Deepavali - an introspection!

A typical abcd (American born confused desi), my daughter asked me yesterday ‘Amma, what is Deepavali?’  The first answer that popped into my mind, of course, was that it is the day that Indians all over the world make lots of deep-fried savories and sweets and indulge themselves in to gluttony.  When my kid put her hands on her waist and glared at me, I realized that I had inadvertantly voiced my thoughts.  Chastising myself, I quickly scanned through my mental pages for that story of the death of the demon Naragaasura that led to the celebration of Deepavali and explained to her that the day symbolizes sweeping away the dark and bringing the light into our homes.  When she nodded and walked away, I patted myself on the shoulders (because my back is wayyyyy in the back) for that grown-up like answer. 

Still, that question lingered on my mind throughout the day.  Yet another Deepavali has come by and as always, I have been focusing too much on the frills of the festival ordering sweets and snacks, buying new clothes, making plans to celebrate with firecrackers and getting together with friends and family to party.  Where in all this is the sweeping away of the dark and the evil? 

This question left a very distinct uneasiness in my mind yesterday.  I went through the day taking comfort in the routine of washing dishes, doing laundry, making pav bhaji and taking classes all the while knowing that I must face the question eventually.  I even made it to bed last night successfully feigning happiness.  The churning of the stomach as I woke up today told me that it was time to deal with it and take stock of all the dark that hides in me. 

Ego, I fear, is the worst dark in me.  This little monster has had a free run in my life for way too long.  This Deepavali, I will try to sweep it out and brave this world without that protective cloak.  My inspiration to lead life with a willingness to humiliate myself actually comes from an unlikely source – my dog Leia.   

There is truly no dog in this world that she cannot be friends with.  She can browbeat every aggressive dog out there just by being passive.  You growl, she will bring her best toy and share with you.  You kick at her, she will come and lick your face and wag her tail.  You intimidate her by any hostile behavior, she will completely ignore that and call you to play.   What can one do in the face of such passiveness except offer a hand in friendship?  There must be some truth to Gandhiji’s strategy of winning a war through non-violence.  This Deepavali, I take an oath to emulate Leia and follow her strategy of meeting all hostility with friendship. 

Ego is just the beginning of a long list of dark in me.  Impatience, a tendency to procrastinate, a temper hot enough to sting those around me, a fear of breaking conventional boundaries, a fear of confrontations, an almost impossible set of expectations from my children, a loving husband that I constantly take for granted, my family by birth and marriage that I love very much but never take any initiative to keep in regular touch…….my mile-long flaws glare at me from the mirror. 

If you expect me to conquer all of them in one Deepavali, you are the uncrowned leader of the LaLa land.  J I doubt if my heart can take annual introspections like this so I am happy that after ego, I still have enough evil lined up to cover a decade of  Deepavali festivals.

Wishing all my family and friends a joyful Deepavali.  May peace reign in our hearts this day and forever.

The secret to any successful relationship!

I goof up a lot. Big and small, I make them all. Enough to know not to judge anyone harshly. And I do own up to my mistakes…eventually! My goof ups can be broadly categorized in to two kinds – one is the common, run-of-the-mill, meenasankaran variety while the other is the spooky, unnatural kind. I own up to the first one and blame the second on the powers above.

Take last night, for example. I was caught once again in the middle of a Physics Jeopardy camouflaged as a family discussion. The relativity of time and space was the hot topic of the night as we had just come back from watching the movie Terminator 5. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s creepy full-toothed smile at the end of the movie was too funny but did anyone want to talk about it? No! It was all “Time is not constant,” “Traveling near the speed of light can warp time and space,” and some such nonsense. It was a trying time for me as usual. Pretending to be intelligent for a whole half hour is no easy task and honestly, I was getting tired of it. I decided that I was going to have my share of the conversation and racked my brains looking for an interesting scientific topic. 

Hah! Yes, I got it. Excited, I stood up and blurted, “I know what plants require to stay alive”. There was a general look of confusion in the room. Happy to have everyone’s attention at last, I declared with a beaming smile that all plants needed sunlight, water and chloroform to survive. When roaring laughter erupted around me, it was my turn to look confused. It was when my daughter asked me ‘Are you planning to kidnap a plant Amma?’ that I realized that I had mixed up chlorophyll and chloroform.  Oops! Still, I thought it was an overkill trying to literally roll on the floor like that. Anyway, after a bit of well-deserved sulking, I had to admit that I had goofed up once again. 

Now, coming to the other kind, I react very strangely to the news of an impending birth of a baby in a family. Naturally, I am happy for the parents-to-be and wish them both tons of fun changing diapers in the wee hours of the night. After putting the goodwill aside though, the news of a pregnancy causes very abnormal gastrointestinal problems for me. 

For example, say you are pregnant and you share the happy news with me. After hurriedly offering you the customary congratulations and wishes, I’ll rush home and immediately start my regime of medications. When you start your pre-natal vitamins, I will break open a bottle of Tums. When you pop a folic acid supplement, I will pop a calcium one. Why? Because at the end of your first trimester, I generally have full blown heartburn; at the end of your second trimester, my heartburn will move up the ladder to acid reflux and when you are ready to push that baby out on that hospital table, I will almost positively graduate to an Ulcer. I have concluded this to be the result of acute stress – the pressure of making it to see a baby within a few days of its birth. 

You see, historically speaking, I have never been known to visit a baby in its baby state. Usually the baby grows up and walks on its two legs and comes over to meet me. This is not for lack of trying on my part, I will have you know. I go to the store well ahead of the birth and buy cute little baby gifts and have them ready in gift bags.  Then I wait for the call. After I had successfully chewed off all my nails, the call usually comes announcing the baby’s birth. This is the make-it or break-it moment. The moment that could change my soiled record. But then, it all begins.

My car falls apart; a ligament around my knee tears like a soggy papad; my shoulder hangs out of the socket; I start talking funny delirious with fever; an allergy specialist declares that I am allergic to the world around me and orders me to live in a sterile bubble. After I win the war with all these elements one by one and at last pick up those gift bags in exhaustion, my dogs start throwing up. Just about this time, I tend to give up and halt all attempts to try and go see the baby. There is a greater power at work here and who am I to question it? Now the wait begins for the baby to grow up and pay me a visit. When they do come around to finally seeing me, I make it a point to pull out their pending gifts and show them the little baby boots, the plush blanket and the tiny little newborn dress that I had bought for them. Children are much more forgiving than the parents, I tell you. 

Luckily I have borrowed an ingenious method from a cousin of mine that very effectively deflates the anger of those annoyed parents. For that matter, this works like a charm on anyone.  Every time I see a hostile person, I offer them a profuse apology. I am never stingy with my apologies, you see. I simply walk up to them with a sheepish smile and say ‘I am soooooo sorry’. Just like that. Sometimes they are confused because at that point in time, I had not committed my mistakes yet. In confusion, when they ask for a reason, I tell them ‘Just put it in my account and keep track of it.  I am sure you will need it at some point.’ 

I believe strongly that this is the solution for all relationship problems.  All one has to do is walk around saying sorry randomly and remind folks to put it in their account. They can pull one up and use it the next time you goof up. In my humble opinion, one can never apologize too much. We never know when we will need them, do we?

On that note, I want to say how very sorry I am.  If I haven't offended you already, I do hope that you will credit this to my account for future use to be used against any mistake I have yet to make.  Because I do believe that a willingness to bow and concede to the opponent is the key to any and all successful relationships! 

Here is another one (just in case) to cement our relationship!  Very SORRY! I am feeling very relieved now.  I think I have enough apologies lying around in my account to cover a couple of hundred mistakes.  Whew! 

Documentation for Dummies!

'M, come here for a minute and bring X and Y with you' my husband called in a voice that suggested that we were about to have a family meeting. This is a routine matter for us. Every once in a while, he will call, we will gather; he will speak, we will listen; he will dismiss and we will disperse. I always think in hindsight that I should have taken a notepad with me because the words of wisdom he doles out in these family meetings deserves to be passed down to generations. Sometimes I wonder how he manages to walk up straight without sagging under the weight of all that knowledge and wisdom. It can't be easy for him, I am sure.

To my 'Can't this wait? I have Sambar on the stove and it's not ready yet', my husband gave an indulgent smile and said no. Of course not! Switching off the stove I walked behind him looking back only to make sure X and Y were following. The next challenge was gathering around the toilet bowl in the pea-sized bathroom which was the venue of our current meeting. If you haven't seen our family recently, you probably cannot understand the mammoth (pun intended) difficulty of fitting the four of us around the said bowl but after a bit of creative maneuvering, we all took our rightful place and waited for the meeting to commence. As my husband cleared his throat to begin, I realized I had once again forgotten the notepad. Darn it!

'As you all know, this toilet has been leaking for a while now' he stopped and looked at us for confirmation. Promptly we all nodded and he continued 'so I have come up with a plan to prevent water getting wasted so much'. X, Y and I gazed at him with undiluted awe. He deserves a halo behind his head, I thought reverently, as he got ready to share another one of his many master plans with us.

Bending down to point at the knob below, he said 'Remember to turn this counter clockwise every time before you use this bathroom'. He paused to see if we were following and we did what we always do best. We nodded vigorously anxious to relieve his mind of all doubts. How could we not follow him? He even demonstrated 'counter clockwise'. That is how good he is to us. I can't believe how fortunate we are to have his guidance in complicated matters like these. Satisfied that we got it, he proceeded 'After you flush the toilet, wait for 20 seconds and then turn it clockwise until you can turn no more'.

Uh oh! Oh God, please no! Not Math! Not at a time like that. I could see myself in the bathroom reciting 1 one thousand, 2 one thousand, 3 one thousand………………….I looked at X and Y in despair but they are made of sterner stuff than me. They were looking at my husband with a look that seemed to say 'Is that all you got'? Unfazed by that, of course, my husband continued to patiently demonstrate the knob-turning technique until he was sure the process was etched in our little brains. Such was his training that I found myself practicing the turn unconsciously in the air while watching TV last night.

'But appa' Y interrupted his training session and asked 'What about when we have guests at home?' Thrilled and thoroughly pleased by this intelligent question of Y, my husband beamed a smiled at her and proceeded to solve this new problem. His ability to instantly provide solutions to problems is spooky, I tell you. Give him a problem and he will give you a solution right away but if you are the kind that needs some hand holding with implementation, I suggest you knock on a different door with your problems. How much can one person do? He can't both think and act now, can he?

'This is what you do' he laid out the plan for us. 'Make a document that gives step by step instructions on how to turn the knob and how long they are supposed to wait before turning it again. Be sure to take a picture of the toilet bowl and put an arrow in red (he really pays attention to details, doesn't he?) to indicate the position of the knob. X, you are good at drawing, right? I want you to draw examples of clockwise and anti-clockwise motions and put it under the bullet points. After all, we want to make it easy for our guests to enjoy our bathroom' he finished.

I blinked the tears of pride that were welling up in my eyes. Such thoughtful and thorough documentation instructions are worthy of a Fortune 500 company's IT department. And here is my husband, brimming with the milk of human kindness, using his skills so you can pee in peace (using the instruction sheet that is soon to go on the wall over the toilet) if you ever plan to stay over in our home.

Is it any wonder that we adore him? J