Words in a waltz

When I first heard about this tag, initiated in my circuit by Shankari, I wondered how the gargantuan joys of motherhood could be compressed into five little nuggets. Then I read her note, followed by Pragya’s, and realized we were merely skimming the surface of an abyss for the purposes of this project. I also realized that motherhood, as big as it is as a collective phenomenon, a Zeitgeist passed down through generations of mothers, is unique, just as every child is.

So, even though I sit on groupthink ledge with two of my favorite mommies and dangle my feet at the world, I will reflect on the five things that I love about being a mom by looking beyond the mirror and gazing deep into my little one’s eyes, which, to me, is like getting a print screen of her mind’s eye - there is no subterfuge to fret over, the world’s atrocities are too faraway to cast their ghastly shadows in there.

The first thing I love about being a mom is that I have fallen in love with life, with my husband, and with myself all over again. Not to mention my own parents. From the day I found out I was going to be a mom, to the months that led up to the birth of my angel - this red, wrinkly, blotchy, bundle of joy that I laid my eyes own and started to cry inconsolably, I had been chiseling away at my inner self to create an entity I wanted to become. The very knowledge that I was going to become a mom helped me push myself to traverse the fringes of womanhood…and in due course, I was brimming with such ferocious love and motherly instinct that I was ready to take charge of not only my little angel, but to also care more for my husband, to nurture my little family. I have since also transformed into a more placid, enduring, and selfless (even if faintly so) person. I have embraced life wholly, realizing that its blessings are far more valuable for me to cringe at the challenges it throws, or thump my fists against the wall every time a dream is shattered, or a plan goes askew. I love my own mother, my father, and my husband for better reasons now - I am able to see through the haze of follies and foibles that shrouds us all, and appreciate them for being able to give beyond measure, for taking on their roles with such sincerity and for being able to adapt to every situation effortlessly. Parenting is the toughest job in the world, yet they make it seem like a breeze and fill me with a sense of pride, and a sense of resolve owing which I am able to keep on, sometimes in tandem, and at others, in the lead.

The next thing I absolutely, truly, deeply treasure about being a mom is the knowledge that I am the center of my little one’s universe (although it may only be transient), and I do swell with pride knowing that the reverse will always be true. I love being loved, being looked up to, being constantly sought for help with tiny tasks, for answers to life’s littlest questions, for approval of the smallest dares, for a sense of belonging, for shelter, for comfort, for pity, for more love and more caring each day. I also love, despite the momentary spasm it thrusts in my veins, being toppled over for daddy to take on the “one I love most in the whole wide world,” mantle, in a spur-of-the-moment decision. I like sharing that center-stage with him from time to time, and I often envisage the time when she is ready to wed…when daddy will take her in his arms and waltz across the room, their feet tapping gently; then pausing in perfect harmony, the floor a mere sheet of gauze under their feet… as I look on with tears of joy rolling down my cheeks, making puddles by my feet. That is my one unselfish reverie, for I admit I am the be-all in the others, and daddy is merely a spectator, cheering us on.

Being a full-time mommy, and a hands-on one at that, has taught me to practice as I preach, to mind my demeanor at all times - as I am constantly being observed, emulated, and analyzed. I love that all of this has grounded me in more ways than I could ever imagine, and enhanced my levels of perseverance. It has also made me realize just how much there is to learn yet, and how much more to give.

Another thing that I love about being a mommy is that I have reaped the rewards of going all out and doing things the way they were done in grandma’s time. No shortcuts will do. No reverberating gadget lulling her to sleep - I love singing golden-olden lullabies and ruffling her hair softly till she dozes off; no Domino’s or Partypallooza-Hot-Spots taking care of her social needs - I love organizing play dates and involving her in every aspect of it - be it making cards, making pizza rolls, or stirring up that lemonade; no store-bought ready-to-bake/eat/ingest/digest stuff - I love baking cookies and cakes from scratch with my little one, with flour in our hair, chocolatey goo on our aprons and eggshells peering from the ridges of the whisk; no ready-to-microwave food, as I love cooking fresh meals for her. The joyfulness that stems from doing all this cannot be condensed into words. It should suffice to say that I often find myself bursting at the seams with the satiety that brims over.

Last, but certainly not least, comes the aspect of motherhood that overwhelms every mother so completely that there is no sensation possibly in the entire world that could override it. It is the power of endurance that comes from deep within when our children are sick. We are ready to relinquish food, water, sleep and everything else that matters in the framework of material existence, in order to care for them. There is nothing more agonizing for a mother than to watch her child writhe in pain, cry, feel hurt…without being able to do anything about it. The past month was a harrowing one in our household, with ghastly virals assailing us and relapsing at the fall of every dusk, and especially in the case of my little one, complications manifesting in brutal forms, nearly toppling over one another, leaving us feeling completely blanched out and helpless. And if it wasn’t for this miracle called motherly instinct and the power that comes with it, I would have been a hopeless nerve-bundle of misery. Right from the early colic days to phases where common and unpredictable illnesses have struck, I have stared right in the face of anxiety with an ever-distending threshold for endurance, sitting constantly by her side…touching, feeling, watching, sensing, caring, and praying.

Motherhood is wearisome, but there are rewards, and they’re bigger than life. There was a time when I couldn’t wait to hear her say “I love you, mommy,” and have her cover my face with butterfly kisses. When, as a month old baby, she would clasp my hand, I would foresee the day when she’d slip her jumpy, tiny hand into mine as we’d approach school. We have been there and done all that by now, and I’m only glad to have traded in my self-absorbed, headstrong, Trendy-Jane-of-the-hour life in exchange for a current and very happening “frightful fours” phase. And those butterfly kisses that wet my face, they’re still what keep me going - they wake me in the middle of the night and boost my energy to heed a nightmare’s calling, play sport at dress-up by wearing macaroni necklaces while tackling a zillion other household chores, or say, put my thoughts down like this.


Afternote: Thanks, Sha'ree, and Prags, for letting us take a peek into your worlds as mommies, and of course, to the one who initiated this beautiful project.

What could possibly go well for an incorrigible romantic, when love is in the air, and the flu, having taken its toll on the rest of the household, decides to assail one on the eve of V-Day? A lot, if you can momentarily forget about the raging fever that threatens to pound on your nerves, fluff up those pillows however feebly, slink quietly under the duvet, and relinquish the vapors of Vicks for a bit to take in the invigorating aroma of plump, lush cloves of garlic hitting a ghee-laced pan, intermingled with a hodgepodge of spices that not only make you go “Hmm…” they also clear up those sinuses and work a new magic on that inflamed pharynx.

Garlic has possibly never been associated with romance before, and to that I say - what a pity, what a laugh!

The affair this Valentine’s in our little household was intense and rather heated up, thanks to the pungency of garlic. For someone who’s always been an advocate of natural remedies, a stanch devotee of grandma’s recipes for homemade cures, it was only natural that I heed the husband’s pleas to make me a hot pot of garlic-magic. That’s not to say I otherwise trust his culinary abilities to appease my gourmet instincts; but this time I had little choice, thanks to the dreaded viral. So I gave in and the consequence was nothing less than dramatic. And in true drama queen fashion, I blew him a passionate air-kiss across the hall before curling up under the covers again to beat the flu blues and assuage my quickened pulse.

I can’t quite put my finger on it - but I reckon I was rather besotted with the idea that the husband, who’s barely shaken the flu off himself, would so completely involve himself in a stirring up a comfort brew for me on V-Day, instead of hopping over to the Soupery and grabbing me a bowl of chicken-noodle soup and sourdough bread. I’d never seen a man so passionately go over a rigorous self-taught, self-made method of creating a special concoction in the good old iron skillet, with the customary wooden ladle…with a sense of conviction, a manner of such flawless clout over the utensils, the spices, the herbs and the kitchen itself. All my memories of my dad venturing in the kitchen are tinted by the letters in my mom’s A to Z instructions written daintily in a vinyl-bound recipe diary. And I’ve had the husband cook for me on other occasions, but I have been conveniently absent during the course of it. So this was quite a revelation - indicative of sorts that love can, at times, be as fiery as most Indian spices. Although he refused to divulge the secret ingredients, I was able to gather a sense of what had gone into this excellent bubble broth, even with the clogged up sinuses that only started to let up as the taste buds actually took all the flavors in.

And my little one added extra zing to our affair with the rasam by animatedly scouring for, and handing me the special “soup” spoon. Not that it stopped me from slurping up the last driblets at the bottom of the bowl with my tongue, table manners be damned. While the flu is presently petering out, I survive on love and leftover garlic rasam. And the best part is not even that - it’s how, in all my South Indian glory, I have come to refer to it in my head as “ro-sh-oom” while the Madras-bred-Bengali husband eloquently says - your r-a-ss-a-m’s ready, baby. That, my dears, is my idea of the perfect Valentine-s - even if the only allusion to class and style is in the half-spent bottle of dessert wine picked up from a wayside winery in the Fall that stares back at one from atop the buffet table.

(Don’t care that much for the reek of fine garlic? Well, I might just be able to elaborate on that once I emerge smelling mentholated, fresh out of my natural eucalyptus clearing bath.)

Luckily, in my case, I have managed, by writing, to do the one thing that I always wanted to do.

Jonathan Coe

It’s not often that you come upon a writer better known for a particular kind of writing attempting something different, like Coe with his first stand-alone novel, “The Rain Before it Falls;” and managing, with those words, to simply take your breath away. The more the writing offers you a vista to reflect on its impact, or in some minuscule way, a repercussion of its impact, on your own life, the more you tend to delve into the writer’s mind, the structure of his thoughts, the flow and pattern of his words - until you reach a point where you begin to comprehend in all that the grimmest of semblances with the workings of your own mind and the manner in which you choose and place your words in a sentence. I do that more often than not. I have started, in fact, cataloguing the words that affect me in the most profound manner and one of my pastimes, when I’m quite simply out of ideas or have inopportunely sold my Muse to the Devil for some indolence, is to go over these words and see if they can inspire me to take a cue, or at the least, motivate me for a while.

For instance, Coe’s words, “…All she could see, in fact, was the formlessness of jumbled buildings, trees, skyline…” have left me completely besotted. Not only do I see myself think like that, and rake over the thoughts in my head to express their import that way, but I also see his brilliance for what it is. About saying little about something immense, for Gill, the character he was alluding to with those words, goes on to realize she couldn’t possibly describe the fogginess of her vision to Imogen that way, but would have to begin afresh, with “the haze that blurred the line of transition from rooftops to sky,” perhaps, or the “sky’s barely perceptible gradations of color, from the deepest to the palest of blues.” Coe’s attention to details, to the little intricacies that form characters and their thoughts, their stories, is brilliant.

If only we could all retain the merits of our writing through a novel, or any piece of work embarked upon with a ragingly high interest level, and fold in to the pitfalls of low will power or self-assurance half way along. It may be said, of course, that these detrimental qualities bleed into other parts of our lives too, and we may be more pathetic than we think; for we cannot write with the kind of sustained brilliance or even tolerability we are thought to possess, nor can we keep a hobby for longer than a week, a day, or a few hours. Patience, as they say, is key. Of course it’s another matter that motherhood leaves you with little of it. But to stay focused as writers, I do believe, as incongruous as it may sound, we need the power of words. So for all that talk about detaching oneself from the rest of the household, or civilization, in whichever order, to sit at a desk and type away everyday, here comes the new mantra: READ. And allow yourself to be so immersed in the process that you begin to imagine you’re not a molecule less cooler than the writer who is making you go weak in the knees, and you begin to produce reams of fantastic text.

If your ego needs a boost, read a mesmerizing writer and imagine you’re them. Nothing gets to your gut like a little gloating does.

One of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite women, Erma Bombeck, goes like this: “Insanity is hereditary. You can catch it from your kids.”

With all the manner of things my toddler gets up to, I fear nothing but the worst - of course, we have insanity running in every iota of our beings, notwithstanding who gave it to whom; but with all the free-time I now get from her being in pre-school thrice a week for four hours on each of the days, I have accomplished much less than I have in all these three years - with her tugging at my sweats as I went about doing chores, yanking my hair as I try to have a make-believe sane conversation with someone giving me work over the telephone, or even just miraculously finding the wrong time to take a pee on the carpet or get up to something equally obnoxious, as I try to gobble down a hurried lunch before I take the garbage out, pay the bills, drive through the pharmacy, make a quick stop at the post office, pick out some over-bought groceries, or simply breathe. If this is insane, I don’t know what is.

Lately, I have been reading a lot of mommy-blogs and I was horrified when I saw this on one: “Do you ever feel like having babies ate your brain cells? Well you might be surprised at the reality! You might be right. We will talk about it and discuss what you can do to stop suffering from Momnesia.” The blog post went on at length about the issue, and said, “Kathy Peel, author of Desperate Households, will discuss how to keep our household balanced.” I cannot remember the last time I felt like I didn’t have Momnesia. Yet, I keep a household, my job, and myself, somewhat balanced. I wonder if Kathy Peel could peel the layers off and tell me I’m not a Momnesiac, when in fact I am!

I am also, I’m afraid, one of those really persnickety moms – and tend to fret over the littlest of things – will her clothes be too crumpled by the time she gets to school? Will she remember to use her best manners while conversing with the teacher? Will she spill her drink at snacktime and make a sloppy mess? Will she ask to be excused for potty-break at the right time? Will she weep and wail again? (Okay, about the weeping and wailing, we gave each other a healthy competition the first day she went to school – the hubby is certain I won hands down – but hey, I am still learning the steps to the happy dance when the house is quiet without Little Miss Muffet for a few hours!) Insanity, again. I often wonder if my mom felt the same way when she sent me off to school the first time. Or is it different with moms who have experience doing the same thing over and over again with their other children? Or do all moms, as a general rule, lose their sanity in the post-natal depression?

I had readied myself for a long time for the separation anxiety. I assumed I had roughened up a bit. But the first few days, beginning last month, were the toughest - I couldn’t bear the thought of having sent my child away with a bunch of strangers to a strange room with too many rules and too much to learn and do. I remember how often I’d crave a little me-time, even if it meant finding time to dust the cobwebs, Pledge-clean the furniture, or mop the floors - and when I did get it, I was clueless. The sudden quiet, the house in perfect order - everything just the way I’d have given tooth and nail to have - but I didn’t want it that way anymore. I noticed I was also looking slightly better, my hair was kempt, I’d relinquished my sweats for something wearable on a morning walk, and I had time to savor a cuppa every morning - without a bother. Yet, I felt as if I was lost. But now I’m coping better - of course, if you discount the time when get back in after putting her on the bus, get into a sudden frenzy and make a gazillion calls to hire cleaners to help clean the already-somewhat-orderly house, and by the end of the fourth hour, realize that I have skipped breakfast, and coffee, haven’t had a shower, haven’t loaded the dishes, haven’t flipped a page of the Sly-Fives BookClub pick, haven’t made the bed, or made lunch, and that I have exactly three minutes and a half to fix everything, including myself, to run down and pick her up. I am forced to conclude that insanity and I have an unbreakable bond - and my life is nothing without - a little disarray, a thing amiss here, a thing kaput there, a lot to do and very little time, and above all, a little madness.

I am a mad, mad mommy. And boy, do I love it!

That something can actually come from taking a lackadaisical approach to get past the blind(ing) alley is no more surprising than being in the blind alley itself. After moping desolately over a rejected manuscript (yes, our first in the stack!) and a spell of unproductiveness (if you discount the work deadlines week in and week out), I decided to take things under control - by doing nothing. From active blogger to blog-hopper, and active net freak to tarrier, my status had relegated way below the nadir. But what came of it?

I found my guiding chi. I gave outline and form to the ideas in my head. I stumbled upon some really cool blogs, met some very interesting bloggers (online)…FunHonee was born, then I happened upon the CBC...and before I knew it, I was milking my misfortune and caramelizing it. Could the obstinate crossword not solve itself thus? I wonder. But I digress.

Amid all the idling, I raked up old scribbles and notes from a creative writing class I took years ago. I was reminded of something my tutor in NZ had mentioned - about writers' cars - when you hear a jangling, roaring engine and see clouds of smoke billowing into the air as the car zooms past you at say, 7 mph, you know there's a writer in it; lame bumper sticker notwithstanding (Write Turns Only?) I can’t say that of my car, unfortunately. But that is by no measure a sign that I’m raking the moolah.

Why then, would anyone in their right senses think of writing as a career option? I cannot really answer that, but speaking for myself, I can say that it satiates my inner passion. When I sit at my computer and stare at the monitor, while I hold on to a thought that was sparked by a long-forgotten memory that came rushing by; or a reverie that was so surreal I couldn’t bear for it not to be true; or an unputdownable book I read that overwhelmed me; or a little life lesson I learned from my little girl…and the words come pouring out, aligning themselves within the perimeter of a Word Doc., the pleasure I get is hard to contain in words. Then I am not myself - my joy is not spent in portions, nor does it carefully shroud sorrow. What I experience is like something out of a Ruskin Bond story - the richness of mirth enhanced by the presence of a pure, untainted goodness. Like little Biniya felt when she got her Blue Umbrella.

But what of the writer’s block? Well, when you set foot in the field, you are forewarned of the repercussions of locking yourself up in an airless room for hours trying to get some words out. You’re not allowed to let a writer’s block weigh you down. It's in all the avant-garde books - sit at your desk everyday and hammer away at the keyboard - even if the words make no sense or need multiple revisions and underlined bluepencilling. The pros swear by it. And then, in consecutive pages, they steel you for the spate of rejections you are bound to garner - may as well sit to write when the words come out right, and minimize those chances, right? But no, everyone from Stephen King to JK Rowling to George Lucas insists on following a routine.

Lucas, who sat at his desk for eight hours everyday to create Star Wars, said:

'A writer is, every waking hour, constantly pondering scenes or structural problems. I carry my little notebook around and I can always sit down and write. That's the terrible part, because you can't get away from it. I'll lie in bed before I go to sleep, just thinking--or I'll wake up in the middle of the night sometimes, thinking of things, and I'll come up with ideas and I'll write them down. Even when I'm driving, I come up with ideas. I come up with a lot of ideas when I'm taking a shower in the morning.' "

I have those times too - an idea comes to me when I'm daydreaming, driving aimlessly, staring into space through rain-beaten windows, playing with my little girl, concocting a new recipe, sipping my "adrak chai," and so forth...perhaps somewhere in the ridged folds of these writerly Bibles, they forgot to add, "SuperMoms - hold on to that thought when it comes, for you can only get to it when the baby has been fed, burped, bathed, washed, read a story, played with, washed, cleaned, washed, cleaned, fed, washed, cleaned, read a story, and lulled to sleep.” But that’s when you’re this close to yanking your eyelashes out and fist-thumping the walls. With time, you realize that’s no impediment, really, once you get the hang of it- once you learn, sans the presence of the power of Tai-Chi in your life, to multitask and stick to your commitment to the family, and the pen.

I have received note from the editor who called my manuscript names before tossing it out the window, to stylize my other collection of children’s stories to suit multicultural tastes. But that’s what I had in mind with the first one, but never mind.

Hackneyed as it may sound, idling can sometimes lead to positive things. Taking the time to think, re-strategize, re-prioritize…stopping to listen in on a whisper, to the lonely cricket on a windy evening, a song that you’ve listened to a zillion times or to the music that drones in your head…taking a long walk by yourself, reading a book you left at half, breathing deep to take the essence of a blank moment in, reining your emotions in once in a while, pausing to look for signs, or even groping for new signs, scouring the Internet for inspiration, and heeding the buzz of an idea that has been marinating in your pickled head for a while, and actually doing something to revive it…can actually get you somewhere.

So if you’re anything like me, I urge you to continue to try…to find your guiding chi. Ponder. Blink. Pause. Breathe. Lounge around. And eventually, you’ll WRITE!

Only when one is ready to remain insentient do the shards of memories come in so fiercely. Like sheep traces on dew-laced grass in the backyard that slip away in a subservient pattern with the arrival of the high winds. In fuchsia-tinted fragments, of times when a bottle of Merlot, a half-spent, scented candle from Auroville, and noodles hurriedly topped with lemon zest for gourmet appeal - meant love was in the air; when a midnight phone call, the initial, awkward embraces at the airport, and even well-timed silence...cut warmth through the nerves, the skin breaking into goosebumps...all screamed "love."

Are these memories merely good enough for the scrapbooks? To hold a grip on the fragments, as the fuchsia bleeds, corrodes, and makes way for sepia-toned wistfulness? Does that happen with age? Or can one, at an early stage, by detaching considerably from one's emotions, by steeling oneself to become adequately unfeeling, master the art of feeling the power of love resonate in every gray-tinted moment?

One can, if one looks through an abraded pince-nez, experience the sensation without as much as losing one's mind over, for what it's really worth. But often, the "objects in the rear-view mirror are closer than they appear," and so on it goes...

If one takes love at face value, it can manifest in the most mundane of ways and take one's breath away. It could be changing the baby's diaper in the middle of the night, taking patiently in the pounding on the dough, the clanking of the dishes and the muffled sighs and grunts over nothing in particular, or something as trivial as flipping the dial from BBC to an oft-repeated episode of Sex and the City when one enters the living room looking like half-dead Riding Hood at the end of a long day...

Love, my dears, is overrated. Candle-light dinner? Seven years (no itch), one baby, and an unfathomable-lot-in-between later, I'll take my precious me-time ANY day...Where's the love? It is in the music, in the blanket that mysteriously swathes me on a chilly night, and in the moments that I get to sit with myself and just take in the silence, smiling at the smithereens of memories and fleet of dreams...

What, one might wonder, could someone write about being nowhere. Unhinged doors flog you in the face as you walk farther and farther into this unfathomable expanse of nothingness. There are no signs, no mileposts, and worse, no speed limits. And accidents, if any, could happen by running into discolored, jagged-edged flashback frames, and the spasms will come from knowing that they harbor little or no nostalgia.

Sitting at my desk, however, I manage to recall some snapshots of note that have hit me lately - an Indian woman, Nimisha Tiwari, who killed herself and her two children by dousing their bedroom with gasoline and lighting it on fire; the lesbian priest, Tracey Lind, who made the list for the Episcopal bishop of Chicago; a teenaged, Indian-American boy, Ian Iyengar, who makes musical instruments from recyclable items, makes music for audiences, and donates all proceeds to charities; a City Council committee that advanced legislation allowing dogs in outdoor cafes (although the luxury is soon going to be stolen by fierce Fall winds and the wonder that is Windy City winter); and so forth. Some utterly disturbing, some that elicit a smile, and generally, a strip of headlines that simply march past one’s groping eyes and dissolve into the seemingly multichrome depths of a flickering screen.

Somewhere in the background, the words – “Can one person change the world?” – hound me. What could I possibly do? I begin to ponder if there is a set of rules somewhere in the ribbed folds of the active gorgeous go-greens, and going by the rigidity it must entail, I wonder whether picking up litter, and trying to recycle as much as one possibly can meets a part of the hoi deka logoi. But there must only be this much an army of one can accomplish, I shrug, and move on in my mottled span of cognitive dissonance.

Then I recollect a full moon night - somewhere under the silvery skies, a fatigued mother feeds her chipper child concocted nighttime stories with supper, little peals of laughter crumble into the air…but these grudging glimpses soon wane away, leaving me with a sense of heavyhearted trance. The coherence in my stuporous mind, if any, is evinced by this unintended stroll through a deserted memory lane - one that reminds me that stories, as have been for ages, can simply be woven around the most prosaic of things - a dimmet sky, the faces of characters penciled out of amorphous clouds, and their shuffling movements chased, for dialogues. I realize there’s a story waiting to be discovered everywhere, even in the middle of being torn between different places and times. If every sky, turn of season, change in direction were a “ba,” like Nonaka and Takeuchi refer to as a notion for providing a space for the accumulation and dissemination of knowledge forms, then one could tap into these everyday pockets, and allow new discoveries and realizations to coalesce with what they offer, and build stories around them.

I fluff up my cushions, unruffle my feelings, and in an imaginary, hazy distance, while an ancient basswood guitar is strumming the blues, with the mesmerizing strains of “Sweet Home Chicago…” drifting in the air, I realize that my thoughts are home, even if I feel like an aimless drifter mostly.

What, one might wonder, could someone write about being nowhere? About being steeped in nothingness…when inspiration has gone on a Spartan diet…and when, as if creativity doesn’t thrive ably on eccentricity, it craves to subsist on insanity…? All it takes is for a distant memory, like a spark, to happen by. And stories suddenly ignite an unlit mind, where the Muse once sat still…and words, like thunder-triggered raindrops, start to fall. Freely.