Make way for Meena!

As I sat watching the Academy Awards on TV last weekend, it occurred to me that I am totally unprepared to go on a stage to receive an award if the need ever arises.

If you must know, I did clear my mantel a few years ago in anticipation of receiving the Pulitzer prize but darn those folks at the selection committee there. They are too picky. It is not enough that I write. It seems they are looking for quality in writing too. Where does this greed stop, I ask you? Well, I may still be batting at zero in the Pulitzer game but it is early days yet. Bigger miracles have been known to happen. And even if Pulitzer slips through my fingers, I feel confident that I have a good shot at getting nominated for this decade’s ‘The Ultimate Nagging Mom’ award. I am not picky. Really! Either one will do for me.

When that day comes, am I really ready to walk the red (or blue or gray or black) carpet and claim my rightful place on the stage? Do I have the right outfit in my wardrobe for the occasion? What about the acceptance speech? Have I practiced enough to get my eyes to sparkle with unshed tears of joy and my lower lip to tremble ever so gently in a show of nerves and frailty? Oh boy, talk about emergency preparedness! I really have my work cut out for me before my day of glory.

Let’s start with the outfit first. None of the items in my wardrobe will do, I am sure. They are too decent to qualify. They cover all parts of my body, for God’s sake. I need something that fits me like a second skin and leaves nothing to imagination. It would be better if the fabric closely resembles a potato sack except that it definitely has to be very sparkly. I will not compromise on that. After all, I want to fit in, not stick out like a sore thumb there. If I can somehow find an extra large fabric bow in red that I can hook on to my bottom, I will be all set.

I am not worried about the acceptance speech though. I have seen enough Oscar awards to know how to write it but it is not just the speech but the whole theatrical delivery of it that I need to work on. I will start by practicing to look dazed at the audience with the ‘I can’t believe I made it to this stage’ look. It won’t be easy but if anyone can do it, I believe I can. I will also have to practice how to fan my face for the next several seconds to portray a desperate attempt to prevent my tears from spilling over and ruining my mascara. That is a must. That will set the tone for what is to follow.

Now for the speech – I will have to prepare a list of all the important people in my life. After all I don’t want to leave anyone’s name out in my ‘thank you’ speech and hurt their feelings. That will be unkind of me. Hmmm…..let’s see. What was the name of that wrinkled old woman who came around to bathe me when I was a week old baby? I can’t believe I forgot her name. Anyway, I will make a note to check with my mom. Then, what about the bus driver who drove me to school every single day of my formative years? I can’t leave him out now, can I?

Of course I will be thanking my mom, my dad, my sisters, my husband, my children, my dog, my brothers-in-law, my nieces, my nephews, my neighbors, my friends, my clients, my teachers, my students, my postman, my lawn maintenance guy and my plumber. Oops! I almost forgot about the handyman. And if someone in the audience feels the urge to start pulling out their hair at the monotony of my speech, it is just too bad. I would rather have the entire gathering snore in boredom than leave out thanking anyone of these important people in my life.

Whew…….that was exhausting but I think it will be worth the effort. I feel mentally ready now to put on the show of my lifetime. Step aside Natalie Portman.  Move over Colin Firth. It is time to make way for Meena Sankaran. Now if only I could find a sparkling potato sack with a red bow! Life will just be peachy.

Oh no.......not again!

There is no use denying the truth when it has you firm by your hair. Some people can acknowledge the truth even if it slightly taps them on the shoulder. Others may face it if it gets up and stares them in the face. Me? I do it only when it yanks hard on my hair and kicks me a few times in the shin. And five times is one too many even for me and I have finally decided to face my truth.

I am a danger to all my music teachers and there is no point sugar-coating it anymore.

When I was a little girl long, long ago, so long ago, my parents heard me singing in the shower one day with gusto and not willing to lose any time, they enrolled me immediately in an instrumental music class. And since then, they made it their life's goal to nurture my instrumental skills and (note this) only my instrumental skills. Innocent that I was, I fell into that trap easily and gave up the pleasure of singing in the showers only to take up mimicking the instrumental sounds even in the sanctity of my shower at the passionate plea of my parents.

I grew up, got married, moved across seas and continents and all of a sudden, one day it dawned on me that I was the victim of a cruel conspiracy. Singing in the shower is as sacred a civil right as freedom of speech and I had given it up without as much as a picket-line protest. How clever they had been! Made me wonder how much the residents of 79th street had paid to have my parents stop me from singing? And how dare they? The rebel in me was outraged at the monumental injustice done to me. With the tight-lipped determination of one who had been unjustly wronged, I decided to take fate into my own hands and at last find a music teacher to train me vocally. And find her, I did.

Eager as a puppy, I attended my classes without fail each week and got through the basics successfully only to find that she had, one day, decided to quit her job, sell her house and move across the many states of United States. Why? To continue her higher education, according to her. Yeah, right! Come now, one has to get up pretty early in the morning to fool Meena. I should have known then that something was wrong, mighty wrong, in the State of California.

I found teacher#2 soon enough and picked up where I left off. Geethams turned to Swarajathis and Swarajathis turned to varnams and just then what did my dear husband do? Oh nothing earth-shattering except that he had decided he didn't like California as well as he thought he had and was now convinced that greener pastures were awaiting us on the eastern seaboard. Not again..... With the lusty sigh of a repeatedly injured woman, I bid a melancholic farewell to teacher #2 and got on the plane already busy plotting to find my next victim aka teacher.

After moving into my next home, fate gave me an opportunity to visit my family in India and I, in a delusion of grandeur, decided to push my luck and ask one of the leading vocalists in town (I will refer to her as Madam X in this post) if she would give me lessons while I was there on vacation. Giddy with joy at my good luck when she agreed, I knocked on her door promptly for my first class. She was everything I had expected her to be and more and I sat down to eagerly learn the Thodi Varnam from her and left a happy person at the end of the first session.

Please note that when I parted from her that day, I left her in no doubt about my intention to return the next day, same time, same place for the second session. As I was busy that night listening to the recording of the class and struggling to get a grip on the slippery notes of Thodi ragam, I got a call on my cell phone. ‘Hello, is this Meena? I am Madam X’s mom. I am afraid that my daughter won’t be able to take classes for you anytime soon. You see, soon after you left today, she doubled over with a bad stomach ache, vomiting and such and has now been admitted to the hospital. By the way Meena, don’t call us. We will call you.’ Oh Wow! Poor Madam X! She was looking the picture of health only that afternoon. Anyway, that is the story of music teacher# 3.

As one who is not so easily broken, I continued my search and found teacher#4. I decided to be smart this time around and found a teacher who gave online lessons. You see, she could pack up and move everyday if she wanted. Since I would only be a Skype call away, she definitely could not flick me away on that pretense. Patting myself on the back for that clever idea, I started my lessons with her and found her to be just as wonderful as all the previous teachers. Just when I was convinced that my luck had changed for good, she simply vanished from the face of the earth one day. Poof, just like that. Hmm…..hellooooooo! …student waiting here!!!!!!!! Apparently, she got too busy and so got too tired and decided to drop a few students. Darn it! What rotten luck that I had to be one of them. Makes me want to question my faith in God sometimes.

Had I known, I would have gladly shipped her a few dozen cases of Glucose-D drink to help her regain her strength. Or I would have happily given up half of my class hour so she could take a nap. I would have accommodated her needs so why couldn't she? I know that whining is unattractive, okay? That is why I am trying to do it in little easy-to-digest spurts.

Okay, I was back at square#1 yet again (square#1 is starting to feel like home considering how many times I land here) with my thinking cap on. Alright, let's see here. I needed a teacher who would not find it so easy to run away from the task in the future? Of course! Why didn’t I think of this before? My good friend’s husband, that's who. He not only lives minutes from my home but also happens to be a phenomenal singer. Duh! Sometimes I can be a little slow, I admit.

Okay, teacher #5 proved to be the answer to all my prayers and finally, things were looking up for me so much so that I was thinking of breaking open a 'Panneer Soda' bottle to celebrate. 'Not so fast' said fate. My 'All zz well' bubble burst tragically when I heard of the sad news that teacher#5 has been diagnosed with a nodule in his voice and has now been advised by doctors to rest his voice completely as part of the cure. Oh no, not again! Poor guy! He totally doesn’t deserve it.

That’s it! I am done. I give up. I refuse to inflict such pain on mankind anymore.

Could there be any more doubts about this? The minute a music teacher signs me up, the seven year reign of ‘Shani Bagawan’ starts for him or her. All kinds of unspeakable horrors await them. They fall sick, lose their jobs, lose their homes or find themselves too tired to face life. How could I, in good conscience, do this to anyone else ever?

The day is not far when twitter is going to be buzzing with the tweet ‘Health Hazard Warning: Teach Meena at your own risk.’

Sigh, sigh, sigh…….

Laurel or Hardy?

Personally, I have nothing against Laurel, you see. I would be the first one to admit that he was one of the best comedians of his time and more than a match for Hardy. Who, in their right minds, could contest the fact that this ‘thin and chubby’ duo was a riot on the screen? But behind the laughing eyes and waddling legs, did Hardy hide a truckload of hurt? Did anyone ever stop to think how the fashionably-thin Laurel might have made our flabby Hardy feel?

You may think that I am crying wolf when there isn’t even a trace of a puppy around but trust me, I have my reasons. As a fellow chubster (just because MS Word underlines this word in red doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, ok?), I feel like I can speak for all the Hardys of this world and tell you that it is a major pain in the you-know-what to be constantly surrounded by thin people.

I am not saying that thin people are bad. Definitely not. They may very well have a small golden heart inside their very petite bodies. It is just that, unwittingly, by their mere presence, they give us chubsters a huge complex and as God knows, we can very well do without anything huge, if you can catch my drift.

Take my case, for example. I happen to live in a town where all the women enjoy eating air for the main course and delight in drinking water for dessert at every meal. If it were up to them, without any qualms, they will rewrite the secret code to open Aladdin’s treasure caves to say ‘LETTUCE’ and then what will happen to poor Aladdin?

Now as one who salivates over a bowl of rasam rice for breakfast, I fail to understand how soy nuts can be appealing to anyone first thing in the morning. Fine, as long as you are at it, why not eat a nice cup of those soy nuts? Why count them every morning to eat exactly 6? And if you eat 8 instead of 6 one morning by mistake, is that any reason to call poison control? Seriously, if you are planning to relocate to my town for any reason and your daily lunch/dinner menu does not include a bowl of colorful leaves, do reconsider. You will thank me later and I will tell you why.

When I first moved into this town, I mistook all the inhabitants to be refugees from Somalia. It was an honest mistake really. I had never before seen anyone else walking around with bones jutting out of the skin like that. My heart bled for their misfortune and determined to do my part as a Good Samaritan, I hosted many parties in the hope of feeding my neighbors and friends with my no fat-spared cooking. But my plan was a big, fat flop. It was the same story at each party. One look at the long row of my wickedly tempting food trays, these folks would whip up their calculators and get busy. The minute the calorie count crossed zero, they would pretend that the food was e-coli infected and happily go back to their air and water diet.

So I gave up and switched to Plan B. If the town wouldn’t fatten up, then I would have to slim down, I thought. After all, I didn’t want to be the only Hardy in this town of Laurels. So I stocked my fridge with leaves and soups of all color. I even went out and got Quinoa. I was that desperate. Since that took care of the eating part of the Plan B, I next set out to buy a treadmill. Of course there is a gym less than a mile from my place but I didn’t want to take any chances, you see.

The shiny Nordic Track was finally hauled up the stairs and just as I got ready to jump on it and puff my way to health, I realized that something was missing. Ah, of course! What could motivate me more than a nice big TV mounted on the wall just across from my new machine? I know that my husband granted this wish of mine and installed a TV on that wall only because he was convinced of the sensibility of my plan and definitely not because he wanted to stop my nagging. Not at all!

Anyway, to make a very long story short(is it too late??), Plan B turned out to be an even bigger flop than Plan A. To say that the sensible diet plan was a complete disaster would be the understatement of the year. For every spoonful of the nasty Quinoa that I ate, I compensated by attacking the white rice with vengeance. For every green leaf that I had to push down my throat, I rewarded myself with a bowl of home-made spicy potato fries. For every cup of sugarless tea that I had to drink, I thumbed my nose at it with 2 glasses of kheer. Sigh, sigh…….......

With regards to the exercise equipment, it wasn’t a total waste after all. I am using the handle bars to organize and hang my thupattas these days so that is something, right? And about the TV, I realized that I liked watching it better from the bed anyway.

I have learned to forgive myself these days. Just like some people enjoy their air and water diet, I am fated to go through life as a Hardy. Philosophically speaking, some things are simply not in our control. As the French would say "Que sera sera".

So what are you? A Laurel or a Hardy?