__

REMINDER

Take a chance,
Balance across the spines
Of mountains, memories.

Tune into happiness,
The mess of things turned true
At the moment of utterance.


__

How I know it’s *definitely* time for a snack-break

When halfway through a book about pre-Elizabethan England i read
the queen “delivered the prizes…”
as
“the queen delivered the pizza.”

_

Jouer: Games of Chance and Skill

Weaving her
More or less Futbol-shaped
Bump through New York streets

She assumes that
The moment which
Fathered it

Arose
Not in their nest of banked
Bedclothes and soft words

But a good ten
Or fifteen minutes
After

When summoned
To play soccer,
And sweating

In the icy breath
Of January dusk,
Her palm laid

Against the insistent bark
Of a wintering tree,
She feels rather than sees

the ball stream by
(Stealthy and silent
As an idea)

Past
Her surprised
and ineffective feet

And hears his exultant
Half laugh-half shout
Goal!

_

Beloved

Me (looking up from my reading, face shiny with iambic pentameter):
Big A, I loooooooooove Shakespeare!

Big A (who thought that sentence was going to end rather differently, making a valiant comeback):
And Shakespeare loves you, puppy!

_

I’m sorry I haven’t said anything

Each time
I started to

To say something
There is yelling

Voices bewailing their dead

Guns go off
Or cannons roar

Not cannons. Rather things
So up-to-date and fierce

I don’t even know what they’re rightly called

Sometimes I can hear
People begging for their lives

From those there to harm them
And from those that cannot hear them

I open my mouth to say something

And then I shut it again


__

Surgeon Hangman

My love for Atul Gawande is fairly irrational. Sure it has something to do with his saving lives and winning a MacArthur and being brown and a Rhodes Scholar, but actually--really--it’s mostly because his name is a version of li’l A’s name…

So I was thrilled when Charles McGrath’s almost hagiographic essay about Gawande in the Times made it to the top-ten e-mailed list. Except that when I read it, the article described him playing Hangman on the patient’s surgical drapes and that made me really sad and very indignant.

Forget for a moment that the game itself reprehensibly requires a rather barbaric pictographic accompaniment. Just the fact that he would indulge in any diversionary game on the body of a patient--a patient who most likely thinks of his surgeon as a human savior, a patient who is anaesthetized and can convey neither consent nor acquiescence for the act, a patient i.e. another human being--suggests a level of disrespect for the human body that's disappointing.

Surgeons have to draw on humans and give orders for their hair to be shaved off and palpate female breasts when necessary. If they do it simply because the person in question happens to be drugged and because they can, then someone will have to explain to me how they’re ethically different from some sickening mass of frat boys.


_

A Good Wife

Someone else’s grandmother
once told me that a good wife

Is as full of loving comfort as a mother
As full of tender adoration as a daughter
As easy to playful irreverence as a sister
And as reliable and loyal as a best friend

And palli arai-yillai--in the bedroom, she said:
she is as winsome and perceptive as a courtesan.

_

It's old and faded now...

Although we always felt a little sad for her by that point in our visit when Dorakanti grandmother would lament that though she had yearned for daughters all her life, all she had been given were six sons and that was why she loved her granddaughters so much; my sister and I would remain stiff and unbending. We had heard that Dorakanti grandmother had been mean to our mother when she was a new daughter-in-law and that made her eternally unpleasant in our eyes. We wouldn’t even be there unless our father hadn’t unwrapped himself from around our little fingers, which is where he spent most of our childhood years, unfurled his parental authority and insisted that we spend some time with his mother.

We were stiff as scarecrows inside Dorakanti grandmother’s embrace, stiff and unfriendly to the children from next door summoned to play with us, and our interactions with the special snacks made for us were cursory. We paid attention when it was story time, but even then silently, and only because it was dark and no one could see our eyes stirring to the story, the punctuating “umms” that were our duty as audience, needlessly parsimonious and slow.

Dorakanti grandmother’s stories were strange in that they never began with a “once upon a time.” They all began, “in a place,” “in a village,” “in a town.” It was as if these stories where the prince fell in love with the princess after chancing upon just one filament of her preternaturally long and fragrant hair, or where the young prince battled tigers to impress his mother--as if these stupid, unnatural things had happened just a few weeks before we came to visit.

And at the end of the story when the prince married the princess or the young prince was crowned, there would be a big celebration and grandmother would launch her punch line. “That was when they presented me with this sari,” she would say, holding her sari out for us to touch, hoping we would scoot closer to her. “It’s old and faded now, but it was rich and shiny when they gave it to me.” And we’d reach for her sari politely enough, even knowing that our fingers would be snatched up and kissed, but we’d remain curled up around ourselves, my sister‘s hand in mine.

Although willing myself to fall asleep, knowing dad would take us home the next day, I would remain conscious on the periphery of my sleep, of grandmother stroking our limbs and making sure to straighten them before she left the room. Stretching each leg in the half darkness to its furthest length so that while we slept we‘d grow tall--unlike her and unlike our father.


_

A Wedding Long Ago

When my Jalagam grandmother married my Gadadoss grandfather, she shone like one of the gleaming, granite statues from the temple come to life. Beautiful, everyone sighed.


Of my grandfather with the famed, nearly-white Gadadoss skin, they say he looked like a red yam.


Though only sixteen at her wedding, grandmother was tall and lissome, nearly grandfather‘s height.


The next year, to everyone’s dismay, she grew two inches taller than grandfather.

_

My father's marriage and me

My father was supposed to marry a princess--the daughter of the Raja of Ettayapuram. When he paid the palace a visit with his family, they found her very short and too fat. Then a family friend took them to meet my mother. Her family weren’t “Poligars” or even Padma Velama, but the girl (my mom! my mom!) was tall, lovely, and college-educated. Amma offered my dad some coffee and he promptly fell for her.

He also got too fond of retelling this story with the punchline, “Who needs a princess when you have a queen?”

Reasons why I’m glad dad didn’t marry the Ettayapuram girl.

• I might have turned out short and fat.
• I love my mom etc.
• The Ettayapurams got their titles for betraying Kattaboman and kissing British ass.
• Although a few generations later they did become Subramania Bharati’s official patron, so perhaps they kind of redeemed themselves.
• Let’s just stick with i might have turned out short and fat.

_

Can’t! Won’t! Shan’t!

There will be no posts for a while. I’m poised on a rolling juggernaut (miscellaneous deadlines) and it’s, sadly, going to be impossible to post.

I do want to thank you all for checking in on me. And you unknown but super regular readers from Lemont, Richmond, Ithaca, St. George, Clark, and Berkeley, thanks for coming back again and again :).

If you’d like to know when I start posting again (in a month--or two--or so) drop me a line--my addy is pocobrat@gmail.

Much love; be well.

_

Once Upon a Time

Li’l A: So… Dad’s working tonight?

Me: Umm-hmm

Li’l A: So… can I sleepover in your bed?

Me: Nooooo!!!!

Li’l A: But why?!!!!

Me: Your stuffed animals stink!

Li’l A: I’ll sleep on Dad’s side.

Me: Oh. Ok, then.

12 hours later.

Big A: Will someone tell me why the pillows smell like goat?

_

Pan’s Labyrinth

“It is only a word, only a word,” says the mother in Pan’s Labyrinth urging her daughter to call her new stepfather “father.”

But of course, nothing is merely a word. Not the word “father” And especially not when Vidal, the stepfather in question, can be patriarchal but is never fatherly. Words have to fit.

Although many things are, admittedly, beyond words… sumptuously Gothic fairytales, say--or intensely re-created histories of fascism. Pan’s Labyrinth manages juggles both brilliantly, and frighteningly. With unforgettable visuals. With inimitable words. With terrifying simplicity. And unreality. Who’s to say that a fascist tyrant pulping a peasant’s face with a heavy glass bottle is less fantastic--or, indeed, more gruesome--than a mantis that changes into an (ugly) fairy?

There is nothing simple in Pan’s Labyrinth. Even the beautifully pure and vulnerable face of its protagonist, Ofelia, verges on pubescence; is clued to a forthcoming awareness of imminently sexual fauns; is limned with a presciently adolescent disobedience and distrust of authority. And everything is serious. In fact--and this is extraordinarily atypical of an experience I count enjoyable--there wasn’t *one* humorous moment in it. Which is perhaps why despite the duality of the resolution, I reacted, with horror and dissatisfaction, purely to the ending that seemed more authentic to reality, and discounted the other.

Pan’s Labyrinth interweaves images and texts from a variety of childhood images and texts--The legend of the cunning Pan and J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan and C.S. Lewis; Ofelia’s strangely Alice in Wonderland-ish headband, pinafore and frock, and her Princess and the Goblin ensembles of nightgown and robe. The cumulativeness of this collective familiarity has the effect of nostalgically speaking to our personal childhoods. And so the loss of the child, prophetically named Ofelia (Ophelia), hurts. It recalls our loss of individual childhood, of security we once enjoyed within the fabric of family and certainty, of our inadequacy in the face of inexorable events controlled by mammoth historical fates. Or inscrutable fauns.

_

SOLACE

Have to say

As the lies grow
Wide-lipped and
Tipped with white

Have to say

Listening
To new stories and
Those gone missing

Have to say

Say:
Everything will go your way
Okay?

_

IN THE ROUGH

(Flood)

Perhaps oysters
String suffering
In peace.
Luminously.
As pearls.


(Blood)

Like pleasures
You press
Into my skin
Where they parade
Proud as tattoos.

_

Li’l A’s Choice

We have to drive into the city to pick up Big A--who’s, sadly, working nights most this week. And as I woke Li'l A by slipping a hoodie over his head for the ride, he got this totally Sophie’s Choice look. He's clutching Ninni (a.k.a. “stinky Goat Ninni,” his baby blanky) in one fist and Licky (equally stinkalicious except he’s a still somewhat adorable stuffed dog) in the other.

Can I bring them both?

This is the same kid who in his waking hours claims he’s too old to kiss me in public.

_

After _Rabbit-Proof Fence_

Occasionally, I’ll watch serious cinema with Li’l A. Our favorites so far have been the Iranian director Majid Majidi‘s delightful Children of Heaven and Danny Boyle‘s somewhat murky Millions.

We started Rabbit-Proof Fence this evening with the caveat that we might have to turn it off if it got too heavy. But it didn't, and anyway Li'l A really got into RPF, which is about three aboriginal children who are separated from their families by the Australian government and trek the 1500 miles back to their home by themselves.

Cousin S wonders if it’s okay to let a little kid watch “real” i.e. non Disneyfied films. And I say yes, because I hope that empathizing with those frequently considered “Other”--
(a) may make him a kinder person
(b) stave off any Gautama Buddha drama later.
(c) Okay, whatever--I didn’t really want to watch it all by myself.

_

Meet Cute

My parents, the lovebirds, celebrate Nov 3rd--the anniversary of the day they first met each other. How cute was their meet? They had an arranged marriage, so it was a very formal meeting.

The first words my mother ever said to my father were in chaste and polite Telugu as she offered him coffee, “Coffee Theesukondi.” To which, my father said, “Thank you.” Adequate. Even well executed. Except to hear my dad tell it year after year, it almost rivals R&J :)

He:
If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

To which, she:
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.

None of my friends’ parents celebrated anything like that, but I thought I would. Except that despite serious mind dredging, Big A and I can’t recollect the day we actually met. So instead we celebrate our first date, which was on a snowy Jan 26th.

This isn’t a very good poem, but it makes me smile--and what the H-E-double-toothpicks-- it’s my blog and my anniversary :).

Update: Pulled my poem. You've got Old Will so you shouldn't complain, it's not like i'll ever compare :).

_

Temple Dogs

My boys.

I can take them to the temple despite the one being a non believer and the other being too young to know his mind. And for the occasion, I can wear a thin tissue sari totally unsuitable for 13 degree weather and be too lazy (or vain--with me that‘s likely too) to cover up in a wrap.

Not only do they follow me around like gentle, well behaved puppies inside the temple, they’ll bring the car around for me, rev the heat way up and try to wrap me in a jacket before I’ve even clipped on my seatbelt.

Which kind of explains the temple visit. Because I don’t know what I did to deserve this, but I do know when I need to say thanks.

_

SNORKELING

Everyday for breakfast
She had spoonfuls of sky
Nothing close or nearby
Ever seemed same again.

So in another land,
In some softly alien sea
They consent to band
In lithe experimental ties

With elongated limbs,
And buckled lungs,
Talking of walking water
Minus primness or miracle

Finding the sea suddenly
Small as a lapping pet,
Animated in assault,
Circling them for treats.

Then too soon, in ten or so days,
Their rules and goodbyes unsaid,
They fly; the red of an airline blanket
Flowers, in her lap, like a miscarriage.

_

Aaj Chelli ka Happy Birthday Hey!

Today is the birthday of the best sister in the whole world (mine:)!

Happy, Happy Birthday, Chelli!

[AA, my favorite aunt in the whole world, calls me to get the birthday girl’s new digits. I give them to her and then somehow a go-to call turns into an hour-long talkfest.

At the end of 60-odd minutes, AA says sheepishly, “M, can you give me the number again? I ummm, doodled all over it and I can‘t make out the numbers anymore.”

My favorite aunt, I tell you!]

_

LTTE's Child "Soldiers"

KS pointed me to this report in Sri Lanka’s Daily Mirror, which has several testimonies from child soldiers about being kidnapped and forced to perform military duties for the LTTE.

Horrible.

Wrong.

And the reason I won’t support any commercial ventures that validate or replicate LTTE culture.

The children are quoted as being 16 and 18--and I’ll forgive you once if you're thinking that they’re more adolescent than child. Because, really, we have to take into account that they are generally drafted around 12 years of age. That is incontrovertibly a child, dammit.

I meandered down the rest of the article and perked up a little when I saw Radhika Coomaraswamy mentioned. I met her once upon a time in Colombo--a very unassuming, highly efficient, and quite jolly person. It turns out that she has recently been appointed as the UN’s special representative for children in armed conflict. Here's hoping that she can hold the LTTE to their frequent denials and resolutions regarding child soldiers.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Incidentally, Radhika Coomaraswamy’s is the *only* Tamizh name amongst the reams of Sinhala and European names on the acknowledgements page of Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost. It's a dismaying indication of a lack of balanced research in an otherwise dazzling book.

_

The Doggies

It started off playfully enough.

Big A and Li’l A and I all have different surnames. (Long story; some other time.) Anyway, for emotional reasons, I’ve been meaning to alter our last names to reflect the fact that all three of us are now ONE family. Of course, we started with the obvious suspects, a mix of our family names: we tried Wandawasi (my family name) coupled with Laskey (his) as in “the Wandawasi-Laskeys are all crazy” but that’s just so tediously fangled.

We needed something else.

Long ago, we’d watched an American-Desi movie (in fact, it might have even been called American Desi) in which the FOB cousin mangled the “dawg” greeting and hailed his homies with “Hello Doggies.” That totally cracked us up for days after. And so, for years now, we’ve been calling each other “Doggie.” Except when Big A is mad at me and yells, “Sweet Baby Puppy” (because you know, the fact that he’s actually yelling at me coupled with mean names could traumatize me forever).

So last night after he returned from work at 11:30, we’re gnawing this to bits again, and he facetiously says that perhaps we should just go with “Doggie” except perhaps we could ethnicize the spelling a bit so it’s not too obvious. I came up with “Daghix” (‘x’ silent) and “Daghe” (with an accent on the ‘e’) and fell asleep laughing.

This morning, I realized that I’m 100% in love with the name and 90% serious about actually changing our name to Daghe (more Indian sounding). While we were stopped at a red light, I confess this, and am stunned when the normally super sensible Big A reveals that he likes the name 90% and is 40% serious about changing to it.

Helllllooooo Daghes!

Update: Li’l A came home from school and said: No way. It’s a strange day when the voice of reason comes from the seven-year-old.

Update Again: Big A just reminded me that the movie was actually Dude, Where's the Party and the line was actually, "Hello, Doggie friends!" (which is infinitely funnier!)

_

The Martin Luther King Day Mystery

Last year, Li’l A and I watched Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi together. Don‘t tell me it‘s overly hagiographic (I know); and don‘t ask me what a five-year-old got out of it (I don‘t know).

But I guess something must have stuck, because he told me that he had mentioned to his class when they were prepping for MLK Day that MLK had been influenced by Gandhi.

And that they didn’t believe him.

So we embarked upon some high-tech research (okay, okay--we googled) to reassure Li’l A that there had, in fact, been a strong and acknowledged influence. Although really, whether MLK’s avowal of moral force over physical force is Gandhian in provenance or not, it would still be awesome and admirable.

We also found the I-have-a-Dream speech.

And we watched that too. Too often, as the grownup, I’m unable to satisfactorily explain to my boy why some people live on the streets (no, really--how do we let that happen?) or I may have to introduce him to the world in terms of its danger--don’t talk to strangers. So on the occasions that we watch something uplifting like MLK’s speech, it makes me feel like a successful parent to be able to say: Yes, it’s true that the world isn’t always fair, but it is possible to take a stand, to change indifference and injustice to action and equality.

Watching those thousands of marchers singing “We Shall Overcome,” readying to fight the moral fight, black and white amassed like one family in the literal and figurative shadow of the Lincoln Memorial resulted in significant goosebumps for me and a look of great seriousness for Li’l A (even though as any self-respecting kid would, he ribbed me, momentarily, about the goosebumps).

Then I noticed all these men in the background wearing what looked like Gandhian topis. Although I wonder if they might not just be naval flat hats.

I don’t have a clue…

Do you?


_

Happy Husband Day

I dreamt last night that my sweet, sweet mother-in-law threw me a party and baked me a cake and the glittery chocolate frosting on the cake said, “Happy Husband Day.”

So when I crawled back into bed at 9 (a.m.! Don’t judge!) to wake Big A, I told him about it, and declared today Happy Husband Day. He was super sleepy, but nevertheless mildly pleased, and he then started making lame-o, low-key requests such as-- “I want five more minutes of sleep,” “I wish my phone was charged” etc., until I had to spell it out for him.

Ummm, Hello? It’s Happy Husband Day. Kinda like Happy Birth-Day. So i'm pretty certain it’s actually MY day, ok? Then I gave him the list: Cake, party, presents...

He was asleep before I got to the messenger bag I really, seriously, desperately need. (Know this: An outsize Canal Street knock-off Balenciaga will give you shoulder pain. I lived and learned. Hopefully, you've learned without pain of your own.)

_

It’s the End of an Era (But shed no tears for me!)

For years now, Big A has been enslaved by the power of my tears. They’ve effectively halted arguments, wrung out extended apologies, made it possible to get my way on everything, be forgiven anything, and frequently enabled good in the world.

But not anymore.

Not after he mistakenly donated my much-beloved, sample-size Italian designer jacket to Goodwill and I cried real gulping, sobbing--and per him, for the first time--angry tears at the loss. That materialism put paid to the fiction about me being a noble and sensitive soul. You can get that worked up about some silly jacket? Really?!

That means no more Magic of Tears™ in this household.

_

Children of Men (I think they mean Human Children)

I wasn’t sure I’d like the movie. I know I didn’t approve of the title--Children of *Men*??

Also, pre-viewing, I disliked that the trailer seemed to endorse the barely-under-the-radar preoccupation with fertility that seems to be everywhere these days. I know that my upcoming, bigheaded comment is exactly the kind of thing that’ll return to bite me in the ass someday when I really really really want to have my own biological kids and it turns out I can‘t--but I’ve always felt it wrong to go so crazy about expensive fertility treatment in an already tired and overpopulated world when there are orphaned and abandoned children everywhere in need of love.

Alright. Alighting off soapbox.

The movie is a very dystopic vision of our near future in 2027, where Britain is the last outpost of Western power and there has been a global failure of fertility--according to the movie, specifically female fertility--resulting in no children at all since circa 2009.

Britain stagnates on two levels because not only are there no children, but immigrants, the other way that a nation state aggregates citizens, are unwelcome--i.e. they are caged and deported or tortured and executed. There’s too much sordid hatred, guns, bombs, futility, despair, crumbling buildings and broken lives to really do any enjoying at this movie, but it does encourage thought and taking stock.

And bad dreams.

And sporadically, grim moments of nervous humor. You simply have to laugh when a young woman in a barn reveals the miracle of her coming baby and the first words the other character utters are “Jesus Christ!” Imprecation rather than an explanation, but still. Although, ultimately, Jesus Christ might be the key to the movie--not in a Christian sense, but in tapping into the way that his birth or anyone’s birth alludes to the vast and mysterious miracle of life and our choices about and within it.

The ending is supposedly uplifting, but I didn’t appreciate it. I was otherwise engaged in speculating about how awful it would be if I were caged and tortured and deported. In fact, I went on and on about this even after Big A valiantly promised to come save me, spring me, etc., and only really stopped when his eyes acquired a misty film. Whether that was from strongly imagined sadness at my loss or distress at my utter and exceptional idiocy--We. Will. Never. Know.


_

COURAGE

Today has left you
Yet you have no fear for tomorrow

The evening hides
Empty between day and another night

You decorate your loneliness
With remembered smiles and old words.

Anyone can question pain
You are the only one to seek answers from it.


_
[Another found poem from an ages-ago notebook.]

DEMAND AND DESIRE

[Being a ditty that I scribbled in the margins of my Economics Reader the day I received my first payment of pocket money--a sum of 25 princely rupees--at age 15*.]

Digit-al dreams rise through the senses
Budgeting income and desires
Desires badger on seemingly relentless
And my limited income expires.

If one had everything one wanted
There would be nothing left to buy
Money is therefore vastly overrated
And there really is no need to sigh.


_________________
* So although I cannot claim any real childhood hardship [I.e. I never walked to school uphill in the snow etc., or ever even walked to school...] I’ll never tire of pointing out to Li’l A that his $2.00 per week trumps my Rs. 25 per month in all of these ways: age of recipient, value of amount, frequency of payment.

_

FOR GOOGLED ACQUAINTANCE

When she was fifteen
Sreekumar Verma told her
That his poems
Turned out
Exactly as long
As the sheet of paper
He happened to be scribbling on.

Not Alan Maley. Ahem.

On her first landmark
Visit to Crossword
She met R. Sriram
Marveling his empire of books
Recalling their frail memories
Across an intervening decade
And a pregnant belly.

Wonder where Ameen Merchant