got tissues?

It is seriously starting to embarrass me.   Just this week alone, it has happened about half a dozen times.  I weep for the weirdest reasons these days. 

I am afraid to go to concerts anymore.  Poor musicians!  After enduring hours of practice, there they are on the stage pouring their hearts out expecting to enthrall their audience and what do I do?  Clap in appreciation like everyone else around me?  Oh no, I don’t.  I sob hard into my ‘dry-clean only’ saree!  At the last concert, the lady next to me took one look at my bawling face and gingerly scooted her chair as far away from me as possible.  Really, who can blame her?  

3 days ago, I had an urge to read ‘Thiruvasagam’ at 5 am in the morning and with an iPad next to my bed table and Lord Googleswara at my fingertips, what is to stop me?  There I was leaning back comfortably on a couple of pillows fluffed up for my morning reading and into the first 10 verses of Sivapuranam, sure enough my eyes started to leak.  My husband woke up in confused concern when I greeted him not with a ‘Good morning Sankar’ like any normal wife but with a weepy ‘Thiruchitrambalam Sankar’.  Poor guy!  His life with me seems to be one endless soap opera.

All this crying is exhausting.  I had to recently switch handbags just to accommodate a bigger Kleenex box.  I run through tissues like there is no tomorrow.  It is bad enough that I bawl in public but to do so without the assistance of a tissue box?  The idea does not bear thinking.  If it weren’t for Costco and its value-priced tissue boxes, I might have been forced to take a second job to dry clean my clothes each week.  I guess it is true what they say about God opening one door when another closes.  Yes, it is true that He gave me a faulty eye faucet but He also gave me tissues to deal with it.  His compassion chokes me right up. 

The saga continued yesterday in my music class.  Two teenage boys were in my classroom doing an exceptional job singing a composition in Hamsanandi ragam.  I closed my eyes in appreciation and seconds later, the tell-tale signs of a brewing Tsunami made themselves known – my lips were trembling, nostrils were flaring and from behind the closed eyelids, tears started to peep out.  All in front of two boys with budding mustaches!  Talk about embarrassment!  It took all my willpower to suck it in and blink it away.  Poor, poor kids!   It is such a tender age to be traumatized this way.  A boy should have the right to sing in front of his teacher and not have her wail and whimper all over him.  And which parent will want to pay for trauma therapy in addition to music lessons?

Either I am getting old or it is payback time for all these years of teasing my Dad for crying alongside the poor women of Tamil TV drama, not to mention, crying in patriotism at the achievements of Indians in the world of Science, Philosophy, Sports and Technology.  My gut feeling says it is the latter.  The only difference is my Dad sobs in to his somewhat-white-looking cotton towel and I sob into my 20^th century pristine white disposable tissues.  Life does come full circle. 

And so, it begins again! 

Till next time, Thiruchitrambalam, my friends! :)

Loo loo, skip to the loo....

It has been one of those roller coaster weeks that make absolutely no sense. Yesterday, I felt the need to ponder on the complexity of the human mind that can delve so deeply into non-existent problems that it can crush the soul with the weight of the world.  Today, I woke up to wonder on the meaning of a nursery rhyme that defies all logic.

Loo loo, skip to the loo
Loo loo, skip to the loo
Loo loo, skip to the loo
Skip to the loo, my darling

Why, oh why would anyone skip to the loo in the first place?  Skipping, in my mind, constitutes an act of youthful energy that expresses sheer happiness.  A child may skip to the park after school to play with friends or to a Carnival anticipating cotton candy and Ferris wheel rides.  What, my feverish mind wonders today, would prompt a child to bounce and skip to the loo?  If you ever catch a child doing that, be sure to take the Mom aside to talk about the importance of fiber in her family's diet.

Fly's in the buttermilk, shoo fly shoo
Fly's in the buttermilk shoo fly shoo
Fly's in the buttermilk, shoo fly shoo
Skip to the loo, my darling

Hmmmm.......I am not quite sure how to interpret this really.   If my kid finds a fly in her cup of buttermilk I will probably tell her to remove it and drink it up or dump the glass and pour another one but that is just me.  There is a Mother somewhere out there that advises her child to happily (otherwise why skip?) take refuge in the loo to tackle this problem?  Running away never solves any problem, doesn't she know? You can hide in the loo for as long as you want, but when you get out, the fly is still there floating belly up, right?  Like I said, the entire thing defies logic.

Lost my partner, what'll I do
Lost my partner, what'll I do
Lost my partner, what'll I do
Skip to the loo, my darling

That is tragic, I agree. Losing a partner can be crippling, I am given to understand. And the loss may induce gastrointestinal turbulence for sure but we are not talking about grown ups, are we?  What kind of a partner skipped out on the child - spelling bee partner?,  crayon bee partner?  or  ballet dance partner?  Explain to me how skipping to the loo helps them deal with this loss.

Come on folks, lets get serious here.  Do we really want to condone defeatism so blatantly?  Should our children grow up believing that running and hiding is the answer to all the problems facing this world?  Imagine that one of these kids gets elected as President of the United States in the future.  And there he is sitting in on a routine meeting with his senior staff in the Oval office at 7 AM one morning only to be interrupted by the Defense Secretary bearing news that North Korea is threatening to fire its nuclear weapons just for the heck of it.   Are we going to sit back and watch our President skip to the Loo on TV?   What if he decides to stay there until the crisis passes humanity?  You may think it is just a catchy rhyme now but heed my warning.  This could have serious ramifications to the future of this world.

Oh but hold it!  Before you jump off the cliff in to an abyss of despair, catch this last verse.  It might just bring salvation for the poet of this verse after all.

I'll get another one just like you
I'll get another one just like you
I'll get another one just like you
Skip to the loo, my darling

Now, that's the spirit!  'Life goes on so embrace the challenges with a happy face' is what it says and what a great lesson for all.  Learning that no one is indispensable can be an invaluable lesson in humility.  I believe that teaching our kids that when you step off the train, someone always boards to take your place is as important a lesson as Algebra and Trigonometry.

On that philosophical note, I thank you for reading this post which barely skirts the edges of sanity to the end and will suggest that you always take my words with a pinch of salt. :-)

Now all I have to do is learn to skip without pulling a muscle.  Skip to the loo, my friends and you shall find answers to all your problems in there.  Good luck and a belated Happy New Year to all!

The nine yard nightmare!

By some cruel and sadistic fate, I have been steadily growing rounder with each passing day.  If you were to stand on a hilltop watching me climb the curved road below, it may seem to you that a perfectly circular roller is fighting gravity tooth and nail to roll upwards laboriously.  But hey, I am not here to groan and moan about my weight loss woes again but to let you know of a prodigious idea that I have had.  I have decided to cash in my plump karma chips at last and go trick or treating on Halloween this year with my kids as ‘a perfect mathematical circle’.  I will get to enjoy a sack full of candy without spending an obscene amount of money on a weird costume.  Beat that, hah! 

I amaze myself sometimes with brilliant ideas like these.  Last summer, I had another such one.  It all started with a traditional family religious ritual that required me to wear a nine yard saaree and serve food to women sitting cross legged on the floor in front of a plantain leaf.  If you think serving food wearing a nine yard saaree was hard for me, you should have seen me sitting on the floor a little later trying to eat out of the leaf myself. 

First of all, which sadist designed this saaree, I want to know.  I bet you all the gold on Wall Street that it was a man because there is no way a woman would have asked me to wrap 9 yards of material around me without at least throwing a lifeline in the form of an in-skirt to hold it all together.  I refuse to believe that a woman could do that to another.  So I have just a few questions to ask the guy who came up with this nine yard madisar design. 

Are you out of your scrambled mind?  How do you expect me to hold the folds at my waist AND bend to loop the tail of the saaree through my legs?  And if I fall on my poor head while bending, what happens to those folds?  Do you seriously expect me start over until I crack my head again?  More importantly, given the fact that I have 9 yards of cloth to cover myself, why are my legs playing peek-a-boo with the world? 

Anyway, I gave it my best shot last summer.  I took step-by-step lessons from my sister who makes the household goddess Martha Stewart seem like a clumsy gypsy.  In spite of her showing me precisely how to tie the saaree, I bungled it and managed to tangle myself up in a knot.  Sisterly love saved the day as she helped untangle me before begging me never to ask her for help in tying this saaree.  Next I watched some how-to-wear-a-nine-yard-saaree videos on youtube but that was no roaring success either.  Finally I threw my inhibitions to the wind and let an elderly woman in the family tie it for me.  I assumed the pose of the Christ on the Cross and stood resigned through the whole ordeal. 

Finally it was done.  I was at last wearing a madisar saaree.  I looked totally weird but never mind that as I was used to it.  I had important duties waiting for me.  There were 9 hungry women sitting cross-legged on the floor in the other room looking expectantly at the plantain leaf in front of them.  I would not let them down.  I had to go serve them food.  I squared my shoulders and started to march towards the kitchen to fetch the food. 

Wow!  ‘Not so fast, my dear’ said my legs.  With a look of horror, the cook caught me just in time before I crashed into her kettle of payasam.  Since I was a quick study, I quickly learned the trick to walk without tripping – to walk like a penguin.  I have mastered this penguin walk so much so that if I were to get stranded on North Pole someday, some penguin family may just adopt me.

There I was standing over the first plantain leaf with a bucket of payasam and 9 pairs of eyes turned and looked hungrily at me.  I looked down and the leaf seemed frighteningly far away.  How was I going to get the payasam all the way down there?   Praying to all the supreme powers of this world to help me to not fall on the leaf while bending, I planted my feet apart and gingerly bent down and scooped a cup of payasam on one side of the leaf.  By the time, I crossed leaf# 4, I was giddy with pride.  If you are a newcomer to the world of nine yard saarees, the trick is in planting your feet wide before bending.  Just remember that.  Yes, you will look like a cricket batsman taking his stance but it beats tumbling down on the laps of the hungry folks on the floor.

The nine yard saga continued with my turn coming up next to sit on the floor cross-legged and eat the sumptuous meal.  Have you ever seen a penguin sit cross-legged on the floor?  Neither have I and hence I had no one to take pointers from.  After a few minutes of trying to elegantly sit down like all those other women in the room, I gave up and simply plopped down like a sack of flour on the floor.  Okay, now I was in business.  The 12 course meal was served and looked enticing on the shiny plantain leaf and I eagerly reached my hand out to taste the sweet pachdi only to find my arm stop a bit short of the destination.  Come on….you have got to be kidding me.  I knew just then how the squirrel in the ‘Ice Age’ movie felt about the elusive acorn. 

I may not be ‘accomplished’ in the Jane Austen sense of the word but what I am is resourceful.  If I couldn’t bend down to reach the food on the other side of the plantain leaf, I decided to get the food closer to me.  It was really quite easy.  I glared menacingly and intimidated the women serving into lining up the food items closer to my reach.  My glare, I am told, can scare the life out of the Lord himself.  There was hardly any choice for me.  Really!  Either that or like a fool, I had to look helplessly at the food and drool over the sight of it the whole time and I will have you know that I am no fool. 

Anyway, that was when the idea bulb went on once again in my head and I found a tailor who took my nine-yard saaree and tailored it for me.  Hallelujah!  No more ‘Christ on the Cross’ pose for me.  No more walking around like a penguin.  No more fear of looking like a mummy.  All I had to do was to slip in, tie the pant, wrap the cloth once around and voila, I would have myself a madisar saaree. 

Well, the reality did not quite go like that.  Two weeks ago on my current trip to India, history repeated itself and I found myself practicing my penguin walk once again. 

I figure some ideas of mine are just more brilliant than the others.